Which senators voted nay on Senate Vote #249 (Homeland Security Act, 2002) and what reasons did they give?
Executive summary
The Senate approved the Homeland Security Act of 2002 by a 90–9 recorded vote (Senate Vote No. 249), with nine senators recorded as “nay” on final passage (90 yeas, 9 nays) [1] [2]. The official Senate roll call lists the individual nays and is the primary source for exactly who opposed the measure [3]; contemporaneous floor debate and the Congressional Record show that the debate around amendments, contracting rules and waiver authority were among the issues discussed as the bill was modified on the floor [4].
1. The formal record: who voted “nay” (and where to find the list)
The Senate’s official roll call for Vote #249 records nine senators voting “nay” on final passage of H.R. 5005 (the Homeland Security Act of 2002); the Senate Legislative Information System page for Roll Call Vote 249 provides the full, authoritative list of votes and the names of the senators recorded as opposed [3]. Summary sources reiterate the margin — 90 yeas to 9 nays with one senator not voting — confirming the scale of the Senate’s bipartisan support and the fact of the nine dissenting votes [1] [2].
2. What the contemporaneous record shows senators debated — and what that implies about reasons for dissent
The Congressional Record for the resumed debate on the Homeland Security Act shows senators wrestling with specific amendments and policy tradeoffs on the floor, notably an amendment championed by Senator Paul Wellstone that would have barred firms using offshore tax havens from receiving homeland security contracts while preserving a security-waiver for the Secretary [4]. That discussion illustrates that contracting rules, corporate eligibility, and the Secretary’s waiver authority were live controversies during final consideration — factors that likely informed some senators’ votes against final passage even when they did not necessarily block the creation of the Department itself [4].
3. How secondary reporting frames the opposition — confirmation of the vote but limited attribution of motives
Public trackers and summaries such as Congress.gov and GovTrack record the vote tally and procedural steps that led to the Senate’s version being sent to the House and eventual enactment, and they frame the vote as overwhelmingly bipartisan [1] [5] [6]. Wikipedia and other summaries likewise report the 90–9 final tally, but these secondary sources typically do not attribute a consolidated set of public statements or a single uniform rationale to the nine dissenters; they confirm the numeric opposition without cataloguing each senator’s floor remarks or press statements [2].
4. Limitations of available reporting and where the concrete explanations live
The sources provided establish the numeric outcome and document the parliamentary record of amendments and debate [3] [4] but do not, in the excerpts supplied, contain a compiled set of quotations explaining each of the nine senators’ reasons for voting “nay.” For precise, attributable rationales from each dissenting senator — floor speeches, press releases, or letters to constituents — the complete Senate roll call page (which names the nays) should be paired with the full Congressional Record for November 19, 2002 and contemporaneous press statements archived by the senators’ offices or major news outlets; those primary materials are the proper next step for anyone seeking verbatim justifications rather than inferred motives [3] [4].