NewsMax.com Wires
Friday, Nov. 2, 2001

The House then passed the overall bill 286 to 139, which puts airport security companies under federal oversight, expands the air marshal program and orders reinforcement for cockpit doors.

The battle over federalizing airport security and baggage handlers has raged in the House for three weeks as Republicans and the White House fought to prevent creating an additional 28,000 federal jobs that they wanted kept in the private sector.

Some liberal Republicans and most Democrats supported a federalization plan, while the White House and GOP leadership strongly opposed the amendment to the security bill. Instead, they pushed a plan that put security and baggage handlers under stringent federal oversight, while keeping the security managed by private security companies.

The Senate last month unanimously approved a bill identical to the Democrat plan, but conservative House members – led by Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, and Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas – quickly expressed concern about expanding the federal government into a role that the private market could play. Several conservatives also expressed concern about adding 28,000 members to federal employees unions, which traditionally support the big-government Democrats.

Calls for changes to the airport baggage monitoring system stem from the hijackings of Sept. 11, when terrorists were able to smuggle weapons onto four airplanes past airport security workers.

Amid calls from Democrats and liberal Republicans that the effort was politically motivated – a charge that could apply just as well to themselves – the White House successfully unleashed an intense lobbying effort to build support for the Republican bill and against the Democrat alternative. But even with this effort, few were willing to predict the final outcome even minutes before the vote.

Both proposals contained provisions to create a broadly expanded air marshal program to protect flights from hijackers and to reinforce cockpit doors to protect flight crews.

DeLay argued that the partial federalization approach favored by the GOP leadership would give the Department of Transportation flexible authority to oversee companies that provide security services to airports. Companies would be forced to implement hiring standards and employees would be subject to federal background checks.

DeLay noted that federal workers would be more difficult to manage than a contract with an outside company, delivering better performance.

"There's a broad consensus that the current airline security system must be replaced. The new system will be federalized," he said at a press conference before the vote. "The federal government must set high standards, rigorously enforce those standards, and demand strict accountability from everyone working to secure airline safety. Remember, tough new standards will turn out to be toothless if President Bush is denied the flexibility to demand rigid accountability."

During the debate on the Democrat alternative, Armey urged his colleagues to reject the bill because it expanded the role of the federal government and denied the president the ability to decide on how to best manage security.

Gephardt implied that allowing federal law enforcement to protect Congress but not airports was hypocritical and foolish.

'They Guard Our Borders'???

"Federal law enforcement patrols the shores of the United States," he said. "They guard our borders. They track terrorists down. They are standing right now outside this chamber protecting us and the people in this building. We must put security in the hands of law enforcement. The American people ... deserve law enforcement in the airports."

The final vote had been delayed for weeks, mostly because the GOP leadership recognized that with as many as two score Republicans supported the Democrat bill – sponsored by Reps. James Oberstar, D-Minn., and Greg Ganske, R-Iowa – they could not prevail without winning back some of their people.

Thursday morning, President Bush met with a group of House Republicans – mostly moderates considered possible defectors – and early statements indicated that the effort had some success.

Reps. Sherwood Boehert of New York, Bob Barr of Georgia and Nancy Johnson of Connecticut said after the meeting that they had been somewhat swayed by Bush and Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta at the meeting.

In gambit designed to sway more votes to their side, the GOP leadership Thursday afternoon also agreed to remove language that would have protected the bonuses and salaries of airline executives at under-performing companies, a provision that was widely unpopular with moderate and liberal Republicans, a group that held the key to final passage.

But as other changes were made Wednesday night and throughout the course of Thursday's debate, Democrats slammed the effort as pandering and pork barrel politics designed to buy support. "I think we now know that Halloween yesterday wasn't just for the kids," House Democrat leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., told reporters Thursday. "The special-interest lobbyists last night filled their bags with treats," failing to mention his own party's special-interest lobbies.

One such provision would have protected airport security companies, airline manufacturers and the Port Authority, which owned the destroyed World Trade Center, from liability based on the events of Sept. 11, a plan that Gephardt condemned for protecting the poorly performing security firms.

"That is hardly what I think we ought to be doing in this bill," he said. "In addition to getting rid of their failure, we surely shouldn't be exempting them from liability for what they have done in the past. Certainly we shouldn't be rewarding the mistakes and failures that these companies have committed."

Transportation Committee Chairman Don Young, R-Alaska, said after the vote that he respected the opposition's arguments and did not consider this battle to have been a partisan one.

"We passed the best security bill that we had before us," he said. "If I had thought the alternative was the best way to do this, I would have voted for it. But it just didn't do the job."

Now the bill will move to a conference committee with the Senate, which will attempt to reconcile the two versions and send them to Bush's desk for his signature.

Copyright 2001 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Bush Administration
Homeland/Civil Defense
War on Terrorism
A product that might interest you:
She Will Run! Hillary Clinton`s Plans for the Presidency