The Secret Service has failed at its core mission in a stunning manner. Investigations into the assassination attempt on former President Trump are just beginning, but we’re already hearing some really lame excuses from federal officials. Secret Service head Kimberly Cheatle’s claim about the sloped roof being unsafe is one of the most dubious defenses I’ve ever heard for a federal failure.
Ten years ago, the Secret Service was embroiled in a different disastrous failure. As the media reported then, “a man carrying a knife was able to get inside the front door of the White House on Friday night after jumping a fence and sprinting more than 70 yards across the North Lawn.” One of the excuses at the time was underfunding, or a staffing shortage, as I discussed here.
If the administration uses that excuse this time, it would not be very convincing because the Secret Service budget has soared in recent years. The chart shows the agency’s total outlays since 2000. The 2024 figure is the administration estimate from March. I put the budget data in constant 2024 dollars using the budget deflator.
Secret Service real spending has grown from $2.34 billion in 2014 to $3.62 billion in 2024, which is a 55 percent increase in ten years. Again, those are inflation-adjusted dollars.
Federal government failure is endemic, and it is not for a lack of funding. I examine the real reasons in detail here.
Originally published by the Cato Institute. Republished with permission under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
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