This legislation will help our nation meet the emerging threats of terrorism in the 21st century: Bush

WASHINGTON, November 20 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) – The U.S. government is gearing up for its largest reorganization in 50 years now that Congress has approved the creation of a new Department of Homeland Security to coordinate defense against terrorism.

The Senate’s approval Tuesday, November 19, of the landmark measure by a 90-9 vote, gives President George W. Bush a hard-fought victory in his global war on terrorism, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.

Bush called the bill’s passage “an historic and bold step forward to protect the American people... This landmark legislation, the most extensive reorganization of the federal government since the 1940s, will help our nation meet the emerging threats of terrorism in the 21st century.”

“Setting up this new department will take time, but I know we will meet the challenge together,” Bush said in a statement.

“I look forward to signing this important legislation,” he added.

The bill already has passed the House of Representatives.

Proposed in the wake of the devastating September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the new Cabinet-level department is seen as the most significant reorganization of U.S. government in the last 50 years.

“The President’s plan will allow us to improve our efforts to work together to identify and assess threats to our homeland, match these threats to our vulnerabilities, and act to insure the safety and security of the American people,” said Attorney General John Ashcroft after the vote.

“The creation of the Department of Homeland Security begins a new era of cooperation and coordination in the nation’s homeland defense,” Ashcroft added.

The bill had been held up for months as Republicans and Democrats argued over how the administration planned to roll all or part of 22 federal agencies into the cabinet-level department which will carry a 38-billion-dollar budget.

Approving the 500-page compromise bill is the first step in what will likely be a complicated and lengthy process to get the 170,000-employee department up and running.

Analysts predict it will take years before the department is fully effective.

“It is an enormously large bureaucracy. I think they’re going to spend the rest of the decade de-bugging it,” said John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a nonprofit defense policy think-tank.

Originally crafted by a group of lawmakers led by Democratic Senator Joseph Lieberman shortly after the September 11 attacks, Bush had opposed a homeland security agency proposal until lawmakers launched a probe into intelligence lapses that allowed terrorists to strike with hijacked airliners, killing more that 3,000 people.

The president later took up the cause and made passage of his version of the legislation a key issue in the November 5 midterm congressional elections, and as Senator Don Nickles admitted, “kept our feet to the fire” to get the bill passed.

Senators spent seven weeks wrangling over the bill, with Democrats balking at what they said were a weakening of employee civil service job protections and late “special-interest” additions to the final compromise measure.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle criticized Republicans for holding the effort hostage to partisan politics.

“There are some who would like to rewrite the history of this effort.

“They want the American people to believe that Democratic opposition is the reason it has taken this long for Congress to pass a Homeland Security bill,” Daschle said.

“That is simply not so. Creating a Homeland Security Department was a Democratic idea to begin with.”

Senate voting results displayed

Although the new department absorbs such key agencies as the Coast Guard, the U.S. Secret Service and parts of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, it will not include the Central Intelligence Agency or the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the two agencies that came under the heaviest fire for September 11 intelligence failures.

“This agency is more concerned with hardening the homeland against attacks than with going after the perpetrators,” explained Pike, noting that the FBI is a law enforcement agency while the CIA is responsible for foreign intelligence.

Not every senator was convinced the undertaking was going to fully equip the country against terrorist strikes.

“It does not address the immediate need to protect our infrastructure, especially nuclear power plants.

“It does not increase our capabilities to detect biological and radiological weapons,” criticized Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, who nevertheless voted for the bill.

The legislation gives broad authority to Bush and Tom Ridge, his homeland security adviser and the leading contender to head the new agency, to design the department as they choose along lines contained in the bill, reported the Washington Post.

In provisions tacked on as the bill moved through Congress, the bill would allow but not require airline pilots to carry firearms.

It would also permit the Transportation Security Administration to give airports an extension until the end of 2003 to install explosives-detection equipment for luggage, although baggage would have to be inspected in the meantime.

Senate leaders said the bill will go to Bush for his signature after the House agrees to technical revisions, probably Friday, November 22.

The most contentious of seven controversial provisions Democrats fought to strip out would limit legal liability for companies that produce vaccines, provide airport security and develop anti-terrorism technologies.

Another would relax a proposed ban on issuance of homeland security contracts to companies that establish foreign tax havens to avoid U.S. taxes.

To read the full text of the bill, click here.  

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