It’s All Homeland Security, All of the Time
By Andrew Kosow
WASHINGTON, Oct. 01, 2002–Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D – Conn.) and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D – S.D.) blasted Republicans at a Tuesday afternoon press conference for letting politics delay the passage of a homeland security bill.
“There has been no movement at all from the White House or my Republican colleagues,” said Lieberman, the main sponsor of the bill in the Senate. “This intransigence makes me wonder if politics is involved.”
Democrats have complained that the Republicans don’t want to pass a homeland security bill because the continuing debate over provisions of the bill keeps the focus off the sluggish economy and on national security, traditionally an issue on which voters trust Republicans more than Democrats.
“They have blocked the vote on cloture (which would end debate on the various amendments and bring the bill to a vote a) five times,” Daschle said at the press conference.
President Bush has said it is Democrats who are playing election-year politics by kowtowing to labor unions that oppose a key provision of the President’s bill. “The Senate is more interested in special interests in Washington and not interested in the security of the American people,” Bush said last week.
The Democrats control the Senate by a one-vote margin. The Washington Post reported recently that unions have given Democrats $50 million in donations in this election cycle.
The major sticking point in the homeland security debate may actually have little to do with security.
The issue involves an amendment, sponsored by Sens. Phil Gramm (R-Texas) and Zell Miller (D-Ga.), which would grant the president the authority he has insisted on to remove the collective bargaining rights of federal workers in the proposed Department of Homeland Security who are involved primarily in antiterrorism activities.
Lieberman has said the Democrats are willing to compromise, and have offered to grant Bush what he seeks when it comes to the workers in the new department who deal directly with terrorism, but would require him to negotiate the changes with the unions. But Republicans will not compromise, he added.
“Even our most fervent antagonist, Phil Gramm, says that our two bills are 95 percent similar,” Lieberman said. “[Bush] will have the executive authority in an emergency.”
Whatever the merits of the two camps’ arguments, House Republicans like Rep. Chris Shays (R – 4th) are clearly fed up.
“The House did its job, and now both the Democrats and Republicans [in the Senate] need to work together, and they are not,” Shays said in a phone interview Tuesday, referring to House passage of its version of the homeland security bill in July. “I am not happy, because this does not speak well of the process.”
Published in The Hour, in Connecticut.
