House GOP stalls intelligence bill

Hours after House and Senate negotiators reached final agreement yesterday on a bill to implement recommendations of the September 11 commission, the House Republican Conference rejected it, with members telling their leaders in a “frank” meeting that the Senate and President Bush were asking for too much power for a national intelligence director and too little in new immigration security.

Earlier yesterday the negotiators had emerged confident from a final meeting, and the commission put out a congratulatory statement on the agreement that had the approval of Mr. Bush and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert.

But a group of House Republicans, led by Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, demanded a full caucus meeting. There it became clear a strong majority of Republicans agreed with the chairmen of the House Armed Services and Judiciary committees, who objected to the intelligence and immigration provisions.

That leaves the bill’s fate in doubt. Mr. Hastert plans to call Congress back in December and hopes that an agreement could be approved then, but members on both sides of the split said they don’t expect anything to change.

“We are so close but so far, in being able to pull this off,” said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, Michigan Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who supported the compromise. “I don’t right now see a process whereby we get this done in the next few weeks. It doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but nobody has exactly laid out for me what that path would be.”

Meanwhile, Congress passed a $388 billion omnibus spending measure to fund the government for fiscal 2005, which began Oct. 1. The intelligence bill and spending package were supposed to be the final votes of the 108th Congress.

The spending bill, a conglomeration of nine overdue appropriations bills, passed the House 344-51 with 27 Republicans and 24 Democrats voting against it, then passed the Senate 65-30, with six Republicans, 23 Democrats and one independent voting against it.

But the measure stalled for hours in the Senate after staffers discovered that the bill, which runs thousands of pages, includes a provision that would allow the appropriations committees to grant access to anyone’s IRS tax forms to anybody the committee chairmen chose.

While promising to pass another resolution to remove the provision, Senate committee Chairman Ted Stevens, Alaska Republican, apologized.

“It’s more than a mistake, it’s a terrible disaster,” he said, adding that it was a provision stuck in by some staffers and never seen, much less agreed to, by the senators or House members. The Senate then unanimously passed a brief bill to strip the offending language, but it must await House passage next week.

In the meantime, the spending bill will be kept in the Capitol to ensure it is not signed into law by the president. Congress passed a temporary bill to keep the government open until then.

In both chambers, Democrats and some Republicans complained about a provision in the omnibus bill that would prevent courts and state and local governments from insisting that a doctor or hospital perform abortions or refer patients and that insurers cover abortions.

Democrats said it doesn’t cover many pressing needs.

“This bill is a poster child for institutional failure,” said Rep. David R. Obey of Wisconsin, ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee. “It’s totally inadequate to meet the nation’s needs in education, health care and the environment.”

But the day was dominated by the failure to pass the intelligence bill, which would have created a national intelligence director to coordinate all U.S. intelligence agencies and establish a counterterrorism center.

Story Continues →