What sort of security would $87 billion buy?
Back in the fall, I did a rough calculation of what sort of homeland security measures one could have funded with $87 billion -- Bush's supplemental request for Iraq.
The answer is, $87 billion buys you a LOT of security programs. Read on for the list...
Roughly, you could do ALL of the following:
- Install anti-missile systems on all US jetliners
- Conduct all recommended security upgrades of US embassies
- Environmental cleanup still to do in NYC (unfortunately, I can't find my notes on what that meant, but there was $2 billion of it by one source)
- Provide $12 billion in WMD incident training to "first responders"
- Inspect 20% of containers entering the US, not 2% (one year)
- Double spending on the Border Patrol and Coast Guard (one year)
- Quadruple spending on securing former Soviet nuclear materials (one year)
- Double spending on intelligence activities at the FBI, CIA, and NSA (one year)
- Hire 10,000 air marshalls, about enough to cover 25% of all flights in the US (one year)
- Double, triple, even more spending on public diplomacy, "Voice of America" type stuff (one year)
- That leaves about $5 billion, for overruns or to throw into foreign aid where we need to win some hearts and minds, bribe the North Koreans again, build more secure, undisclosed bunkers, fund Ashcroft's anti-porn initiative, or whatever else you think is important to keep America safe...
Of course, some of these are one year costs only for recurring programs. But then again, Iraq hasn't turned out to be a one-time expense, either. If Iraq ends up costing $500 billion total, then you could fund everything here for six or more years.
I was reasonably conservative in my estimates, for example, assuming each air marshall cost $500,000/year for all compensation, ongoing training, air fare, associated administrative staff and facilities, etc. To be fair though, it would be difficult to expand some programs so quickly in an efficient manner (increase container inspection by 10x, for example -- probably have to phase that in).
I was actually planning to do an OpEd with this, but for various reasons put it aside. The discussion of the just-foiled plot in the UK reminded me of it.