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© St. Petersburg Times, published November 1, 2001
WASHINGTON -- House leaders scrambled for votes Wednesday as a tight vote neared on the role of the federal government in ensuring the safety of the nation's airways.
The House is to decide today between two aviation security bills: a mostly Democratic-backed bill that would make all airport screeners public employees and a mostly Republican-backed measure that would put the government in charge of screeners but leave screening duties largely in the hands of private workers. The outcome was too close to call.
"The biggest thing that is interrupting our economy is fear, especially fear of getting onto airplanes," said Democratic leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri.
President Bush, who is actively lobbying for the House Republican bill, and congressional leaders pledged Wednesday to work through their differences and take quick action.
Fifteen mostly moderate GOP lawmakers hold the key to the outcome in a House where Republicans hold only a narrow majority, 221-212. The swing Republicans say they might vote for the Democrats' preferred version of the bill.
That bill is identical to legislation the Senate passed 100-0 on Oct. 11. Besides making airport screening a federal operations similar to customs or immigration work, it puts the Justice Department in charge of aviation security and takes steps to fortify cockpit doors, assign more air marshals to flights and inspect all carryon and checked bags.
If the House accepts it, it will go directly to Bush. The White House has indicated he will sign it despite his reservations over the federal screener issue.
If the House Republican bill wins out, the issue goes to a House-Senate conference. House GOP leaders said they are confident they can quickly reach a compromise. While the two bills differ on the issue of screeners and the House bill keeps oversight of security within a new Transportation Department agency, they share many objectives.
But unlike in the Senate, where Lott and other conservatives voted for the final bill despite reservations over federal screeners, the two parties remained deeply divided on the eve of the vote.
"There's a broad consensus that the current airline security system must be replaced," said Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, the House's third-ranked Republican. But he said tough new standards "will turn out to be toothless" if the president isn't given the flexibility to choose the most effective security techniques and must adopt a new federal work force instead.
Democrats, in turn, said Republicans were succumbing to the lobbying efforts of the aviation security industry, which now supplies the 28,000 airport screeners through contracts with the airlines. They argue that private screeners are poorly paid and poorly trained and that screening should be performed by law enforcement officers.
- Information from Knight Ridder Newspapers was used in this report.