WASHINGTON, 4 September — After its month-long August vacation, the US Senate met yesterday to examine the creation of a new Department of Homeland Security, which intends to move several law enforcement agencies under one roof.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are divided over how much flexibility the Bush administration should have in running the new super agency.
The atmosphere surrounding the creation of the new Homeland Security Department has changed from cautious enthusiasm to reservation since lawmakers began examining the idea earlier this summer.
President Bush, meanwhile, has spent the last few weeks on the campaign trail attacking key members of the Democratic controlled Senate, who question his demand to micromanage the agency.
“They put their own ‘turf’ ahead of the security of the American people. They’re more interested in the ‘special interests’ of Washington, than in the interest of Homeland Security. I will not accept a Homeland Security Bill that ties the hands of this administration, or future administrations, to defend the homeland against the enemy,” Bush said last week at a Republican fundraiser in Oklahoma City that earned half-a-million dollars for his party.
The White House said the president will veto any version of the bill that doesn’t give him the broad ability to hire, fire, promote and reassign workers in the new department, which is expected to employ about 200,000 people.
Opponents of Bush’s wish list for the new Homeland Security Department are just as vehement to limit the president’s control.
Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia is one of the most vocal voices on the Hill: “Consider carefully a veto threat of any bill that would set up a Department of Homeland Security that would give this White House sweeping new powers to abolish workers rights and workers protection. Imagine that. Imagine such a veto. I think the agenda of this White House is very becoming very, very clear.”
During this speech last month, Sen. Byrd waved a copy of the Constitution on the Senate floor, and said the administration’s agenda is to seize new power in the name of fighting terrorism.
He said the administration already has the flexibility it needs to set up, and run, the new agency.
All of this is a far cry from June’s bipartisan enthusiasm for enacting the new bill as early as Sept. 11, something that is now out of the question.
Connecticut Democrat and former Democratic vice presidential candidate, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a long-time advocate of a Homeland Security Department, said he is surprised by the controversy, and hopes it is only a temporary obstacle to passing the bill.
“I just think that when the debate starts, we’ve all got to remember that we stand largely on common ground and that the disagreements that exist are in the margins. And, frankly, when it comes to the civil service system, we ought to put those arguments aside for another day.”
But the president considers this to be a fundamental in regards to his Homeland Security plans. He says he must have to ability to hire, and reshuffle workers quickly, if the government is to be well positioned to respond to terrorism.
Homeland Security chief, Tom Ridge, told an advisory group at the White House last week that that what the president is asking for is the whole point of the reorganization: “If all we do is to take this department and these agencies and bring them all into one new agency, and we don’t give the president and his management team ‘the freedom to lead,’ then we really wouldn’t have affected change.”
The president insists he doesn’t want to undermine civil service protections. But the problem is his proposal for the new department does not exactly state what he does intend to do with the flexibility he wants to have.
This vagueness has federal employee unions — which are already suspicious of the Bush administration’s intentions — very nervous. They insist that no one has given them any example of how union or civil service rules have hampered the war on terrorism.
