WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 (UPI) -- When Democrats assume control of the U.S. Congress next year, they plan to make homeland security one of the cornerstones of their agenda.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who will become chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told reporters last week he would seek to boost funding for rail and mass transit; strengthen security regulations for chemical plants and container cargo; and implement what he said were a number of recommendations from the Sept. 11 commission that remained unaddressed.
But he acknowledged Democratic plans would likely face some of the same challenges -- especially turf conflicts in Congress itself -- that stymied many of the initiatives of their Republican predecessors.
Thompson also pledged more aggressive oversight of the Department of Homeland Security, saying that improving its responsiveness to congressional requests for information and reports would "top of my agenda."
He pledged to demand answers from Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on what he said was an unacceptable level of vacancies in the department's senior ranks.
"The secretary needs to come clean with the committee and tell us why he can't fill these positions," said Thompson, adding Chertoff would need to come up with ideas to address the situation, "or we will have to provide some ideas for him."
In general, he said, he expected Chertoff to be spending more time on Capitol Hill.
"The secretary only came before our committee two times this entire year, and that is not enough," Thompson said in a conference call Wednesday. "He cannot be a stranger before the Homeland Security Committee. He is going to have to be fully engaged, and I am going to demand that of him."
Homeland security officials point out that Chertoff, whose department is overseen by multiple congressional committees, had testified dozens of times on Capitol Hill last year.
Overlapping committee jurisdictions have also stymied efforts to pass annual authorization laws for the department.
Thompson pledged to pass such a bill, a legislative vehicle that could be used to implement the Sept. 11 commission recommendations. But the committee, under GOP leadership, has passed authorization legislation the last three years running; only to see it die because of an absence of a companion bill in the Senate -- something some observers attribute to turf conflicts between committees in that chamber.
Thompson acknowledged that "there will still be some split jurisdiction," but maintained Democrats would be in a better position to resolve turf issues. "We can make it work," he said.
Congressional reform is one element of the Sept. 11 commission's recommendations that remains largely unimplemented, in part because, whichever party is in power, committee chairmen are generally reluctant to cede authority.
According to commission member Tim Roemer, "some of the unfinished recommendations are among the most important."
He said four of them were: completing the move to risk-based allocation of federal homeland security grants, away from what he called "pork-barrel" allocations; implementing spectrum changes to enable interoperable first responder communications; countering the spread of nuclear and other non-conventional weapons; and engaging in a battle for the "hearts and minds" of Muslims.
But he acknowledged that some of the changes were outside the pruview of Congress.
"Some of it is legislation," he told United Press International, "some of it requires policy (initiatives); some of it is the bully pulpit ... requiring the president to take the lead."
"Congress can't do all of this," he said. "They don't have the steering wheel."
But Congress does have the purse strings, and analysts predicted they would loosen them.
"The Democratic takeover ... will likely result in significant new funding for homeland security initiatives," said Matthew Farr, a senior homeland security analyst with business consultants Frost and Sullivan.
Thompson promised more probes of the department's acquisition systems, saying there had been "a lot of problems with sole-source contracting." But he also deferred to Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who will become chairman of the broadly empowered government reform committee, and who has been an attack dog on the issue of fraud and abuse.
"I want to work with chairman Waxman" on those issues, he said.
He also said Democrats will look again at the law mandating 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border, and may seek to scrap the plan altogether.
He said that the high-technology Secure Border Initiative, or SBI Net -- essentially a set of monitors, cameras and other integrated surveillance systems to monitor the border -- was a viable alternative.
"We might do away with it, or look at (integrating it into) SBI Net," he said, "A virtual fence rather than a real one."
In the Senate, Joseph Lieberman was re-elected in Connecticut as an independent after losing the Democratic primary. But a spokeswoman for Democratic leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Wednesday Lieberman would keep his seniority and become chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee when the Democrats take control next year.
Democrats hope to use their committee chairmanships to probe what they say is a culture of fraud and abuse the Republicans have allowed to grow up in Washington, but observers say there is likely to be little change in either the tone or the character of the homeland security committee's oversight.
