DHS Admits They Could Have Cut Costs Without Releasing Felons

From: Freedom Outpost 

 by Tim Brown

Republican members of Congress are using hearings to hold the bureaucrats accountable for their actions in regard the sequester and things they are doing that they are blaming on it. While Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) exposed the Obama administration’s duplicity on alleged cuts to pediatric vaccinations a few weeks ago, Representative Trey Gowdy (R-SC) grilled a Department of Homeland Security Under Secretary as to why his department released ten “level 1″ aggravated felons from federal custody, claiming it was due to sequester cuts.

 

During the exchange between the South Carolina congressman and DHS Under Secretary Rafael Borras, Gowdy asked, “There was nothing else [you] could do as a cost savings measure. Is that your testimony?” 

Borras andswered, “No, that is not my testimony.”

Gowdy, knowing the DHS had more than a year and a half to prepare for sequestration, asked him anyway how long his department had to prepare. The release of felons into the community when it would have only cost them about $1,200 to keep them locked up is irresponsible and reckless, but then nothing has been on the “up and up” with this administration since it began.

It seems the same approach to cutting out White House tours, is the same approach given to the release of convicted felons. After all, the Washington Times reported, regarding an email to Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Official Charles Brown:

In the internal email,… Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.

“We have gone on record with a notification to Congress and whoever else that ‘APHIS would eliminate assistance to producers in 24 states in managing wildlife damage to the aquaculture industry, unless they provide funding to cover the costs.’ So it is our opinion that however you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be,” Mr. Brown, in the internal email, said his superiors told him.