Control of the Guard

Winston-Salem Journal

Gov. Mike Easley and Missouri Sen. Kit Bond, a former governor, are absolutely correct when they say that recently expanded presidential powers over state-based National Guard units should be repealed.

Guard units are elements of state governments, not the federal government. The president should not have wide-ranging power to nationalize these units.

Before 2006, presidents had all the authority they needed to nationalize Guard units. The law gave them the authority to call up troops in times of national emergency, such as an urban riot. The law also gave the president the power to call on the Guard to enforce laws when state governments refused to do so, such as the implementation of federal court orders during the school-integration era.

But President Bush wanted more control over the Guard after Louisiana’s governor refused to hand him that state’s units in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He got the power, but members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said this week that the change in law, which was slipped into a defense-spending bill, is a political orphan. That is, no senators have come forward to admit having sponsored the proposal.

This kind of secretive lawmaking is just what the American people want to stop. An issue as serious as the expansion of the president’s power over Guard units goes right to the core of the federal-state relationship in our governmental system. Such matters should be discussed in numerous committees, on the editorial pages of our newspapers, on television talk shows and at local coffee shops. Americans should not wake to find that a basic element of their democracy has been changed in secret.

That’s why Bond, a Republican, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who heads the committee, are sponsoring the repeal bill. At least this legislation will be discussed.

Easley argued well before the committee, making the point that Guard units play a critical role in implementing state responses to natural disasters. He noted the Guard’s role in responding to the many hurricanes that have blown through North Carolina. And he correctly cited the Guard’s role in saving lives in those emergencies. He also correctly noted that state officials have more insight into when and where the Guard can be most effective.

Leahy argued that the new law gives the president too much power to use the Guard as a police force, something it should not be. America, he said, does not believe in using its military to maintain domestic order, except in the direst situations. We have civilian police forces for that purpose.

Given the bipartisan nature of the effort to repeal the law, prospects for returning Guard control to the governors looks good. That’s the way it should be.