Key house members agree on bioterrorism bill
While the Senate continues to struggle with how to approach the issue of bioterrorism, it now appears the House will go first on a broad authorization bill.
A bipartisan group of Energy and Commerce members led by Energy and Commerce Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La., and ranking member John Dingell, D-Mich., Thursday unveiled a $2.9 billion measure, which Tauzin said would likely be on the House floor under suspension of the rules next week.
The House bill, said Tauzin, authorizes "slightly less than the [$3.2 billion] Senate version," formally introduced this week by Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., Public Health Subcommittee ranking member Bill Frist, R-Tenn., and 64 other senators. But Tauzin added that the House bill "contains things the Senate bill does not."
Among those things is a more comprehensive focus on the potential for an attack on the nation's food supply. The measure would not only authorize an additional $100 million for the FDA to hire more inspectors to examine imported food and develop rapid tests to detect adulteration, but would also provide the agency with new authority to detain suspicious food shipments and require better recordkeeping.
Like the Senate bill, the House measure would authorize $1 billion in grants to state and local public health agencies and another $1 billion to purchase more drugs and vaccines for the national pharmaceutical stockpile, including smallpox vaccines.
The measure would also authorize $100 million to develop plans to protect the nation's water supply, would incorporate a House-passed bill requiring those who possess or study the 36 most deadly biotoxins to register with the government, and would authorize $450 million for infrastructure improvements at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
The state of the CDC's physical facilities, said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., who has been working on the issue all year, "is a scandal. We have some of the best medical professionals in the world working in some of the shabbiest conditions."
Meanwhile, the Senate appears to be moving away from considering the Kennedy-Frist authorization bill in favor of the nearly $4 billion appropriations package put together by Labor-HHS Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and ranking member Arlen Specter, R-Pa., that is included in the $15 billion package Appropriations Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., wants to add to the FY02 Defense appropriations measure.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., said Tuesday he would not bring up the Kennedy-Frist bill "if the Defense bill passes." Some have speculated that is because the measure, despite its broad support, has still not won the endorsement of the Bush administration or Health, Education, Labor and Pensions ranking member Judd Gregg, R-N.H.
"There's still some money issues," Gregg said today. "We've got the policy worked out."
Gregg said he is continuing to work with the White House "to make sure we're on the same page as Frist and Kennedy."