House Republicans pressure Senate Democrats on homeland bill
As the Senate continues to work on homeland defense legislation, House Republican leaders are stepping up their rhetoric in an effort to pressure Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., to give in to White House demands on a set of partisan issues that have brought work on the bill to a near-standstill.
"Sen. Daschle, in my estimation, has not provided the kind of leadership he should have had," House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, told reporters Tuesday. Armey added that he was "disappointed" in Daschle, needling the Democratic leader with an expression often employed by Daschle.
Armey's attack on Daschle will be amplified Thursday, when five members of the House Republican leadership stage a media event to press for a deal on the legislation.
"It's a matter of looking at the calendar and realizing that there is not a whole lot of time left on the legislative calendar," said a House Republican leadership aide. "The Senate just isn't moving fast enough."
The Republicans hope to prod Daschle and the bill's author, Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., to loosen their resistance on the divisive labor issues holding up the creation of a new 170,000-employee Homeland Security Department.
President Bush and congressional Republicans would like to give the secretary of the new department the power to ignore established labor protections for unionized workers. However, most Democrats have worked to protect those employment rights.
In remarks this week, Armey called the labor issue a "straw man" because Democrats have voted for "managerial flexibility" before. Armey staffers said that more than a dozen Democratic senators voted for a provision to give the Federal Aviation Administration similar authority to waive civil service laws in 1995.
"It's time to stop the demagoguery on the personnel issue," Armey said. "I have to tell you it sounds an awful lot like politics to me."
The renewed pressure from House Republicans comes as a number of Republican and Democratic senators work toward a compromise to the issue.
Sens. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., and George Voinovich, R-Ohio, are negotiating with a group of moderate senators in hopes of finding a deal to settle the matter.
"We're trying to build a coalition to break the logjam," said a Nelson spokesman.
Meanwhile, several Republican senators are considering whether they should try to replace the labor protection contained in the Democrats' bill with the provision approved by the House in July.
That provision, by moderate Republican Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, would give the president much of the flexibility he seeks while protecting other worker rights, such as whistleblower and retirement protections.
The House approved the amendment, 229-201, with 11 Democrats voting for it.
However, the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents tens of thousands of federal workers who would be transferred to the new Homeland Security Department, issued a statement Wednesday opposing the compromise.
The provision would have "a substantial adverse impact" on the department's ability to protect the nation from terrorist attacks and "does nothing to alter our strong opposition," said union President Colleen Kelley.