Less than a month after an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, agencies that failed to protect him from harm could be getting bigger budgets.
When Thomas Matthew Crooks shot and wounded Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, Secret Service agents jumped into action and heroically protected him from further harm and escorted him Leave the stage.
But subsequent reports suggested the incident was entirely avoidable: Rally attendees alerted law enforcement more than an hour before a suspicious man began shooting, and they later saw him climb to the top of the building with a gun. “Trump was on stage for about 10 minutes from the time Crooks was spotted holding the gun on the roof to the time he fired the first shot,” the BBC reported.
After a particularly disastrous appearance before the House Oversight Committee, Secret Service Director Kimberly Chettle resigned. Acting Administrator Ronald Rowe Jr. testified before two Senate committees this week that he was “ashamed” of the agency’s failures.
Shortly after the shooting, it was reported that the failure was due to a lack of resources.
At a White House press briefing on July 15, a reporter asked Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees the Secret Service: “Is the Secret Service stretched thin?”
“During times like this, the Secret Service needs additional resources and capabilities to respond to an event of this magnitude,” Mayorkas responded. “I do intend to talk to members of Congress about the resources we need.”
“Our agency needs adequate resources to meet our current mission needs and anticipate future needs,” Cheatle said in opening testimony before the House Oversight Committee on July 22. As of today, the Secret Service has just over 8,000 Secret Service agents. “Staff,” she told Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.). “We are still working to increase our headcount to approximately 9,500 employees to meet future and emerging needs.”
In a letter to Rowe this week, Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Katie Britt (R-Ala.) — members of the Senate Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee ’s Chairman and Ranking Member—seek to understand the needs of the agency’s Financial Conditions Subcommittee as it drafts appropriations bills.
“Congress provided the Secret Service more than $190 million in fiscal year 2024 specifically for protection requirements related to the 2024 presidential campaign, an additional $22 million above President Biden’s budget request,” the senators wrote. “Despite the increase, in mid-June, before the assassination attempt, the Secret Service submitted a reprogramming notice to our subcommittee detailing its intention to transfer $19 million. to cover shortfalls in protection-related travel funding, on top of the upcoming addition of two vice presidential candidates and their families to the agency’s protections, which President Joe Biden added in the wake of the shooting. To the list of independent presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
“As a result, the Secret Service is incurring new protection costs associated with this activity at a time when it already appears to lack adequate resources to accomplish its protection mission,” the senators continued.
But whether the problem is a lack of resources is unclear: The agency’s actual budget has increased by 55% over the past decade, to $3.62 billion, and its staff has increased by 33% from 2002 to 2019.
The agency’s responsibilities can be stretched thin: By law, the Secret Service is tasked with protecting not only the president, vice president and their immediate families, but also former presidents, vice presidents, their spouses, and their children until they are 16 years old. Protects visiting heads of state and “other distinguished foreign visitors to the United States and official representatives of the United States on special missions abroad when the President directs such protection.”
“The Secret Service currently protects 36 individuals per day as well as world leaders visiting the United States,” Charter told the House Oversight Committee.
But that’s not the agency’s only job: Agents are tasked with investigating financial crimes such as counterfeiting, money laundering and identity theft, as well as ransomware attacks, botnets and “online sexual exploitation sometimes carried out by predators and other criminals.” and sexual abuse” for financial gain. “
The Secret Service may be doing too much for the resources it enjoys. Perhaps many of its financial and investigative tasks should be transferred to the U.S. Treasury Department, where the Secret Service originated before Congress added presidential protection to its responsibilities in 1901. .
But it’s also worth remembering that government agencies, by their very nature, do too much, too poorly, and too much money. As noble as its mission is, the Secret Service is no exception.
