Bush Threatens to Veto Homeland Security Bill
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT.  THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: There has been an intense debate over the creation of this new Homeland Security Department. And President Bush and some lawmakers have different ideas about how to get this job done, if it's even going to get done. Our senior White House correspondent, John King, joins us with more on that. John -- good morning.</s>JOHN KING, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning to you, Daryn. A veto threat from the president of the United States today. He is threatening to veto legislation creating the very Department of Homeland Security he says is so urgent for the country to have right now. At issue, is a dispute with the Democratic-controlled Senate. Mr. Bush says the legislation put forward by a committee -- the chairman of that committee is a Democrat, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut. Mr. Bush says the legislation does not give him and the new secretary of Homeland Security the flexibility to make adjustments when you take 170,000 new federal employees and lump them together under the new department. So Mr. Bush had this event here on the White House campus this morning to make the case that he needs that flexibility. The White House believes there will be a number of redundancies and duplicative people and agencies coming in, and that it needs to be able to move employees around and reassign them. The president says the Lieberman legislation does not give him that power. So he says, if that is the version that makes it to the White House, he will veto it.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am not going to accept legislation that limits or weakens the president's well- established authorities, authorities to exempt parts of government from federal labor management relations statute when it serves our national interest. Every president since Jimmy Carter has used this statutory authority, and a time of war is the wrong time to weaken the president's ability to protect the American people.</s>KING: Senator Lieberman, as you can see, on hand there as the president made those remarks. He sat nodding his head quite expressionless. Other Republicans were applauding the president. Senator Lieberman sat and listened. Senator Lieberman's take is that this bill gives the president 90 percent of what he wanted. Obviously, though, some negotiations to be done. The president making his threat today, even as the House passes a version or takes up a version in the House that is very much like what the president wants. So the House about to pass its version. The president likes that. The Senate moving ahead with a version the president likes most, but not all of it. The negotiations to continue, the president putting the veto threat out there hoping to strengthen his hand in those negotiations -- Daryn.</s>KAGAN: John, from outside of Washington, this seems rather strange. The things that you would have expected this bill to get tripped up on, the big issues, when you try to reorganize these governmental departments, when you're talking about different budgets. That's where you would expect people to get in a power struggle. This seems relatively small.</s>KING: Well, it might seem relatively small, but it also is a key concern to the Democrats. It is a key concern to several employees' unions -- unions, federal employees' unions who are lobbying the Democrats quite hard. And you might say in some ways, there is a subplot to this. Senator Lieberman, of course, was the vice presidential nominee for Al Gore. He is considering running for the Democratic nomination in the year 2004. He very much wants to work closely with those unions, not only in this, a mid-term election year, but looking ahead to his political future. So there is a philosophical debate about the strength here. The president says, though, that he needs the authority to move people around. Look for some compromise discussions in the days and weeks ahead, but Mr. Bush wants to make clear, that again, he is the one who has called for this department, he is the one who has said it is critical. He says if the Senate bill makes it here, he will veto it. No one expects that to happen. They expect some negotiating now after the president drawing that line in the sand, if you will.</s>KAGAN: And even looking at a veto, but this president has yet to veto a bill that Congress has sent to him.</s>KING: Well, there have not been a lot of bills sent to him in the sense that after September 11, the pace of congressional action slowed down. Mr. Bush has had relatively good relations with the Congress, but he has -- this would be a big one if the president used his veto pen on this. But again, we are in the middle of the process. That is why the president did not even use the word veto himself. He just said he would not and cannot, but the president trying to use his political popularity here to influence the debate. We'll see how it all plays out in the weeks ahead.</s>KAGAN: No doubt the talks go on behind closed doors. John King at the White House -- John, thank you very much. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.