WASHINGTON – If House GOP leaders would allow a vote on post-September 11 legislation overhauling the nation’s intelligence community, it would easily pass, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle predicted yesterday.

A top Republican scolded opponents who worry the Pentagon would lose some of its authority, saying national security is far more important than turf battles. “There was a global intelligence failure. We can’t have a status quo. We’ve got to change that,” said Senator Roberts, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The Republican-controlled House will return today to decide whether lawmakers should vote on a House-Senate compromise to create a national intelligence director position to coordinate the nation’s spy agencies and enact other anti-terror measures. If the House passes the bill, the Senate will return to do the same.

[In New York, the speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, said it was “far past time” for Congress to act on the September 11 commission’s proposals.

“We have 3,000 reasons to enact these reforms immediately. Let us pray that we don’t have to be given any more reasons before Congress and Speaker Hastert and the Republican minority that are blocking these reforms finally gives in,” he told reporters yesterday in front of Ground Zero.

Cameron MacRae, a lawyer in Manhattan whose daughter Catherine was killed in the World Trade Center, called the delay in the vote a “tragedy for democracy.”

“A piece of legislation that has the support of the president, that has the support of the Senate… that has the support of the majority of the House of Representatives, is being held from a vote primarily because of the turf battles and the protection of budgetary authorities on the part of the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee,” he said.]

At the center of the dispute is how much authority the Pentagon will retain over intelligence agencies that it now controls. The bill attempts to give a central authority more control, but some Republicans are pressing to preserve more of the Pentagon’s power.

House Speaker Dennis Hastert decided not to allow a vote on the legislation last month after two powerful committee chairmen, GOP Reps. Duncan Hunter of California and James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, objected.

And on Friday, a powerful Republican senator, Virginia’s John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, expressed concerns about the bill. His office said Mr. Warner was “concerned about those issues that may impact the time-tested chain-of-command” at the Pentagon.

Still, with the help of Democrats, there are enough Republican votes to push the measure through the House, several lawmakers said. Some argue that President Bush needs to be working harder to push the legislation through.

“Every day we delay our country is less safe,” House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said on “Fox New Sunday.” “Speaker Hastert knows that. The president knows that. They just haven’t convinced all of the Republicans.”

Even Republicans said the bill could pass despite opposition from GOP holdouts. “If it came to a vote, it would pass the House,” said Mr. Roberts, a Republican of Kansas.

Mr. Roberts supports the bill and said opponents allied with the Pentagon should put national security first.

“They have to understand something, the primary user of intelligence is not the military….It is the president of the United States and the National Security Council and it is the Congress of the United States,” he said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

Mr. Hunter, who heads the House Armed Services Committee, has expressed concerns the intelligence realignment could interfere with the military’s chain of command. He wants the bill to ensure that the Defense Department retains direct control over the agencies that operate the nation’s spy satellites and analyze that information for troops on the battlefield. The bill’s supporters say it would not interfere with those operations.

Mr. Sensenbrenner, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, wants the bill to address illegal immigration and what he sees as loopholes in the system.

Mr. Bush, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, and the members of the September 11 commission have all endorsed the intelligence bill. Mr. Bush telephoned House and Senate lawmakers and used his radio address over the weekend to press Congress to pass the bill.