‘Long been the case’ that we’re stretched too thin, Secret Service says

The U.S. Secret Service has been struggling for a decade to maintain the staffing it needs to ensure the safety of its protectees, a top official said on Wednesday, who explained the agency is doing the best it can with the resources it has.

Agency leaders have been adamant that it met all the resource demands placed on it ahead of former President Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday that led to an unsuccessful assassination attempt, though it conceded its workforce has and continues to be spread too thin. Matthew Noyes, the director of cyber policy and strategy in the agency’s Office of Investigations, told the Aspen Security Forum that USSS is still recovering from the impacts of the budget caps first instituted across government in 2013. 

Noyes said those spending limits, which were regularly increased but remained in effect for a decade, restricted hiring at USSS for several years and the agency went multiple years without hiring at all. An agency with fewer than 8,000 employees like the Secret Service, he added, feels the pain of those restrictions for a long period. 

“We do the best we can with the resources we have, but we have been constrained for well over a decade now, in terms of resourcing and hiring,” Noyes said. “That has a long impact in terms of increasing the staffing to do both of our incredibly important tasks.”

Noyes was referring to USSS’ dual mission to protect designated individuals and safeguard the nation’s financial systems. He said it has “long been the case” that the agency has been spread too thin. 

Back in 2021, when Secret Service employed 7,600 personnel, it had hoped to increase its staffing regularly until seeing an overall jump of more than 25% by fiscal 2026 to nearly 10,000 employees. That surge never materialized and instead the agency still maintains fewer than 8,000 workers. 

Its budget situation has improved in recent years, however. In fiscal 2024, USSS received $3.1 billion in discretionary funds, a 9% uptick from the prior year and more than Biden had requested. Biden asked for just $2.9 billion and essentially flat staffing levels for the agency in fiscal 2025—a proposal made before fiscal 2024 funding was finalized—and House Republicans have instead proposed boosting that figure to $3.2 billion.

Noyes acknowledged that the agency’s funding situation has improved in more recent years and said it is “hiring as quickly as we can.” Still, he suggested the renewed caps instituted last year in the Fiscal Responsibility Act as part of a deal President Biden struck with House Republicans are bringing back the uncertainty of years’ past. 

“It really constrains the room for strategic planning and thoughtful consideration of how to best allocate resources,” Noyes said. 

The agency has long suffered from poor morale. In a 2023 ranking of the best places to work in federal government as measured by the Office of Personnel Management’s annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and compiled by the Partnership for Public Service, USSS came in 413 for overall engagement and satisfaction out of 459 subcomponent agencies. 

It fared equally poorly in employees’ assessment of the agency’s senior leaders. Those individuals have now come under fire, in particular Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. In an interview with Fox News on Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., called on Cheatle to resign. That followed a similar request from House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La. Cheatle told ABC News on Monday that she would not step down from her post. 

Several House and Senate committees are investigating the assassination attempt and Cheatle is set to testify before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee next week. Johnson said he would create a task force that would coordinate the various probes. 

Cheatle said USSS has adjusted its protection for Trump to ensure his safety going forward. Noyles added the agency has enough “depth” to make changes as new scenarios arise. 

“Neither manpower nor budget is as elastic as you would hope when you're responding to events,” he said. “But that is part of the design of the Secret Service is that we have a depth so we can shift resources as needed to meet increased requirements, which is the case now.”