Politics & Power Quote by Michael Chertoff

The power move here is how little power Chertoff appears to claim. "Well, I mean" is bureaucratic throat-clearing, a verbal shrug that signals restraint and invites the listener to lower the temperature. Then comes the pivot: not to what should happen, but to who decided. By stressing that Congress "did originally set the formula" and "guaranteed every state a minimum", he relocates responsibility from the executive branch to the legislative one. The repetition of "formula" does quiet work: it frames the issue as math, not values, implying that complaints are really quarrels with arithmetic rather than with human choices.

The subtext is protective. Chertoff, speaking as a public servant conditioned by post-9/11 scrutiny and the politics of homeland security funding, is likely responding to criticism over unequal or inefficient distribution of federal grants (the infamous "every state gets something" logic, even when risk is uneven). By calling the minimum allotment a "congressional decision", he pre-empts accusations of favoritism or incompetence inside the agency. If the outcome looks irrational, the rationality he offers is procedural: the system is doing what it was designed to do.

It also subtly flatters Congress while indicting it. "They guaranteed" sounds like beneficence, but in context it hints at pork-barrel insurance: a baseline payout that keeps all states invested, regardless of threat level. Chertoff's intent is to narrow the debate from moral outrage to jurisdictional reality: if you want the grants to follow risk rather than geography, the fight is with the statute, not the administrator.