R&I – FS
Here are the three words that no elected official, serving or retired, wants to say: “I was wrong.”
Throughout my career, I was known for taking some very lonely votes. But I made a mistake in 2002 when I voted to create the Department of Homeland Security, which had been recommended by a number of members of Congress in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 the year before.
Looking back in the congressional record, I could hear the doubts in my voice.
“I have tremendous misgivings about the size and shape of this department,” I said. I warned that people could be “less accountable, hiding under layers of bureaucracy.” I worried out loud on the Senate floor about including FEMA, the Coast Guard and immigration agencies into one giant department.
That was enough to get my yes vote.
Here’s where I went wrong: I never imagined that a president would use unconfirmed puppets like acting DHS secretary Chad Wolf and his deputy, Ken Cuccinelli, to terrorize our own citizens in our own country. Our goal then had been to protect our own people, not hurt them, not harm them, not hunt them down on the streets of Portland or any other city. There was no protection built into this bill to stop a power-hungry president from misusing a powerful federal police force, hidden in disparate agencies, controlled by one agency head — the thought never even occurred to me.
SunnyDandthePurpleStuff
Article URL : https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/07/25/barbara-boxer-regret-dhs/