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--- Begin Message --- -Caveat Lector- Posted on Thu, Feb. 13, 2003![]()
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GOP leader backs off anti-union diatribe
Labor bosses called 'clear, present danger'
in letter DeLay signed
E.J. DIONNE
Washington Post Writers Group
Being Tom DeLay is supposed to mean never having to say you're sorry. But the Republican majority leader known as "the Hammer" decided it was impolitic to stand behind an outrageous letter he signed attacking the American trade union movement as unpatriotic.
DeLay didn't quite apologize. One of his aides said over the weekend that DeLay never saw the fund-raising diatribe on which his name appeared and "doesn't believe the words that were ascribed to him."
The letter from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, an anti-union organization with close ties to DeLay, attacked "the union bosses' drive to use the national emergencies we face to grab more power." Their effort, the letter said, "presents a clear and present danger to the United States."
"It is truly sickening that, at a time when we desperately need everyone in America to pull together," said the disavowed letter, "the big labor bosses are willing to harm freedom-loving workers, the war effort and the economy to acquire more power."
Unionized firefighters and police officers were America's heroes after 9/11. But the letter attacked "high-paid union lobbyists" for "convincing Sens. Ted Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton to try ramming through legislation to force the nation's firefighters and policemen to accept union bosses as their exclusive workplace spokesmen."
This didn't sit well with Harold Schaitberger, the president of the International Association of Fire Fighters. "How dare you question the patriotism of the nation's firefighters and their elected union leaders," he wrote DeLay, "all of whom have crawled down a burning hallway, faced uncontrolled flames and risked their lives countless time for the citizens of our great nation."
Now DeLay's decision to disentangle himself from the letter is lovely. But if he's serious, the Hammer has a lot more disavowing to do. After all, DeLay and his party spent the 2002 election campaign suggesting that standing up for the rights of unionized public employees was, indeed, contrary to the national security interests of the United States.
Remember the debate over the bill creating a Homeland Security Department? President Bush insisted that it contain provisions curtailing the rights of unionized public employees whose jobs would fall within the new department. Senate Democrats, joined by Republican Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, resisted.
In an interview last September in which he called critics of Bush's Iraq policy "hand-wringers and appeasers," DeLay accused the Democrats of "playing games with the Department of Homeland Security" and doing so "to help their political friends, the union bosses and trial lawyers." The president left no doubt about his feelings toward those unwilling to give him all the power he wanted. "The Senate," Bush said, "is more interested in special interests in Washington, and not interested in the security of the American people."
In speech after speech, the president blamed unions for thwarting his desire to protect Americans.
"Right after Sept. 11," he said, "the Customs Service wanted to quickly assign its best, most qualified inspectors to the northern border. The union leaders objected. They said we had to bargain over those assignments; we had to take time to hash it out, rather than moving our best to where we thought we needed to move them immediately." If that was not implying that the unions were being unpatriotic, what exactly was the president saying?
Bush regularly told another story about customs inspectors, in which they were asked to wear "radiological detection devices" so that "somebody on duty will have a device indicating that a weapon of mass destruction is coming in."
As the president recounted the matter, "The union representing the workers said, `No, we're not going to have that. You can't have mandatory use of a radiological detection device. It must be voluntary, otherwise we're going to take you to collective bargaining.' " No way, said Bush, "we don't have time to bargain collectively over an issue like that."
Sounds pretty close to accusing the unions of presenting "a clear and present danger to the United States," doesn't it?
DeLay's disavowal was said to have come in response to one of the few union leaders Republicans are actively wooing, Teamsters President James Hoffa. He called DeLay's letter an "anti-union screed."
In one of his wooing sessions, Hoffa should ask DeLay and Bush whether everything they said last fall is now inoperative. As for the right-to-work organization, there's no doubt it acted in good faith -- toward DeLay, if not toward patriotic union leaders. It just made the mistake of sending out a letter stating plainly everything that Tom DeLay and George W. Bush were willing to insinuate to win an election.
E.J. Dionne
E.J. Dionne Jr. is a Washington Post columnist.
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