Faceoff: To form a more perfect union

WASHINGTON, Aug. 6 (UPI) -- The president's plan for a new federal department of homeland security is in trouble on Capitol Hill. The Democrats' resistance to President Bush's request for flexibility in personnel matters has prompted the threat of a presidential veto. Question: How important is the president's desire for flexibility to the effectiveness of the new department? UPI political analysts Peter Roff and James Chapin face off on opposite sides of this important issue.

Roff: For the Democrats it's politics, as usual.

The president has asked that 21st century management techniques be used in the new department charged with safeguarding against 21st century threats. Unfortunately, the federal bureaucracy operates like something out of the 19th century.

The Democrats are balking at this idea -- and it's no wonder. The government employee unions have a lot to lose if Bush gets his way.

It all boils down to politics.

As a rule, 100 percent of union political contributions go to Democrats. The place the American labor movement has grown for many years now is in the public sector. The American Federation of Government Employees and the other government unions are an important, even critical component of the Democrat's political machine. The Bush plan puts their hegemony over the government workforce at risk.

They fear the successful employment of 21st century workforce rules in one cabinet-level agency will inexorably spread through the federal government. This is something, to misquote Churchill, "up with which they cannot put." The Democrats cannot afford to lose them, but politics aside, the idea make sense. The security of the nation is very much at risk.

Kate O'Beirne, the Washington editor of National Review, is someone who has worked in the city at least since Jim Buckley was a senator. She knows the ins and outs better than most. In a recent essay, she identified four reasons why flexibility is needed.

First, there are the existing difficulties associated with hiring federal workers in the existing system. Finding qualified candidates for many of the existing important jobs is made harder by the rules governing minorities, women and veterans. These rules artificially limit the pool of available talent.

Second, O'Beirne says negotiated union contracts prevent the efficient use of resources by dictating assignment policies for covered workers.

Rigid union work rules could prohibit the rapid reassignment of essential personnel, impeding the response to new threats and needed missions change.

Third, the ability to discipline federal workers is "virtually theoretical."

As anyone who has dealt the with the Internal Revenue Service, the Post Office or any of the alphabet soup of regulatory agencies that litter Washington can attest, the bureaucracy is often times slow and unresponsive. Part of this sluggishness results from the many protections provided civil service workers. They know they cannot be fired; hence the disincentive for them to pursue excellence.

Finally O'Beirne says, is the civil service's rigid pay system -- "which guarantees automatic pay raises for all federal workers" -- and which, because it is based on seniority and not performance, makes it impossible to reward with better pay superior performance among more junior workers.

For these reasons and more, the Department of Homeland Security should not be saddled with arcane bureaucratic rules that will handicap its pursuit of excellence. It is a shame some in Washington are putting protection of the government unions ahead of the protection of the country.

Chapin: Republicans Play To Their Base

It was an old joke about Republicans five decades ago that their base was more hostile to George Meany, then the head of the AFL-CIO, than to the Soviet Union. Apparently, nothing has changed.

With the ostensible purpose of fighting Osama bin Laden, the Republicans have found time to conduct a diversion into attacking government employee unions, the rights of government employees, and the power of Congress to oversee the government.

As this president has been known to crow in other circumstances, "that's a trifecta!"

Any reorganization involving dragging pieces of several dozen organizations into a single department is going to create extreme confusion and cost a lot of money. However, this administration, staffed by incredibly competent people who can walk on water and balance budgets on the back of napkins, assures us that it won't cost a dime and there will be no impact on service delivery.

If, by some strange chance, there might be some problems in the biggest reorganization of government in more than half a century, wouldn't it be nice to ensure that those nasty "bureaucrats" don't have any recourse? Like, say, whistle-blower protection?

Luckily, there will never again be a president whose management folks might break the law! Of course, if there was, giving the power to hire, fire, and silence 170,000 government employees under the rubric of "national security" might make it hard to find out just what was going wrong.

Fortunately, of course, this administration is well known for its openness to Congress and to the press, and its general willingness to accept input from other people. No small cabal of decision makers here.

There weren't any government employee unions nor any civil service protections in the 19th century, so if anyone is advocating 19th-century rules it has to be the administration, unless one believes that the Texas geniuses who brought us Harken, Halliburton, and so on, developed some new techniques that the rest of us haven't heard of (aside from totally imaginary budgeting and studied "ignorance" thereof, that is).

With the power to hire, fire, and to grant raises, not to mention change titles up or down (or out) without reference to existing rules or to Congress, any political administration could rapidly politicize a large chunk of the government. Of course, that wouldn't happen under the watch of Gen. (or is it Admiral?) Karl Rove.

But in theory, it might happen in any future administration. It's an old rule of politics, which "conservatives" and "liberals" alike forget, that some day the powers you arrogate to yourself will be wielded by your domestic foes.

While it's easy to complain about the sloth of bureaucrats, the rules of bureaucracy exist to protect all of us. It's not as if elected politicians can be trusted with absolute power.

Yet in the Bush-Ashcroft regime, so-called "conservatives" seem to be imitating that old liberal saw, "you can trust us with great and arbitrary power, because our motives are pure!"

But conservative founding father John Adams got it right: "Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak."

Behind the request for "flexibility" is simply a request for power unchecked by rules. That's never a good idea.