It’s not a money issue.
The usual D.C. response to government failures is to call for more money. This time it’s for the Secret Service.
There’s now a back-and-forth between congressional Republicans and Democrats over Secret Service funding. The Dems and the media are playing the usual Catch-22 game. Either Republicans increase spending or the Dems and the media can blame them for the next Trump assassination attempt.
Does the Secret Service actually need more money? It has a $3 billion budget. That’s around double what it was in 2000.
Only about $1.2 billion of that goes to protective operations and only about $73 million gets spent on providing security at presidential campaigns. $138 million gets spent on training and professional development.
By way of comparison, $3 billion is around the LAPD budget. And while there are obvious differences between the duties and areas of operations for the LAPD and the Secret Service, the LAPD has more personnel and covers a wider territory and deals with deadlier threats. It also has a better performance record than the Secret Service.
The two Trump assassination attempts came so close because the Secret Service failed to actually closely monitor the scene allowing the two killers plenty of time to set up. More money is not fixing this problem.
Article posted with permission from Daniel Greenfield
