Partisan, turf battles slow Homeland Security authorization

Partisan differences and turf battles stalled negotiations Monday night on the House Homeland Security panel's first-ever authorization measure, according to committee aides.

Homeland Security ranking member Jim Turner, D-Texas, said Democrats had objected to the strategy of Homeland Security Committee Chairman Christopher Cox, R-Calif., to mark up the measure piecemeal by slicing it into nine different titles.

Turner said he thought he and Cox had initially agreed to mark up the whole measure and then subsequently bring the smaller bills, such as cybersecurity, intelligence gathering and science and technology issues, to the House floor. But Democrats said Cox's tactic of marking up separate bills would render most of their amendments nongermane.

"When we have jurisdictional fears and get caught up in bureaucracy -- we've got more problems," said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J., during his opening statement. He added that if the panel produced a bill without the substantive amendments offered by Democrats, then lawmakers were "just going through the motions."

A senior adviser to Cox said the two sides were close to reaching agreement on the germaneness of amendments and wanted to take more time to negotiate on the measure. The adviser said the markup could happen later this week.

Cox's adviser said his office also learned Monday that his measure to revamp the grant funding process for first responders would come to the floor this week. "We want to redirect resources to put a bow on the first-responder bill," said the adviser.

During a break in Monday's markup for floor votes, aides said Cox met in the Capitol with panel Republicans, nine of whom chair other committees that share jurisdiction over homeland security issues, to discuss strategy for pushing forward with the markup.

Cox narrowly drafted the original bill in an effort to avoid a jurisdictional tug of war with other panels that would diminish his chances of bringing the bill to the floor this year.

Cox said during the markup, "political constraints" had affected the panel's ability to include wide-ranging policy changes. The provisions would be an "empty gesture," he said, because they would ensure the bill could not pass this year.