WASHINGTON, June 6 (UPI) -- Leaders from both parties on Capitol Hill Thursday applauded President Bush's plan to seek a new department of homeland security, with a Cabinet-level post at the top.
"All too often, homeland security has fallen through the cracks of an overlapping bureaucracy," said House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. "The goal is to create a more effective government response to threats upon our homeland."
But the massive reorganization of government will require approval by Congress, which will have to reconfigure powerful committees to reflect the new government organization, sparking turf battles that might overwhelm the plan.
"Make no mistake about it, change is never easy, particularly for big bureaucracies," said Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn. "Or for members of Congress who are close to those bureaucracies."
Lieberman and Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., had previously drafted legislation that would create a new department of homeland security by merging immigration, border control and other departments.
Some lawmakers said they support Bush's plan in principle, but would reject any ideas that might complicate government operations further.
"We need a well-organized, efficiently run office that works in coordination with existing law enforcement and intelligence agencies, not another bureaucracy," said Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.
Kennedy said he opposes plans to roll the Immigration and Naturalization Service into a homeland defense agency, because it might bury immigration services the INS is also supposed to perform.
House Appropriations Committee Ranking Member David Obey, D-Wis., expressed outright opposition. He said the plan was "developed with little or no input from experts or federal agencies, with the result being a haphazard plan that would load the new department down with a huge bureaucracy and responsibilities that have nothing to do with preventing terrorism."
Under Bush's plan, four separate divisions of the new department would address countermeasures to weapons of mass destruction, infrastructure protection, border and transportation security, and emergency response capabilities. The four new divisions would consolidate a raft of now-separate government departments, ranging from the Coast Guard to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The plan represents a reversal by the White House, which since last fall has argued that Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge does not need statutory authority to do his job. A nascent plan by Ridge to consolidate border control agencies was also buried for months by turf battles inside the Bush administration.
Congress and the White House got into a particularly prickly scrape last month over homeland security, when the White House refused to allow Ridge to testify before the Senate Appropriations Committee, which at the time was wrestling with a $38 billion request from the White House for homeland security funding.
"The administration, for months, pushed hard against making Director Ridge a Cabinet-level official and allowing him to work openly and directly with Congress," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. "I only say that it is about time, and I hope that it is not too late."
