The Homeland Security budget has become a business-as-usual way for politicians to steer tax dollars to contributors and supporters. But even though the budget is being allocated using traditional pork-barrel methods, the arguments for more homeland security spending are based on exaggerated claims that the money is necessary to thwart terrorism.

Veronique de Rugy, an American Enterprise Institute scholar and Cato adjunct, call these claims “terror porn.” ABC News’ John Stossel quoted de Rugy as part of a recent report:

[T]he bureaucracy hypes terrorism to justify its pork. “Terror porn” is what economist Veronique de Rugy calls it. Why “porn”? “Because porn sells, [and] terrorism sells even better,” she says. “It’s great for politicians. They can campaign on the fact that they are protecting us. They also can campaign on the fact that they’re bringing more money to their states.”

Lots of small towns do get absurd grants for homeland security. Lake County, Tenn., a rural county with only 8,000 people, got nearly $200,000 in homeland-security money. …“I don’t know that terrorists will come, but I don’t know they won’t come,” Lake County Mayor Macie Roberson told us, smiling.

At least he didn’t do what Columbus, Ohio did: spend it on bulletproof vests for police dogs.

Inordinate fear of terrorism leads to more than just wasteful spending. Stossel also cites a study estimating that 1,000 people have died because they avoided air travel and instead relied on a much riskier mode of travel:

Of course, terrorism is a real threat. But fear kills people, too. A University of Michigan study found that an additional 1,000 Americans died in car accidents in the three months after Sept. 11, because they were afraid to fly. We need to keep risk in perspective.