This year, Congress will spend about as much on the budget for the FBI as it does on four stealth bombers. But if terrorists launch another successful attack on American soil, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will likely take much of the blame for it. 
   In a recent interview with NewsMax, FBI Director Robert Mueller all but said that Congress is seriously underfunding the agency while it blows wads of cash on pork barrel projects (see below) that are useless in the fight against homeland terror.
   The FBI's FY 2007 budget is $6.1 billion, equal to the cost of a few Stealth bombers, Mueller says. 
  "The country wants us to build a domestic intelligence capacity, but it costs money," Mueller told NewsMax. 
   According to NewsMax, Mueller told National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, "Just give me the rounding errors off of the intelligence budget, and I would be very happy."

           
   This is what happens when politicians allow our intelligence agencies to become complacent. 

    Muller was subtle about it, but his message was clear. Congress' pork barrel spending and backwards priorities could kills tens to hundreds of thousands of us. Here are a few numbers to consider:
   
   Total number of FBI employees: 28,576.
   Total agents: 12,156.
   Total support professionals: 16,420, including 1,300 analysts and more than 1,000 information technology experts. 
   Growth in the total FBI workforce since 9/11 (after retirements, etc.): 1,662 employees, including 990 agents and 672 support employees.
   
   Now consider these numbers:
   
   45,008: The number of illegal aliens from countries on the U.S. list of state-sponsors of terror or from countries that protected terrorist organizations who were detained at our border and were released into the general public between 2001 and 2005, even though immigration officers couldn't confirm their identity, according to a 2006 Department of Homeland Security report. These are just the folks we detained. It is unclear how many more slipped across our borders undetected.

   605,210: The number of illegal aliens classified as "other than Mexicans" who were arrested for violating US immigration laws between 2001 and 2005. According the same report, 51% of them were released into the general population because there weren't enough beds to hold them in federal detention facilities while they awaited their immigration hearings. In many cases, the government was never able to verify the identity of the people it released

   33: The number of FBI agents who speak Arabic, according to an article in the Washington Post. Agents who speak Urdu, Farsi and other languages of the Middle East and South Asia are critical for building intelligence connections inside our country.    

   44 million: The number of people processed between 2004 and 2006 by US-VISIT, the often-criticized program that  fingerprints and supposedly keeps tabs on foreign visitors to America. So far it has apprehended just over 1,000 people on criminal and immigration violations.

   $1,190,000,000 for full funding of 20 F-22A fighter jets. According to Citizens Against Government Waste, the F-22 was originally designed as an air superiority fighter for use against the Soviet Air Force. Before Congress put the ink on the check, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sent a 13-page letter on June 20, 2006 to then-House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman C.W. (Bill) Young urging Congress to stop funding this program due to its high cost and the fact that the aircraft is out of date. The GAO said, "DOD has not demonstrated the need or value for making further investments in the F-22A program." The GAO also noted that the F-22s "are not sufficient to be effective in the current and future national security environment." There are 22 test F-35 aircrafts that are more modern, effective, and cheaper. In 2003, Popular Science reported the F-22 had a price tag of $120 million each while the F-35 cost $35 million. In June 2006, the GAO report raised the F-22's numbers, concluding that the multi-year contract would drive per-plane costs up to $183 million from $166 million.

   $13.2 billion: The amount of pork barrel spending stuffed into the Homeland Security Appropriations Acts, according to Citizens Against Government Waste.