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Bush makes case for homeland agency

By KATHY A. GAMBRELL, UPI White House Reporter

WASHINGTON, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- President George W. Bush said Saturday that the American homeland remains at risk for terrorism four days before the nation is set to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the terror attacks that killed 3,000 people in New York and Washington.

"We must also remember a central lesson of the tragedy: Our homeland is vulnerable to attack, and we must do everything in our power to protect it," Bush said during his weekly radio address.

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Bush's message comes as the nation prepares to honor those killed on Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 Islamic extremists hijacked four commercial passenger airliners, plunging two of them into the World Trade Center twin towers in New York and a third into the Pentagon building outside Washington. A fourth plane, thought to be intended for the White House or U.S. Capitol, crashed in western Pennsylvania.

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The terror attacks, which U.S. officials have blamed on the Islamic extremist group al Qaida and its leader Saudi fugitive Osama bin Laden, spurred an aggressive move to tighten security at airports, seaports and other potential targets nationwide.

Bush used his weekly radio address to advance his case for a Cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security that would consolidate more than 170,000 workers in 22 federal agencies.

"One essential tool this new department needs is the flexibility to respond to terrorist threats that can arise or change overnight," Bush said. The president said the move would end duplication across dozens of departments in Washington, and be more cost-effective.

Bush's proposal would bring together elements of agencies as diverse as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Coast Guard and the new Transportation Security Administration. The new Homeland Security agency would have total control of America's borders along some 7,000 miles of land borders with Mexico and Canada.

The homeland security proposal, being debated in the Senate, also would prevent the merging of the Border Patrol and Customs into one entity in the new department, which would also include the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Coast Guard and others.

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The prospect of such a massive reorganization -- the largest since President Harry Truman placed the government's intelligence operations under the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 -- has sparked vigorous debate in the halls of Congress.

Democrats have argued that consolidation of workers would weaken labor and worker protections throughout the federal government. Senate Republicans say that powers in Bush's proposal are already present within national security agencies.

Bush wants no union rules or restrictions on hiring, firing or job assignments. Bush said the Senate bill would restrict his ability to ban collective bargaining with labor unions when the national security interest warrants it.

"Every president since Jimmy Carter has used this authority, and a time of war is not a time to limit a president's ability to act in the interest of national security," Bush said.

That is a stance that the labor group AFL-CIO strongly opposes. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney has said that maintaining existing worker protections and rights to appeal decisions on pay or job termination does not hamper administration officials' ability to manage the federal workforce. And he said it does not limit Bush's ability to conduct the war on terrorism.

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Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., on Tuesday said the issue around the rights of labor was a question of whether presidents should be held accountable for what they do in government.

"What the president wants is unfettered ability to take actions that no president in peacetime has ever had the opportunity to do before. This president would eliminate the reforms put in place many, many years ago with regard to civil service, reforms that were so obviously needed when they were enacted, reforms that ended the politics of decision-making with regard to personnel, the politics of decision-making with regard to employee practices, the politics involved in firing somebody who disagreed with a manager or a chief executive," Daschle said.

"This is a country, a system of checks and balances. Those checks and balances have served us well for over 220 years. I think it's critical that those checks and balances stay in place when we create an agency as large as this one."

Daschle said lawmakers want to ensure they have a "good and balanced and thoughtful" reorganization of homeland security.

"But we're not going to roll over when it comes to principles and beliefs that we hold very, very -- to be very, very important," Daschle said.

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Homeland Security adviser Tom Ridge said earlier this week that he would recommend that Bush veto any legislation that included provisions restricting management of federal workers. On Saturday, Bush said he would not accept a homeland security bill that "puts special interests in Washington ahead of the security of the American people."

"I will not accept a homeland security bill that ties the hands of this administration or future administrations in defending our nation against terrorism," Bush said.

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