Wes Vernon, NewsMax.com
Thursday, Nov. 14, 2002

Senate Republicans also re-elected Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., as their majority leader in the upcoming 108th Congress despite significant unhappiness with his habit of caving in to the Democrats.

The president’s post-election political muscle passed its first test with flying colors as negotiators reached a deal to create the Department of Homeland Security Bill.

Vacation Time

Lawmakers in the House and the Senate put the measure on a fast track so that the 107th Congress can go home late this week or early next. In so doing, other Bush initiatives will be put off until after the newly-elected GOP Congress is seated in January.

"This legislation meets our requirement and gives the president the authority and flexibility he needs to protect the American people,” according to White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

President Bush wanted to be free of union privileges for the thousands of employees in the new agency because it would have hindered the department's top goal: guarding the safety of Americans.

The compromise worked out by a coalition of Democrats and Republicans requires negotiations for workplace changes and other employee grievances. In the end, the department can make whatever changes it wants, just what the president said he would need.

The Senate voted 50-47 to set aside a Democrat version. Independent Dean Barkley of Minnesota voted with the Republicans.

The Republican-led House planned to pass the new compromise Wednesday night, and final action in the Senate was expected later this week or possibly next week, Fox News reported.

Bush is the clear winner. Longtime TV correspondent Sam Donaldson, who does a local radio talk show in Washington, described the small concession to the unions as "a fig leaf."

Malkin: 'A Lot of Things It Doesn't Address'

However, the measure has come under fire for not dealing effectively with the huge problem of border security.

"There are a lot of things it doesn’t address that are still on the table,” author and columnist Michelle Malkin told NewsMax.com on Wednesday.

Example one, she notes, is ”the lack of a foreign student tracking system, which was mandated in 1996, and which we’ve known should be in place since the Iranian hostage crisis.”

Malkin’s book "Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores,” has stirred outrage among Americans already unhappy with the failure of both parties to curb the influx of illegal aliens. She says the Homeland Security Bill does nothing about "the holes in our deportation system.”

The "holes” amount to non-enforcement, she points out.

"We have a catch-and-release policy,” the author noted. That was underscored by the case of the snipers who terrorized the Washington area for three weeks last month.

"The INS knows that it has admitted illegal aliens in its custody, and then simply releases them, and then trusts them to come back. Well, guess what happens. No one ever comes back.”

Malkin, a daughter of legal Philippine immigrants, discussed this with NewsMax on the day the Washington Times reported that federal authorities were investigating whether sniper suspects John Muhammad and John Lee Malvo had ties to a growing sect of militant American Muslims committed to waging "holy" war against the United States.

"We’ve got hundreds of thousands of people running around loose in our country who we know should have been deported years ago, but again simply are on the lam,” the columnist charges.

Both of the accused D.C.-area snipers were reportedly involved in the illicit immigration traffic, Muhammad as a facilitator, Malvo as an illegal alien.

"I don’t think reorganizing bureaucracy and giving people new titles” will fix "basic and fundamental flaws in our system and the open doors that remain for criminal aliens … to come in,” Malkin opined.

Further, she says, the Homeland Security bill does nothing to reform the Board of Immigration Appeals, which contains the Executive Office of Immigration Review.

The little-known agency, located in the Washington suburb of Falls Church, Va., is an "unelected, unaccountable board that makes a lot of decisions on final deportations of people,” the columnist notes. Tens of thousands of cases are pending. While they are pending, criminal aliens flee.

Malkin applauds other sections of the legislation, the "good things in there” with regard to reorganization, especially bringing the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Customs Service together. "Flexibility in hiring and firing is absolutely critical,” she says.

That is the very reason Senate Democrat leader Tom Daschle sat on the bill for weeks at the bidding of organized labor. He still does not like the measure, although the senator (perhaps reading last week’s election returns) has agreed not to block an up or down vote on the Senate floor.

"There will be violations of worker rights in the years ahead,” he predicted Wednesday.

Arming Pilots and Delaying Airport Screening

Other, less-publicized items in the security bill: Pilots could carry weapons in cockpits, and airports would get a year's reprieve from screening all air travelers' baggage.

"Passenger advocates praised the decision to extend the Dec. 31 deadline to screen all checked luggage. They said there was not enough time to finish the construction needed to install bomb-detection machines at hundreds of airports. Also, temporary measures would have caused long delays and crowding," the Associated Press reported Wednesday.

David Stempler, president of the Air Travelers Association, said the extension was "a big, big, big deal."

Yet in a speech Wednesday, Transportation Security Administration chief James Loy opposed an across-the-board extension.

"We're under threat from terrorists who have made it clear that they will stop at nothing to kill Americans," he said. "I don't and I won't support a wholesale delay in the December 31 deadline."

AP reported: "Meantime, many pilots welcomed the requirement that a training program for carrying weapons in the cockpit would begin within three months of the bill's passage. Any pilot of a commercial passenger plane could sign up for the training. After completing it, the pilot would be allowed to take a gun into the cockpit."

"We are looking for a last line of defense, and that defense has to be lethal to counter lethal intent," said Gregg Overman, spokesman for Allied Pilots Union, representing 13,500 American Airlines pilots.

Loy had wanted a more limited program. He said the cost to arm and train all pilots could be as much as $900 million to start and $250 million a year thereafter.

Lott Keeps Control

While Daschle complained about the security bill, on the Republican side of the aisle, Lott was re-elected by his Senate GOP colleagues as their top leader in the 108th Congress. This "unanimous” vote came despite widespread dissatisfaction with the Mississippian’s willingness to cave in to Daschle and the Democrats over the years.

One knowledgeable source told NewsMax that some Republican senators were trying to mount an opposition campaign to elect Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to the top spot. But it came to nothing, and by the time the secret election was held behind closed doors, Lott was the only candidate. The Republican leader is known to use his power to discourage possible challenges.

Frist, who headed the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, which led to stunning GOP victories nationwide, was thought to be a logical choice to lead the new Republican majority. NewsMax’s effort to get a comment from his office was unsuccessful as of this writing.

There was even less momentum for running Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, for the No. 2 spot of majority whip. But Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., is well-liked and won that post by acclamation.

Both parties in both houses were rushing toward adjournment Wednesday, with no plans to return in December. That means that when Sen.-elect Jim Talent, R-Mo., is officially certified to take office Nov. 22, the GOP would have a numerical majority. But under an agreement between Lott and Daschle, the Democrats would retain control of committees even if the Senate remained in session.

Those who thought of dumping Lott as the Republican leader note that his pre-election deal with the Democrats trashes what could have been an opportunity to break the Daschle-created logjam of Senate obstruction of some of the president’s initiatives: federal court nominations, an energy policy to reduce Americans' oil dependence on terrorist-supporting nations, and making the tax cuts permanent to boost the economy.

In January, dealing with this unfinished business will have to start all over again from scratch.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Bush Administration

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