From CNN Website, 18 November 2002
Democrats question items in homeland bill
McCain says he will support effort to strip provisions
By Sean Loughlin
CNN Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The legislation creating a Department of Homeland Security is coming under fire from Democrats who say it is stuffed with special-interest provisions that have little to do with protecting the nation and a lot to do with benefiting corporate interests.
The legislation, approved last week by the House, is pending in the Senate, and a vote has been scheduled for Tuesday on stripping out what Democrats have identified as seven special-interest provisions. While Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-South Dakota, has said that passage of the homeland bill is likely, many lawmakers over the weekend began raising questions about those provisions in the bill.
Monday evening, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, told CNN he would side with Democrats in their effort to strip the legislation of the seven provisions, a move that increases the chances of the homeland bill being changed.
"I don't support a process where the House of Representatives throws a major piece of legislation over to the Senate and says goodbye," McCain said.
Republicans in the House added the provisions to the legislation before it was passed there last week.
"This homeland security bill, the bill the president supported, was 35 pages long. The bill that I've been asked to vote on Monday or Tuesday is 484 pages long, filled with special interest legislation, loaded up by the House Republicans in the last few days," Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut, said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."
Republicans have defended the provisions as legitimate and say they pertain to homeland security. For example, they say new liability protections are needed to encourage companies to develop new anti-terrorism technologies.
The provisions, as described by Daschle's office, would do the following:
- Enact new liability protection for pharmaceutical companies for the vaccines they make.
- Gut a Senate amendment that prohibits the government from signing contracts with companies that move their headquarters offshore -- where they don't have to pay U.S. taxes.
- Create a homeland security research center program at a U.S. university. Democrats say the legislation is written in such a way as to create the center at Texas A&M University in Texas, home to some powerful GOP lawmakers and President Bush.
- Provide liability protection for airport screening companies.
- Provide liability protection for companies that sell anti-terrorism technologies or products.
- Erect barriers to the Transportation Security Agency for the issuance of some security rules for travelers.
- Allow the Department of Homeland Security to hold advisory committee meetings in secret, a move Democrats say is a gift to corporate lobbyists.
"If this is a homeland security bill, let's keep it homeland security related and let's take out all this terrible special-interest legislation that has nothing to do with homeland security," Daschle said last week.
At the White House on Monday, spokesman Scott McClellan did not respond directly when asked about the provisions cited by Democrats, but he said the administration does not want to see anything done to the bill that would slow its passage.
"This remains the highest priority for this lame duck Congress," McClellan said. "The president made that clear. We would hope that there would not be action taken that could stop this bill from getting done."
If Democrats succeed in stripping out the provisions, that could complicate final passage of the homeland security bill because the version passed by the House includes the provisions.
In a statement, Sen. Fred Thompson, a Tennessee Republican who has played a lead role in guiding the legislation through the Senate, said that altering the legislation could delay passage of the overall bill this year.
"We have to ask ourselves if these issues rise to the level of importance to merit further prolonging creation of a department to ensure our nation's security," he said.
Thompson also defended the provision that guts the ban on government contracts with U.S. companies that move offshore, saying it's justified because foreign companies on U.S. soil can bid on such contracts.
Sunday, Homeland security chief Tom Ridge defended another provision that has generated controversy -- the one dealing with vaccines.
Democrats -- and even one Republican, Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana --say it takes away the legal rights of families whose children were harmed by vaccines.
Ridge said that was not the case, saying such families had access to a government compensation fund, and, if they were not satisfied there, "they still reserve the right to litigate it."