ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the legislative action that led to the creation of Department of Homeland Security (DHS). It also uses that story to evaluate the effectiveness of the oversight, budgeting, and organizing powers of Congress. The chapter discusses that each power is quite difficult to use on its own and that combining them to enforce decisions is vastly tougher. Most of the agencies designed to handle security issues were put together at the start of the Cold War, and they each played a specific role within the system that provided the United States with a comprehensive national security apparatus. When Congress created the Defense Department in 1947-1949, it also established the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), to provide strategic intelligence to the White House, and the National Security Council (NSC), so the president could work out security strategy with the participation of all the key departments.
