Homeland Security Funding

New York City's Homeland Security funding has been slashed by about $83 million from what the city received the previous year. From the Staten Island Advance we get this exchange between Fossella and Harrison's campaigns:

"Fossella wrote to Bush last week asking him to intervene on behalf of the city after Chertoff announced the decision to slash its counterterrorism allocation from last year's $207 million to $124 million. Among other rationales, the Department of Homeland Security offered the startling contention that New York lacks significant monuments.

Fossella said yesterday that he is satisfied with the White House's response to date. But chances of recouping the slashed funding were pooh-poohed by his Democratic opponent in the upcoming election, Brooklyn attorney Stephen Harrison.

"When you have a Congress controlled by Republicans and a White House controlled by Republicans, you are not going to see the 40 percent cut in funding for the city restored," said Harrison.

Harrison does well in explaining that the funding cuts were partisan and the Republican party is intentionally withholding funds from this very Democratic region. It is a good point to drive home because it shows you how little ability Fossella has in his party. I would suggest that security and thus security funding is possibly the most important issue for a representative from New York City, and even New York state. We see Reps. Sweeney and King doing as much for our funding as Fossella and one is from upstate and the other Long Island. It would be one thing if Congress were to withhold transportation funding that theoretically would be attached to the much hyped NASCAR track. But to play with our security at the expense of one of their own is baffling. It is not as if Fossella doesn't get along with Speaker of the House, Rep. Hastert.

What Harrison doesn't bring up that I find interesting is that Rep. Fossella, a five term congressman, and the only Republican member of Congress from New York City has so little influence and power in his position that this was able to happen. It wasn't even as if he was able to just maintain last year's amounts instead of bringing home more money, he wasn't even able keep those levels. If this is what happens when he is part of the majority party what should his constituents expect when after the fall elections he becomes part of the minority party?