Wealth & Money Quote by Michael Chertoff

Chertoff’s sentence is the sound of a cabinet official trying to move a boulder with his fingertips. It’s not a rallying cry; it’s a calibrated admission, designed to signal reform without lighting a fire under anyone who benefits from the status quo. The hedging is the point. “I have to say” implies reluctant candor, as if the conclusion is forced by evidence rather than politics. “I agree with some of the criticisms that some have made” dilutes ownership twice: first by limiting agreement (“some”), then by outsourcing the critique to unnamed others (“some have made”). He’s validating dissatisfaction while keeping his fingerprints off the sharpest edges.

The target is a familiar bureaucratic villain: a “very rigid formula” that spreads funds “all across the country” by “a certain percentage to each state.” On its face, that’s fairness. In practice, it’s a policy architecture that can ignore risk, need, and emergent threats in favor of predictable entitlements. In the homeland security era, this was a live wire: post-9/11 grant programs were criticized for treating Wyoming and New York as if they faced comparable targets.

Subtextually, Chertoff is arguing for discretion and prioritization, but he can’t say it bluntly because discretion means winners and losers. The phrase “allocates the grant money” keeps agency abstract, as if the formula itself is the culprit rather than Congress, lobbying, or political fear of being seen as “shorting” any state. It’s governance as careful choreography: propose change, reassure the skittish, and frame redistribution as technical modernization rather than political redistribution.