It’s encouraging to see the new Congress keep its commitment to make improvements in homeland security. There are few more urgent issues than counter-terrorism.
But from the looks of things, House lawmakers were too hasty in passing a bill aimed at implementing some remaining recommendations of the Sept. commission.
The measure was rushed through the House Tuesday evening and passed on a 299-128 vote. The problem is that the 277-page bill was never reviewed by the House Homeland Security Committee and had virtually no deliberation on the floor.
We were hoping that kind of hurry-up vote would be retired with the 109th Congress. Remember the Patriot Act? That was the legislation rushed through Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that wound up impinging on too many rights of due process. Lawmakers were so gung-ho to get it passed in the emotional aftermath of the terror attacks that they didn’t read the legislation before voting on it. We’re not suggesting the 9/11 commission recommendations is such a slipshod piece of work, but it is a far-reaching measure containing costly and complicated provisions, and it deserves thorough deliberation.
Among other things, the house bill would divvy up federal anti-terror money based more on risk than politics and create more grants for first responders.
It would push the Bush administration to work with the United Nations on controlling loose nuclear material. It mandates that President Bush apply sanctions to any country that trades nuclear technology with a non-nuclear state. And it would require sea and air cargo containers entering the United States be scanned for nuclear materials and other potential weapons, a Herculean task.
It is but one of the provisions that carry pricetags in the billions of dollars. Given the pressures on the federal budget, lawmakers need to set priorities. What’s more important: screening U.S. cargo ships at foreign ports – using technology that is far from perfected – or building blast barriers around nuclear plants? That’s just one example.
Fortunately, the bill passed by the House is not the final version. The Senate is working on its own version, and we trust the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will give it the appropriate time and attention.
