Committee beats back effort to remove agencies from homeland bill

Legislation to create a Homeland Security Department cleared the House Government Reform Committee early Friday.

After 12 hours of contentious debate, the panel reported its amendments to the ad hoc House Homeland Defense Committee by a 31-1 vote, with Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, casting the lone dissenting vote. But several other Democrats emphasized their dissatisfaction with the legislation.

Government Reform ranking member Henry Waxman, D-Calif., said many flaws remained in the bill, and argued that it would create too much bureaucracy.

Most Democrats supported amendments to prevent the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Secret Service, and parts of the Immigration and Naturalization Service from being included in the new department. But all of those amendments failed.

"The decision to retain all four of these entities is critical to the core mission and overall success of this new department," Government Reform Chairman Dan Burton, R-Ind., said after the meeting. "We have to take a comprehensive approach to homeland security, and the president's plan does that."

Burton disagreed with the White House on the issue of visa adjudication, and offered a managers' amendment that would have transferred that responsibility from the State Department to the Homeland Security Department.

But an amendment by Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., modified Burton's provision to allow the State Department to retain its visa adjudication responsibilities while authorizing the Homeland Security secretary to override any visa approval.

The committee also approved, 21-19, an amendment by Rep. Constance Morella, R-Md., to preserve the union rights of federal employees who would transfer to the new department without changing their job responsibilities.