The Senate struggled Thursday to settle upon an appropriate response to last week’s bombings in London after an emotional debate broke out over how best to allocate antiterrorism spending between mass transit and other security needs.In three votes, the Senate, unable to reach a consensus on how much to spend, rejected proposals to increase the Homeland Security Department’s budget for mass transit and rail by amounts ranging from $100 million to $1.4 billion. It finally voted 96 to 1 to adopt a $31.9 billion spending plan for Homeland Security in the 2006 fiscal year that appropriates $100 million for transit security, which is $50 million less than in this year’s budget. The measures to increase transit security spending failed even though a majority of the Senate voted in favor of one plan – a $1.16 billion expansion in rail and transit grants proposed by Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama.Full Story
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