Haley Stevens: “I have two short statements that I would like to make concerning this legislation. The first deals with the use of…”

“I have two short statements that I would like to make concerning this legislation. The first deals with the use of appropriated funds. As my colleagues know, one of the major issues confronting Congress with respect to establishing the Department of Homeland Security was the extent to which the Homeland Secretary would be given the authority to transfer funds between appropriations accounts or among the organizations and programs within the new Department. Underlying this issue are two critical questions--how best to give the Homeland Secretary the flexibility he or she needs to organize and operate the new Department, and how best to preserve the Congress's constitutional authority to appropriate funds and to oversee their use. Previous versions of the Homeland Security Department legislation included extensive language governing how the Department would allocate and use appropriated funds and funds generated through property disposal or gifts from outside the Federal Government. The compromise embodied in the final version of the Homeland Security Department legislation now before us takes a somewhat different approach, but the net effect is the same: Congress's appropriations authorities are maintained. Transferred funds must be used for the purposes for which they were appropriated, and Congress must approve, in advance, the reallocation of transferred funds away from their originally intended purposes.”