House Approves Domestic Security Bill

By DAVID FIRESTONE

ASHINGTON, Nov. 13 — The House hurriedly approved a revised domestic security bill tonight to reflect a new agreement with the White House on reducing worker protections, brushing aside Democratic objections that Republican leaders had added several provisions benefiting businesses and Republican interests.

The bill, approved 299 to 121, would reverse an earlier measure and allow American companies that have moved offshore in order to evade taxes to contract with the Homeland Security Department. It would also extend protection against liability suits for airline screening companies and many other businesses that contract with the department, and adds a similar provision protecting the makers of smallpox vaccines.

Most Democrats voted against the bill, with many raising objections to the new provisions and the altering of Civil Service rules.

The House voted 215 to 203 along party lines not to create an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11 attacks. Several members of both parties in the two chambers said they would try to include the commission in an intelligence spending bill that has still not been passed. But Republican House leaders said the commission needed more planning, drawing complaints from relatives of attack victims that they were trying to hide failures that might have prevented the attacks.

Working to conclude the year's legislative business by week's end, the House also passed a stopgap spending measure to keep the government operating through January. Many members of both parties had hoped the House would pass at least a few of the pending appropriations bills the government uses to keep operating, but House leaders said they would take up the bills once the new Congress convened next year.

As expected, Republican House members elected Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, formerly the majority whip, to the new post of majority leader in the next session.

Democratic House members are scheduled to conduct their leadership elections on Thursday, and are likely to choose Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, now the minority whip, as their leader.

This morning, however, a new candidate for the job emerged, demonstrating the continuing disagreements among Democrats over how to respond to their losses in last week's elections. Representative Marcy Kaptur of Ohio said she would run for the position to draw votes from members who object to Ms. Pelosi's emphasis on fund-raising.

"We will never raise more money than the Republicans — never," said Ms. Kaptur, who is known for her opposition to free-trade measures and federal funding for abortions. "We must elevate the non-money wing of the Democratic Party and create populist symbols to convey our message."

Ms. Kaptur joins Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee in contesting the Democratic leadership election, for which Ms. Pelosi claims to already have sufficient support to win.

In the Senate, Republicans chose Trent Lott of Mississippi to be the majority leader in the next term, along with Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky as majority whip and Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona in the third-ranking job of leading the Republican Policy Committee. Mr. Lott said after today's election that Republicans would focus on national and economic security, mentioning specifically a prescription drug program for low-income older people and making individual retirement accounts easier to use.

Senate Democrats also held their leadership elections today, unanimously choosing Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota as chairman of the caucus, along with Senators Harry Reid of Nevada and Barbara A. Mikulski of Maryland in the No. 2 and No. 3 positions. Mr. Daschle will be minority leader in the next Senate, Mr. Reid will be minority whip.

Senators also voted 58 to 36 not to block their annual pay raise, which would increase their salaries by 3.1 percent to $154,700 to $150,000 next year. Passage of an energy bill was deferred until next year because of continuing partisan disagreements over regulation and conservation.

The Senate began a lengthier process of approving the domestic security bill, which is expected to pass as early as Friday.

Senators showed that they remained closely divided on the bill, deciding 50 to 47 to drop the Democratic version of the bill on a closely watched test vote. The new version of the bill will have enough votes for passage, but many Democrats remain upset that President Bush won virtually his entire plan to cut back on civil service protections for workers, making it easier to fire and transfer them.

Many Democrats in both chambers were furious today when they read the fine print of the new version of the bill and found that Republicans had inserted provisions that had not been discussed in the six months of debate on the antiterrorism department, or that had been cut in the Senate bill.

The new language, for example, allows the administration to reorganize the department after it is created, differing from the Senate Republican version that would require congressional approval of a reorganization. It revises a provision, passed 318 to 110 in July, that prohibited contracts with offshore tax-evading companies, allowing the department to waive the ban in the name of saving American jobs.

The bill would allow immunity from liability for companies that make faulty antiterrorism devices or technology, and would make it difficult to sue companies that make smallpox vaccinations if the vaccines cause illness.

In one last-minute addition, Representative Dick Armey, Republican of Texas, inserted a provision that was apparently intended to protect Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical giant, from lawsuits over thimerosal, a mercury-based vaccine preservative that some parents contend has caused autism in their children.

"I'm really quite surprised they would put in the fine-print provisions we never saw in any other versions, that never even went through committees," said Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee."

But Republicans, like Representative William M. Thornberry of Texas, said the additions were minor and paled next to the importance of creating a department to protect the nation's safety.