Seems $1.7 Billion Can’t Make the White House Safe: Opening Line

During all that weeping and gnashing of teeth when the moment of sequestration arrived, we heard about myriad areas of the government and the U.S. economy that were headed for some pain, but we don’t remember hearing about the Secret Service.

We must have missed it, because surely someone would have hollered if we knew that its effect would lead directly or indirectly to the House Oversight Committee’s hearing yesterday. We came across this BGOV summary of the fiscal 2014 budget, which, conversely, shows the Secret Service got more than it asked for. There’s this summary of former Homeland Security Director Janet Napolitano’s testimony to the Senate Appropriations Committee in February 2013, but this doesn’t exactly count as a screaming headline.