Senate backs screener bargaining rights despite veto threat

Senate Democrats and a handful of Republicans joined forces late Tuesday to pass a massive homeland security bill, moving one step closer toward a showdown with the Bush administration over a controversial provision that would give federal airport screeners collective bargaining rights.

By a 60-38 vote, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., and ranking member Susan Collins, R-Maine, were handed a victory in their effort to pass the bill, which would implement unfulfilled recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

Final passage followed a 73-25 vote to table an amendment from Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., that would have required the Homeland Security Department to divert rail cars carrying hazardous materials away from population centers and other high threat areas.

The 9/11 Commission and family members of victims to the attacks have waited for more than two years for the security recommendations to be put in place.

"This bill is a direct response to the appeals of the 9/11 commissioners and 9/11 families to take constructive action," Lieberman said.

But Republicans argued the bill will be dead on arrival at the White House, where a veto threat has been issued if a provision giving Transportation Security Administration screeners collective bargaining rights survives in the bill.

Enough Republicans in the House and Senate have pledged to sustain the veto, if necessary.

Lieberman said the dispute over collective bargaining rights was overshadowing discussion of other major provisions in the bill. But he added he will continue to champion the rights of screeners to have collective bargaining power.

"I sure hope we can continue to discuss this section, why we think it's fair and why we are totally convinced it will have no [adverse] impact on public safety," he said.

The most immediate hurdle is a potentially contentious conference with the House, given several stark differences between the Senate bill and companion legislation in the House, the first bill passed by the new Democratic majority in January.

The Senate bill, for example, would guarantee that each state receives 0.45 percent of total funding available under the state homeland security grant program. The House bill would give states only 0.25 percent of that funding, leaving more money to be distributed based on risk and threat assessments.

The bills also have different formulas for other grant programs.

Twenty-five lawmakers sent President Bush a letter last Friday urging him "to weigh in and encourage the Senate to adopt" the House formula for grants. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., were the only two senators to sign the letter.

"While we commend Senators Lieberman and Collins for their diligent work in drafting the Senate bill, we believe the House-passed version of this legislation, which makes our homeland security funding more risk-based, is far more representative of the needs of our country -- especially those locations facing the greatest risk, such as New York," the letter states.

"Specifically, we are concerned about language in the Senate measure that provides state minimum funding levels that are far too high and ignore the more pressing needs of those states, cities, and localities at greatest threat of attack."

The bills also differ on requiring the Homeland Security Department to ensure within five years that all cargo at foreign ports is scanned before being shipped to the United States; whether to include more countries in a program that would let their citizens come to the United States for up to 90 days without visas, and whether to declassify the nation's overall intelligence budget.

"This is a wonderful step toward finally fulfilling the 9/11 recommendations," House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said of the Senate bill. "I look forward to continuing negotiations with the Senate to resolve outstanding issues, including the risk-based grant funding formula."