WASHINGTON, Oct. 16 (UPI) -- House and Senate negotiators, working to combine each chamber's terror legislation into one bill to send to the president, face public and political pressure to finish quickly, said staff familiar with the effort on Tuesday.
On Thursday and Friday, the Senate and House passed somewhat different bills to expand the powers of law enforcement to fight terrorism. Resolving two major differences between the bills will likely require a conference committee to reconcile -- a process could take longer than the Bush administration would prefer.
Tuesday, the president released a statement urging rapid action.
"We must strengthen the hand of law enforcement to help safeguard America and prevent future attacks -- and we must do it now," Bush said.
The Senate bill included language to tighten enforcement of money laundering laws, unlike the House version. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., continues to insist that any final bill have these provisions. House Financial Services Committee Chairman Michael Oxley, R-Calif., opposes including money laundering in the bill, because he believes the issue should be addressed in a stand-alone bill.
The House could debate such a bill as early as Wednesday.
The other major difference is the House bill's five-year sunset provision that would require congressional reauthorization in 2006. The Senate bill has no such expiration date, and some, such as Sen. Orrin Hatch and the Bush administration, oppose any such provision.
Although House and Senate staff on both sides said that other differences between the bills should be easy to reconcile, the extra time spent to do so could allow civil liberties groups a chance to increase opposition to the effort. Several groups have complained that the bills would be overly restrictive on individual liberties; others complain that the quick passage of each left insufficient time for debate on the matter.
The American Civil Liberties Union denounced last week's passage of the bills with a strongly worded statement that accused lawmakers of caving in to the administration's demands for terror-fighting powers.
The ACLU said it was "bitterly disappointed with the passage of anti-terrorism legislation, which mirrored closely the highly controversial original legislative proposals the administration submitted to the House of Representatives and the Senate."
ACLU Washington Office Director Laura Murphy said that the decision by Republican House leaders to substitute a bill negotiated with the administration for a bipartisan compromise that unanimously passed the House Judiciary Committee was made in bad faith.
"In rushing through its legislation, the administration has undercut any attempt at good faith negotiation with Democrats, the American public and even members of its own party," she said. "If the bill does go to conference, we urge lawmakers to reestablish in the bill the proper balance between the requirements of safety and the necessity of liberty."
They might get their chance to pressure the conferees, because Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., opposes having a small group of party leaders negotiate the final version of the bill, staff said Tuesday. Instead, the committee will likely be larger and hold public hearings on how to combine the bill.
Sources involved in the various talks said that Monday's anthrax attack on the Majority Leader's office has delayed some decisions and that the conference committee could begin work later in the week.
