 MOUNT RUSHMORE NATIONAL MEMORIAL,
S.D. (Reuters) - President Bush accused the Democratic-led Senate on Thursday
of tying the hands of his proposed Homeland Security Department while Senate
Majority Leader Tom Daschle said the U.S. president was seeking "dictatorial
powers" over the agency.
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- With the stern granite faces of four presidents gazing
down from the Mount Rushmore monument, Bush suggested the Senate was placing
dangerous limits on his ability to protect the nation through the planned
170,000-strong agency whose creation he proposed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
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- "I need the flexibility to be able to look at the
American people and say we're doing everything we can to protect the homeland
against an enemy that hates us," Bush said forcefully to an audience
that included Daschle.
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- Daschle, who stood listening with his hands folded in
front of him as Bush spoke, later accused the president of seeking "dictatorial
powers," particularly in the freedom to fire government employees
and the right to move money around the government without congressional
approval.
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- The South Dakota Democrat told reporters that Senate
Democrats did not want to "give this president or any president the
dictatorial powers that I think compromise the checks and balances that
our founding fathers recognized."
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- Asked what he meant, Daschle replied: "The ability
to fire an employee on the spot. The ability to move resources without
any congressional approval from one agency or another. Those are powers
that no president has had and we don't think this one should have them
either."
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- The Republicans and Democrats are sparring over the protections
the proposed department's employees would enjoy and the administration's
ability to move money around in its effort to prevent further attacks on
the United States.
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- SUPPORT FOR THUNE
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- Bush also used his visit to the 60-foot (18 meter) busts
of Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and
Abraham Lincoln carved into Mount Rushmore to promote Rep. John Thune of
South Dakota, a fellow Republican running in a tight race for the Senate
in the Nov. 5 election.
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- The president hopes Thune will beat Sen. Tim Johnson,
who also attended the speech, helping the Republicans retake the Senate
and tossing Daschle from the majority leader's office.
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- "I appreciate you leadership and your friendship,"
Bush told Thune at the start of his speech.
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- Control of the Senate is vital to Bush's policies. The
Republican-led House of Representatives approved legislation to create
a Homeland Security Department to Bush's liking but the Senate has yet
to do so and a version approved by committee does not provide many of the
powers Bush wants.
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- Democrats support merging all or parts of 22 federal
agencies into a single department to better protect the nation after the
Sept. 11 attacks, but they argue Bush's plan will gut the union and civil
service rights of government workers.
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- In his speech, Bush said the Senate's homeland security
bill would take away an authority held by every president since Jimmy Carter
to exempt agencies from collective bargaining requirements if this were
in the national security interest.
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- He also said it would impose bureaucratic rules that
would slow down hiring people for the new department, would make it difficult
to reward them with bonuses for good work and prevent the government from
moving money around to fight new threats.
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- While saying Congress was making some progress on the
legislation, Bush said: "I'm a little worried about some of the noise
I hear. I don't want our hands tied so we cannot do the number one job
you expect, which is to protect the homeland."
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- After a two-day Midwestern swing in which he raised money
for Republicans in Wisconsin and Iowa, Bush returns to his Crawford, Texas,
ranch on Thursday to resume his four-week working vacation that included
this week's Waco economic summit. He returns to Washington around Labor
Day on Sept. 2.
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