CHICAGO - In unveiling his plan for a new federal Department of Homeland Security, President Bush promised that it would require no new funds.
On the contrary - it would "enhance operational efficiencies," minimize "duplication of effort" and foster "streamlined grant making." Creating a huge new Cabinet-level bureaucracy, he assured the nation, "would not grow government."
Of course not. And Britney Spears wouldn't expose her navel.
It may sound thunderously obvious, but nobody ever created a federal department in order to save money for taxpayers. The whole goal, whether stated or not, is to ensure more dollars for a specific government function. Establishing a Department of Homeland Security to reduce the size of government is like going to a NASCAR race to get some peace and quiet.
If your boss announced that he was going to do some streamlining to minimize duplication, you'd immediately start looking at the help wanted ads. Governments, however, operate by different notions of efficiency. If Mr. Bush's plan were really going to eliminate redundancy, abolish unnecessary jobs and get rid of outmoded functions, the constituencies affected by these trims would be screaming themselves hoarse right now. The comparative silence in the vicinity of the Beltway indicates that not many people in Washington see any threat to their livelihoods.
More likely, most of them feel optimistic about the coming boom in federal employment. War, it's been said, is the health of the state, and the current war is no exception. The rise of anti-American terror obviously demands that Washington devote more resources to the danger. But why shouldn't the money come from other programs that have suddenly grown less urgent? Why does the federal government acquire new responsibilities but never shed any old ones?
When Mr. Bush says he doesn't want additional funds, he brings to mind the old country song: "I don't love you any more - trouble is, I don't love you any less." He proposed a doubling of outlays for homeland security in his latest budget, and despite all the new efficiencies his department would achieve, that function would need every bit as much money next year as it does this year.
History suggests that expenditures will only grow. After the Department of Energy was created in 1977, its spending nearly doubled in three years. Federal spending on education rose by 20 percent, in inflation-adjusted terms, in the two decades after President Carter founded the Department of Education in 1979.
That pattern sounds fine to former Sen. Warren Rudman, a New Hampshire Republican who co-chaired a commission that in 2001 urged the creation of a homeland security agency.
"The agencies that will form the Department of Homeland Security are relatively insignificant within their current Cabinet departments," he said. "They will be far more important and get much more care, attention and funding in their own agency." A senior House Republican aide, upon hearing administration aides insist that the overhaul won't cost money, told Time: "I don't know how they can say it with a straight face."
That's why Republicans, who fancy themselves the custodians of the purse strings, had opposed the idea all along. Come to think of it, Mr. Bush himself had opposed the idea all along. Now he finds himself lobbying to erect a bureaucracy with enough employees (170,000) to populate a good-sized city.
It sounds sensible to put under one roof all of the 100 agencies with some responsibility for homeland security, but many of them have other functions as well.
The Customs Service is more involved in collecting tariffs than in keeping out terrorists. The Secret Service has the job of chasing down counterfeiters, who are not much of a threat to skyscrapers. The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) does things like accrediting veterinarians and protecting elk from chronic wasting disease, neither of which is al-Qaida territory.
Eventually, someone will look at all these different duties and ask why they're being allowed to distract the Department of Homeland Security from its mission. Then someone will propose splitting off those functions into new agencies in other departments. Instead of having one Customs Service or one APHIS, we could end up with two of each.
We can also expect growth within the new department. Hardly had Mr. Bush made his pitch before Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Jon Corzine of New Jersey were urging that the Department of Homeland Security include an Office for the Protection of Children. Pretty soon all sorts of high-minded causes will be repackaged as homeland security to justify new funding.
Not so long ago, a president informed us that the era of big government is over. It wasn't George W. Bush.
Steve Chapman is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune Publishing newspaper. His column appears Tuesdays in The Sun.