Balancing Liberty With Security Measures

All indications are that President Bush is patiently and deliberately considering his military and diplomatic responses to the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

So why is the debate over the attacks’ domestic implications proceeding in such a frenzy?

Congress is rushing toward critical, and often expensive, decisions on issues from internal security to defense spending to the airline bailout approved late last week, and even to more tax cuts--all in an atmosphere oddly defined by parallel excesses of fear and camaraderie.

Opportunism explains some of this rush to judgment, with politicians and interest groups using the attacks to justify policies they have been pushing anyway. But the deeper dynamic is an exaggerated reluctance in the political world to publicly disagree during what is approaching wartime.

From several angles, it’s understandable why legislators might feel so hesitant. No politician wants to let terrorists believe they have divided America. No politician wants to give his voters reason to believe that he’s undermining the commander in chief at a time when nearly 90% of Americans have understandably expressed support for military action. And everyone on Capitol Hill appears reluctant to disturb the buddies-in-a-foxhole personal dynamic that developed after legislators faced the prospect that the Capitol itself might have been targeted.

But Congress has already given Bush the fundamental authority (through the resolution approving the use of force passed earlier this month) and means (with the $40-billion spending bill) he needs to plot the immediate response to the crisis. It does the country, and even Bush, no service to now suspend critical thinking on all decisions framed as part of the war effort. Ignoring hard questions in the name of unity doesn’t make them go away. It may not be comfortable to confront them during wartime, but they will have to be confronted eventually, and history suggests sooner is usually better than later.

That’s been especially true on issues relating to civil liberties. American decisions about civil liberties during wartime have been like the judgments sailors make about tattoos during weekend passes: Morning-after regret is more common than not. From Abraham Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s support for Japanese internment, there’s a long history of overreaction at moments of threat that should give Congress reason for caution as it considers new internal security measures now.

If Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft can demonstrate that the enhanced authority the administration is seeking to investigate and wiretap terrorists is needed for the current investigation, then Congress ought to move quickly to consider emergency powers. But if not, that checkered history suggests legislators should take a long, deep breath and consider all the implications as they recalibrate the balance between liberty and security.

Surely that balance will have to tilt more toward security, but retaining proportion is critical. As Clint Bolick, vice president of the Institute for Justice, a conservative legal group, recently put it: “It is tempting to trade freedom for security. But to do so sacrifices both. For the freedoms we have not only make America a moral exemplar but provide us with the wealth and means to effectively combat terrorism.”

If anything, a deep breath would have been even more appropriate on the bailout of the airline industry. By their own estimates, the airlines lost about $1 billion during the period when they were forcibly grounded by the federal government. Yet the industry convinced Congress to hurriedly approve a $15-billion package of loan guarantees and grants.

It’s implausible that all of the financial distress the airlines are now experiencing flowed only from the attacks; many analysts suspect it’s more likely that the industry was using the current crisis to stampede Congress into approving an aid package for deeper ailments that it could never pass in ordinary circumstances.

At the least, before Congress approved financial security for the airlines, it ought to have asked what job security the airlines will provide for the tens of thousands of workers they have laid off in the past week. (Help for those workers will only be considered later.) And now that Congress has bailed out the airlines, it ought to brace for a line of other industries--like insurance, hotels and even steel manufacturers--all demanding their share.

The rush to shower money on the airlines highlights a third post-attack impulse that needs to be curbed: the breakdown of fiscal discipline. Few doubt that it’s appropriate for Congress to tap into the previously sacrosanct Social Security trust fund to cope with the devastation and retaliate for the attacks. “The problem is whether it’s taken as an excuse to abandon fiscal discipline altogether beyond response to the immediate crisis,” notes Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a fiscal watchdog group.

Most questionable is the push in both parties for another tax cut, ostensibly to offset the economic drag of the attacks. With the sluggish economy still depressing revenues and demands on spending proliferating, the government is already on track to cut deeply into the Social Security surplus this year and next.

That means Washington will pay down less debt, increasing its future interest costs. Some budget experts believe another tax cut could conceivably weaken the government’s balance sheet to the point where it consumes all of the Social Security surplus next year and begins adding to the national debt again--further raising its interest costs. That reduces government’s ability to meet future challenges--foreign or domestic.

Both Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan and Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill last week sensibly cautioned Congress to hold off on more tax cuts. It’s one thing to bend fiscal discipline to confront the most invidious security threat the nation has faced in years. It’s another to sacrifice the hard-won victory over the federal deficit to a panicked urge to do something. Bush has resisted the temptation for precipitous action abroad. Congress and the administration should do the same at home.

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See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times’ Web site at: https://www.latimes.com/brownstein.