Protecting the Homeland

WASHINGTON -- The Department of Homeland Security being created Monday with the stroke of President Bush's pen, will suffer through the normal "growing pains" and will not be fully operational for up to two years, the White House said.\n"Wrinkles will have to be ironed out," presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer said.\nHe pledged, the new department "will enhance America's homeland security." It will "bring people together in the field who are the experts under one roof to do their jobs and do them better."\nThe new Cabinet department -- an idea Bush initially opposed -- will swallow 22 existing agencies with combined budgets of about $40 billion and employ 170,000 workers, the most sweeping federal reorganization since the Defense Department's birth in 1947.\nThe bill gives Bush 60 days to give Congress his organizational plan, Fleischer said. The administration has been working on the transition for months, thus the White House may not need the full two months.\nAfter the plan is submitted, the administration must wait at least 90 days before the first agency can be transferred.\nFleischer said the department will come together piece by piece but will not be fully functional for at least a year, and perhaps two. "Just like any entity there are going to be growing pains ... and that must be anticipated in the creation of this department," he said.\nEven as they prepare to move into the new department, the agencies will be busy protecting America from their current positions in the federal government, Fleischer said.\nBush proposed the new department last June, saying it was needed to provide a united front against the terrorist threat to the nation. The plan came at a time when the administration was facing questions on what it knew about the terrorists before they struck on Sept. 11, 2001.\nThe bill became snarled in partisan disputes on Capitol Hill, with Democrats refusing to grant the president the broad powers he sought to hire, fire and move workers in the new department.\nBush would not yield, and made the disagreement a political issue, railing against Democrats as he campaigned for Republican candidates through the fall. Democrats reversed course after their Election Day loss of Senate control was attributed partly to the homeland security fight.\nLeaders of federal-worker unions were attending the signing ceremony as a "gesture of goodwill."\nRidge spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the new department's leadership structure will be in place within three months.\nSigning the homeland security bill ends an odyssey for legislation that started inching through Congress nearly a year ago against Bush's opposition, only to see him offer his own version after momentum became unstoppable.\nThe road to passing the homeland security bill was tortuous to the end.\nSenate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi phoned House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., in Turkey and won his pledge that Congress next year will reconsider three provisions that moderates opposed.\nOne provision permits federal business with American companies that have moved their operations abroad to sidestep U.S. taxes.\nAnother measure legally shields drug companies already sued over ingredients used in vaccines. Democrats said this includes claims that mercury-based preservatives have caused autism in children.\nAlso re-examined will be a section that helps Texas A&M University win homeland security research money. The district of incoming House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is near Texas A&M.\nBush also signed port security legislation, which he says will protect the nation's coasts and harbors by adding port security agents, restricting access to sensitive areas and requiring ships to provide more information about the cargo, crew and passengers they carry.