Senate Dem: End ‘bottomless pit’ stimulus projects

WASHINGTON — A senior Democratic senator urged the Obama administration to suspend hundreds of millions of dollars in repairs to the nation’s border stations Wednesday, saying Homeland Security officials were treating the economic stimulus plan like a “bottomless pit” of taxpayer money.

Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said he was not persuaded by assurances from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that stimulus money was handed out appropriately for renovations at border checkpoints. This is unusually pointed criticism from a member of the president’s own party about how the administration is handling economic recovery spending.

The Associated Press reported last month that Homeland Security officials did not follow their internal priority lists when choosing which border checkpoints would get money. The result is that tiny crossings in Montana and Dorgan’s home state are set to get money ahead of busier, higher-priority border stations.

Homeland Security officials say they acted appropriately. Dorgan was unconvinced, even though his state stands to receive more than $128 million for checkpoint improvements.

“There’s no common sense at all to a requirement that says you’ve got to put up a $15 million facility for a small port of entry that’s host to about five vehicles an hour,” Dorgan said in a telephone interview. “That seems to suggest that there’s a bottomless pit of taxpayers’ money out there to be spent.”

Dorgan sits on the powerful Appropriations Committee, which helps control the purse strings for the federal government. His criticism is a blow to the Obama administration, which has promised to crack down on waste and provide unprecedented transparency to stimulus.

“We’re deep in debt, we really do need to be smart about how we spend money,” Dorgan said. “In my judgment, this is not a smart investment.”

Neither Homeland Security nor White House officials immediately responded to requests for comment.

In 2003, Congress required Homeland Security officials to rank every border crossing based on security concerns, traffic and the need for repairs. Instead of relying on that list, the Obama administration added its own subjective decision-making, making the process both secretive and susceptible to political influence.

Two Montana Democratic senators, for instance, said they personally appealed to Napolitano to get money for lower-priority border projects. That includes a $15 million plan to build a station the size and cost of a Hollywood mansion at the sleepy Whitetail, Mont., border crossing.

Homeland Security refuses to make public the initial priority list or their reasons for deviating from it. Instead, officials say the final project list is all they need to make public. After the AP reports, Homeland Security officials wrote letters to newspapers and defended the process in speeches.

Dorgan said he received a detailed briefing and listened to the administration’s explanations. He came away convinced the process was flawed.

“I’m convinced that this particular plan just lacks common sense and would represent a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money,” Dorgan wrote Wednesday in a letter to Napolitano.

Associated Press writer Matt Apuzzo in Washington contributed to this report.