In politics, it's about 'security'

From perennial budget battles to fights over the environment, official Washington is reframing some of its biggest policy disputes around the buzzword of "national security."

It's a phrase that, since Sept. 11, has played largely in Republicans' favor. Presidents typically surge in authority during times of national crisis. President Bush has been attempting to borrow this commander-in-chief aura for his fiscal plans, too, arguing that tax cuts are vital to building "economic security" at home.

For Democrats, the conventional wisdom before the midterm elections was to stand with the president on national security, and battle on anything else. But that formula took a bruising in November, when Democrats lost control of the Senate and lost seats in the House.

The first days of the 108th Congress signal that that strategy is out. An unusually partisan opening to the new legislative session included pointed attacks on the White House on questions ranging from the security of nuclear power plants to budget and tax plans that Democrats say shortchange homeland security.

"Safety of the American people and the soundness of our economy are the issues," says new House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi - a theme other Democrats quickly picked up.

The newly empowered Republican majority is also framing its agenda around security. GOP lawmakers are gearing up for a fresh assault on some environmental regulations, on the grounds that they undermine the nation's capacity to fight a war.

Environment committees in both houses, moreover, plan to reintroduce versions of the president's national energy strategy to boost domestic production. This, too, will be cast as a response to the needs of national security - arguing that Arctic reserves could cut dependency on Arabian oil.

"You can sell a lot of policies if you wrap it in khaki," says John Pitney, a political scientist at Claremont McKenna college in Claremont, Calif. "Now that we're on a war footing again, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to tie just about any initiative to the war effort, and both sides are doing it."

Using national defense to move big domestic agendas is not new. In 1956, President Eisenhower won congressional backing for a national interstate highway system, citing the needs of national defense. The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 prompted a sweeping national student loan program to produce more mathematicians and scientists.

Many of the big-ticket items on this year's congressional agenda are already being reframed with an eye to national security issues, beginning with spending bills left over from the 107th Congress.

Bush is asking the Congress to hold spending in the nine remaining appropriation bills to $385 billion. Senate Democrats had proposed spending nearly $10 billion above that cap, including more money for droughts and wildfires, education, worker training, and voting systems.

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