Secret Service Spending Soars

Chris EdwardsIn theWall Street Journal, Peggy Noonanreviews Carol Leonnig ’s book,Zero Fail, about the history and performance of the Secret Service. The federal agency has suffered from epic failures and scandals in recent years.Secret Service management has been dreadful and burying the agency within the sprawling new Department of Homeland Security in 2002 probably made things worse, as Noonan suggests. Indeed, I  think that the DHS superstructureshould be abolished as an excessive layer of counterproductive bureaucracy.Where Noonan and Leonnig appear to go wrong is assuming that the Secret Service budget has been shortchanged.Noonan says —based on Leonnig’s findings—that the agency has been “weakened by bad leadership, underfunding, an insular culture and declining professionalism.”Noonan claims that the agency “was always underfunded.”Noonan recounts: “In 2011 Julia Pierson, who would become the first female director, told the Office of Management and Budget her agency was ‘bankrupt.’ Budget cuts led to understaffing and waves of uniformed‐​officer resignations.”The statements about “underfunding” and “budget cuts” could have used some factchecking. Secret Service spending and employment have soared since 1990. Spending did flatline for a while in real terms a decade ago, but that was after a large increase in the prior decade.The chart below shows the agency ’s spending in 2020 constant dollars. Real Secret Service spending incr...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs