WASHINGTON (REUTERS) — The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation Wednesday to create a Department of Homeland Security, handing President Bush a major victory in his war against terrorism.
The Senate, in perhaps one of the final acts of the 107th Congress, is expected to give final congressional approval within a week, clearing the way for Bush to sign it into law.
Proposed by Bush in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, the measure would trigger the biggest U.S. government reorganization in a half-century by rolling into the new department all or parts of 22 existing federal agencies, including the Coast Guard, Border Patrol and Secret Service.
The House’s 299-121 vote in favor of the bill came a day after Bush mustered needed support to resolve a labor dispute involving the new department that had stalled the measure in the Senate for more than two months.
While neither the FBI nor the CIA would be part of the new Cabinet-level department, the legislation seeks to bolster the analysis of their intelligence information.
A chief aim is to avoid a repeat of the breakdowns in communication between the two agencies exposed by the hijacked airliner attacks last year on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington.
Bush’s proposed Department of Homeland Security was a key issue in last week’s congressional election, when the Republicans won back control of the Senate and expanded their majority in the House.
In campaigning for fellow Republicans, Bush blamed Democrats for the failure to pass the homeland-security legislation, arguing they were more interested in protecting workers’ rights at the new department than the nation’s security.
Tuesday, three moderate senators — Democrats John Breaux of Louisiana and Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Republican Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island — gave Bush the needed level of Senate support by backing a newly revised provision to settle the labor dispute.
The agreement would grant Bush the power he has demanded to exempt unionized workers at the department from collective bargaining agreements in the name of national security. His White House successor could extend the exemption or end it.
In addition, the new department would be able to bypass civil-service rules in promoting, firing and transferring workers.
Yet under the new proposal, unions would have to be given advance notice and an opportunity to object and could take their case to the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. But if no agreement was reached, the department could carry out its initial intentions.
Sen. Phil Gramm, a Texas Republican and a chief sponsor of the legislation, predicted Senate passage as early as Friday, saying, “The election is over. The people have spoken.”
In addition to creating a new department, the sweeping legislation would: permit guns in the cockpit as a last line of defense against hijackers; provide limited liability to makers of anti-terrorist products; extend by one year the deadline for screening of all airline baggage; and provide broad exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act.
The revised measure dropped a bipartisan proposal contained in an earlier Senate version that would have created an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks.
Lawmakers vow to make a new push for such an inquiry when the new 108th Congress convenes in January, saying the nation must find out what went wrong to permit the deadly attacks.
“The families of September 11 victims will not rest until they know how their government let them down,” said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican.
Bush has said he favors such a commission, but has been unable to come to terms with members of Congress on it.
The post-election drive for the department coincided with the broadcast of a purported audio tape of Osama bin Laden, the fugitive al Qaeda leader blamed for the Sept. 11 attacks.
On the tape, aired Tuesday by the al-Jazeera satellite television channel based in Qatar, a man identified as bin Laden warned U.S. allies they would be targets of new attacks if they continued to back the United States. Bush said the tape put the “world on notice.” When I was an undergrad, when smoking was still in the Rath, it was much more populat than it was today.