The war against terrorism
Big government is back
But how much? For how long? And with whose assent?
WARS are fought by soldiers but organised by governments. Most conflicts therefore tend to increase the power of the state, at least temporarily. America's war against terrorism is no exception. In the two weeks after September 11th, the country has seen a sharp increase in the role of the federal government.
On September 14th, three days after the attacks, Congress appropriated $40 billion in emergency spending and then approved, in record time, a $15 billion rescue for airlines. On September 20th, President George Bush announced a new federal Office of Homeland Security. John Ashcroft, the attorney-general, wants to expand the powers of the FBI and the CIA. Other people want to increase the federal government's role in providing security for vulnerable targets such as airports and nuclear-power stations.
None of this is surprising, or necessarily permanent. After all, national defence is the prime responsibility of the state. When it is threatened, people naturally rally round, and the government's work becomes more visible. It happened in 1941 and again in the mid-1960s, at the start of the Vietnam war. This time, America is also facing a recession, increasing the call for public spending in another area.
Still, the change represents a remarkable about-turn for a president who came into office saying “[Al Gore] trusts the government; I trust the people” and who wanted to limit the scope of federal spending by cutting taxes. Mr Bush now finds himself presiding over the most visible rise in government activity for years.
The most obvious example is the proposed new Office of Homeland Security to be headed by the governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Ridge (see Lexington). This would be the first new job to be created at cabinet level since 1989. Mr Bush wants Mr Ridge to co-ordinate the 40 or so government departments involved in protecting Americans from terrorists at home. This in itself would not necessarily expand federal powers; it would merely rationalise them. But some in Congress want to go further, setting up a new department.
When people think of “big government”, though, they think of large spending increases and new federal programmes. Congress has so far approved $55 billion in extra cash, with more to come (see next story). Some money—such as the $2 billion going to the Federal Emergency Management Agency—will be temporary. But not all will be. It is striking that Congress, a body normally fierce to guard its control over federal spending, has given the president free rein to spend $20 billion more or less as he wishes.
For civil libertarians, a bigger issue is the demand for extra authority, rather than extra money. Mr Ashcroft wants Congress to increase law-enforcement powers in four ways. The first two methods have plenty of support in Congress; the other two do not.
•Eavesdropping. The current wiretapping law dates from 1968, before mobile telephones and multiple lines. It requires a separate court order for each telephone number in each jurisdiction. Mr Ashcroft wants wiretapping authorisations to apply to the suspect, not the line, so that surveillance can continue when a suspect switches telephones or uses a mobile phone in a new place. Investigators also want to seize unopened e-mail and voice messages with a search warrant, not a court order.
•Defining terrorism. At the moment, harbouring a terrorist is not a crime in America. Mr Ashcroft wants to bring the law into line with those on harbouring spies and drug-dealers. The term terrorist would include those who support terrorist organisations. He also wants to eliminate the statute of limitations on terrorist crimes (now five to eight years). As with wiretapping, most congressmen see this as merely filling a gap in the existing law.
•Detaining suspects. Mr Ashcroft wants discretion to detain foreigners held to pose a threat to national security. The detention would be without trial and with only minimal judicial oversight. Opponents think this would, in practice, make detention indefinite. Many congressmen also fear that it would increase the government's powers of surveillance in other areas of law enforcement, not just terrorism.
•Uses of intelligence. The attorney-general wants intelligence agencies to get information from law-enforcement ones (including secret grand-jury testimony). This has been banned because the FBI abused this power in the 1960s to harass Martin Luther King, among others. Mr Ashcroft also wants to permit intelligence gathered by foreign governments to be used in American courts, even if the gathering would have been illegal in America. Opponents say this would be unconstitutional.
The White House hopes that Mr Ashcroft's anti-terrorist measures can be passed quickly. He will get some of what he wants. But it is notable that his package has not flown through Congress, as the economic bail-outs did. The civil libertarians' opposition will not easily be overcome, partly because it is bipartisan. In the Senate hearings, some of the sharpest questions came from Republicans. In the House, the most left-wing member of the judiciary committee, Maxine Waters, shared the reservations of the most conservative member, Bob Barr—the first time the two have agreed on anything.
Another mooted area of bigger government—guarding vulnerable targets—faces practical as well as philosophical, doubts. At nuclear-power stations responsibility for security is shared between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the owners. The NRC had been thinking of giving the utilities more responsibility for security. It now looks likely that, instead, there will be greater federal involvement.
The bigger mess is air travel, where the Federal Aviation Administration sets guidelines but leaves the rest to airports and airlines. Senators of both parties want the FAA to take over the baggage-screening business. The stereotypical screener is poorly trained and on the minimum wage. Under the Senate plan, they would become federal employees in a new security division of the FAA. Mr Bush's transport secretary, Norman Mineta, fears it would take too long to hire and train 28,000 new civil servants. He wants to bring in federal training and performance standards—an idea approved by Congress in 1996, but not implemented.
The most important effect may be cultural. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan declared that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” At a time when America's heroes are its firemen and its rescue workers, government seems to be at least part of the solution. This feeling, like Mr Bush's sky-high poll ratings, could be ephemeral. But Robert Hormats, a vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs, thinks it will last. “We will to have to spend more money on the war and to get us out of recession. We will have to spend more on domestic security. And our spending on defence will go up, pulling more people and more technology into the governmental sphere.” These things could halt—or at least slow—the erosion of faith in the federal government that has marked American politics for a generation.