Over the last two months, most of the country - and amazingly, the U.S. Congress - have managed to put political ideology aside.

Democrats and Republicans have rallied behind President Bush as he governs a nation that is cautiously moving past the tragedies of Sept. 11, while prosecuting a war against an enemy which is unlike any other we have seen.

Along those lines of cooperation, the U.S. Senate last month voted 100-0 to make airport baggage screeners federal employees. Republicans and Democrats alike realized that the quickest and best way to implement stricter standards for screening people and baggage was to make them federal employees.

But it was an entirely different scenario in the U.S. House. A largely party-line vote of 218-214 rejected making the screeners federal employees on Nov. 1. Then, not wanting it to appear as if they voted against airline security, the House approved the privatization security measure pushed by President Bush and Republicans, by a 286-139 margin. At press time, some senators, including Republican John McCain, stressed the importance of making the screeners federal employees, and said he expects the Senate "to restore these important security measures."

House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt argued, "The companies that have been doing this have failed the American people. It is time for them to be replaced."

Added U.S. Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga): "To me as a conservative, I look at a problem and ask, 'Is this a federal function?' Faced with the crisis, we make the illogical jump that the government is the only one that can do it."

The argument we make in the construction industry certainly applies here: when it comes to paying $25 an hour vs. $10 an hour for a worker's services, you get what you pay for. Do we or do we not want fairly paid and motivated employees in place to safeguard the public?

A letter to their Republican colleagues by House Majority Leader Dick Armey and Majority Whip Tom DeLay, both of Texas, urged that they keep the airport screening system private. "A nationalized system lacks accountability and flexibility because it establishes a massive federal bureaucracy," they said. Even more telling, they earlier blasted Democratic support for the federalization measure as politically motivated because it would result in more "union-dues paying federal workers."

This is the first major flashpoint of biased political partisanship following the Sept. 11 attacks. Unions moved to the center of the debate - and the issue wasn't whether union members could do a better job, but because creating union jobs is seen as having political ramifications. The position of Armey, Delay and a lot of Republicans is clearly putting political interests above the interests of national security.

We'll let Wall Street Journal columnist Albert Hunt have the last word:

"Politically, the two Texans are doing the bidding for the private airport security companies that have done such an atrocious job. Ideologically, they hyperventilate about adding federal unionized workers; union members somehow wouldn't be as effective or dedicated, they suggest.

"During today's debate, maybe someone will ask these union-bashing right-wingers if union cards impaired the effectiveness or dedication of most of the 366 firemen and policemen who died on Sept. 11 while trying to rescue people from the World Trade Center."