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President Bush is locked in battle on two issues. In both instances, the President is correct and needs to be supported. Senator Tommy Daschle is involved with more special interests...see below

The first issue involves his Homeland Security bill. The House passed a bill that the President can support. But the Senate wants to pass a bill that looks like a deal breaker for the President. The Senate bill, sponsored by probable presidential candidate Sen. Joe Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, does not give the President the flexibility he needs to rationalize the consolidation of the various departments. In fact, the Senate bill is a major step backwards. It would take away some of the authority the President now has under existing legislation.

The President has not used the word veto, but he has called the Senate bill absolutely unacceptable. The President is right to fight the Senate bill. The President must be able to hire and fire accordingly to long established procedures. The House bill improves his ability to do so. The reason the Senate bill is so constructed is because the labor unions are a powerful force within the Democratic Party. Lieberman wants to do them this favor so if he does run for president he can tell the unions "you owe me one."

This bill comes from a party whose mantra is that the president and his party are tools of the special interests. The same Senate won't vote on cloning and partial birth abortion because its leadership is beholden to the radical lifestyle groups.

If the Senate does pass this Homeland Security bill intact, then the House-Senate conference committee should throw out the Senate provisions and adopt the House version.

The other issue where the President is right on and must have our support is his initiative to thin out the forests on our federal lands to prevent forest fires. We have had a disaster of a year thus far, with a record number of acres burned and many firefighters killed and many more injured. And the real season for such fires has just begun.

The President's proposal would create 100,000 jobs in an area of the nation starved for employment. Of course, the usual suspects among the radical environmentalists are screaming that this initiative is just aimed to help the President's friends in the logging industry. Yet Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle added a provision to an unrelated bill that would do exactly what the President is proposing, but limited to his home state of South Dakota. These same so- called environmental radicals were silent on Daschle's action because he belongs to the party that constantly plays ball with these extremists whose policies clearly are a danger to the nation.

Western Democrats know that the President is right. They have not joined the gaggle of liberals in Congress who have read the script prepared by the extremist groups, because they don't want to endanger their own future. Those Democrats should help roll the leadership of their own party and should join with almost all of the Republicans to pass the legislation the President is asking for. The President's initiative to thin out our forests is just common sense. Let's see if common sense can overcome the bitter, nasty partisanship of those groups that claim to be green but whose ideology is quite evidently red.

We must support the president on this initiative. The alternative is to watch large parts of our nation going up in smoke.

Paul Weyrich is president of the Free Congress Foundation.

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