The White House and both houses of Congress struggled Tuesday to agree on legislation that would tighten aviation security, as divisions remained over whether the federal government would run the whole security effort or just supervise it.
The legislation under negotiation would upgrade equipment, install bulletproof cockpit doors and employ well-trained, well-paid airport security screeners. The Senate version would make the screeners federal employees. But the House version would not, and companies that now screen passengers are lobbying to keep the work in their hands.
The plan also calls for expanding the number of air marshals and gradually increasing their presence on flights.
Like the legislation, airline industry recommendations, made on Monday by an aviation task force appointed by the transportation secretary soon after the hijackings of Sept. 11, called for better cockpit doors. But they also raised new security questions, including whether the people who have been searching empty jetliners for weapons daily since Sept. 11 are qualified to do so.
The task force laid out some quick remedies, among them the use of passwords to get through the cockpit door. It suggested that in any attempted takeover of an aircraft, flight attendants be left on their own, with no help from the pilots. The flight attendants would have access to "nonlethal" weapons, though.
Congressional Democrats have led the push for full federal assumption of the security effort. House Republicans say federal employees should oversee the work but not do it. Other open questions are how much the security effort will cost and how much passengers will be charged to pay for it.
Officials said the White House appeared to be moving toward those advocating a greater degree of federal involvement.
Senators Ernest Hollings, a Democrat, and John McCain, a Republican, said there was broad consensus in the Senate to nationalize security at all major airports, and argued that anything short of that would simply maintain the status quo. Hollings initially wanted to see security at all airports put under federal control but now says he is amenable to federalizing it only at the largest ones, a number somewhere between 140 and 200.
Smaller airports would have to comply with whatever stricter standards emerged from the new legislation but, with the help of federal financing, might be able to use local law enforcement agencies rather than federal workers to carry out the functions.
"The current situation is not acceptable," McCain said. "Let's see at least partial federalization."
But the executives of companies that now do the work came to Washington to argue that even if their past performance was poor, no one was ready to replace them. "We are going to be the trainers anyway," said Lior Zouker, chief executive of International Consultants on Targeted Security. "Let us train the right people."
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