Senate leaders seek a way out of aviation security impasse

Senate negotiators met this morning with Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta in an effort to break an impasse over aviation security and find a way around a Friday cloture vote.

"I can't imagine we'll be hung up on this. It's too important an issue," said Senate Commerce ranking member John McCain, R- Ariz., as he emerged Wednesday from a meeting with Mineta and others.

But Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., did not indicate that he would drop his amendment seeking $3.2 billion for Amtrak improvements.

"I'm not asking for anything remotely unreasonable," Biden said, noting that about 350,000 passengers a day pass through the country's aging train tunnels.

Senate Republicans blocked the aviation security bill from going to the Senate floor Wednesday, after the Bush administration raised objections to provisions that would make airport baggage screeners federal employees. A vote on limiting debate on the bill was set for Friday.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., who had said earlier in the day that he hoped the bill would be resolved soon, said the problem lies in getting Republicans to agree on the screeners.

But Lott also said members raised objections to a growing list of amendments, such as a $3 billion-plus airline-worker relief package and the Biden Amtrak package, among others.

"We're trying to get people serious about amendments," Lott said.

The administration, which has been sending mixed signals about its position in the past few days, offered Republicans an alternative to federalizing security that would allow the Transportation secretary to make "an airport-by-airport determination that using contract personnel will achieve a level of security equal to or greater than that provided by federal employee screeners."

But Democrats and some Republicans, such as bill cosponsors McCain and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said federalizing screeners is the best way to ensure safety and keep workers on the job.

"There's a fetish here for contracting out [workers]," said Senate Commerce Chairman Hollings, chief sponsor of the aviation security bill, during floor debate on a motion to proceed to the bill. "That's got to be eliminated."