The WaPo reports:
The U.S. Secret Service expects to borrow more than 2,000 immigration officers and federal airport screeners next year to help guard an ever-expanding field of presidential candidates, while shifting 250 of its own agents from investigations to security details.
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Its $110 million-plus budget for campaign protection—two-thirds more than the record $65 million it spent for the 2004 election—was prepared when the service did not expect to be guarding Obama or anyone else until January. The agency has already been forced to scale back its efforts to battle counterfeiting and cybercrime.
I would think that the candidates—especially the Democrats—support the Secret Service and that most have a timetable for withdrawal by March 2008.
It is difficult. Clearly, we must redeploy these officials to somewhere like Okinawa.
Actually redeploying to Okinawa might allow these agents to investigate North Korean counterfeiting operations, which they seem to be pretty uninterested in.
If we send the candidates down to Mexico, they can come back into the country in perfect safety and the immigration guys won’t need the overtime…