Protecting the pork
Providence Journal: A formula that gives anti-terrorism funds of $38.31 per resident to Wyoming but only $5.47 per resident to New York State could be called ill-conceived, but "perverse" is more accurate. These numbers reflect the classic congressional mindset that all federal money is just more pork to be doled out to the folks back home.
Fortunately, a few wiser heads in Washington have drawn attention to the foolishness of handing out homeland-security money on the basis of anything but the threat of terrorism. And such criticism from the 9/11 Commission really got the ball rolling. The growing recognition that politics fueled the grab for anti-terrorism money has now led lawmakers to reconsider their formulas.
Formula-driven
Actually, there have been two formulas for divvying up the anti-terrorism money. One guaranteed that each state would get a minimum percentage of a multibillion-dollar pot. That's how Wyoming, thanks to its tiny population, ended up with seven times the funds per head of New York. The national state average, $7.77 per resident, was also higher than New York's.
The other formula, using a somewhat bigger pot, goes only to densely populated areas that are most vulnerable to a terrorist attack. But pork-barrel politics crept into this formula, too. It would have seemed logical the list of recipients include New York City, Washington, Los Angeles, Chicago and just a few other huge urban centers. Yet the original list came to 30, and is now 80. The more cities included, the less money for the ones that are most at risk.
Rep. Christopher Cox, a California Republican who chairs the homeland-security committee, has proposed a much sounder allocation of the anti-terrorism funds.