Will Republicans Continue to Obstruct 9/11 Commission Recommendations?
by Jonathan Singer, Sat Nov 11, 2006 at 03:35:19 PM EST
One of the central lines of attack Democrats have lobbed at Republicans in recent years has regarded their inability and indeed opposition to passing all of the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission -- the creation of which a number of Republicans did not even support two years ago. With that in mind, one of they key planks of the House Democrats' 100 Hours agenda includes passage of the Commission's policies in full, a move that could lead to obstruction from Congressional Republicans, as Dan Eggen and Spencer S. Hsu report today for The Washington Post.
Homeland security experts cautioned that Democratic control of Congress will not guarantee implementation of some of the commission's most controversial suggestions, which have languished because of entrenched political and bureaucratic obstacles.A prime example is the commission's call to base the federal government's homeland security funding on the actual risk of terrorist attacks or other calamities -- an approach that would generally benefit large metropolitan areas at the expense of smaller cities and rural regions. Although such an approach would favor regions represented by Democrats, lawmakers have preferred to spread dollars to as many jurisdictions as possible.
While Eggen and Hsu don't spell it out explicitly, the implication is that Republican legislators' lust for pork trumps their desire to protect American national security as efficiently and effectively as possible. Make no mistake; Republicans' determination to garner homeland security earmarks for their states and districts, many of which we can safely assume are far from the top of most terrorists' target lists, hurts efforts to keep Americans safe from attacks.
Now no doubt there are individual Democrats who fall prey to this same vice. But just as is the case with the issue of corruption, the improrpieties of individual Democratic members of Congress pale in comparison with the culture of the Republican Party that puts preservation of power above all else -- homeland security included.
So if legislation containing all of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations, including the prioritization of homeland security grants on the basis of threat rather than seniority of individual members, does not reach the President's desk, Republicans alone will be to blame. And in that case, the Democrats should stop at nothing to educate the American people about the skewed priorities of today's Congressional Republicans and their propensity to obstruct legislation that does not fit in with their radical ideology.
Tags: 9/11 Commission, Republicans (all tags)
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