After President Trump’s near assassination, the Secret Service complained that it needed more money.
My take was that this is what government officials always claim after a massive screw-up and that more money is not needed.
Does the Secret Service actually need more money? It has a $3 billion budget. That’s around double what it was in 2000.
Only about $1.2 billion of that goes to protective operations and only about $73 million gets spent on providing security at presidential campaigns. $138 million gets spent on training and professional development.
By way of comparison, $3 billion is around the LAPD budget.
I did a deeper dive back in December.
The Secret Service salary cap is $221,145. In one survey nearly 40% of agents had hit the cap for working overtime which means that many of the Secret Service personnel are being paid more than some of the elected officials they’re protecting.
With a mandatory retirement age of 57 and a program that allows personnel to retire in their fifties, collect pensions and then return to work, ludicrous salaries have become the norm.
In 2014, the Secret Service blamed malfunctioning radios that made it difficult to track the intruder. In 2024, the Secret Service once again blamed malfunctioning radios.
With a $3 billion annual budget and a decade worth of time, the Secret Service can’t even manage to solve a problem with its radios. Why expect it to do anything at all?
When Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu visited D.C. Secret Service “agents said they marveled at what their Israeli counterparts brought — including a portable security camera network that delivered live feeds from key spots in the prime minister’s hotel. The Secret Service has its own mobile camera system. But agents say it is so unreliable it is rarely used.”
Now the Secret Service, which is absolutely short of money, decided to address its problems with a Super Bowl ad directed by Michael Bay.
The United States Secret Service tapped blockbuster movie director Michael Bay to create a recruiting advertisement that is expected to be unveiled in the stadium on Super Bowl Sunday, according to multiple NFL and Secret Service sources.
The ad cost an estimated $2 million for the Secret Service to produce, according to two sources familiar with the project — a hefty price tag that comes amid massive budget cuts and layoffs at other government agencies.
One source told CNN the estimated $2 million budget is about double what was spent on previous Secret Service recruiting ads.
People are fairly aware of the Secret Service. A Super Bowl ad isn’t fixing its recruiting problems. The problem is that the Secret Service has to compete for the people it wants with multiple police forces desperately trying to staff up after the BLM crime wave and with the military and various security agencies.
But a Super Bowl ad is not going to address that. People either believe in the ethos of your organization or don’t. Making the Secret Service look cool is not the answer. Not when existing veterans keep heading out the door. That’s not even a recruitment issue, it’s a leadership issue and one that desperately needs fixing.