Panel votes to keep some Customs duties with Treasury

Warning that lawmakers must strike a careful balance between border security and the need to maintain global commerce, the House Ways and Means Committee today voted to modify several Customs Service-related provisions in the pending legislation to create a new Homeland Security Department.

The bill, as introduced, would transfer the Customs Service from the Treasury Department to the proposed Homeland Security Department. But under the committee's substitute, approved by a 34-3 vote, the Treasury Department would retain jurisdiction over Customs Service operations that deal primarily with trade and revenue collection. Nearly 5,000-or 25 percent-of Customs Service employees would remain with the Treasury Department under the amendment.

In other committee action Wednesday, the House International Relations Committee approved a compromise on the issue of who should be responsible for issuing visas. The State Department would continue to run consular offices, as President Bush had wanted-but the new Homeland Security Department would be authorized to send people into the field, train consular officers and review individual visa petitions that raise security questions. The House Judiciary Committee, by an 18-15 vote, later approved a similar plan on visas at the prodding of House International Relations Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., who also sits on the Judiciary panel.

Meanwhile, in a move that appeared designed to counter one of the chief objections to Bush's proposal to create a new Homeland Security Department, Bush Wednesday met with former Coast Guard commandants who support moving the Coast Guard into the new agency. Some lawmakers have indicated concerns with placing the Coast Guard in the department.