Among the very few positive outcomes of last September’s terror attacks was a national resolve, embraced by both major parties, to take bold but reasonable steps to protect the homeland.
United in that resolve, Democrats and Republicans backed plans for a new director of homeland security. Then, agreeing that this director needed muscle to be effective, they agreed in principle to the reorganization of several agencies into a new Department of Homeland Security.
Now, perhaps predictably, election-year politics have begun to dissolve that resolve. And, as usual, there’s plenty of blame to go around. This time, though, more is at stake than who will control Congress. Much more.
A bill to create the new department passed the House in July, but things have ground to a halt in the Senate, where Democrats are holding out for greater worker protections — protections President Bush sees as cumbersome regulations that could get in the way of dealing with a crisis.
The partisan dispute boiled over late last week, with the president cavalierly suggesting that Senate Democrats were putting special interests ahead of national security, and Majority Leader Tom Daschle staging a melodramatic meltdown on the Senate floor in response.
Democrats seem to fear that giving Bush what he’s seeking — the freedom to hire, fire, move and discipline employees, and to move workers out of unions for national security reasons — would open the door to broad union-busting.
That’s more paranoia than rational fear.
The whole point of undertaking the largest federal reorganization since the Department of Defense was born in 1947 is to increase the government’s ability to respond to the next terrorist attack, or the threat of one. Allowing workers in the new department (there would be some 170,000) the ability to challenge changes deemed necessary by the president to protect our security completely undermines the goal of quick, efficient response.
Indeed, challenges already made to homeland-defense actions indicate why the president needs maximum flexibility.
The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents Customs Service employees, filed an unfair labor practice charge on Sept. 18 over a work directive involving the government’s new terror alert index, which a week earlier had been raised from "elevated" to "high" risk of a terrorist attack. The union contended that it should have been consulted before the directive was issued so that any questions could be addressed.
Imagine having swift response to a terrorist threat stymied by a meeting of the National Labor Relations Board. Democrats need to yield on this one.
President Bush was wrong to question Senate Democrats’ commitment to our security. Daschle overreacted. Both sides need to get past petty politics and back on course to securing the homeland.
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