Senators vote to raise cap on homeland security spending

The Senate on Friday debated a series of budget amendments, including several on homeland security. Senate sources said the process could extend to Saturday.

On Friday, senators adopted, by a margin of 97-0, an amendment that would raise the fiscal 2003 cap on homeland security spending by $3.5 billion. The amendment did not specify how the money would be spent and did not propose an offsetting reduction in the Bush administration's proposed tax cut, a Senate aide said.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., authored another amendment that would have raised the cap by an additional $3.5 billion, but it also would have required the full $7 billion to be offset by a reduction in the tax cut. The Senate defeated that language on a 48-52 vote, with all Democrats except Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia voting for it. The amendment would have increased funding through the Homeland Security Department's Office of Domestic Preparedness.

Another defeated amendment would have increased security spending by $88 billion over 11 years, including $5 billion as part of an expected emergency spending bill for fiscal 2003. Defeated on a 45-54 vote, the amendment would have increased funding for emergency "first responders," port security and other efforts, according to an aide.

Some Democrats voted against the amendment because it would have offset the amount by a reduction in the tax cut, the aide said.

The Senate still is expected to debate an amendment that would increase the level of fiscal 2004 funding that goes directly to first responders by $3 billion, according to Jessica Berry, an aide to the proposal's sponsor, Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy. The amendment would increase the funding for the Office of Domestic Preparedness.

Berry said that Leahy's office has interpreted the president's budget request to mean that $1 billion would be allotted directly to first responders and that Leahy feels that the funding should be increased. Leahy also sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge on Thursday, urging that the planned emergency spending bill include at least $5 billion for first responders.