Editorial: One item too many - 9/11 bill is too important for a hasty vote

Sacramento Bee ^ | 1/9/7 | Editor

[SmithL]

New House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has set an ambitious schedule for voting on six measures in what she styles as a "100-hour agenda."

The 100-hour agenda is obviously a gimmick, but it's a gimmick with an upside: Americans will be able to hold the new majority accountable for results. And taking up these specific issues makes some sense, both in terms of policy and politics. All six issues have been debated at length in the last five years. Pelosi wants clear up or down votes to draw distinctions between Democrats and Republicans.

The downside is that Pelosi has chosen to begin the agenda with a vote on a highly complex national security measure. That's unfortunate. In contrast, the five other bills, which are slated for votes in coming days, are short -- three pages or so -- and deal with very clear (if controversial) issues. The desire for a quick, clean vote on these bills is more understandable. That surely can't be said of the bill up today on Pelosi's agenda: Implement recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

Though these recommendations have been around for nearly three years and should be implemented sooner rather than later, the 277-page text of this bill has been available only since Friday afternoon. While it's extremely important that Congress refocus attention on homeland security and particularly international policies that have been sidelined with attention to Iraq, we'd like to see the House give a bill of this importance (not to mention length) more than a cursory treatment.

The bill begins with homefront issues --

[Falcon4.0]

The Sac Bee laying down a suppressive cover fire.

[alloysteel]

Maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of her life, Queen Bee Nanacy is going to regret the decision to call for so much haste in reversing or blocking so many ongoing programs already in place, from the war in Iraq to the method of increasing tax revenues, all the while looking for ways to "punish" the "malefactors of great wealth".