Homeland Bill Clears Senate
The 107th Congress neared its end Tuesday by passing two bills President Bush said were crucial to the fight against terror, creating a Homeland Security Department and passing terrorism insurance coverage.
But the months-long effort may have been just a warm-up for a bigger battle to come: getting the new department up and running. It will merge 22 diverse agencies with combined budgets of about $40 billion and which employ 170,000 workers and be the largest federal reorganization since the Defense Department was created in 1947.
"Setting up this new department will take time, but I know we will meet the challenge together," a jubilant President Bush said after the Senate, nearing adjournment for the year, voted 90-9 to authorize the new Cabinet agency.
On a day that gave Mr. Bush a number of decisive legislative victories, the president hailed the bill as "landmark in its scope."
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge, appearing on Wednesday's CBS News' The Early Show says merging so many federal agencies into one Cabinet-level department will be "quite a task,'" but he says the government's prepared to do it. Ridge said thousands are already working on homeland security, at the nation's ports and in laboratories.
Ridge said the president will reveal his choice to head the department when he returns from his trip to Europe. The former Pennsylvania governor says he's "prepared to serve" if asked.
Eight Democrats and independent Sen. James Jeffords of Vermont voted "no" on the homeland security bill. The House was to meet Friday to give final, voice-vote approval to small changes the Senate made in the homeland security bill before sending it to Mr. Bush for his signature.
But the battles over the department are just beginning. It will take months for the new agency to get fully off the ground. And a budget stalemate continues to block most of the extra money for domestic security enhancements both political parties want for the federal fiscal year that began Oct. 1.
The Senate also sent Mr. Bush a bill making the government the insurer of last resort for terrorist attacks, with a maximum annual tab to taxpayers of $90 billion. The vote was 86-11.
It also sent Mr. Bush a measure keeping federal agencies open through Jan. 11, needed due to unfinished spending bills.
Completion of the homeland security bill ended a topsy-turvy odyssey for legislation that started inching through Congress nearly a year ago against Mr. Bush's will, only to see him offer his own version in June after momentum became unstoppable.
The House approved the legislation by a wide margin in July, but Senate debate stalled for months.
Democrats first resisted Mr. Bush's bill because it restricted labor rights of the new department's workers. But many reversed course after their Election Day loss of Senate control was attributed partly to the homeland security fight.
But then a fight erupted over what Democrats said were last-minute inclusions of favors to corporate interests unrelated to the nation's security. One measure protects pharmaceutical companies from lawsuits over the side effects of vaccines they create.
Senators rejected a bid to block the controversial provisions after Republican leaders agreed to work next year to remove three of the provisions.
The final text did not represent the complete Bush administration wish-list: it prohibits any more work on the TIPS system, a proposal by Attorney General John Ashcroft to solicit information on suspicious activity gathered by repairmen, truckers and others.