integration efforts. the budget also focuses on monitoring and compliance, promoting adherence to work site related loss through criminal prosecutions of egregious employers and expansion of e-verify. next, to safeguard and secure cyber space, this budget makes significant investments to strengthen cyber security, including funds to expedite the deployment of einstein 3, to prevent and deticket intrusions on government systems, increase federal network security across the federal government and continue to develop a robust cyber security workforce to protect and respond to national cyber security threats. in 2011, the department responded to a record number of disasters. so to ensure continued resilience to disasters, our next major mission, the president's budget focuses on a whole of community approach to emergency management.

it includes resources for the disaster relief fund which provides a significant portion of the federal response to victims in federally declared disaers or emergencies and is funded largely through authority provided under the budget control act. this budget also continues to provide essential support to national and economic security by supporting the coast guard's operations in the polar regions and by continues to support i.c.e and cbp's efforts to protect u.s. intellectual property rights and collection of customs revenue. the fy 2013 budget proposal reflects this administratiminia strong commitment to protecting the homeland and the american people through the effective and efficient use of dhs resources. as outlined in my testimony today, we will continue to preserve front line priorities across the department by cutting kog costs, sharing resourgss of cross components and streamlining operations wherever

possible. chairman king, ranking member thompson, members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to be here today, and i'm happy to answer your questions. >> thank you for your statement, secretary na pal ton know. as i stated, your full statement will be include ted in the record. we'll now begin the round of questions. we've been faced with a series of threats for the past 10 1/2 years. now within the last several months, the threat of hezbollah seems to have emerged more than it was during that previous time. we had the indictments in washington regarding the attempted assassination -- the plot to assassinate the saudi ambassador, to blow up kataimalano. i believe there's a growing, growing threat from hezbollah. certainly i have been contacted by local police, also local houses of worship, especially synagogues. can you tell what you say the department is doing to address this pending -- pending or possible threat from hezbollah, specifically are you reaching out at all to religious

institutions? >> yes, mr. chairman. we share your concern about hezbollah. we are constantly monitoring their activities around the world. we're working very closely with the fbi and intel community in this regard. and, in addition, we are reaching out to particularly jewish -- the jewish community across the country who have been the intended targets in the past. we have just this past week convened a very large conference call with leaders of the jewish community from around the country and we remain in constant touch with them. right now we have no specific or credible threat against any organization or target in the united states. but this is certainly a situation that bears watching. >> thank you, secretary. you referenced this in your opening statement, but the changing in the grant system, which basically taking, i guess, it's 16 former programs and

merging them into 1, it's a national preparedness grant program. now, in going through the budget justification documents, it appears to only mention state and territories as recipients of the funding. so all high threat urban areas, transit authorities, port authorities, will they be eligible to apply for the funding? >> mr. chairman, what we have put in the budget documents is our vision for how these grant programs would be cole sol dated and organized. we'll work with the members of the committee in terms of how you see the appropriate recipients to be. right now as envengsed we don't envision any changes. because this is such a major alteration on how we handle grants, we'd probably need to work with the community on that. >> i would think so. again, a lot of states like california and new york, to have it just going through the state, to me it's important that we have, again, local urban areas,

certainly port authorities, transit authorities, all of whom could have unique problems to their area of the state including large number of people. millions of people, perhaps. i would ask that as it goes forward that you find ways to work with all those entities. >> indeed. and to accomplish our vision we will require legislative change. so we will be working with the committee on that. >> also, i'm pleased to see that the secure the cities program is being fully funded again this year. as its goes forward, how do you see dhs monitoring, using in cities elsewhere in the country other than where it's just located now? >> we saw securing the cities as a -- it was a pilot program. originally in new york. what we are asking for now is, and what the budget has money for, is to add a second site to

it. and i think we've -- a lot of lessons learned, good lessons learned, actually, from the experience in new york. so we can begin the process of expansion. >> going back to the point i raised before about the grant system, we were contacted by a number of local organizations, sfwrashl association of emergency managers, national association of counties, national league of cities who are concerned that the grant funding may be too state centered. again, i would just emphasize that we are -- we've been contacted just in the last 24 hours by one of these groups concerned about that funding. >> it's our intent that the funding be consolidated to streamline, simplify, remove administrative costs. but we want to focus on meeting the national preparedness goal. how do we leverage resources around the country. how do we make sure there's a basic homeland security net, so to speak, building on the $35

billion of capability that the congress already has invested in. my view is that this should be primarily a risk based grant and that we ought to continue to inform grant decisions by evaluation of risk. >> again. again, just using an opposition. you have myself. she had real security concerns on the northern border. we have different concerns in the long island/new york city area. both are legitimate. i don't know if the state, with all due respect to governor koe mo, if the state fully e kwipted to appreciate differences between various spots of the stage. i'm just asking you to keep that in mind when you go forward. >> yes, sir. >> all right. with that i recognize the ranking member. >> thank you, mr. chairman. as well as the other states in the united states other than new york, we -- we join you in that concern, mr. chairman.

with respect to the reference the chairman made of the letter from the national association of counties, national league of cities, u.s. conference of may yez and national association of five chiefs and others, i'd like to have it entered into the record. >> without objection. >> also with respect to the theme of grants, there is some concern that these stake holders have not been included. in the process of developing guidance on the grants and the consolidation proposals. will you commit to the committee that if it has not been the best, you'll make your best effort to work with those groups. >> yes. and we have had a lot of discussions with stake holders over the last year. some of them have actually, i think, already said they support the vision. the question is going to be the details. how do we fill it out?

that, again, will be something we will work on not just with the stake holder community but with the congress. >> well, and we have the record. and i will ask also that we'll provide you with a copy of the letter from the stake holders. with respect to twik, your best guess as to when we'll come with some guidance on the readers for the twik car. >> i think they're on the verge of the guidance for the readers. i've put some pressure to get this guidance out. as you know, the cars tedlines is coming up. we want to avoid the situation to the extent we can where people are having to renew cars before the readers -- or at least guidance for the readers is out. >> well, if we get to the deadline and it's time to renew, to you see yourself extending

the cars rather than having people come back and pay $133.50 -- >> i asked my staff to give me a set of options on what we can do if that were to happen, yeah. >> we have, we have a lot of communities that are poorly connected and others. they are hearing from a uniform people that they pay the money for the car. they're no more than just a flash card right now because there's no reader that goes with them. i would encourage you to look seriously that if the department does not meet the timeline for producing the readers, that that period be extended until the readers are in place. and the other point is, we'd like for you to look at not

requiring people who apply for a twik car to come back and pick it up. that second trip for a lot of individuals costs a lot of money. some people have to take off a day's work to pick up the car. there are some alternatives out there. we understand the security challenges around it. but it's a concern. and we'd like for you to look at it. >> i'd be happy to. i share those concerns, and we're going to work through all available options within the department. we'll certainly keep your office informed. >> for the sake of the record, here's the -- the problem with the reader, the department or -- where has the breakdown been for the last four-plus years? >> i -- you know, it's -- it's hard to say where, in fact.

there have been a lot of just operational issues with some of the test readers. with respect to their viability and their rugleness and the likes. there's been just things tested that haven't played out. so it's been a real process to finally arrive at something that will be good guidance. >> so your testimony is you're close. >> that's my understanding, yes. >> mr. chairman, i would love to get something back from the secretary as to her best guess as to when we can expect something from the department. >> we can make that a joint request to the secretary right now. >> i'll be happy to get something back to you. >> i yield back. >> thank you, gentleman, for yielding. ms. hokele, i'd want to site mr. higgins from western new york. you're just in my line of vision

there. how can we ignore brian higgins. in event -- >> we've got another new york guard here. >> even if we don't always agree with the -- >> mr. rogers? >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'd like to offer for the record a letter that -- we appreciate your service. i want to talk to you about secure communities and 287-g. now, my understanding from looking at the budget -- or the memo on the budget is that the 2 #7-g program was reduced by 25% which has basically halted any additional training of additional communities going

forward. is that correct? >> for forces, yes. we are moving to a -- we began this migration last ea toward, we install secure communities through the country, that's really the preferred way to identify those in the country illegally and to get them removed sfl i agree the security communities is a dpraet way. but 287-g program has been just an outstanding force multiplier, relatively inexpensive, too. i hate to see no additional communities be added. >> if i might, representative? >> certainly. >> in terms of task forces we're actually going to discontinue some because there we have task forces in the country that over the last one or two years have paked up maybe one or two illegals. so when we actually calculate out the average cost of removing somebody who's been picked up by 287-g task force versus, say,

secure comments. 287-g pen similars out to be about ten times expensive per alien. there is a cost, correct. >> that's interesting. talk about security communities. my understanding is that we were -- not my understanding. i know we were told in alabama that the remaining 27 -- or 37 counties, there's been 30 so far that have had the security communities established. the remaining 37 counties were to have it installed by november of last year. then i was told backed up to december of this year. now i've been told it's stopped. is that the case? >> it has been delayed, that is correct. >> why? >> several reasons. but one reason is that, as you know, tal al state law is in litigation. it's at the 11th circuit. the schedule for oral argument is coming right up. we left the program in place

where it was turned on. where it's turned on covers 75% of the foreign born population in alabama. but given the pennensy of the litigation we decided to just hold off on the remaining quarter. i will say, however, that is is our intent to finish completion of the securities later this year. >> why is it relevant? you haven't hawked it in arizona or georgia. they have similar legislation at the state level. >> i think in those jurisdictions for already turned on before the litigation commenced. we left it at their status quo as well. >> okay. talk about procuriousment. i've had a lot of business groups come intomy -- not only my hearings that we've been looking at procurement, but coming in we're had kind of open sessions off the record where different groups that interaction with the department

come in and talk about their ek peerns. uniformly i hear, akros industries, how difficult it is to work with dhs when it comes to procurement acquisitions. mainly they're saying there's never really any intersection before an rfp. oftentimes that creates a -- are you familiar with the problem and the concerns that the private sector has and what, if anything, are you doing about it. >> yes. i think probably some of the same people have visited with me as well. a couple of things. one is i've directed the undersecretary for management to take on procurement. we need to centralize it more within the department. one of the problems has been, as a new department from a lot of different legacy agencies, we had different procurement systems and rules and people are used to dealing with a timpt thing and different category of

vendors. so we've taken steps to centralize to have an acquisition or approval process for acquisitions that are larng and then to reach out to the prior seconder. we just held, an ex -- for example, kind of an improvement fair. representative, we're on it. >> great. >> chairman yields back. je lady from california, ms. sanchez, is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, madam ser take for being before us today. i have two questions for you. the first is that i recently was in the kalexico/mexican border. and from the mexican side they have poured cement. they have built new ode reiroad come over to make another land

port, if you will, that i think was, from my understanding, was agreed to by both sides and somehow or another the funding has not come or the cuts in the budget are not making this new land port happen from our side, which is just amazing to see it happening on the other end and nothing from our end. the first thing would be, the locals had asked me to come and take a look at it. obviously, the council people and the county supervisor. so what's going on with that and what can we do because they tell me that it's about three hours standing time if you're a pedestrian to go across that section right now. and i app to know because i have family in mexicali, so i asked

them. what to you think? >> absolutely. the second question i have for you, madam, is that this van the media reported that two touristst from the united kingdom were denied entry to the united states by cbp because of comments they had posted on twitter. so do you know anything about this incident? is it a cbp practice to see what foreign nationals are putting on social media and is that determining their admittance to the u.s. >> with respect to the port question, i can look specifically into mexicali. the southern pord behr torts are budge edded through dsa, not dhs. the gsa guj et has not faired well in the kanc. that has slowed down a number of

important projects including land ports along the southwest border, which are necessary for travel and trade. all the thipgs that go on in that border area. i think that's probably where it's call up. >> madam, how could we -- what's the mechanism if they're necessary and if you're department deems them necessary, to get this moving? sfwl the question is trying to to everything we need to do within the con feigns of the budget control act. we're all dealing with that as a tis cal reality. we need to redouse the deficit. we all recognize that as well. because fwrgsa is governed by a different set of committees and timpbt appropriations process, it does become a little bit two hits passing in the night. we are in constant touch with gs-a working with them. they know the priorities. but they only have so much money. >> thaurng. then the question of the foreign

nationals from england. >> without getting too much in the weeds, we aren't sitting there monitoring social media looking for stuff. that's not what we do. in that instance, there was a tip. and the tip led to a secondary inspection of the individuals. and that governed the judgment of exclus, not just the twitter, or tweet. >> so was -- but was the tweet taken into account when your department was thinking of whether to let these people in or not. >> well, it was. but i'm really not at liberty to say all of the reasons. but i think the impression was left that cbp's just sitting around, you know, wandering the blogesphere looking for things. that is not what cbp does. they do, however, when they receive a specific tip, have an

obligation to follow it up. >> thank you, madam chair. i'll yield back. >> gentleman from texas and chairman of the subcommittee and oversight investigation, mr. mccall. >> madam secretary, thank you for being here today, thank you for your service. i think it's important to note that today marks the one-year anniversary of the brutal killing of agent jaime zopato. it's important to remember that event and remember them here today in this committee. madam secretary, there's been some speculation that the weapons used to kill agent sopata may have possibly be linked to the operation fast and furious. do you have any information that would indicate there's a connection there? >> i have no information of that

effect, no. i don't know one way or the other. >> okay. so you can't say -- it's possible, i guess, is what you're saying? >> i just don't know one way or the other. >> you can't conclusively say one way or the other whether there's a link to these weapons and fast and furious. >> that's true. >> okay. we know the weapons were used to kill border patrol agent brian tierry, correct? >> they were certainly found at the scene of that murder. >> the other question i have is i know that the organized -- organized a crime enforcement drug task force -- can you tell us what the role of that i.c.e. agent was with respect to fast and furious? >> well, my understanding is it was very minimal. this is all learned after the

fact. this was an atf operation operated under the us a pigss of ocidet. >> do you believe the atf may have mislead your agency or the ocidet? >> hopefully they did not. >> do you know whether he was informed about the operation? >> i do not. i don't know whether the full extent and the number of guns being allowed to walk unsupervised in to mexico was disclosed. i believe the size and management of that operation was -- lots of serious mistakes made. and should never be repeated. >> and i certainly agree with you. i'd like to follow up more with that with you in the future. the next question i had was more along the lines of management and budget. we had hearings on -- we heard from several undersecretaries

within dhs. one particular talked about -- you and i talked about this previously -- the idea of the dod model, gold water/nichols model, you actually said you have a book on this which i was impressed to hear -- >> on my desk. >> on your desk. it seems to me there are always lessons learned from the past of the federal government. there may be a lot to learn from the growing pains and mistakes and lessons learned that the department of defense had consolidating their efforts as you are trying to consolidate 22 dpimpbt organizations, a very difficult task. they found there were various high-risk operations that were, i think, in their words had performance problems. and i think as you testified earlier to mr. rogers' question, the idea of centralizing acquisitions and procurement, seems to make a lot of sense. i was pleased to hear you have made some progress in that

direction. but can you just sort of tell me what your thoughts are nerms of looking at that model and trying to apply that to the department of homeland security? >> yes. i do have a volume of goldwater/nichols on my desk which i guess shows you what secretaries of homeland security do in their spare time. in any event, it took about 40 years between the creation of the department of defense and the consolidation and management that goldwater/nichols represented. we're going to beat that target. we're going to take lessons learned in dod. not everything done in the dod context applies in the dhs context. and we also in many respects have a much broader set of missions that we have to perform. but things like acquisition review, particularly for large purchases. how you manage procurement in general. things look liike looking at ho

buy software, how you guy vehicles, designing common frames for aircraft that could be used by coast guard -- >> i do want to mention at that hearing, out of all the agencies in charge of homeland security, d h dhs only gets 50% of that funding. that was an important point i was not aware of. i think perhaps we can change that as well. >> that's for the congress. >> precisely. >> i will say. but those are the kinds of efficiencies that we can, i think, edge courage and grow at d hrk s. >> thank you, madam. >> gentleman yields back. the gentleman from texas, mr. kwa ya, is recognized for five henutes. ranking member. madam secretary, it's fwood seeing you again. i believe you're going down to my district next week and i hope that actually i'll be in there at the same area you'll be at, so i hope to see you there. again, thank you. i know dealing with a budget is always hard. i thank you for looking at the

add mrlt i costs, retuxs, the programs that you had. thank you for doing that, for making your agency more efficient, more effective. the report that came out on march 2011 talked about a 639$64 million that came about because of the elimination of that north american trade agreement country exceptions. it's been going on, i believe, since 2008. there's authorization, there's no thorsization. bottom line is, that's a lot of money that's available if we can use that for -- for border because that came in from the trade issues. what is the status on trying to get that? why can't we get that money out especially in these tight municipal times. >> i don't know sitting here. i don't know whether there's some st