• Anti-Terrorism Measures Dominate Agenda
• Feingold Balks at Anti-Terrorism Effort
• Wisconsin Reps Tour Disaster Site

Oct. 16, 2001

ANTI-TERRORISM PACKAGE SLOWS
Feingold still has concerns

By Melanie Fonder and Noelle Straub

Tense negotiations between the House and Senate over money laundering and a time limit for anti-terrorism powers have slowed one of the administration's top priorities since the terrorist attacks.

President Bush has urged Congress to send him the final bill by the end of the week. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) said Tuesday that the Senate was prepared to go to conference with the House, but that a bill without the money laundering provision was "just something we cannot accept."

The House, meanwhile, will take up a freestanding money laundering bill later this week.

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), the lone vote against the Senate's anti-terrorist bill because of concerns over civil liberties infringements, criticized the fact that conferees had yet to be named.

"I am stunned to hear that there is some resistance to naming conferees," Feingold said. "I thought last week that the argument that was used" against his offering amendments "was that this had to be done urgently. So what's all this talk about how urgent it was when we can't even have a conference committee?"

The Senate version contains the money laundering provision, while the House bill does not. Also being debated is the sunset provision - providing a five-year limit on the expanded anti-terrorist powers -- which was passed by the Senate but not the House.

But most lawmakers still expect the bill to move rapidly to President Bush's desk. A meeting was held at the White House Tuesday morning and another in the Capitol at the staff level to try and iron out the variations between the House and Senate version.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) also said Tuesday that it remained unclear whether there would be a "full-blown" conference committee.

"I don't think the House has a problem with money laundering being done, I think they had not had as much time working on it, had not had a chance to come up with their version of it, and I think they're in the process of coming to grips with where they want to be with money laundering," Lott said.

Several other senators predicted that public knowledge of the bill's provisions could help sway conferees to limit the time period the rules are in effect.

Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.), who supported Feingold's three amendments, said that the lack of a sunset provision in the Senate bill was worrisome.

Corzine said the more informed the public became on the bill's scope, the more likely his colleagues would be to amending the bill in a conference committee.

"If they knew all of the elements of the bill and some of the potential for infringement . I think there would be more concern," Corzine said. "We all want to give law enforcement enough tools to go after terrorists, but I think there are some items here that are too far-reaching and are undermining our civil liberties."

"If there isn't a legitimate sunset, I'm going to have some real trouble supporting the bill," Corzine said. "I think we need to give law enforcement the authority to do things they need to do, but this is an imperfect piece of legislation."

Feingold, who is chairman of the Judiciary Constitution, Federalism and Property Rights Subcommittee, said, regarding a sunset provision, while it would "be better than nothing," he expected court challenges of several of the final bill's provisions.

"To me the idea of sunsetting what are possible or likely constitutional violations is not much comfort to those who were violated during the five years," Feingold said. "I can think of how the Japanese-Americans [in camps in World War Two] would feel if they sunsetted that sort of violation."

But because the House leadership ditched a bipartisan committee bill in favor of a leadership bill similar to the Senate bill, most see the sunset provision as the only viable possibility to protect civil liberties in the final bill.

Three other senators who voted for all of Feingold's amendments -- Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.) - echoed the same sentiments.

Wellstone, who said a sunset provision was "critical," said he expected several House members and Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) to curb some of the "potential abuses" in the bill.

"I'm hoping that it will be a better bill coming out of conference," Wellstone said, and added that there was a danger of not protecting people's lives by giving law enforcement expanded powers. "The other danger is that's it's too excessive and there will be an abuse of power by government, but there at least you can go back and change it."

Cantwell said she recommended a review process be put in place, even for classified information, "so that we could go back and see how these new powers were being used."

Conservatives have also strongly condemned the measure. Conservative Paul Weyrich of the Free Congress Foundation, in a commentary, complimented liberal Rep. David Obey (D-Wis.), who criticized the leadership's handling of the bill. Weyrich said:

"Veteran U.S. Rep. David Obey . echoed the sentiment of many of us when he sighed and said, 'After all, it's only the Constitution.'"

Weyrich went on to criticize the Senate for capitulation to the Bush administration's requests and the House for replacing a "more reasonable" committee bill with one from the leadership.

"I have the distinct belief that one day in the not-too-distant future we will look back on this piece of hastily drawn and ill-considered 250-plus page piece of legislation (which almost no on has read) and we will exclaim: 'Good Lord, what have we done? What has happened to the American way of life?'"

And the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which worked closely with Feingold on his opposition amendments, said they were "bitterly disappointed" with both the Senate and House bills.

The Center for Technology and Democracy is also working with the senators to get "at a minimum" the sunset provision, Cantwell said.

"There would be other things I would change, but I think that's the key thing that I think people are rallying around right now within the scope of this that would give us some protection," Cantwell said.