The Senate passed a sweeping reorganization of the federal government to meet the threat of international terrorism Tuesday evening, including a series of last-minute additions that critics charged were payoffs to myriad special interests. Later, senators also passed a major terrorism insurance bill.
The vote to create the new Department of Homeland Security, which has been the subject of much angry partisan debate, was 90-9. The department will encompass 22 federal agencies and 170,000 employees, the broadest restructuring of the U.S. government since the Defense Department was created in 1947 at the advent of the Cold War.
But the hundreds of pages of fine print in the measure, which will go to President Bush for his signature, contain everything from protection for pharmaceutical manufacturer Eli Lilly & Co. against a lawsuit filed by parents of autistic children to an earmark assuring that Texas A&M University will be the site of a security research center.
Other measures that have attracted little attention include pay raises for thousands of high-level federal bureaucrats and a cap on the amount of damages that can be awarded against certain airport security companies that were on duty on Sept. 11, 2001.
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The legislation also extends the surveillance powers of federal, state and local government agencies by granting new authority to obtain the Internet and e-mail records of citizens from Internet service providers. Any government entity, not just law-enforcement agencies, would be allowed to trace e-mail and Internet records without prior court approval in some cases.
Flying to Europe, Bush hailed the bill as “landmark in its scope.”
Still, experts cautioned it would be years before the broader changes in federal government achieve their full effect in bolstering protections against terrorist attack. The organization of the Defense Department was hampered by interservice rivalries and had to be revisited numerous times in the years that followed. The Homeland Security Department will touch on agencies with much more varied missions and less shared history.
The Senate later Tuesday also approved legislation to protect the insurance industry against catastrophic losses from future terrorist attacks. Federal taxpayers would finance up to $90 billion in claims in the event of a terrorist attack.
`Egregious giveaways’ get OK
Before acting on the homeland security legislation, the Senate had voted 52-47 to reject an attempt by Democrats to remove seven provisions that the party criticized as especially egregious giveaways.
That vote, which provided the day’s biggest drama, was marked by maneuvering from both sides. In the end, Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi won over a group of wavering moderates by pledging that Congress would revisit at least three of the controversial provisions next year.
As the final moments of the vote ticked away, Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) waited off the Senate floor in an adjoining cloakroom, withholding their support until they received a call from House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) agreeing to abide by that deal. Republican aides tracked Hastert down in the midst of a visit to Turkey.
Sens. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said the agreement also swayed them to side with Lott and reject the Democratic amendment. And after spending most of the vote locked in conversation with Democratic leaders, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who faces a difficult Dec. 7 runoff for re-election, joined the moderates in defeating the amendment once the outcome was clear.
Many political professionals in Washington credit GOP charges that Democrats were obstructing passage of the homeland security legislation as a significant factor in several Republican victories in this month’s midterm elections. At the time, Republicans and Democrats were locked in a bitter struggle over collective bargaining rights for employees of the new department, with Bush prevailing in curtailing labor rights after the election.
The House already has left Washington for the year. And on floor, Lott fended off efforts to modify the legislation by raising alarm at the prospect of a further delay while waiting for the House to reconvene so it can agree to changes.
“The terrorists are not going to wait for a process that goes on days, weeks or months,” Lott said. “I don’t want to be singing `Jingle Bells’ here Dec. 21.”
Eli Lilly immunity qualified
Collins and Snowe said Republican leaders agreed to next year repeal the earmark for Texas A&M and scale back the grant of legal immunity for Lilly so that it does not apply to pending lawsuits. Also, they said, the Republican leaders agreed to narrow a provision contained in the legislation that creates a loophole to the current ban on government contracts for companies that move offshore to evade U.S. taxes.
The lone Republican to dissent was Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
“I thought the process itself was bad, unbelievable,” he said.
With just eight words, the legislation wipes out dozens of pending class-action lawsuits filed by parents of autistic children. The suits target the manufacturers of thimerosal, a preservative containing ethyl mercury that was used in childhood vaccines. The largest producer of thimerosal was Lilly, which halted use of the product in 1990.
Although no definitive link between thimerosal and autism has been shown, mercury has been linked to other serious health problems.
Existing federal law already contains liability safeguards for vaccine manufacturers but does not provide such protections for those, such as Lilly, who made the preservatives used in vaccines.
One controversial provision that Lott did not promise to fix when Congress returns would limit the amount of potential damages faced by two baggage-screening contractors on duty at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Sept. 11, 2001: Globe Aviation Services and Huntleigh USA Corp.
The legislation gives Globe and Huntleigh the same liability protections that Congress extended to the airlines following the terrorist attacks, capping all potential damages from suits filed by relatives of victims and others at a total of $100 million.
It also bars plaintiffs from collecting any punitive damages in those lawsuits. In many negligence cases, punitive damages can be up to three times greater than normal damage awards.
Richard Diamond, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Dick Armey, the Texas Republican who authored the provision, said it was only fair to extend the same protections to the baggage-screening companies that were afforded the airlines. He also defended the decision to exclude another company, Argenbright Security, from the bill. The government this year barred Argenbright from the airport security business.
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Another piece of unrelated legislation contained in the bill could raise the annual compensation of at least 8,300 federal employees to the same annual pay received by the vice president, which is more than $192,000 this year, according to the bill and Senate aides familiar with the provision.
Federal employees covered by the provision include more than 7,000 members of the Senior Executive Service, who are top-ranking, non-political hires; about 1,300 administrative law judges; and certain federal court officers, clerks and administrators, according to the legislation and Senate aides.
The law now caps annual compensation for those employees, which includes base pay, allowances, bonuses and the like, at about $166,700.