Tom Ridge, the administration's homeland security chief, said recommendations made last week by a dozen House committees to keep those entities out of the new agency "would impair the department's ability to secure our homeland."
"There are certain basic components that the president feels are necessary," Ridge told reporters after testifying before the nine-member House Select Committee on Homeland Security, which will assemble a bill creating the department later this week for House floor consideration.
Ridge also announced that Bush would release later Monday a summary of his long-awaited national strategy for homeland defense, much of which is already public in the form of his proposed new department and his anti-terrorism budget priorities for next year.
A dozen House committees made numerous changes last week to Bush's plan. They include keeping FEMA independent to deal with natural disasters and retaining the Coast Guard in the Transportation Department amid concern that a move would reduce emphasis on such duties as marine search-and-rescue and maintaining fisheries.
Ridge sought to assure the select panel that neither agency would suffer under Homeland Security.
"These functions will continue to receive the attention they require in the new department," Ridge said.
Likewise, Ridge urged the panel to revisit a decision by the House Appropriations Committee to reject Bush's proposal to permit the new department's secretary to transfer up to 5 percent of each year's budget within programs without consulting Congress. Ridge said that power would help negate predicted transition costs of $3 billion and is critical to permit quick response to emerging or unforeseen terrorist threats.
"This is not a traditional war; the strategy and tactics are different," Ridge said.
Lawmakers jealously guard their constitutional power of the purse, however. House Majority Leader Dick Armey, the panel's chairman, said it was improbable that Congress would grant Bush's request for broad transfer authority.
"You must be aware it's not likely that's going to happen," Armey, R-Texas, told Ridge.
Many lawmakers also served notice that it will be difficult for the White House to prevail on many key points. Democrats on the panel repeatedly urged that the House consider its bill under open rules of debate, so that all viewpoints will be heard.
"To make this work, we must build a bipartisan coalition that is as deep as it is broad," said Rep. Martin Frost, D-Texas.
On some disputes, Ridge was more accommodating. He said the White House agreed with a House panel's decision to split the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service between the new agency and the Agriculture Department, where its duties include farm pest eradication and overseeing humane animal treatment.
Ridge said the administration opposes a House Judiciary Committee plan to split the Immigration and Naturalization Service between Homeland Security and the Justice Department. But he said the White House is willing to divide the INS' enforcement and processing duties into separate parts within the new agency, reflecting a bill passed by the House earlier this year.
But in most cases Ridge called on lawmakers to stick by the president. Ridge said:
- The Secret Service should go into Homeland Security, not be moved from the Treasury to the Justice Department as the House Judiciary Committee proposed.
- Lawmakers should not weaken a proposed exemption from the Freedom of Information Act for private companies and non-federal government entities to provide the new agency with information about vulnerable facilities and infrastructure.
- Bush's plan fully protects whistleblower protections for workers who divulge agency wrongdoing as well as collective bargaining rights for the two-thirds of the estimated 170,000 employees who belong to unions.
- Homeland Security should have the lead priority over research into bio terrorism and diseases that can be used as weapons, even as the actual work remains within the Health and Human Services Department.
Copyright 2002. Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
