Forget Slots, Congress is Too Loose

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) has spent too much time in Las Vegas. So much time, in fact, that he sees the federal government as one big lever that he can pull to get a big payout for his state. Now, he's in a pissing match with the Director of Homeland Security who has told Las Vegas to stop sucking on the federal tit.

Angry that Las Vegas was jettisoned from a list of cities eligible for anti-terror grants to high-risk areas, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., is calling for the resignation of the nation’s homeland security chief.

A spokesman for Reid confirmed comments first published in the Las Vegas Review-Journal Thursday. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff this week announced a new method of distributing the Urban Area Security Initiative grants. His plan included removing the eligibility of some cities that have received the high-risk grants in the past, including Las Vegas, which received $8.5 million in fiscal 2005.

“Anyone who can’t see that Las Vegas is a high-risk area doesn’t deserve to serve in a position like that,” Reid said. “We had more visitors on New Year’s Eve than they had in Times Square and we’re not a high-risk area? For heaven’s sakes.”

[snip]

Some lawmakers have praised Chertoff’s changes, however, calling them another step toward ending the allocation of homeland security grants based on what the independent Sept. 11 commission called a “pork-barrel” methodology.

A spokesman for the Homeland Security Department did not immediately return a call seeking comment. Chertoff explicitly anticipated the kind of outcry Reid’s comments exemplified at a news conference this week.

“I have to be very clear about this: The purpose of the UASI program — indeed, the purpose of all homeland security funding — is not to generate popularity for the secretary or for the Department of Homeland Security, it is to address the highest priorities driven by an analytic, risk-based process,” Chertoff said.

“UASI funds are not entitlements. Once you get a UASI designation, it doesn’t mean that a city has it for the rest of the decade, or the next 20 years. Each year we have to look afresh at what the risks are,” he said.

Via CQ. (subscription required).