ASHCROFT DEFENDS CUT IN POLICE PROGRAMS

Funds needed to fight terror, panel told

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General John Ashcroft defended to skeptical senators
Tuesday the Bush administration's plans to reduce federal money for state
and local police as it shifts its budget to pursuing terrorists and
preventing new attacks.

Even while praising one Clinton-era grants program as among the Justice
Department's most successful, Ashcroft told a Senate appropriations panel
that money to hire more local police officers was needed elsewhere.

"Obviously, there is a need to do some things federally that we haven't
done," Ashcroft said. "It is not as possible for us to be as generous as we
would otherwise be at the state and local level."

Ashcroft later amended his answer to tell senators that federal money
available overall to state and local police actually increases under the
administration's budget proposals because of new funds available to police
through other agencies, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Ashcroft argued that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against New York and
Washington caused the department to dramatically reshape its $30.2 billion
budget proposal.

"The world awakened to a new threat from an old evil," Ashcroft said. The
spending plan includes $1.9 billion for new anti-terrorism measures,
including a new immigration system to track foreign visitors and better
aircraft with new surveillance features. Most of that money would go to the
FBI and Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Senators pointedly questioned Ashcroft about making deep cuts in a program
he acknowledged was so successful. Ashcroft described the Community
Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, which spent $385 million last
year to hire new police officers nationwide, as "a miraculous sort of success."

The chairman of the appropriations subcommittee, Sen. Ernest "Fritz"
Hollings, D-S.C., which must approve the budget, called those proposed
reductions "a non-starter as far as the subcommittee is concerned."
Hollings complained that such a funding cut "decimates local law
enforcement, decimates cops on the beat. We don't mess with something
that's working."

In exchange for the cuts, the Bush administration has offered to create an
$800 million grant program for state and local police for spending on
projects that would not be decided by Congress.

Lawmakers supportive of the programs targeted for cuts -- which can
translate into new jobs and millions of dollars for a congressional
district -- complain that funding is being cut even as the federal
government seeks an unprecedented level of help from state and local police
to prevent terrorist attacks.

"I don't know what to make of your answer," Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., told
Ashcroft. He asked whether the attorney general was saying, "It's a great
program, great success, but we're going to go in a different direction now?"

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., added: "I'm not convinced this is going to help
law enforcement."

"This administration has made a decision," Ashcroft said at one point
during the questioning, "and I support that decision."