Homeland Highjacking

It's impossible to calculate what the overall costs would be if Bacon-Davis were applied to the new department, but suffice it to say that each buck would buy a whole lot less security. One government estimate we've seen says that $2 billion in Federal Emergency Management Agency flood and disaster relief, currently exempt, would cost up to $400 million more. Davis-Bacon also contains a host of administrative requirements that eat up time as well as money. Let's hope Osama bin Laden pays his operatives union scale and requires them to file their forms in triplicate too.

Expanding Davis-Bacon to Homeland Security also goes against the spirit of that law, which specifically permits the President to suspend Davis-Bacon in times of national emergency. Connecticut's Joe Lieberman, who is writing the Senate bill, may have a different definition, but most Americans probably consider the terrorist threat a genuine national emergency.

The other quiet outrage is sponsored in the House by Maryland Republican Connie Morella, who is facing a tough election in a district full of federal workers. Ms. Morella's amendment weakens the President's ability under the Federal Labor-Management Relations Act to exempt national-security units of the government from some civil-service regulations and union-negotiated agreements.

Every President since Jimmy Carter has found this authority useful. Dozens of federal agencies are already exempt, including the CIA, FBI, Secret Service and the FAA's air marshals and Customs's enforcement division. Given that the explicit purpose of the proposed new department is national security, exempting it too ought to be a no-brainer.

The Morella amendment passed the House Government Reform Committee but the select committee led by Majority Leader Dick Armey deleted it from the version of the bill that was headed for the House floor last night. In Senator Lieberman's committee, a motion to strike Morella-like language from the bill failed by a party-line vote of 7-10. The one GOP defection was Ohio's George Voinovich.

An encouraging sign is that the White House is starting to pay attention to this unfine print. The Senate version of the homeland bill drew a veto threat from the White House yesterday, with spokesman Ari Fleischer saying that "we do have serious reservations about the direction that the bill has taken."

The proposed Homeland Security Department is becoming less about national security and more about political security for Members of Congress. Their effort to pay off unions at the expense of taxpayers and national security is one more reason to call the whole thing off.