Was it necessary for US to create the Dept of Homeland Security?

It felt good at the time and it easily won political support. This is how the executive branch has gradually gained far too much control of our federal government. That is why I often lump Bush and Obama together when I'm referring to Progressives. Bush was just a lot sneakier and less draconian about it.

No. You can thank the Democrats for it, although I'm sure you'll get plenty of answers blaming Bush. After 9/11 Bush simply wanted to create a liaison office to expedite communications between the existing intelligence agencies at the time. Simple, effective, and budget-conscious. Unfortunately, that didn't meet the Democrats' approval (they were actually the majority in the Senate at that moment in time), so instead, Bush proposed creating the DHS, a new behemoth that many of us predicted would turn into a money-sucking black hole that would be a model of inefficiency and bureaucratic waste.

We were right. That was one of Bush's major mistakes in his time in office, to go along with failing to plan for post-war actions in Iraq and approving that ridiculous bailout at the end of his term.

I really hated the idea. I have worked for both the Justice Dept. and Treasury Dept. Justice was very political, Treasury was very professional. Personally, I think the idea was to gut Treasury and the National Treasury Employees Union. AFSCME is so much less threatening legally.

Taking Customs, ATF and Secret Service away from Treasury and politicizing them was stupid. Taking INS away from Justice and creating a separate USCIS was also stupid. Leaving DEA with FBI in Justice defeated the whole purpose of creating a single European style Ministry of the Interior out of DHS.

Just my humble opinion. Nothing against the agents or agencies, just that it seems political and not for the benefit of the USA. If they want efficiency, they'd eliminate the 159 federal law enforcement agencies and 7000 + local and state police forces and create one national police force. But we prefer to confuse inefficiency with freedom and we don't want too many eggs in one basket. If we wanted cost efficiency and simplification, we wouldn't tie their shoelaces together.

Because the terrorists won that day.