WASHINGTON, Sept. 25 — House and Senate negotiators agreed Monday evening to spend $1.2 billion to install hundreds of miles of fence and vehicle barriers along the Mexican border as part of a $34.8 billion spending plan for the Department of Homeland Security for the coming year.
The border security spending is just one of several major policy initiatives that Congressional leaders decided to insert into the annual appropriations bill. Others include a mandate for antiterrorism steps at high-risk chemical plants nationwide and the reorganization of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The biggest increase in spending in the bill, on which the House and Senate are expected to take final action on this week, is in the area of border security and immigration enforcement, which would get a total of $21.3 billion, an 11 percent jump over this year.
This includes money to hire 1,500 new Border Patrol agents, increasing the force to 14,800, and to add 6,700 detention beds. The $1.2 billion for border security is designated for a traditional fence, vehicle barriers and a so-called virtual fence made up of cameras and sensors. That money could also be used to help build 700 miles of physical fence along a specific stretch of the Mexican border, a construction project that the House has already approved and the Senate is still considering.
“It is a major step down the road on border security,” said Senator Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire Republican who is chairman of the Senate panel that oversees the budget bill.
The bill also sets aside $4.34 billion for port security measures, including money for 450 new cargo inspection officers. That is up $600 million over the current year. The bill would also provide $178 million for new radiation screening equipment at domestic ports, among other initiatives.
The chemical plant security rules — which neither the chemical industry nor environmentalists were satisfied with — would allow the homeland security secretary to require facilities that manufacture, store or use chemicals to conduct security assessments and then take any steps the owners decide are appropriate.
The Homeland Security Department would have the power to inspect plants to determine if the measures are sufficient. While it could not mandate any specific safety improvement, it would have the power to shut down any plant that failed to honor the generic rules.
The language is stronger than what Republican leaders in the Senate first endorsed, but Democrats said Monday that it remained far too friendly to the industry.
“The threat of a chemical release, is real, real, very real,” said Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, as he introduced an amendment he said would give Homeland Security the power to impose broader regulations. “We cannot afford to be so vulnerable.”
But Republicans rejected that effort, saying that the agreed-upon language was strong enough to improve security, at least for now, because the regulations would expire in three years unless Congress reauthorized them.
“This is the best proposal we can get,” Senator Gregg said just before a party-line vote rejecting Mr. Byrd’s proposal. “And in my opinion it is significantly better than nothing.”
Democrats at the conference committee meeting Monday evening also tried to add about $1 billion in spending for areas including mass transit security, aviation explosives detection research and port security grants.
“I challenge all of us not only to talk the talk on port security but walk the walk,” said Mr. Byrd, the minority leader of the appropriations panel, referring to the much-heralded recent action by Congress on a port security bill that called for a larger amount of grants.
But with the Republicans holding a majority, each of the measures that Democrats proposed were defeated, one after the other, in party-line votes.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency will continue to exist under the agreement, though some members of Congress had said it was so discredited it should be abolished and rebuilt from scratch.
Under the agreement, the FEMA director would have a higher rank, still reporting to the secretary of homeland security, but serving as the president’s chief adviser on emergency management, in a manner similar to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon.
FEMA would also now oversee Homeland Security agencies that focus on preparing for a disaster, instead of just responding to them, and it would have an extra $30 million to hire up to 250 permanent disaster relief employees.
Congressional negotiators also added a measure to the bill that would allow Americans to buy as much as a 90-day supply of prescription drugs in Canada, where they are less expensive, and then return home with them.
Overall spending for Homeland Security under the bill would be up by $2.3 billion, or 7 percent, compared with the current fiscal year, which ends on Saturday.