Port talk is cheap

Congress talks a good game about improving national security but the talk becomes hollow when the government fails to provide adequate funding to protect vulnerable ports and port cities.

By slashing nearly $650 million in new money for port security, the federal government is saving money at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Belt-tightening, usually a good thing, halts for at least a year spending that would have moved the country toward a more credible effort on port security. Inspectors now check less than 5 percent of more than 11 million containers that enter American ports. That's not enough.

The $648 million was not feel-good money. It would have provided a measure of protection for ports and port cities such as Seattle and Tacoma, the third-largest port system in the country.

The new funds were intended to pay for 60 more imaging machines that allow inspectors to peer inside cargo containers as they arrive. It would have added customs inspectors at 50 foreign ports and more U.S. Coast Guard inspectors at foreign and domestic ports.

All the bipartisan rhetoric about beefing up homeland security, all the indignation and outrage about Dubai Ports World making our country vulnerable, becomes empty when federal funding fails to materialize. This was an investment of federal dollars that made sense.