The US Secret Service will get a much-needed additional $231 million this week to shore up its overstretched mission to protect presidential and vice-presidential candidates. Two failed assassination attempts on former president Donald Trump—which got close in part because the Secret Service was stretched thin—were enough to convince congressional Republicans and Democrats and President Joe Biden that the Service “needs more help.” The threat to presidential candidates is obviously increased, and the budget for the Secret Service should be based on the threat, not on an amount that is a little more than the previous year’s budget, as often happens in government. The Secret Service needs the additional $231 million, and it needs it now.
But the same logic applies to the overall budget for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), of which the Secret Service is a small but vital part.
The Secret Service is the quintessential nonpartisan security agency. Its agents are prepared to put their lives in the way of anyone trying to harm one of their protectees, regardless of party. They get to know the personal lives of presidents and ex-presidents and their families. Their discretion and valor are both legendary. They also understand that their failures make headlines. Successes, which are far more frequent, seldom get public attention.
It is unusual when the Service’s budget challenges become public controversies, but this has happened in recent years under administrations of both parties.
In 2019, the director of the Service went behind the backs of DHS leadership with Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in an attempt to move the Secret Service back into the Treasury Department, where it originated in 1865, when it focused on counterfeiting. While this cabinet intrigue was well reported at the time, this was less well-known: One reason the Service wanted to leave DHS, I’m told, was because of concerns its budget would be raided to build the wall Trump wanted on the US-Mexico border. Trump’s fiscal year 2018 budget called for the Service to lose fifty million dollars to help fund the border wall. After Biden was inaugurated, the effort to move Secret Service out of DHS was halted at the same time as work on Trump’s border wall.
Under the Biden administration, the Service has fared somewhat better. It has received moderate increases, but DHS as a whole has been treated as a domestic agency, grouped with agencies such as Health and Human Services for negotiating purposes in the 2023 budget deal between Biden and then House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, while the Department of Defense (DOD) got almost all that it requested for military operations. In March 2023, when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin introduced DOD’s fiscal year 2024 budget, he called it the “most strategy-driven request we’ve ever produced from the Department of Defense.”
But this should lead to a larger discussion: Are we spending the right amount on homeland security?
Basing the DOD budget on the threats facing the United States makes eminent strategic sense. The same thinking ought to apply to the budget for DHS, which, in effect, leads the defense of the nation against nonmilitary threats.
Even more than most agencies, the Secret Service’s budget needs to be based on threats against its most important protectees, which for decades have included the major party candidates for president and vice-president and their families. Any effort to place blame for the heightened threat is pointless, from the Service’s standpoint. It is vitally important for the sake of national security and the democratic process that the 2024 presidential election be decided fairly at the ballot box, not through violence.
But this should lead to a larger discussion: Are we spending the right amount on homeland security? There is ample evidence that the Secret Service is not the only DHS agency that needs substantially more funding to do what the public now demands on everything from migration to cybersecurity to school shootings.
Consider the interrelated issues of immigration and border security. Vice President Kamala Harris said days after becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee that she supported the January 2024 bipartisan Senate compromise on immigration and border security—a bill that would have made wide-ranging policy, operational, and resource improvements toward making the immigration system more just, fair and secure. She repeated this during her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention and again during the September 10 presidential debate. We know the approximate price tag of the bipartisan Senate compromise: $20.3 billion. And we know the vice president, if elected, will ask Congress to appropriate the additional money.
Trump has pledged to finish the border wall, more strictly enforce border controls, and launch the largest deportation in US history using Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, state National Guard units, and local law enforcement. The Trump campaign has put forward no cost estimates for its proposals. If Trump is elected, there are good reasons to question whether much of this will actually work, but it will certainly be expensive—and likely impossible to squeeze out of other parts of DHS’s budget. The total cost will be likely be much more than $20 billion, perhaps by a multiple of five or ten times.
On cybersecurity, the Biden administration’s well-reasoned but ambitious cyber strategy calls for shifting the burden from consumers and end users to the organizations that are most capable and best able to reduce risk. Ransomware is still a dangerous threat, and foreign nation states continue to target US computer systems. This may not mean significant budget increases for DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, but it signifies that the national cybersecurity enterprise—which includes the private sector; federal, state, and local governments; and non-profits—all need to spend more on cybersecurity.
There’s a similar case to be made for increased spending for violence prevention programs to divert troubled individuals before they can shoot up schools or houses of worship. These programs have proven successful in proof-of-concept and pilot projects, but they need to be scaled up to try to prevent incidents like the Apalachee High School shooting in September. DHS’s Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention grant program awarded $18 million in grants this fiscal year, but a truly national violence prevention program would cost one thousand times this amount.
Other parts of DHS could benefit from a thorough, threat-based review to see if DHS’s funding and resource level meet the nation’s security needs.
The Secret Service has faced significant criticisms for what happened during the Trump assassination attempts. Additional resources are necessary but not sufficient, and the Secret Service and DHS understand the need for significant changes. But a fundamental re-think of the level of funding for homeland security should be high on the priorities of whoever is the next president. When the threats change, DHS’s resources should change to meet them.
Thomas S. Warrick is a senior fellow and director of the Future of DHS Project at the Atlantic Council. He served in the Department of State from 1997-2007 and as deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism policy at the US Department of Homeland Security from 2008-2019.
Further reading
Wed, Feb 21, 2024
This year’s bipartisan immigration bill offers a border blueprint for 2025
Issue Brief By Thomas S. Warrick
The consequences of another year of inaction on border security and immigration policy may convince a supermajority in the Congress to take up again in 2025 many of the ideas in this year’s bipartisan Senate compromise—no matter which party captures the White House in November.
Tue, Aug 15, 2023
How to put out the fires of violent political extremism
New Atlanticist By
The danger posed by domestic violent extremists is considerable. The United States needs a nationwide, community-grounded initiative to address this threat.
Mon, Jan 31, 2022
Biometrics at the border: Balancing security, convenience, and civil liberties
Issue Brief By Seth Stodder, Thomas S. Warrick
Forward Defense nonresident senior fellows Seth Stodder and Tom Warrick consider how US Customs and Border Protection can employ biometrics for safer, more efficient border operations.
Image: U.S. Secret Service agents stand guard during a campaign rally held by Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, U.S. August 17, 2024. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon