Obama’s FBI Budget Cuts Reward Criminal Gangs, Illegal Aliens – OpEd
By Jim Kouri
While it spends hundreds of billions of dollars on wasteful “stimulus” projects and the expansion of costly entitlement benefits, the Obama Administration is eliminating a crucial FBI division that counters gang violence, according to a Washington, DC-based public-interest group that investigates and exposes government corruption and fraud..
This could not have come at a worse time considering gang violence in the United States is at an all-time high. In fact, according to the latest annual gang threat assessment issued by the agency, the National Gang Intelligence Center (NGIC), is headed for the chopping block.
It says that gangs are responsible for nearly half of all violent crimes in most parts of the country and up to 90% in many jurisdictions. That’s because there are over 33,000 active gangs in the U.S. with some 1.4 million members, according to the NGIC. For example, MS-13 is estimated to have 50,000 members nationwide.
To help curb the growth of gangs and related criminal activity, Congress directed the FBI to establish the NGIC in 2005. It’s a multi-agency operation that combines the efforts of several federal and local agencies working together to tackle crises.
According to its web site, the NGIC integrates gang intelligence from across federal, state and local law enforcement on the growth, migration, criminal activity and association of gangs that pose a significant threat to the nation.
This leaves many asking: Why, then, would FBI Chief Robert Mueller eliminate the NGIC?
A conservative news web site uncovered Mueller’s plan because a congressman grilled him about it at a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week.
It turns out that the FBI’s fiscal year 2013 budget proposal calls for the elimination of the NGIC, which has more than a dozen positions and an annual budget of nearly $8 million.
That’s a drop in the bucket compared to the billions that have been wasted under the president’s fraud-infested $787 billion stimulus, which he vowed would jumpstart the economy and put Americans back to work. Instead, much of the cash has gone to unthinkable things like a genitalia-washing program for uncircumcised African men, international ant research and a Pennsylvania “tunnel to nowhere.”
Bless the FBI for trying to save taxpayers money. In its 2013 budget proposal the bureau assures that nixing the NGIC won’t hinder its ability to counter the threat posed to the U.S. by criminal gangs. The congressman challenging the NGIC’s closure, Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia, struck back with a rather interesting statement indicating that the White House was behind the plan.
“We received a revised version of your testimony late yesterday that the OMB [the White House’s Office of Management and Budget] inserted language making the absurd claim that the elimination of the National Gang Intelligence Center – $7.8 million and 15 positions – will not hinder the FBI’s ability to perform the analytical work done there,” Wolf said to the FBI chief.
Could this be part of a bigger Obama plan to pander to Latinos in an effort to earn that crucial Hispanic vote in the upcoming election? After all, it’s been well documented that most violent gangbangers in the U.S. are, either Hispanic or illegal aliens.
