California leaders cool to Bush border plan

SACRAMENTO, Calif. – 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, a Democrat, said he would move to freeze $38 million in California Guard funding that could be used for border patrols. 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. He spent 45 minutes on the phone with Bush senior adviser Karl Rove on Monday about the plan, but after both conversations 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 success of their mission? And how would California handle the “staggering” job, as Schwarzenegger put it, of providing support for the thousands of troops that will be cycled into the border region for two-week rotations?

He added: “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.”