Senator blocking security nominee

— An attempt to blow up a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day would be all-consuming for the administrator of the Transportation Security Administration - if there was one.

Instead, the post remains vacant because Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., has held up President Barack Obama’s nominee in an effort to prevent the agency’s workers from joining a labor union.

DeMint, in a statement, said that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s attempted terror attack in Detroit “is a perfect example of why the Obama administration should not unionize the TSA.”

Two Senate committees have given Obama’s nominee, Erroll Southers, a former FBI special agent and a counterterrorism expert,their bipartisan blessing.

DeMint, however, has objected to a full Senate vote, saying he wants additional testimony to clarify Southers’ stand on unionizing the agency, a shift that Democrats support. An acting administrator is in place at the agency, the division of the Department of Homeland Security that oversees airport security.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., hadn’t scheduled a floor vote for Southers before the Senate left town on Christmas Eve, and the Senate won’t be back in session for three weeks.

Reid spokesman Jim Manley said Monday that the majority leader is working with the White House to get Southers confirmed “as quickly as possible” and charged that “Republican obstructionism has prevented TSA from having the leadership in place that the organization deserves.”

DeMint spokesman Wesley Denton said that Obama didn’t nominate Southers until September, and charged that Reid “has been too busy trading earmarks for votes on health care” to deal with the nomination.

DeMint’s objection creates a procedural hurdle that likely would take at least three days of debate and test votes to overcome. Were that standard applied broadly to nominees, it could bring Senate business to a halt, said Manley, who called DeMint’s opposition “disgraceful.”

For now, DeMint said, the agency has “flexibility to make real-time decisions that allowed it to quickly improve security measures in response to this attempted attack.”

He said if organized labor were involved, union leaders would have the power “to veto or delay future security improvements at our airports.”

He urged Obama to “rethink” his support of unionizing the agency “and put the interests of American travelers ahead of organized labor.”

Southers is the Los Angeles World Airports Police Department assistant chief for homeland security and intelligence. He also is the associate director of the University of Southern California’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, and he served as a deputy director of homeland security for California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Front Section, Pages 10 on 12/29/2009

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