Washington, D.C.—Thirteen months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the federal government is deadlocked over the massive reorganization of federal government agencies into the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  While there are a great many policy questions that should be answered before creation of such a complex and costly department, the final agency must be exceptional in the federal universe: entrepreneurial, mobile, and flexible.  For kowtowing to the government employees’ unions, blocking the effort to make the DHS as un-bureaucratic as it needs to be, and undermining his own party’s agenda, Citizens Against Government Waste names Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) the Porker of the Month for October. 

The hallmark of President Bush’s vision of DHS is the ability to shift resources within the agency to best utilize personnel.  This flexibility would mean that response to future terrorist attacks would not have to be decided by committee, or worse yet, union bosses.  As private sector companies (and terrorist organizations) shift resources without artificial restraints, DHS could do the same depending on when or where the next terrorist attack may occur.  Every president since Jimmy Carter (who used it extensively) has had the authority to declare that certain personnel or programs within a federal agency are essential to national security.  Under such a designation, collective bargaining rights are removed, making it easier to shift personnel from one job or location to another.

The Chafee version of DHS would withhold this authority from President Bush, as well as future presidents, and give it to the Secretary of Homeland Security.  The excuse is that no president has ever used the national security designation on the departments and agencies that will be incorporated into the DHS.  But never having had a DHS or an attack on the United States as devastating as Sept. 11, it would be absurd to think the rules should remain static.

While some would characterize his actions as disloyal to his commander-in-chief and party leader, Sen. Chafee hasn’t been with the Republican program for some time.  He has the lowest Council for Citizens Against Government Waste rating at 40 percent, 37 points lower than the Senate Republican average.  Last year, said he would follow Sen. Jeffords’ lead in bolting from the Republican party if it did not move more to the left, meaning if the Republicans take back the Senate in November, it may be a Pyrrhic victory.

The past year has been uncharted territory for the entire country.  Creating the new DHS will require a fine balancing act between the protection of the country and our fiscal future.  But it won’t even get off the ground if Sen. Chafee’s version of the new DHS is adopted by Congress.  In fact, due to his evisceration of the president’s authority to designate personnel as essential to national security , Americans will not be better off then they were 13 months ago. As the ranking member of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) said, the “bottom line criteria should be not personal and parochial interests, vested interests and pressure groups, but will this provision make our country safer.” 

For putting special interests above the common defense and Big Labor’s bureaucratic rules over management flexibility and efficiency, as well as disloyalty to his party and the taxpayers, Sen. Lincoln Chafee is the October 2002 Porker of the Month.

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.