Homeland Security Revamp Effort Seeks to Skirt Turf Skirmishes
“What they really need to do is strengthen the center of DHS,” said Paul Rosenzweig, another Bush-era DHS official who’s now a senior fellow at the R Street Institute, a Washington organization that backs free markets and limited government. “The secretary’s office is like a holding company with eight subsidiaries, each of which acts pretty much independently.”
Former DHS leaders, think tanks, and national security organizations have repeatedly warned that DHS’s diffuse structure hinders the mission of keeping Americans safe. Thompson’s bill attempts to address some of those concerns by adding an associate secretary to help manage the agency’s components, setting new limits on who may serve as an acting secretary, and expanding the role of DHS civil rights officials.
