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38 minutes ago
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By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Department of Homeland Security, being created Monday with the stroke of President Bush (news - web sites)'s pen, will suffer through the normal "growing pains" and will not be fully operational for at least a year, the White House said.
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Bush was naming current homeland security chief Tom Ridge to head the department and Navy Secretary Gordon England to be his deputy at the bill-signing ceremony.
The 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.
"Wrinkles will have to be ironed out," presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) said.
The 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.
After the plan is submitted, the administration must wait at least 90 days before the first agency can be transferred.
Fleischer said the department will come together piece by piece but will not be fully functional for at least a year. "Just like any entity there are going to be growing pains ... and that must be anticipated in the creation of this department," he said.
Even 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.
Bush 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.
The 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.
Bush 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.
Ridge spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the new department's leadership structure will be in place within three months.
Signing 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.
The road to passing the homeland security bill was tortuous to the end.
Senate 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.
One provision permits federal business with American companies that have moved their operations abroad to sidestep U.S. taxes.
Another 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.
Also 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.
