Senate Bill to Strengthen Anti-Terrorism Powers Is Sent to Bush

Congress, galvanized by threats to homeland security on multiple fronts, cleared a major counter-terrorism crime bill Thursday and readied further action on bioterrorism and aviation safety.

The Senate’s 98-1 vote to send the counter-terrorism bill to the White House for President Bush’s signature capped lengthy deliberations over new powers for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, including expanded authority to eavesdrop on phone conversations and trace suspected terrorists’ Internet use. The legislation drew sharp criticism from some civil liberties advocates, but overwhelming bipartisan support from both houses of Congress.

In the House, meanwhile, Republican leaders scheduled a showdown debate for Wednesday on aviation security, a prime issue since the Sept. 11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center by suicide hijackers.

The debate is likely to turn on how much of the nation’s airport security should be handled by the federal government.

Earlier this month, the Senate unanimously approved a bill creating a new federal work force of more than 18,000 baggage and passenger screeners at major domestic airports. Leaders of the House Republican majority, however, are pressing for tougher federal oversight of airport security without mandating a full government takeover of a system now staffed by private contractors.

Lawmakers in both houses are also drafting responses to the anthrax scare. Sens. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) are hammering out a proposal to spend billions of dollars to improve federal, state and local readiness for bioterrorism attacks.

House Democrats unveiled their own bioterrorism proposal Thursday.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), whose staff was exposed to anthrax through a letter opened in a Senate office building Oct. 15, says he wants to put such legislation to a vote as soon as possible.

Prime motivations for these and other measures are to fight fear, congressional leaders say, and to get the country moving again.

“Until we solve people’s security concerns, we are not going to solve our economic problems,” said Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), the House minority leader. “And so in a way, the security bills are more important than economic stimulus, because it’s going to take that psychological lift, if you will, to get America’s economy back on track.”

The lone dissenter in Thursday’s vote on the counter-terrorism bill was Sen. Russell D. Feingold (D-Wis.), who has repeatedly criticized the measure as an incursion on constitutionally protected civil liberties.

Both of California’s Democratic senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, backed the bill, which also includes a crackdown on money laundering.

On aviation security, House Republican leaders mounted a major effort to persuade their rank and file to back a bill that would allow Bush to choose how many airport screeners would be federal employees.

The president himself weighed in with a letter endorsing “the flexibility to use private contractors.”

But it was unclear whether their effort would succeed in a House where the 220 Republicans hold only a narrow edge over the 211 Democrats. House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) said Thursday that Democrats would be allowed a vote on their own proposal, which is expected to largely mirror the Senate version. The floor fight could be a tossup.

On bioterrorism, Frist and Kennedy were negotiating over funding for legislation to add to the national stockpile of pharmaceutical drugs, bolster laboratories at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, produce more vaccines and improve the often-haphazard coordination among local, state and federal agencies charged with responding to threats and suspicious outbreaks of disease.

Aides said Kennedy was proposing to spend as much as $6 billion and Frist was calling for $2 billion to $3 billion.

House Democrats, at the same time, urged a $7-billion package. Any of those sums would far exceed the roughly $300 million Congress allocated last year for public health systems to respond to bioterrorism, a Kennedy aide said.

Other senators are seeking to protect agriculture production and food supplies from terrorist attacks.