Bush To Unveil Homeland Security Plan

President Bush will unveil the nation's first homeland security plan Tuesday, calling for the deployment of nuclear sensors and for Congress to give the president new powers to extradite suspected terrorists and reorganize federal agencies.

Administration officials said the 100-page "National Strategy for Homeland Security," which Bush will present to lawmakers at a White House meeting Tuesday, will set out his priorities for fiscal 2004, from deploying sensors to prevent terrorists from using nuclear weapons to developing new vaccines in the event of a biological attack.

Bush will also ask Congress to consider federalizing the National Guard, as well as propose new laws expanding presidential powers to extradite suspects and reorganize federal agencies. To safeguard information about U.S. chemical and nuclear plants, Bush also wants Congress to tighten freedom of information laws.

An administration official said the homeland security plan would help prevent future attacks like those on Sept. 11, but conceded: "The threat we face is almost infinite. We are vulnerable in so many different ways."

The plan's presentation comes just after a dozen House committees completed work on the proposed new Homeland Security Department President Bush wants. A House panel still has to put together one bill that reconciles some major differences with the president on the future role of such agencies as the Coast Guard and the INS.

The House Government Reform Committee, working past midnight Thursday, was the last to approve its portion of the legislation that would combine some 100 agencies with security functions, comprising some 170,000 employees, under one federal roof.

Deviating from other committee decisions, Government Reform went along with the president in including the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Secret Service in the new department.

Retaining those agencies in the first new Cabinet department since Veterans Affairs in 1989, “is critical to the core mission and overall success of this new department,” said committee chairman Dan Burton, R-Ind.

The focus now turns to the special panel headed by House Majority leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who must deal with the dozens of suggested revisions to the president's proposals and meld them into one package. He said Friday his panel intends to complete its work by the end of next week so the full House can vote on it the following week.

The Senate also must pass its version of the legislation. Senate leaders have said they intend to act this month, although Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., has objected to that fast pace.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said in a statement Thursday that attempts to block a vote on a measure with broad bipartisan support “would be a very unwise decision.”

Four Cabinet secretaries appeared at the first hearing of Armey's special committee Thursday to stress the urgency of congressional action.

“We must be willing to make a dramatic transformation in light of the dramatic threats we face,” said Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, accompanied by Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

But some House members from both parties said Mr. Bush's plan went too far and moved too fast.

The House Transportation Committee, responsible for 54 percent of the employees and 50 percent of the estimated $37 billion budget of the new department, defied Mr. Bush's plan Thursday in deciding to let the Transportation Department keep the Coast Guard and let the Federal Emergency Management Agency remain independent.

In both cases, the argument was the main functions of those agencies — such as search-and-rescue and drug interdiction for the Coast Guard and FEMA's relief for natural disasters — would get secondary treatment in a department devoted to fighting terrorism.

House committees also rejected Mr. Bush's request for broad authority to transfer money within the new agency's budget without congressional approval; kept the bulk of animal and plant health inspection programs in the Agriculture Department; and made clear the Health and Human Services Department would maintain primary responsibility for health research.

Rep. Constance Morella, R-Md., whose district includes many federal workers, joined Democrats in the Government Reform Committee to pass, 21-19, an amendment to ensure that civil servants whose jobs don't change when they move to the new department don't lose collective bargaining rights.

On Wednesday, committees decided against Mr. Bush's plan to move the entire INS into the new department and voted to shift the Secret Service from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department instead the new department, again contrary to White House wishes.

But Armey's committee has the power to reverse all those decisions, setting up a possible battle when the bill reaches the House floor. House Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, urged his 75-member committee to block the bill on the floor if they don't get a chance to amend it.

Rep. Martin Frost, D-Texas, a member of Armey's committee, said in 1979, the House spent four days on amendments to legislation that created the Education Department.