I'd Like To Punch Jim Jordan In The Neck

and then run like hell:

House budget-writers have proposed giving the U.S. Department of Homeland Security nearly $9 million less than it requested for high-risk chemical tracking in the coming fiscal year, citing ongoing concerns about gaps in the oversight of plants like West Fertilizer Co.
A bill by the House Appropriations Committee also would withhold $20 million until DHS submitted a detailed spending plan to Congress that included answers to questions about chemical security inspections.
The moves appear to be the first repercussions faced by any of the federal, state or local regulators responsible for facilities like West Fertilizer since last month’s fire and blast, which left 15 dead and 200 injured.
DHS declined to answer written questions about the spending bill for fiscal 2014 and the committee’s requests for information. The U.S. Senate has not yet presented a budget proposal.
DHS was assigned in 2007 to regulate security at chemical facilities that the government thought might be vulnerable to terrorist attack or theft. A year later, the department was also charged with tracking the buying and selling of ammonium nitrate — the chemical that detonated April 17 in West.
Ammonium nitrate, known widely as a crop fertilizer, was used in combination with other materials in the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City and several terrorist bombings in India since 2007. It can become explosive under extreme heat and when exposed to shock.
In a legislative report accompanying last week’s budget proposal, the House Appropriations Committee cited the West disaster and took aim at DHS, saying it has made “only marginal progress in carrying out its regulatory responsibilities.”
The lawmakers wrote in the report that DHS’ National Protection and Programs Directorate “has failed to fully implement” the ammonium nitrate tracking, which remains in the “rule-making” and public comment process. They also noted department inspectors didn’t know West Fertilizer Co. had stores of ammonium nitrate well beyond the 400-pound amount requiring oversight.

“Although the recent tragedy in West, Texas is assumed not to be connected to terrorism, it nevertheless highlights the importance of a functional and efficient CFATS [Chemical Facilities Anti-Terrorism Standards] program. Even more specifically, however, this event highlights the inability of NPPD to implement the Ammonium Nitrate Security Program, and it raises serious concerns that the Department’s Chemical Security Inspectors were unaware that West Fertilizer Co. was handling 2,400 tons of potentially explosive ammonium nitrate.”

That figure was noted in a 2006 permit form that West Fertilizer Co. filed with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

What a fucking bunch of assholes!  If DHS was bothering those hard-working job creators who would eventually blow up half their fucking town, these same assholes would be pitching a goddamned fit.  It really takes a ton of gall to strip money away from DHS under those circumstances, but House Republicans are up to the task.