WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Amid a flurry of meetings Wednesday by House committees putting the finishing touches to their Sept. 11 reform bill, Democrats and a small number of Republicans ripped the GOP leadership in the chamber for using "narrow, turf-conscious" rules to exclude amendments and force through partisan legislation.
The GOP bill, said Rep. Chris Shays, R-Conn., was "a pale reflection" of the recommendations of the Sept. 11 Commission, "a blurred and obstructed image tainted by matters extraneous to our true mission."
Shays and two other Republicans have joined 40 Democrats in proposing a measure that mirrors exactly the commission's 41 recommendations. An identical bill has been proposed in the Senate by Sens. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and John McCain, R-Ariz.
Shays' co-sponsor, Rep. Carol Maloney, D-N.Y., told reporters at a Democratic briefing that their bill "deserved an up-or-down vote" but predicted that the GOP leadership would not allow one.
"Ironically," said Shays, "the same narrow, turf-conscious House rules the commission unequivocally said must change (will be used to) prevent our consideration of the commission's broader reorganization proposals."
Shays spoke at a meeting of the House Government Reform Committee, one of five panels that spent Wednesday considering amendments to the bill that House Speaker Denny Hastert, R-Ill., introduced late last week.
Once the committees have considered amendments the various parts of the bill will be stitched together in the Rules Committee, and GOP staff said they hoped to have it ready to go to the floor by next week.
A companion bill is on the Senate floor this week. That bill establishes a new national intelligence chief with broad budgetary and personnel authority over the nation's intelligence agencies and sets up a National Counter-Terrorism Center to coordinate action across the whole federal government.
The House bill is a much broader-ranging measure.
The speaker said it was the most comprehensive legislative response to the Sept. 11 Commission's recommendations, and Republicans point out that intelligence reform is only one aspect of those proposals.
But the House bill has been criticized by members of the commission and others who say it contains too many controversial provisions not in the commission's final report.
Democrats have accused some Republicans of deliberately burying "poison pills" in the bill to complicate the process of reconciling it with the Senate version, thereby delaying or possibly derailing it.
These include measures that make it easier to deport aliens without a court hearing and restrict the right of appeal when there is a hearing; a provision that broadens the definition of both "material support" and the terrorist or terrorist-linked organizations to which it is a crime to provide it; and a clause making it easier to deport or transfer suspected terrorists to countries that practice torture.
Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., accused the bill's authors of trying to legalize the practice known as "extraordinary rendition" and of "mock(ing) world opinion by attempting to make it legal and easy to outsource the torture of terror suspects."
In an effort to boost the integrity of the nation's most important identity document, the bill would impose national standards for driver's licenses -- something recommended by the commission. But the draft law goes further than their recommendation in drastically restricting the so-called feeder documents that applicants can use to verify their identity in order to obtain a license.
Critics said the move would make it impossible for undocumented immigrants to get licenses, which would make the roads less safe.
Another provision would extend the circumstances under which federal authorities can apply for a special warrant to conduct secret searches -- the so-called sneak and peek -- against non-citizens.
Currently, such searches can only be conducted against terrorists who are agents of a foreign entity like a government or an international terrorist group. The so-called lone-wolf provision of the bill makes these warrants usable against individual non-citizens who may not be affiliated with any group.
Hastert's bill did not contain any clause setting up the civil liberties oversight board that the commission recommended, although it did establish privacy officers within federal law-enforcement agencies -- building on the success such a post has had at the Department of Homeland Security.
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee attempted to offer amendments on all these issues during Wednesday's meeting, known as a markup.
An amendment to beef up the judicial oversight of lone-wolf sneak-and-peek searches passed, as did a GOP amendment establishing a civil liberties oversight board.
Democrats -- who had originally proposed a civil liberties board amendment of their own -- opposed the GOP version because, a staffer said, it included no subpoena power for the board, "which we believe to be essential to its operation."
At a hearing last month, Sept. 11 Commission Vice Chair Lee Hamilton said such a power was essential.
"The key requirement," he told the House Constitutional Law Subcommittee, "is that government agencies must be required to respond to the board." He said that although they had only used it very rarely, the power of subpoena the Sept. 11 Commission had been granted was essential. "If this board is not able to require agencies to respond in detail to your questions," he concluded, "it will be ineffective."
One other Democratic amendment -- a measure to increase security for the transportation of hazardous materials -- was passed. Many lawmakers have expressed concern that deadly chemicals are transported in large quantities through residential areas -- including within a few yards of the U.S. Capitol -- creating the possibility that terrorists could create mass casualties by causing their release.
A host of other Democratic amendments fell on party-line votes.
In the Government Reform Committee, Democrats tried to remove a radical measure known as executive reorganization authority -- a power vested in the executive branch until Congress allowed it to lapse in 1984.
The authority, said committee Chairman Tom Davis, R-Va., would enable the new national intelligence director to propose reorganization plans for the intelligence community and receive a straight up-or-down vote in Congress with no amendments or committee process allowed.
Davis said that it was unlikely Congress would get everything right the first time and it was important the new director had the chance to make fixes without getting "bogged down in turf conflict" between different committees and between the two chambers.
Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., called the provision "a total abdication of Congress' responsibility" to legislate such changes.
Davis, as Shays had predicted, ruled his substitute amendment -- replacing the whole bill with his and Maloney's version -- out of order, saying he had no choice. Other similar amendments were defeated or ruled out of order in several other committees.
The Intelligence Committee also adopted an amendment to beef up the bill's civil-liberties protections with the support of Chairman Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., but with three other Republicans opposing it.
But the committee -- in another series of party-line votes -- rejected suggestions aimed at strengthening the budgetary and personnel powers of the new director, which would have brought it more into line with those envisaged in the Senate bill and White House endorsement.
GOP aides said the House leadership and other committees had reached a decision about what powers the post should have that would be acceptable to supporters of the Defense Department -- which will lose authority in the new setup -- and pressured Hoekstra and other members of the majority on the Intelligence Committee to hold the line.
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