Lawmakers try to move bill implementing 9/11 panel recommendations

Senate and House leaders struggled Friday to appoint conferees to finalize negotiations on a bill to implement unfulfilled recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But at least one Senate Republican was still objecting to moving forward.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., was repeatedly rebuffed this week when he asked Senate Republicans to go to conference on the bill, which has been hanging in limbo for months. Reid was expected to ask again Friday for unanimous consent to proceed, but the prospects did not appear good, aides said.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., continued to object because the bill does not contain a provision on auditing how billions of dollars in homeland security grants are spent, his spokesman said.

"The post-grant auditing process he was told would be in the bill is not in the bill," the spokesman said. "Until that provision is fixed, the bill is going nowhere."

Democrats have, however, appeared to relent on language that would give federal airport screeners collective bargaining rights, which was another sticky issue preventing a conference.

The White House has threatened to veto the bill if it includes that provision. An aide for Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., said he has agreed to drop the provision to keep the bill alive. Lieberman steadfastly opposed all previous efforts to remove the provision.

It was not clear whether House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat and another staunch supporter of collective bargaining for screeners, has agreed to drop the provision.

Republicans also said they have not yet received an official assurance from Democratic leaders that the provision has been deleted from the bill.

"If the majority wants to say on the record that that provision will be eliminated, then that puts us in a much different position," said an aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.