Shays Crosses Party Leadership
By Dori Berman
WASHINGTON, September 30, 2004-Rep. Christopher Shays broke party ranks Thursday, urging the House leadership to allow consideration of a bipartisan intelligence reform bill instead of legislation drafted solely by the Republican leaders.
Shays and three other House Republicans joined 16 House Democrats in a letter to the House leaders declaring that the Republican bill does not reflect all of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission.
“This just can’t be a Republican bill. It needs to be a Republican and Democrat bill like it is in the Senate,” Shays said at a news conference Thursday, where members of the 9-11 Commission and the Family Steering Committee endorsed bipartisan legislation sponsored by Shays and Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.). The Family Steering Committee is a group of people who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and endorses the 9/11 Commission recommendations.
The Shays-Maloney bill was drafted to closely resemble the Senate bill, co-sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), to allow intelligence reform to pass Congress swiftly, avoiding a long, difficult conference committee on the bill.
“If we can have a bill in the House and Senate that are fairly close with a few differences, then we have a better chance of passing legislation,” said Shays, the chairman of said the Government Reform Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations . The White House, the 9/11 Commission and the family steering committee have endorsed the Collins-Lieberman bill.
Like its Senate counterpart, the Shays-Maloney bill would create a national intelligence director with budgetary power to oversee the nation’s intelligence-gathering operations and establish a National Counterterrorism Center.
Shays and Maloney argued that the House leadership bill, which the Government Reform Committee approved Wednesday, has extraneous provisions that should be considered as separate legislation, such as a measure that would make easier the deportation of aliens without a court hearing. The immediate goal should be to enact the recommendations of the 9/11 commission and quickly pass intelligence reform legislation that will ensure the safety of the American people, they said.
“I have a concern that some on my side of the aisle want there to be some poison pills,” Shays said. “No one is saying [the leadership bill] is not a good bill, but it does not fully reflect the direction that the commission wanted.”
Shays proposed an amendment to the leadership bill that would have aligned it more closely with the Collins-Lieberman bill, but the amendment failed Wednesday during the Government Reform Committee mark-up session.
The letter sent Thursday requested that House leaders allow that a similar amendment be considered when the legislation reaches the House floor.
Westport first selectwoman Diane Farrell did not express support for either House bill.
“If implementing the 9/11 commission’s recommendations was truly a priority for the White House and leadership in the House of Representatives, action would have been taken immediately upon the commission releasing its report,” Farrell said in a written statement. “While I commend the hard work of my colleague, Sen. Lieberman, more should have been done by those in key positions of oversight on this issue prior to October of an election year to address a flawed intelligence system of our national security.”
Shays was surprised at Farrell’s criticism of Lieberman.
“I don’t know anyone who has worked harder on this than him,” Shays said. “I think that he is a real hero on this issue. Joe has put aside temptations to be partisan.”
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