Bush told 3,700 employees from throughout the federal bureaucracy that the 100 or so agencies now responsible for various slices of domestic security are not effective.
"Despite everybody's best intentions and hard work and sacrifices there is a dispersal of authority, a lack of accountability, and, the truth of the matter is, a needless drain on critical resources," Bush said.
Bush is trying to pull all those agencies under one roof.
"Twenty years from now, if we're still standing -- individually, that is -- you can look back and say, 'I was part of not only winning the war on terror, but I was part of working together to leave behind a legacy, a legacy of a more secure homeland,'" Bush said. "This is a historic moment, a fantastic opportunity. History has called us into action, history has put the spotlight on America."
A battery of House committees is moving with unusual speed to assemble legislation creating the department. Five committees were set to vote Wednesday on their parts of the legislation with a similar number expecting to act Thursday.
House leaders are aiming to get the bill ready for a floor vote next week. First, though, the pieces must go through a special committee chaired by House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas.
Armey said Tuesday that the panel would be "respectful" of what the other House committees produce but would act independently. That means any changes approved by the panels could be short-lived.
"We do not feel bound by the chapter-and-verse details of the president's proposal or of any of the committees," he said. "We think the committees' expertise is going to make the president's proposal an even better proposal."
The Senate is taking a somewhat slower approach even as Democratic leaders aim to get a bill to Bush by mid-September. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., intends to have a bill on the floor before Congress' August recess, Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., told reporters Wednesday after congressional leaders met with Bush.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., who chairs the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said he expects the Senate measure to reflect much of Bush's plan.
"There are some disagreements, but I don't feel they are deep and divisive," Lieberman said. Also Tuesday, law enforcement officials and the Coast Guard chief told Congress it would be a mistake to split their agencies into pieces, urging instead that lawmakers move them entirely into the new department.
Officials from the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, the Secret Service and the just-created Transportation Security Administration told a House Judiciary subcommittee that all their duties are intertwined and some could suffer if not transferred intact to the new agency, as Bush proposed.
Many members of Congress have the opposite concern. They say an agency like the Coast Guard, which performs such tasks as marine search-and-rescue and fisheries management, might make security such a high priority that the other jobs lose emphasis.
"Some fear that the Coast Guard may be put in a position of compromising your other duties," said Rep. Howard Coble, R-N.C.
Adm. Thomas Collins, commandant of the Coast Guard, said dividing the agency's responsibilities between Homeland Security and the Transportation Department would threaten its ability to do any job properly. The same cutters, boats, aircraft and people are involved in all the Coast Guard's tasks, he said.
"Mixing safety and security is not like mixing oil and water," Collins said.
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