Anyone who is not outraged about what is happening in Washington right now is not paying attention. Consider the following:
- America is currently engaged in a conflict with Iran, which the State Department has designated for the last 40 years as the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism
- The main reason Congress created the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after 9/11 was to protect Americans from terrorism
- DHS will have no money to pay its employees in less than one week
I was in the Senate working with the late Senator Joe Lieberman when he worked aggressively with his longtime colleague Senator Susan Collins to fund and oversee the fledgling new Department of Homeland Security. The Department itself was enacted through legislation he introduced alongside late Senator Arlen Specter, the Homeland Security Act of 2002. It was assembled to be the eyes and ears of the nation, detecting threats and protecting Americans. Yet Congress, in its continuing refusal to do its job and fund DHS, is making every American less safe. The consequences are piling up:
- The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which defends federal networks from foreign attack, is operating with fewer than 900 of its 2,341 employees on the job
- The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) cannot process most disaster reimbursements to states
- The Secret Service has suspended training courses even as it prepares to protect a presidential campaign cycle, the 2026 World Cup, and the 2028 Olympics
- About 61,000 TSA officers across more than 430 airports have been working without pay
- The Coast Guard has accumulated more than 500 unpaid utility bills at its stations, and a backlog of 18,000 merchant mariner credentials is delaying the certification of workers who keep American ports running
None of this had to happen.
In March, then-Senator Markwayne Mullin and Congressman Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat from New Jersey, tried to broker a bipartisan deal to fund DHS. The Senate passed a version of it by unanimous consent. Speaker Mike Johnson refused to bring it up for a vote in the House, where a far-right faction led by Reps. Anna Paulina Luna and Thomas Massie threatened to blow up the process unless voter identification legislation was attached.
That deal is now dead.
We are out of time and out of options. American service members are in harm’s way in the Middle East. Iran is the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. The department Congress built to protect the homeland from exactly this kind of threat is running out of money in a matter of days.
If Congress cannot do that, then they will simply have to fund the department through a one-party reconciliation bill to safeguard our national security. It is not a good option, but it may be the only option at this moment of peak congressional dysfunction. Senator Lieberman, Senator Specter, and Senator Collins built this department through the ultimate exercise in putting country before party, and although reconciliation is the opposite of that tradition, it is the only option left, and the safety of the country has to come first.
Clarine Nardi Riddle
No Labels Board
Former Chief of Staff to Senator Joseph I. Lieberman
