And so we've asked Mr. Posner to tell us what's missing and what haven't we got into that we should have gotten into. And if we've got something that isn't working right, we throw it over to him because we like his little blue books. There's about 50 blue books they've put out, by the way, on terrorism; isn't that right, easily 50? Mr. POSNER. Probably more, but easily 50, yeah. STATEMENT OF PAUL L. POSNER, MANAGING DIRECTOR, FEDERAL BUDGET ISSUES, STRATEGIC ISSUES, U.S. GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE Mr. POSNER. Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here, and it's a pleasure to hear the other testimonies such compelling ways showing that our Federal system is still vital. It reminds us at Washington how valiant the efforts have been out here, and when we craft new Federal responses, we better be sure that we support and don't kill that kind of initiative and passion. We are realizing slowly that this challenge is beyond the capacity of any one level of government, including Washington, and it means that what we do here involves a national not a Federal response. It means it has to be collaborative, partnerial in nature. We have over 40 Federal agencies involved in this problem, 22 of which are going to be consolidated into the Department of Homeland Security, and there's still going to be a significant number of agencies not in this department, I might add. We have State governments from which we've heard, local governments, special districts; we have 87,000 units of those. We have private players who are critical in addressing this problem, and somehow we all have to figure out a way to integrate and overcome the stovepipes that have traditionally, at least at the Federal level, and are used to having these. I started my career with the New York City budget office and was familiar with stovepipes in city government as well. One of the things that's so critical we've heard, particularly after September 11th, is the statement with regard to the first responders, and that's obviously a critical role. We've heard a lot about that, how you're better preparing yourself. But throughout the whole range of this problem, State and local governments are critical. But the last panel brought that up very well that even in counterintelligence and counterterrorism efforts, State and local governments are really critical players because we at the Federal level don't have the resources that you do. There are 650,000 police officers in this country, and it's dawning on Federal agencies that to respond to the kind of threat we are facing, they have to get into the community and have those kinds of information-they need to better find a way to tap the kind of information that you have and the resources you have. And that's why the INS is starting to contract with local police departments to chase down visa overstayers because their staffs simply aren't enough to do the job. It's true for critical infrastructure. How do we protect critical infrastructure? The Federal Government doesn't own much and doesn't do much on its own. The critical infrastructure the roads, the highways, the transit facilities, the ports in this country, the drinking water-are all really owned by State and local governments and private sector. And so how we can kind of figure out a way to mobilize a response on a national level is absolutely critical to solving this problem. And the dilemma for any local official, hav-> ing been one myself at one time, is that you have really a lot of different players involved with these things. You don't control much, but, you sure are accountable for almost everything. And so that's why, you know, it's important that we help you better address those kinds of issues. I will say that there are shifts going on right now in the way we-and we've heard here at the local level some of the important initiatives going on. At the Federal level, we all, of course, know about the President's proposed a Department of Homeland Security. The House has passed a bill largely following his proposal. The Senate has a somewhat different bill that has not yet passed. We are awaiting a resolution of that this fall. We believe at GAO that is a promising first step, a necessary but not sufficient step. It's important to get all the relevant players, for example, border security, get it together. Does that mean they'll all really work together? No. That's why putting them into a department is probably the first of a maybe 10-year journey before we really achieve the kind of harmonization and integration that we need. In the bill, for example, the Customs Service still has autonomy with regard to submitting its budget directly to Congress, notwithstanding the new department. So there are forces that still are going to be very difficult to address as the department, if we get a department, tries to bring some more cohesion to this. Grants is one of the real important tools that we think the department will use and consolidation of grants is important. And you all have experienced the Department of Justice and FEMA and the Public Health Service and a variety of other separate funding streams coming down with different requirements, and we kind of dump it in your lap, and you've got to figure out how to bring them together. The Federal Government can do a better job of bringing some cohesion to that up front and providing some national goals, but giving you flexibility in how you address them. So those are some of the challenges that we are starting to move to, but we've also seen some significant shifts already, not even passing the statute yet, in long-standing roles and relationships between these levels of government. National defense was historically a national responsibility, a Federal responsibility. Fire and police were historically a local responsibility. What this crisis is bringing to light is that defense is increasingly a local responsibility, protecting the Nation from this kind of insidious attack. And that, in fact, local police and how you work together is a national level interest. So we are bringing more of these kinds of levels that used to be separate together in some way, and the key is how can we do it in a way that both provides accountability to achieve some national expectations but gives flexibility to avoid a one-size-fits-all. For example, when you look at what's in the offing right now, what's on the table, we have a new law that Congress passed requiring local drinking water systems to do vulnerability assessments and develop protection plans with some Federal money. We have a new Coast Guard regime that's putting a new Federal responsibility over the ports; that used to be a State and local responsibility. The Coast Guards requiring plans in 55 major ports. Fire services are again going to get a lot of Federal help but also probably some Federal standards. Communications, historically, we've heard, is a fairly fragmented thing. Every State and every community does it somewhat differently. The Office of Homeland Security's plans say that as a condition for Federal grants, local and State governments are going to try to achieve some greater interoperability, some national standards coming down in that arena. For the motor vehicles issue every State has a separate Department of Motor Vehicles. We are now seeing national proposals coming from Congress and the President to nationalize that responsibility, to get States to provide better secure documents when they issue driver's licenses so that we don't have terrorists able to counterfeit these kinds of documents. So there's going to be greater national pressures building on local services. The question is, how can we do it in a way that accommodates both national and local roles? We've also seen State and local roles changing, and that's one of the issues when we talk about what's missing here. One of the things we've been doing is we've been going out, and we've seen, as jurisdictions within metropolitan regions attempting to work together more closely. Bringing together partners across a community as widespread as the Denver Metropolitan area is not an easy challenge. Every metropolitan area has tens, or hundreds in some cases, of governments, special purpose and others, that are responsible to their own constituencies. How to bring some harmonization together is always a challenge. And so as we look down from the Federal angle, we see some of these problems are clearly local, some of them seem to be State, when the States can provide leadership, and some of them might best be done on a regional basis. And we've seen, as we visited, a lot of this starting to happen on its own. Mutual aid agreements historically have been in place. The public health networks are improving. And we are seeing a lot more here in Denver and other areas of regional efforts to promote better sharing and promote more economy of scale in how we provide for this expertise we need. But more, clearly, can be done in that regard, and it's historically very difficult to get communities, whether in the Washington area or New York area, to really collaborate with one another. And that's the kind of thing that we need to promote. And we look at critical infrastructure areas, and we also see a lot of fragmentation there. Take, for example, airports. Airports have a patchwork quilt of different players responsible for security. We have TSA now responsible once you go through the gate. We have local and State governments responsible for the perimeter. We have the National Guard that comes in from time to time. We have the FAA that has responsibility. The airlines have responsibilities. So when we look at the safety of airlines and airline travel, we have a lot of players. And it's not clear to anyone that this has really been sorted out. The same thing goes for something like food safety. You take the distribution chain and you have, you know, from the farm to the processor to the retail establishment to the grocery store or the restaurant, very different governmental roles and responsibilities for each stage of that process. The farmer is pretty much on their own. We have some kind of State roles there. When you get to the proc essing plants, why, there you have two different Federal agencies: The Agriculture Department responsible for meat and poultry, and the FDA responsible for pretty much everything else. We don't have any Federal standards; we have voluntary standards that those agencies have put out for that phase of the distribution process. When we get to the restaurants, that's totally State and local. So what the President's homeland security plan suggested, and I think this is a useful thing to think about, is having a national strategy for each one of these critical infrastructure areas so that we would at least have a way to agree as a Nation whether we are comfortable and whether those roles and responsibilities are appropriate. Given all these different players, it's really important to have clear goals and measures as we craft national strategies—what we are trying to achieve. How much security is enough, and how will we know it when we get there? The presence or absence of a terrorist event is not an acceptable performance measure. We want at national levels to make more of these investments. The quid pro quo is, I think, we are going to want to see some demonstrable changes in the results, in the outcomes. What are we getting by way of approved protection? Are there ways to measure it? Can we get every one of the systems to subscribe to those measures? Finally, we've heard a lot of discussion, rightly so, about assistance, and we need to think more clearly at the national level about how we are going to get this done. Because, clearly, every hearing we do and every time we go to the local level, needs are incredibly large and always outrun the funding available. I'm reminded that the congressional budget office on Tuesday is going to issue their latest deficit update for the Federal Government; $160 billion deficit in 2002. One of my other responsibilities at the General Accounting Office is to develop long-range Federal budget forecasts. And given the aging of our population and the increasing demands of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, why, our forecast of CBOs say that at current tax rates, we are going to be able to basically pay for the elderly and their doctors and that's about it in 20 years. In other words, we are quickly running, as the baby boomers retire, into dire fiscal straits. And so the question is, how do we respond to these urgent needs in a way that is both effective and economical? And that means we are going to have to think hard about how to best target these moneys, how to best ensure that we are going to get something of value for this. How, for example, to ensure that when we hand money down to local communities and States that they don't simply turn around and replace their own money with our money and cut taxes or put it in some other area. In other words, we need to prevent fiscal substitution. We need to have reasonable accountability provisions. I know that planning sometimes can go a little awry. Some kind of, again, assurance of results in terms of what we are getting for the money is important. And, finally, there is the question of sustainability. How long should the Federal Government be involved, and what should be the Federal versus the State versus the local shares of costs in these things? So the point is, I think, by and large, we have to fig |