"Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast" -Oscar Wilde |
"The liberal soul shall be made fat, and he that watereth, shall be watered also himself." -- Proverbs 11:25 |
Three weeks before London's bus and subway bombings, a Senate committee voted to slash spending on mass transit security in the United States, a decision sure to be reversed when Congress returns next week.
At a minimum, the Senate will restore the $50 million cut, G. William Hoagland, top budget aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Friday.
There is pressure for a lot more, though adding to rail and transit security programs means cutting elsewhere in the Homeland Security Department's $32 billion budget for next year. That places severe limits on what Congress can do — at least if it plays by its budget rules.
Despite the March 2004 bombing of Madrid's subway system, U.S. officials have been consumed with preventing a repeat of the airliner hijackings that produced the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.
In a stroke of bad timing, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted last month to slash money for rail and transit security grants to state and local government by a third from the $150 million devoted to them this year. As of May, none of the money had been distributed by the Homeland Security Department.