SACRAMENTO — California's highest-ranking officials were reacting with displeasure and exasperation Wednesday to President Bush's plan to use thousands of National Guard troops to support border patrols and curb illegal immigration.
State Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) said he would move to freeze $38 million in California Guard funding that could be used for border patrols. And he ordered legislative hearings on the Bush border proposal, giving Democrats another public forum in which to criticize it as a distraction from the Guard's primary role in disaster relief.
"I do not want to spend any money at all, invest a dime, into anything that weakens our ability to respond to a state disaster when it comes," Perata said.
For his part, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was demanding answers -- to a host of questions -- from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who briefed him Wednesday. The governor had spent 45 minutes on the phone with Bush senior advisor Karl Rove on Monday about the plan. But after both conversations, the governor complained about being left in the dark.
In a letter Tuesday night to Chertoff, Schwarzenegger called the border security plan a "logistical nightmare" and asked several questions: Who determines when troops come home? What criteria would determine whether their mission was successful? And how would California handle the "staggering" job, as Schwarzenegger put it, of providing support for the thousands of troops who will be cycled into the border region for two-week rotations?
"Think about it," he said Wednesday after a Sacramento speech. "Every two weeks we will rotate out the National Guard? That's like starting a heart surgery and having the whole team of doctors and nurses leap up after every five minutes and switch. How are you going to be successful with that? I have a lot of concerns with it.
"But bottom line is we want to be cooperative. We want to be helpful in this crisis. And we want to come in, but just temporarily. Not permanently."
After his phone conversation with Chertoff on Wednesday, the governor remained dissatisfied, an aide said. "Following 40 minutes, it was evident the administration did not have all the answers Gov. Schwarzenegger was looking for," said Adam Mendelsohn, the governor's communications director.
