House weighs amendments to TSA measure

The House today began floor debate on legislation authorizing programs and spending for the Transportation Security Administration, with plans to vote on amendments to the bill this afternoon.

In a 238-177 vote, lawmakers approved a rule for the bill, which authorizes $11.4 billion in new discretionary spending on aviation and transportation programs over the next five years.

Barring any last-minute controversy, the bill is expected to pass today. Because the Senate has not produced companion legislation, the bill's fate is unclear.

The bill is unusual because it is the first authorizing legislation for TSA since the agency was created in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Most of its provisions are not controversial. But Republicans and Democrats butted heads today over one that would prevent terrorism suspects who have been held at the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, from flying on commercial airliners.

The bill stipulates that detainees who are released into the United States could be put on the national no-fly list based on a decision by the president. Republicans want released detainees added automatically to the no-fly list.

The no-fly restriction would only apply to detainees who were imprisoned on or after Jan. 1, 2009.

Republicans may try to address the issue by offering a procedural motion to recommit the bill with language requiring detainees be put on the no-fly list. This could trigger a lively floor debate and potentially delay the bill's passage.

GOP aides would not say if Republicans planned to offer such a motion.

Lawmakers are expected to vote on an amendment that would prohibit TSA from using whole-body imaging machines at primary airport checkpoints. The machines produce a metallic, robotic image of a traveler without clothes, allowing security screeners to detect any hidden, threatening objects.

TSA is testing the machines at 19 airports, where passengers can go through them on a voluntary basis.

The proposed ban has bipartisan support from lawmakers who say the machines raise too many privacy concerns. But House Homeland Security Transportation Security Subcommittee ranking member Charles Dent, R-Pa., said in an interview he will not support a ban on these devices.

Dent visited Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Va., Wednesday to view the machines and receive a security briefing. "I feel pretty good about it," he said today. "It seems to me that the privacy issues are being addressed."

The machines produce an image that blurs the face of each traveler. In addition, TSA asserts that none of the images are stored and that the security official who views the images does so from a distant room and never sees the traveler.

Dent added that a demonstration of the machines detected plastic explosives and ceramic knives, neither of which would be picked up by a metal detector. Each machine costs about $170,000.

"TSA has done some analysis to determine the resources needed to offer equivalent security provided by [whole-body imaging] in the primary position," the agency said in response to questions from CongressDaily. "The analysis demonstrates a significant increase in security detection that could only otherwise be obtained by increasing manpower to conduct physical pat down searches."