Members of Congress Freak Out Over White House Fence Jumper, Want to Know Why Secret Service Isn’t More Paranoid

Last
week, an Iraq war veteran jumped the White House fence armed with a
knife and got all the way into the East Room before agents
apprehended him. At first, the Secret Service claimed the man, Omar
Gonzales, had only gotten just inside the White House. That was a
lie, turning what might’ve been  an odd story forgotten by
next week into an indicator of bigger problems at the Secret
Service.

The Secret Service’s controversial recent history—arguing with
prostitutes in Colombia, getting drunk in Holland, and missing
things like party crashers and gunfire—means the incident became a
reason to hold hearings in Congress about the Secret Service. This
morning, the director of the Secret Service, Julia Pierson,

appeared before the House Committee on Oversight and Government
Reform.

And while the Secret Service’s recent history of mishaps was
brought up throughout the hearing, several members of Congress,
both Democrat and Republican, appeared more interested in demanding
the Secret Service use more force in situations like last week’s
fence jumper. This even though the president and his family weren’t
at the White House that day, something the Secret Service knew when
responding but Gonzales probably didn’t.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), for example, insisted the Secret
Service should’ve arrested Gonzales the first time he showed up
outside the White House with a hatchet—something Pierson stressed
was not illegal. She also stressed that Gonzales was cooperative
with authorities at the time.

No matter. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said he and his fellow
members of Congress “want to see overwhelming force” in a situation
like the fence jump, saying he would defend the lethal use of
force. Remember, President Obama and his family were not at the
White House when the fence was jumped so there was no threat to the
president during this incident.

Although Pierson promised something like this would “never
happen again” (an impossible guarantee to make no matter the
vigilance exercised) and said she took full responsibility, it’s a
big old case of “nothing else happens.” Although Pierson
acknowledged a failure during the fence jumping incident
(debatable: again, the Obamas were not at the White House and the
Secret Service agents involved apparently did not feel threatened),
she didn’t announce any concrete disciplinary measures because of
the failure. She did manage, at one point, to blame “funding
constraints.”

The Secret Service has a $1.8 billion budget in 2014 to protect
the president and his family, down from $1.92 billion in 2013. It’s
just a 6 percent decrease from 2012’s budget, a year when the
Secret Service had to protect both the president and eventually
also his challenger during a long season of election
campaigning.