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Washington, D.C.—The proposed fiscal 2004 budget for the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is “simply inadequate” to meet the needs of the Customs Service and other border security personnel, the leader of the union representing Customs employees said today.

In testimony submitted to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said the administration’s budget request for fiscal 2004 represents only “a token increase” from last year’s

combined appropriation for the four agencies making up the CBP Bureau.

NTEU represents 12,000 Customs employees who, along with employees of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Border Patrol and Animal Plant Health Inspection Service of the Agriculture Department were merged into the new CBP Bureau.

The administration’s proposed fiscal 2004 budget for CBP is $6.37 billion, an amount President Kelley said reflects a continuation of the trend of the past decade of inadequate funding for Customs, particularly given its need for additional personnel to meet its expanding missions.

“Short-changing Customs and the rest of CBP short-changes the nation,” the NTEU leader said. “Despite the increased threats of terrorism, the dramatic increases in trade resulting from the North

American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and new drug smuggling challenges,” she said, Customs personnel “are confronting rapidly increasing trade workloads and homeland security missions.”

She particularly urged the subcommittee to adopt as “a priority” additional funding for port security, calling it a matter that was “largely overlooked” in the Homeland Security Act last year.

Kelley also pushed for renewal of a user fee for Customs which funds all overtime for inspectors and canine enforcement officers—as well as funding some 1,200 Customs positions across the country. This account is funded with user fees collected from air and sea passengers as well as from commercial vehicles, vessels, barges and rail cars. It is scheduled to expire on Sept. 30, unless reauthorized by Congress. “It is vital that Congress act now to reauthorize this important program,” President Kelley said.

She noted that NTEU and other employee representatives are currently in discussions with both DHS and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) “on laying the groundwork” for possible “flexibility” changes affecting federal employees.

“I ask that Congress use the oversight authority given to it to ensure that the Title 5 rights of the Civil Service Reform Act that are currently available to employees who have been merged into this new department are not lost,” she said.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 29 agencies and departments.