Congress readies for "Security September"

WASHINGTON — Congress returns to Washington this week with the Republican majorities in both chambers at risk and GOP leaders planning to turn the House and Senate into battlegrounds over which political party can best protect the country from terrorists and other security threats.

But in devoting the few remaining legislative days almost exclusively to security issues, Republicans will leave major domestic tasks undone, including President Bush's prized immigration overhaul and long-promised legislation to toughen the restrictions on lobbying after a wide-ranging corruption scandal.

No budget plan for 2007 will be completed. Promised relief for seniors struggling with their Medicare prescription-drug plans will have to wait. And up to eight of the 11 bills needed to fund the government will not be passed before the November elections.

That has some Republicans worried.

In Michigan, "the No. 1 issue is the economy," Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich., said. "The emphasis they're putting out there now is related to world events and the fact that the national economy is not facing what Michigan is facing. But if you're hungry, you've got less time to delve into international affairs."

But what some have dubbed "Security September" will provide Republicans with opportunities for an endless flurry of press releases, news conferences and floor speeches to try to make their case that their approach is the best way to ensure Americans remain safe — and to push the argument that Democrats can't be trusted.

With Senate and House leaders hoping to adjourn by Sept. 29, Congress will have as few as 15 legislative days to finish its work and try to send members on the campaign trail with fresh accomplishments to tout.

A slow start seems likely. After a five-week summer break, the centerpiece of the House schedule for the coming week is a bill to toughen rules against horse-slaughtering.

If Republicans succeed in the weeks that follow, their accomplishments will be focused on national security. Republican leaders hope to complete a defense-spending bill, a defense-policy bill, legislation to give Congress' blessing to the National Security Agency's (NSA) warrantless-wiretapping program and to bring the president's military tribunals into constitutional compliance, and a port-security overhaul.

A resolution commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks also will likely be a vehicle for heated debate on the policies that followed.

Ron Bonjean, a spokesman for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said it is not politics but a confluence of events that has forced the security focus on Congress, including the recent foiling of the alleged London bombing plot, a federal judge's ruling against the NSA surveillance program and the Supreme Court's ruling against the administration's military tribunals.

"There's a certain acceptance on both sides of the aisle that we're looking at the House floor as a political arena in the next month," said a senior House Republican leadership aide who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not cleared to speak in political terms. "This will be a test of ideas on military security and homeland security."

Democrats will counter with a push for a vote of no confidence in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and with multiple calls to fully implement the recommendations of the bipartisan commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Our fight is with the Republicans," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said. "They have weakened our military, hurt our position in the world, spent away our children's future and again not made America safer."

The single-minded focus has some Republicans concerned that bread-and-butter issues of great importance to the battleground states of the Midwest and the Northeast are being left on the cutting-room floor. Friday was the ninth anniversary of the last increase in the federal minimum wage, yet minimum-wage bills coveted by embattled Republicans are not on the priority list.

In a letter, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, urged Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., to take up legislation allowing small businesses to band together to purchase health insurance, and to help seniors who have exhausted their prescription-drug coverage find a more generous plan.

Other lawmakers want to make good on promises to forgive penalties for seniors who missed the deadline to sign up for a Medicare drug plan.

But even Republicans who would prefer a domestic-policy emphasis understand what is at work. McCotter, the Michigan lawmaker, said a sustained debate on national security and terrorism is the best way to remind the most voters why they have trusted Republicans with control.

"As the Democrats have discovered so many times, when national security comes to the fore, all of a sudden things don't look so good for them," he said.

Democrats think the national-security theme will not have the sting it had in 2002 and 2004.

A Newsweek poll last month found that 44 percent of those surveyed trusted Republicans to handle the battle against terrorism, at home and abroad, compared with 39 percent who trusted Democrats. In 2002, Republicans had a bigger lead on that question, 47 percent to 24 percent.

Republicans hope to force Democrats into difficult votes on the NSA's warrantless-wiretapping program and on the Bush administration's plans to use military tribunals to try terrorism suspects.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he expects Republicans to go back to the political playbook that worked so well in the past two elections. But he added: "They've run that play one too many times."

The other problem for Republicans is to finish work on legislation. Republican leaders would like to quickly bring to a vote a bill that would give Bush as much latitude as possible to continue the NSA's warrantless-wiretapping program — which Republicans call the terrorist-surveillance program — and then dare Democrats to oppose it.

But some Republicans close to the issue are committed to legislation that could have bipartisan appeal. Rep. Heather Wilson, R-N.M., who wrote the most prominent House surveillance bill, said it is time for Congress to reassert its authority over the NSA's surveillance program and demand the president obtain a warrant for any wiretapping, unless he expressly seeks Congress' permission not to.

That tough stance hardly presents a dilemma for Democrats, who have called for the same thing.

"This is not a partisan issue," Wilson said. "This is a national-security issue, and I've tried to keep it that way."

Similarly, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., has drafted legislation that he said would bring Bush's military tribunals into compliance with the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions, and garner bipartisan support. That may not fly with House conservatives who are resisting offering due-process rights to terrorism suspects.

The situation could lead to difficult negotiations on Capitol Hill in a supercharged political atmosphere and a tight deadline.

"For a bill as important as this, this is a very quick timetable," conceded John Ullyot, a Senate Armed Services Committee spokesman.

The potential effectiveness of the Republicans' tactics remains uncertain.

"It depends on events," said Norm Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. "I don't think it works if, in late October, we're in a situation like we're in now: The jolt of the London bombing threat has passed, and the stories every day are back to the wheels coming off in Iraq more than anything else."

Material from McClatchy Newspapers is included in this report.