White House threatens veto of homeland bill over managerial flexibility

Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., said Thursday that the White House should be pleased with the bill to create a Homeland Security Department that his panel is drafting.

"The reality is that on 85 to 90 percent [of the bill], we are in agreement" with the White House, Lieberman said.

But White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters that senior advisers to President Bush will recommend a veto if the bill passes in its current form.

"The president will continue to work in a bipartisan manner, but we do have serious reservations about the direction that the bill has taken," Fleischer said on Air Force One as Bush headed to North Carolina.

Fleischer said Bush would veto the bill because it does not provide agency managers with sufficient flexibility on "hiring, firing, pay raise[s], discipline [and] reward incentives."

The legislation is also officially veto bait because it would require the White House director of homeland security to be confirmed by the Senate, Fleischer suggested.

"That's micromanagement of the White House by the Congress," he said.

The committee's final approval of the bill was delayed by a bomb scare in its hearing room.

After Capitol police cleared the room and determined that an unattended satchel posed no threat, senators began considering the final few amendments. The bill is expected to pass by a comfortable margin.

Governmental Affairs ranking member Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., warned, however, that important differences remain.

"We have some very, very fundamental disagreements," Thompson said at the markup. "It's a little bit early to be wrapping this thing up."

In earlier debate, panel members approved language offered by the Appropriations Committee that would deny the department secretary any flexibility over spending appropriated funds, as proposed by the White House. The agreement was a product of negotiations between Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and ranking member Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, who feared that giving the department too much control over the department's funding would damage Congress' oversight role.

On another issue, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Stevens prevailed in their effort to protect funding for the Coast Guard's traditional search-and-rescue mission.

The amendment seemed doomed Wednesday night, but Collins and Stevens delayed the vote until Thursday in order to rally Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., to change his mind. Thursday, the amendment passed 10-7 over the objections of Lieberman and Thompson.

The committee also beat back a GOP attempt to strike a provision from Lieberman's bill that would require the White House's homeland security adviser to be approved by Congress. This issue generated some of the most heated debate of the panel's two-day session, including a near shouting match between Sens. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., and Mark Dayton, D-Minn.