The Senate adopted late Thursday night the conference report on a wide-ranging Sept. 11 security bill, sending it to the House, which could clear it as soon as Friday.
President Bush is expected to sign it.
The legislation (HR 1 -- H Rept 110-259) would not implement all of the remaining recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission, as Democrats promised during the 2006 campaign cycle, and many recommendations that it addresses were watered down to avoid a veto. But the Republican former chairman and Democratic vice-chairman of the commission praised it as a big step forward.
Most notably, the legislation would distribute more anti-terrorism funding to state and local governments based on risk of attack and greatly expand scrutiny of cargo for nuclear devices and other dangerous contraband. The biggest recommendation the bill leaves incomplete is a call to strengthen congressional oversight of homeland security and intelligence.
The Senate adopted the conference report, 85-8. If the House clears it before the August recess, it would be the Democratic Congress' biggest achievement since pushing through an increase in the minimum wage in May.
Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman, D-Conn., predicted that President Bush would go along with the bill, since many provisions were negotiated with the administration.
"This bill has some very strong improvements on our homeland security, so we didn't want to get into another veto override fight if we could avoid it," he said.
House and Senate negotiators completed a deal on the legislation July 25. Most Republican conferees signed on to the bill after winning adoption of a provision that would shield from lawsuits individuals who report suspicious activity to authorities.
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., said Thursday that the House intended to take up the legislation Friday, although a House Democratic leadership aide said it could slip to next week.
Conference negotiators had to work out compromises where, in some cases, the House, Senate and administration each had different positions.
For instance, the Senate version of the bill (S 4) would have declassified the total of the intelligence budget, whereas the House contained no such provision. The White House has, in the past, threatened vetoes over similar language.
Conferees struck a deal that would declassify the totals for fiscal 2007 and 2008 but give the administration the authority to waive the disclosure requirement starting in fiscal 2009 if it explained to Congress why doing so would jeopardize national security.
"I think the concern would be that there would be significant increases in expenditures that would indicate to our enemies that we're doing something surprisingly different," Lieberman said, explaining how the compromise works around the administration's objections.
Leaders of the former Sept. 11 commission praised the bill, although they conceded it did not go as far as they would have wanted.
"This is a big step forward on our recommendations," said the chairman of the commission, former New Jersey Gov. Thomas H. Kean.
Kean said the bill's highlights included changes to the funding formula for first-responders, its strengthening of a board to protect civil liberties and its disclosure of the intelligence budget total. He said it neglected congressional oversight changes, some foreign policy-related recommendations and more, but, "you can't get these things done all at once."
Former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, D-Ind., the vice-chairman of the panel, said that should the bill be signed into law, an estimated 80 percent of the commission's recommendations will have been acted upon "in whole or in part.
"It's not a perfect piece of legislation," Hamilton said. "The bottom line is that when it is enacted and implemented, the American people will be safer."
However, one homeland security expert from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, dismissed the bill as doing too little in some areas and overreaching in others.
"This is an act of politics, not policy. It's too bad, because it could have been a good bill," said James Carafano. "It's not the most horrible thing ever written, but it's not something that will make us terribly safer."
The bill contains a number of provisions that have little to do with the Sept. 11 commission recommendations, such as the language addressing cargo.
And some aspects of the bill, such as those authorizing billions more in homeland security funding over the next several years, are already being left behind, starting with the fiscal 2008 Homeland Security appropriations bill.
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