The Senate has agreed to make homeland security its first order of business when lawmakers return after Labor Day from their August recess.
On homeland security, the Senate's top Republican, Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, said Bush was right to insist upon management flexibility that would enable the administration to quickly hire, fire and relocate workers to deal with emerging terrorist threats.
Democrats say the plan amounts to an assault on union rights and civil service protections in a new Cabinet agency with 170,000 workers.
"The American people, I believe, expect us to focus on how can we protect their life and liberty, their security here at home," Lott said.
The chief sponsor of the Democratic homeland security bill, Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, said that Bush had picked the fight by proposing such broad new powers for the agency's secretary. Lieberman said these personnel issues were not central to the department's mission of safeguarding Americans at home.
"That was his initiative, and it's totally unnecessary; it will delay what we all want to do," Lieberman said on "Fox News Sunday."
Other issues confronting lawmakers when they return are the 13 annual spending bills to keep government operating and attempts to reach compromise in such areas as a national energy policy, terrorism insurance, bankruptcy reforms, a patients' bill of rights and reauthorization of welfare laws.
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