Justice & Law Quote by Solomon Ortiz

Bureaucratic prose like this isn’t meant to inspire; it’s meant to make a decision feel inevitable. Solomon Ortiz, a long-serving member of Congress, is doing something very specific here: laundering a controversial expansion of security power through the language of administrative housekeeping. “In fact” signals that he’s not arguing values, he’s asserting record. The date stamp (“in 2002”) anchors the move in the post-9/11 urgency, when the government’s appetite for coordination and control spiked and few politicians wanted to be seen as standing in the way.

The key phrase is “authorized such support on a reimbursable basis.” “Support” is elastic: it can mean resources, personnel, intelligence, logistics. “Reimbursable” sells it as fiscally responsible, a cost-neutral arrangement rather than an institutional power grab. It’s a rhetorical trick common to governance: frame authority as accounting.

Then comes the longest, most revealing part: the winding chain of agencies “formerly” here, “currently” there. Ortiz is narrating the birth pangs of the Department of Homeland Security, created by folding older units into a new superstructure. The sentence performs that reorganization in real time, as if the complexity itself validates the need. Subtext: don’t scrutinize the expansion too closely; it’s just agencies being re-shelved.

The intent is also defensive. By specifying prior departmental homes (Justice, Treasury) and the new one (DHS), he’s preempting jurisdictional objections: this isn’t mission creep, it’s continuity. In a moment defined by fear and institutional churn, the sentence offers a calm promise: the machinery will keep running, the money will be tracked, and the security state will be seamless.