Homeland Security Bill Easily Passes in House

WASHINGTON -- The House gave strong bipartisan approval Wednesday to a bill that would create a Cabinet department to coordinate America’s defenses against terrorism, and the Senate moved with new urgency to follow suit within days.

But the decisive steps to reorganize the federal government in response to last year’s terrorist attacks contrasted with congressional indecision on government spending that left many high-profile homeland security initiatives in limbo.

Two House votes showed the conflicting pressures on lawmakers as they pushed toward a belated conclusion to the year’s business.

First, the Republican-led House voted 270 to 143 to approve a stopgap spending bill that would fund most government operations only at current levels until mid-January. Most opponents were Democrats.

As a result, billions of dollars in planned increases to ramp up the Coast Guard and the Customs Service, hire hundreds of Border Patrol agents, bolster state and local anti-terrorism programs and step up other domestic security programs were postponed.

Hours later, the House approved on a 299-121 vote what is apparently the final version of the most significant overhaul of the executive branch in the last half a century, a plan to forge a new Department of Homeland Security out of 22 agencies now scattered throughout the government.

The Senate was driving toward the same outcomes on both bills. The White House and Senate Republicans prevailed in a handful of preliminary Senate votes on the government reorganization, as Democrats largely conceded a fight over worker rights within the new department. President Bush won most of the powers he sought to revise civil service rules and, if necessary, waive labor agreements. Final Senate action on the homeland security bill and the spending bill was expected this week or next.

Republicans and the Bush administration hailed both bills, saying the congressional actions would allow Bush to keep a rein on purse strings while moving swiftly to build what will be, with about 170,000 employees, the third-largest department in his Cabinet, after Defense and Veterans Affairs.

But many Democrats said that the GOP and the White House were paying lip service to homeland security while refusing to pay for initiatives that would offer concrete protection to the American people.

“Osama will be glad,” fumed Rep. David R. Obey of Wisconsin, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. He said the Republican decision to postpone appropriations decisions until next year would give Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden “openings to do his dirty work.”

Still, there was little that Democrats could do other than protest or wave through two bills seen as critical before the expected adjournment of the 107th Congress in coming days. Bush has seized the legislative offensive after the GOP’s expansion of its House majority and capture of the Senate in last week’s midterm elections.

The decision to postpone spending decisions until after the 108th Congress convenes in January marked a capitulation by lawmakers.

Bush has often sought to restrict the congressional power of the purse as far as possible. By maneuvering Congress into another stopgap spending bill -- this one is due to expire Jan. 11 -- he ensured the death of 11 of the 13 annual appropriations bills for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Only two military spending bills made it into law, mainly on Bush’s terms. Many of the expiring bills contain items both political parties view as critical to the nation’s defense against terrorism. No one disputes, for example, that state and local police and firefighters need more money from the federal government to respond to catastrophes.

Similarly, there is no partisan quarrel over the need for enhanced nuclear security, bioterrorism defense, border protections and other measures to remedy vulnerabilities exposed by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But now Bush will be able to sift through and reshape those proposals within the context of a new executive agency to oversee homeland security. Congress is about to approve the security agency he endorsed in June, months after Democrats raised the idea.

Under the 484-page bill the House approved -- which reflected negotiations with senators and the White House -- the new department would have four main pillars:

* A division of information analysis and infrastructure protection would coordinate with the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies to assess threats.

* A division of science and technology would promote measures to defend against nuclear, chemical or biological attacks.

* A division of emergency preparedness and response -- built around the current Federal Emergency Management Agency -- would respond to disasters.

* And the largest division, for border and transportation security, would encompass what is now the Customs Service, the Transportation Security Administration and the Border Patrol. Its difficult mission: “preventing the entry of terrorists and the instruments of terrorism into the United States.”

Other units within the department would include the Secret Service, Coast Guard and a new Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services. Under the bill, the Immigration and Naturalization Service would be abolished and nearly all of its employees would be moved to the new department from the Justice Department.

In another shakeup, the bill would move most of the agency now known as Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from the Treasury Department to Justice and rename it the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. With that move, Treasury would lose nearly all of its law-enforcement functions -- aside from those related to trade and revenue collection.

The bill also would authorize the new department to deputize commercial airline pilots who volunteer to carry firearms in the cockpit as “federal flight deck officers.” Many lawmakers demanded that pilots be allowed to carry guns after hijackers took over four large jets last year using little more than box cutters as weapons.

In addition, the bill would extend for as long as a year the Dec. 31 deadline for airports to screen all checked baggage with bomb-detection machines.

The House vote for the bill showed continuing support for the president’s reorganization plan. In July, a version was approved on a 295-132 vote. On Wednesday, 87 Democrats joined 212 Republicans in voting for the bill. Six Republicans, 114 Democrats and one independent were opposed.

“It’s long overdue,” said Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “It will vastly improve our nation’s defense, and it obviously is a critical component of the war on terror, particularly in our homeland, where we live. I think we have found something the American people are going to cheer about.”

The bill becomes effective 60 days after enactment. There will be a transition of at least one year, and perhaps longer.

“Some parts of it may take time,” acknowledged a White House spokesman, Scott McClellan. “But we will move as quickly as we can to begin that process. We already are making preparations.”