The FBI’s FY 2019 budget request proposes a total of $8.92 billion in direct budget authority to carry out the FBI’s national security, criminal law enforcement, and criminal justice services missions, Director Christopher Wray detailed in May 16 testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee, Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies .
That includes $8.87 billion for salaries and expenses, breaking down to 34,694 positions including 12,927 special agents, 3,055 intelligence analysts, and 18,712 professional staff. It also includes $51.9 million for construction.
“As a result of this budget being formulated before the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, it was built utilizing the prior year enacted level as a starting point. Accordingly, this request sustains prior year personnel and operational funding, but provides no discrete program enhancements,” Wray said. “The request also includes a cancellation of $148 million from Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) automation fund available surcharge balances.”
The FY 2019 request level drops $476 million from the 2018 omnibus allocation, including a $318 million reduction in the FBI’s construction account funding for one-time projects and a $158 million reduction to salaries and expenses.
Wray detailed key threats and challenges in the areas of counterterrorism, counterintelligence, cyber threats, “going dark” encryption technologies, violent crimes, transnational organized crime, opioids and crimes against children.
“A key challenge inhibiting our ability to address current and future threats is the lack of a Headquarters facility that fully fosters collaboration, intelligence sharing, and is dynamic, enabling special agents, intelligence analysts, and other professional staff to combat evolving threats as they arise. The current J. Edgar Hoover building is incompatible with what the United States expects of the FBI,” he said. “Our goal is to build a consolidated, secure, resilient intelligence community-worthy facility. But even more than that, what we need is a facility capable of meeting the increased demands of the nation’s premier intelligence and law enforcement organization for the future of the FBI. This building will address the way we will work for the next 50 or more years.”
“Being expected to respond to a wide range of complex and ever-changing threats and crime problems is not new to the FBI. Our success in meeting these challenges is, however, directly tied to the resources provided to the FBI,” Wray added. “The resources the committee provides each year are critical for the FBI’s ability to address existing and emerging national security and criminal threats.”
