U.S. Customs and Border Protection FY 2015 Budget Request

4/02/2014

House Appropriations Committee Subcommittee on Homeland Security

Chairman Carter, Ranking Member Price, distinguished members of the Subcommittee; thank you for the opportunity to provide this testimony. As President of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), I have the honor of leading a union that represents over 24,000 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Officers and trade enforcement specialists stationed at 329 land, sea and air ports of entry (POEs) across the United States.

NTEU applauds the Administration’s FY 2015 budget that recognizes that there is no greater roadblock to legitimate trade and travel efficiency than the lack of sufficient staff at the ports. Understaffed ports lead to long delays in our commercial lanes as cargo waits to enter U.S. commerce. NTEU strongly supported the FY 2014 Omnibus bill that provided funding to hire an additional 2000 new CBP Officers by the end of FY 2015 at the air, sea and land ports of entry. NTEU also strongly supports the Administration’s legislative proposal in its FY 2015 budget request to fund the hiring of an additional 2000 CBP Officers paid for by an increase in customs and immigration user fees.

For years, NTEU has maintained that delays at the ports result in real losses to the U.S. economy. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, more than 50 million Americans work for companies that engage in international trade and, according to a recent University of Southern California study, “The Impact on the Economy of Changes in Wait Times at the Ports of Entry”, dated April 4, 2013, for every 1,000 CBP Officers added, the U.S. can increase its gross domestic product by $2 billion, which equates to 33 new private sector jobs per CBP Officer added.

NTEU strongly supports the increase of the immigration and customs user fees by $2 each to fund the hiring of an additional 2000 CBP Officers in FY 2015. CBP collects user fees to recover certain costs incurred for processing, among other things, air and sea passengers, and various private and commercial land, sea, air, and rail carriers and shipments. The source of these user fees are commercial vessels, commercial vehicles, rail cars, private aircraft, private vessels, air passengers, sea passengers, cruise vessel passengers, dutiable mail, customs brokers and barge/bulk carriers. These fees are deposited into the Customs User Fee Account. Customs User Fees are designated by statute to pay for services provided to the user, such as inspectional overtime for passenger and commercial vehicle inspection during overtime shift hours. User fees have not been increased in years and some of these user fees cover only a portion of recoverable fee-related costs. In 2010, CBP collected a total of $13.7 million in Commercial Vehicle user fees, but the actual cost of Commercial Vehicle inspections in FY 2010 was over $113.7 million-a $100 million shortfall.

Increasing the immigration inspection user fee by $2 will allow CBP to better align air passenger inspection fee revenue with the costs of providing immigration inspection services. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) (GAO-12-464T, page 11), fee collections available to ICE and CBP to pay for costs incurred in providing immigration inspection services totaled about $600 million in FY 2010, however, “air passenger immigration fees collections did not fully cover CBP’s costs in FY 2009 and FY 2010.”

Despite an enacted increase in appropriated funding in fiscal years 2014 and 2015 for an additional 2000 CBP Officers, CBP will still face staffing shortages in FY 2015 and beyond. If Congress is serious about job creation, then Congress should support enactment of legislation that increases the IUF and COBRA fees by $2.00 each and adjust both fees annually to inflation.

Agriculture Specialist Staffing Shortage

Ports also perform agriculture inspections to prevent the entry of animal and plant pests or diseases. The U.S. agriculture sector is a crucial component of the American economy generating over $1 trillion in annual economic activity. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), foreign pests and diseases cost the American economy tens of billions of dollars annually. Failure to detect and intercept these non-native pests and diseases imposes serious economic and social costs on all Americans. Staffing shortages and lack of mission priority for the critical work performed by CBP Agriculture Specialists and CBP Technicians assigned to the ports is a continuing threat to the U.S. economy.

To address CBP Agriculture Specialist staffing shortages at the ports of entry, NTEU supports funding to hire additional CBP Agriculture Specialists and GAO recommendations aimed at more fully aligning Agriculture Quality Inspection (AQI) fee revenue with program costs (see GAO-13-268). According to GAO, in fiscal year 2011, CBP incurred 81 percent of total AQI program costs, but received only 60 percent of fee revenues; whereas the Animal, Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) incurred 19 percent of program costs but retained 36 percent of the revenues. In other words, APHIS covers all its AQI costs with AQI fee revenues, while CBP does not. AQI user fees fund only 62 percent of agriculture inspection costs with a gap of $325 million between costs and revenue. To bridge the resulting gap, CBP uses its annual appropriation. NTEU also supports CBP’s efforts to establish an Agriculture Specialists Resource Allocation Model to ensure adequate CBP Agriculture Specialist staffing at the POEs. Release of the Agriculture Specialist Workforce Staffing Model, initially due at the end of September 2013, however, has been postponed.

Foreign Language Awards Program (FLAP)

NTEU is strongly opposed to the $16 million cut in the FY 2015 budget for the Foreign Language Award Program (FLAP). Established in 1993, FLAP allows employees who speak and use foreign language skills on the job to receive a cash award if they use the language for at least 10 percent of their duties and have passed the competency test. Congress authorized FLAP as an incentive for CBP Officers and CBP Agriculture Specialists to learn foreign languages to augment duties at the ports of entry in order to better serve the traveling public and their security mission.

Congress understood that these law enforcement officers stationed at U.S. air, sea and land ports of entry were in daily direct contact with international travelers. Facilitation of trade and travel along with port security is a dual mission of these employees. Not only do language barriers delay processing of trade and travel at the ports, for these law enforcement officers, communication breakdowns can be dangerous. Confusion arises when a non-English speaking person does not understand the commands of a law enforcement officer. These situations can escalate quite rapidly if that person keeps moving forward or does not take their hands out of their pockets when requested.

This incentive program, incorporating more than two dozen languages, has been instrumental in identifying and utilizing CBP employees who are proficient in a foreign language. At CBP, this program has been an unqualified success, and not just for employees, but for the travelers who are aided by having someone at a port of entry who speaks their language, for the smooth functioning of the agency’s security mission.

Congress should be concerned about the impact on the traveling public and CBP’s security mission if this 84% cut in this valuable program is implemented. In the FY 2013 Senate Homeland Security Appropriations bill, Congress encouraged CBP to work with airport authorities to develop a “welcome ambassador” program and cited language within the CBP’s FY 2012 Improving Entry Process for Visitors Report stating, “[CBPOs are] the first face of the US Government that travelers see at ports of entry. As a visible symbol of our Nation, CBP Officers have an important responsibility.”

Incentivizing CBP Officers to attain and maintain competency in a foreign language through FLAP, not only improves the efficiency of operations, it makes the U.S. a more welcoming place when foreign travelers find CBP Officers can communicate in their language, and help expedite traveler processing to reduce wait times. In a recent U.S. Travel Association Traveler Survey, adding entry processing personnel fluent in foreign languages ranked second in priority--only surpassed by reducing long lines and wait times.

Pursuant to Title 19, section 58c (f) of the U.S. Code, FLAP is funded with user fee collections rather than appropriations. A portion of customs user fees paid by international travelers fund the availability of CBP personnel with foreign language fluency. It is clear that by reducing the program from $19 million to $3 million and reallocating these user fee funds, the incentives available to CBP Officers will be dramatically reduced. Many Officers will drop out of this program that requires ongoing training and testing to be eligible. This result will only add to the perception by international travelers that traveling to the U.S. is an unwelcoming experience and one to be avoided.

CBP Trade Operations Staffing

CBP has a dual mission of safeguarding our nation’s borders and ports as well as regulating and facilitating international trade. In FY 13, all revenue collected by CBP exceeded $41 billion with nearly $30 billion of that revenue coming from the collection of trade duties. Since CBP was established in March 2003, however, there has been no increase in CBP trade enforcement and compliance personnel. NTEU is concerned that, rather than hiring additional CBP trade operations personnel, the budget proposes to cut trade operations positions including Rulings and Regulations staffers who are responsible for promulgating regulations and rulings, and providing policy and technical support to CBP, DHS, Treasury, Congress, and the importing community concerning the application of Customs laws and regulations.

NTEU urges the Committee not to cut CBP trade operations staff, but to increase funding to hire additional trade enforcement and compliance personnel, including Import Specialists, at the ports of entry to enhance trade revenue collection.

NTEU commends the Department for increasing the journeyman pay for CBP Officers and Agriculture Specialists. Many deserving CBP trade and security positions, however, were left out of this pay increase, which has significantly damaged morale.

NTEU strongly supports extending this same career ladder increase to additional CBP positions, including CBP trade operations specialists and CBP Seized Property Specialists. The journeyman pay level for the CBP Technicians who perform important commercial trade and administration duties should also be increased from GS-7 to GS-9.

CBP continues to be a top-heavy management organization. In terms of real numbers, since CBP was created, the number of new managers has increased at a much higher rate than the number of new frontline CBP hires. According to CBP’s own numbers, a snapshot of CBP workforce demographics in September 2014 shows that the Supervisor to frontline employee ratio was 1 to 5.9 for the CBP workforce, 1 to 6.1 for CBP officers and 1 to 6.9 for CBP Agriculture Specialists.

The tremendous increase in CBP managers and supervisors has come at the expense of national security preparedness and frontline positions. Also, these highly paid management positions are straining the CBP budget. With the increase of potentially 4000 CBP Officer new hires, NTEU urges that CBP return to a more balanced supervisor to frontline employee ratio.

NTEU strongly urges Congress to end the sequester. Prior to enactment of the Omnibus, the CBP sequester plan for FY 2015 would have severely restricted CBP’s ability to address critical staffing needs at the ports of entry. If Congress doesn’t reverse the Budget Control Act, another round of sequestration will be devastating to CBP—requiring furloughs and hiring freezes, reducing services, increasing wait times for trade and travel and jeopardizing national security.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Funding for additional CBP staff must be increased to ensure security and mitigate prolonged wait times for both trade and travel at our nation’s ports of entry. Therefore, NTEU urges the Committee to end the sequester and include in its FY 2015 DHS appropriations bill:

• funding to increase agriculture inspection and trade enforcement staffing to adequately address increased agriculture and commercial trade volumes;

• funding to extend enhanced pay and retirement recognition to additional CBP personnel, including Import and other Commercial Operations Specialists, CBP Seized Property Specialists and CBP Technicians; and

• language requiring CBP to continue the $19 million COBRA user fee funding for all FLAP eligible CBP employees.

Lastly, NTEU strongly supports legislation to allow CBP to increase, by $2, user fees to help recover costs associated with fee services and provide funding to hire additional CBP Officers. We also support including in the extension of the Travel Promotion Act, that provides CBP the authority to collect a fee to fund the promotion of tourism, a provision requiring a significant portion of fees collected be remitted to CBP to provide additional funding for CBP Officer new hires.

The more than 24,000 CBP employees represented by NTEU are proud of their part in keeping our country free from terrorism, our neighborhoods safe from drugs and our economy safe from illegal trade, while ensuring that legal trade and travelers move expeditiously through our air, sea and land ports. These men and women are deserving of more resources to perform their jobs better and more efficiently.

Thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony to the Committee on their behalf.