Washington, D.C. – Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today praised the bipartisan congressional effort to increase oversight of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) threat detection technologies.  In an October 30^th letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) Comptroller General, 23 legislators called for a comprehensive report to assess the more than $18 billion spent on efforts to detect and deter biological threats since September 11^th:

“Having reached the fifth anniversary of the anthrax attacks, we believe Congress and the Administration would benefit from a comprehensive assessment by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) of currently deployed airborne or environmental biological threat detection technologies and those that are planned or under development.” 

“Before we rush to implement this expensive technology, an evaluation must be made of its usefulness,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “We applaud this bipartisan effort to bring accountability to biodefense spending.”

The members of Congress asked the GAO to examine the effectiveness of biological detection technologies, methodology for determining effectiveness, plans for developing new technologies, and utilization of resources past, current and future.  Recognizing the complexity and breadth of its request, the signatories indicated an anticipation of multiple reports. 

The letter comes in the wake of a recent GAO report that criticized DHS’s cost-benefit analysis of the purchase of new radiation detection monitors for ports as unsound and incomplete.  Some members of Congress have called for the inspection of every piece of cargo that goes through each port of entry, a significant potential inhibition of trade, but, as the GAO found, the technology is not yet accurate enough. 

“Billions of dollars have been spent on the worthy cause of protecting the country from terrorist attack, but we must make sure that the money is spent wisely and on programs that are effective,” concluded Schatz.  “Homeland security can only benefit from heightened oversight.”

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.