House backs clear path toward anti-terrorism bill talks

The House on Tuesday agreed to appoint negotiators to finalize legislation implementing unfulfilled anti-terrorism recommendations, but only after voting to increase restrictions on giving port workers new biometric identification cards.

The House approved a procedural motion to trigger a conference with the Senate on the bill, which has languished for months largely due to turf battles among committees. The Senate appointed its conferees last week. But House and Senate lawmakers and their aides still have to decide how to incorporate parts of a House bill on rail and mass-transit security.

House lawmakers originally wanted to merge that measure with the bill to implement recommendations of the panel that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But Senate Republicans objected to the move Monday, forcing new talks over which rail security provisions can be included.

Notably, several provisions in the rail security bill, such as one that would protect people from lawsuits for reporting suspicious terrorist activity to authorities, might not make it into the final legislation. Another contested provision would require the Homeland Security Department to conduct threat assessments on employees of rail, mass transit and bus companies.

About three dozen Republicans, including House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, sent House and Senate Democratic leaders a letter Monday urging them to include the immunity provision in the 9/11 legislation.

The language was successfully inserted into the House rail security bill by Homeland Security Committee ranking Republican Peter King of New York. King said the provision was needed after passengers on a U.S. Airways flight in Minneapolis, Minn., were sued for reporting that six Muslim men were acting suspicious while boarding a flight last November.

"We cannot afford to wait any longer to protect citizens who report suspicious activity," Republicans wrote in their letter. "No American should fear lawsuits for doing the right thing."

Before agreeing to appoint conferees, the House voted 354-66 to instruct them on restrictions that the Homeland Security Department must follow when issuing transportation worker ID credentials to port workers. The "motion to instruct," offered by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., tells conferees to use language for TWIC that is in the Senate's version of the 9/11 bill.

That language would establish criteria that would disqualify port workers from receiving TWIC cards. "We want to make certain that the workers we are sending into these ports have gone through the appropriate clearances," Blackburn said.

Some Democrats, such as Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, argued that the Senate language could cause workers who pose no terrorism risk from being denied TWIC cards, which in turn could ruin their livelihoods.