The Obama Administration released the first Quadrennial Homeland Security Review on Monday. The document, 88 pages long, is a strategy document meant to outline budget priorities for the next four years. The Review lists five missions backed by 14 goals, including preventing terrorism and enhancing security, securing U.S. borders, enforcing immigration laws, securing cyberspace and ensuring a vibrant response to disasters. While preventing terrorism is the cornerstone of homeland security, the review identified hazards such as cyberattacks, pandemics, natural disasters, illegal trafficking and transnational crime.
Quadrennial Defense Review Report.
Modeled after the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Administration is attempting to move away from “budget politics of the moment” and move towards a comprehensive vision. The Review won praise from both conservatives and liberals, and it is the culmination of a steady move away from terrorism caused by the mishap of Hurricane Katrina. A “bottom-up” review is expected to buttress and elaborate the Review in 2012.
This review comes on the heels of President Obama’s proposed fiscal 2011 budget. Funding for DHS would be up to $53.6 billion, a 2% increase from the current budget. The budget would include $734 million to deploy Advanced Imaging Technology (“full-body” scanners) and new explosives detection equipment for the nation’s airports, $4.6 billion to support 20,000 Border Patrol Agents and to complete the first segment of the virtual fence along the nation’s border with Mexico, $1.6 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement programs to “expeditiously identify and remove” from the United States illegal immigrants who commit crimes, and $billion in state and local programs for equipping, training, and hiring first responders.
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