Implementing the 9/11 Commission Recommendations

Monday, December 4, 2006

By Andrea Koppel, CNN's Situation Room

December 1, 2006

BLITZER: We want to follow up on that Democratic campaign promise and whether it's going to pan out when the new Congress convenes next year.

Once again, let's bring back our Congressional correspondent, Andrea Koppel -- Andrea.

KOPPEL: Wolf, as you know, out on a campaign trail, Democrats, especially speaker, like Nancy Pelosi, almost on a daily basis were talking about pledging to implement all of the 9/11 recommendations made by that committee. And she pledged to do so in the first 100 legislative hours of the next Congress.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PELOSI: The recommendations are specific and they all address making America safer. That's something we have to do.

KOPPEL (voice-over): But now that pledge, according to a Democratic aide familiar with Pelosi's plan, will not include one of those recommendations -- improving intelligence oversight by reorganizing Congress itself.

Instead, Pelosi plans to appoint a bipartisan panel to work out details of what Democrats say was a vague and complex 9/11 recommendation.
Republicans responded with an I told you so.

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS, (R-ME), CHAIR GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: I'm not surprised that Speaker Pelosi's pledge that she would implement all of the 9/11 Commission's recommendations is running into a brick wall of reality.

KOPPEL: Of the 9/11 Commission's 41 recommendations, at least 16 remain unfinished. Among them, improving screening for explosives on airline passengers; providing adequate radio frequencies for first responders and moving to streamline intelligence oversight, which the 9/11 Commission called dysfunctional.

If implemented, the House and the Senate Intelligence Committees would have the power not only to approve new programs, they'd be able to fund them, too.

Currently, the Appropriations Committees hold the purse strings.

California Congresswoman Jane Harman is the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

HARMAN: Money talks and if we don't control the money, we don't get the committee to follow our direction.

KOPPEL: But to do so could mean igniting turf wars, as some of the most powerful lawmakers, whose committees like Defense Appropriations, now control the money and will fight to keep the Intelligence Committees from taking some of it away.
Still, according to one of the members of the 9/11 Commission, it's essential to keep the nation safe.

TIM ROEMER, FORMER 9/11 COMMISSIONER: They result in better expenditure of taxpayer money when you base your spending on benchmarks and risk in intelligence, rather than pork barrel spending.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KOPPEL: Implementing all of the 9/11 recommendations is just one of a number of pledges that the Democrats now must make good on. Others include cutting in half the interest rates on student loans, as well as severing the link between lobbyists and lawmakers -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Andrea, thank you for that.

Andrea Koppel reporting for us from the Hill.

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