WASHINGTON — Few people have more at stake in the fight over legislation to overhaul the nation's intelligence community than Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), who led House conservatives in a successful bid to block the bill this weekend.
As chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Hunter was defending the Pentagon -- and his own committee's turf -- when he resisted efforts to shift authority over much of the intelligence community's budget from the Defense secretary to a new national intelligence director.
And as one of the few members of Congress with a son who has served in the Iraq war, Hunter said he was also defending the 138,000 troops battling insurgents across a territory the size of California.
Not even phone calls from President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney could persuade Hunter to back House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) when Hastert sought Republican support Saturday for a compromise intelligence bill written by House and Senate negotiators. Hunter's opposition -- coupled with that of House Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-Wis.), who objected to the deletion of some of the House-passed immigration and law enforcement provisions aimed at terrorists -- probably doomed the bill for this year.
Republican leaders sent the House and Senate negotiators back to work with the aim of producing a bill by Dec. 6. "We can do it," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said Sunday on CBS' "Face the Nation."
But even many of the bill's supporters were skeptical. "I just don't see it as of Dec. 6," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said on "Fox News Sunday."
And one of Frist's own senior advisors, Eric Ueland, said, "It is premature to pronounce the last rites, but it takes a willing suspension of disbelief to pretend it will easily pass in early December."
Republicans had hoped to produce a bill underscoring the president's commitment to security and responsiveness to the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission. Instead, they produced another piece of unfinished legislation in a session already rife with them.
And some Republicans' unwillingness to fall in line behind a bill supported by the White House raised questions about what support Bush could expect from House Republicans in the looming battles over Social Security, tax reform and immigration in his second term.
