House debates rail security despite objections to bill

The House on Tuesday began debate on a major bill to improve rail and mass-transit security, even though the White House threatened to veto the legislation over provisions dealing with whistleblower protections for transportation workers.

The bill would require the Homeland Security Department to establish risk-based programs for rail and transit systems, and would authorize about $7.3 billion for security-related efforts between fiscal 2008 and fiscal 2012.

Supporters argue that the legislation is needed because terrorists have shown that they will target public transportation systems, such as through train bombings in London; Madrid, Spain; Moscow; and Tokyo in recent years.

The legislation is intended to give House and Senate negotiators a vehicle to conference a final bill for implementing unfulfilled recommendations of the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The White House, however, has objected to several provisions.

Bush administration advisers said they would recommend a veto if sections about whistleblower protections remain in the legislation. The administration said the language would permit employees to disclose classified information.

"Moreover, this bill would place unacceptable substantive and procedural limitations on the ability of the United States to assert the state-secrets privilege in litigation, raising grave constitutional concerns and hindering the ability to protect classified and sensitive information, perhaps to the detriment of rail and transportation security," the White House said in a statement.

The state-secrets privilege is a trump card the White House can use in order to fight lawsuits and classify information.

The White House also objected to several other provisions in the bill, such as creating a rail and transit security grant program, and splitting responsibility for managing and distributing grants between the Homeland Security and Transportation departments.

"Creating a separate grant program that divides responsibility between two executive departments sets up an unnecessarily complicated administrative process and creates confusion among stakeholders as to which department is responsible for transportation security," the administration stated. A Homeland Security official called the grant structure in the bill "a wretched mistake."

Republicans on the House Homeland Security Committee offered several amendments on border security, the protection of sensitive information and whistleblower protections. The Democratic-controlled House Rules Committee, however, blocked debate on any of those amendments.

New Yorker Peter King, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, said he wished a "spirit of bipartisanship" would have prevailed on the Rules Committee.

Republicans were clearly upset. "I guess allowing amendments on protecting national security information and preventing terrorists from entering our country had no place in their homeland security agenda," a GOP leadership aide said.