Port deal in trouble

House panel defies Bush, OKs amendment to block Arab firm from managing ports, as a showdown nears

BY J. JIONI PALMER AND GLENN THRUSH
NEWSDAY WASHINGTON BUREAU; Craig Gordon of the Washington Bureau contributed to this story.

March 9, 2006

WASHINGTON - A House panel voted yesterday to scuttle a proposed deal to give control of operations at six American ports to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates, setting in motion a legislative process that could hand President George W. Bush his first significant congressional defeat.

As the House committee was voting, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) tried to force action in the Senate, stealthily inserting an up-or-down vote on the ports into an unrelated ethics bill. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), desperate to delay a vote amid growing opposition to the deal within his own caucus, has scheduled a vote tomorrow to strip Schumer's amendment from the bill.

Ignoring a threat by Bush to veto legislation blocking the ports deal, the House Appropriations Committee voted 62-2 to approve an amendment to block the deal to an emergency spending bill funding military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and additional Hurricane Katrina aid. The bill is expected to be considered on the House floor next week, where it is expected to pass overwhelmingly.

House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King, who spoke with two of the president's closest advisers within the past few days, said it was too late for the White House or Dubai Ports World to present a compromise that would appease most of his colleagues.

"This train has left the station," said King (R-Seaford). "It appears we're on a collision course. Having said that, it is not in the president's interest to keep this war going on."

Schumer, sensing momentum slipping for a similar Senate vote, jumped up during debate over the ethics bill yesterday and slipped in his ports amendment before Republican leaders realized what he'd done.

"We want to make sure that there's a vote up or down on this issue," Schumer said. "We believe that a majority of senators, an overwhelming majority, would vote to end the deal."

The gambit took Frist completely by surprise, and the exhausted-looking leader countered by scheduling tomorrow's vote on stripping all amendments, including Schumer's, from the ethics bill.

Victory is hardly assured. Frist needs 67 votes, including 12 from Democrats. And Schumer vowed to continue inserting the anti-DP World provisions into GOP-sponsored bills "until we get a vote on this issue."

Faced with political mutiny by usually steadfast House Republicans, White House officials struggled to downplay the vote, saying they were concerned it would bottle up funding for troops in Iraq and rebuilding the hurricane-hit Gulf Coast.

But the vote sets up a potential showdown with Bush, who has threatened a veto - which would be his first ever - of any legislation that blocks the deal. Asked whether that threat still stands, Press Secretary Scott McClellan said, "The president's position is unchanged."

King said if Bush did indeed veto the supplemental budget, "he would be putting the United Arab Emirates in front of the welfare of American troops."

The White House did little to hide its displeasure that House Republicans jumped the gun on the 45-day investigation agreed to by Dubai Ports World, a probe the White House hoped would buy time for passions over the deal to cool so Bush could avoid such a rebuke.

Bush initially thought he could squelch the controversy with his veto threat, but that seemed only to anger some Republicans. Then the company agreed to temporarily hold off the U.S. part of the deal, then to a 45-day investigation. Neither move did anything to stop the momentum for a vote in the House, though it did defuse the issue somewhat in the Senate.

Craig Gordon of the Washington Bureau contributed to this story.

Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.