Washington ? Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill asked a special House committee Thursday not to let resistance to change block creation of the Homeland Defense Department that President Bush wants.

“We cannot respond to the terrorist threats simply by pledging more cooperation or making marginal changes,” O’Neill told the first hearing of the House Committee on Homeland Security. “We must be willing to make a dramatic transformation in light of the dramatic threats we face.”

O’Neill was one of four of the president’s Cabinet secretaries testifying before the special committee, which next week is to piece together the administration’s proposal and lawmakers’ ideas into one bill.

“Working together with the other agencies charged with U.S. national security, we will accomplish our common goal of ensuring the security of the American people, our territory and our sovereignty,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his arm in a cast after a thumb operation, told the panel.

Outside the committee room, Rumsfeld told reporters the administration is not worried about changes to the president’s planned recommended by some House committees.

“It seems to me we’re a good distance yet from a conclusion,” Rumsfeld said. “Anything that’s this substantial … will take a good deal of discussion.”

Attorney General John Ashcroft assured the committee that the CIA and FBI, which under Bush’s proposal would not be part of the new security agency, would fully share the intelligence they gather. “For the first time, America will have under one roof the capacity for government to work together to identify and assess threats to our homeland,” he said.

Ashcroft also said the Immigration and Naturalization Service should be moved intact into the new agency, not split between the Justice Department and the new department as one House panel has recommended.

“I believe that it’s very important that they be connected, because there are frequently overlaps,” Ashcroft said of the agency’s dual responsibilities to enforce immigration law and to serve immigrants. “I believe that is best undertaken if you don’t have these two functions in different Cabinet agencies.”

Secretary of State Colin Powell, despite an investigation in his department of visas being obtained through alleged bribes, resisted calls from some lawmakers to switch that function to the new Homeland Security Department.

“We have the experience, the training, the language skills and the dedicated people to perform this mission,” Powell said. But he endorsed the idea of having the new department “determine who can and cannot enter the United States.”

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who heads the special panel, said it would work out the final details of the House vision of the Homeland Security Department after about a dozen House committees this week complete action on their pieces of the legislative puzzle.

On Wednesday, five House committees approved portions of the bill affecting agencies under their jurisdictions. Most endorsed the outline Bush set down June 6, although there was some tinkering.

The Judiciary Committee voted to keep most of the Federal Emergency Management Agency as an independent disaster response agency and to move the Secret Service from the Treasury Department to the Justice Department rather than into the new Homeland Security Department.

That panel also decided to move the enforcement arm of the Immigration and Naturalization Service into the security agency but leave other immigration services with Justice.

On Thursday, four more committees will vote on the proposal, with one focus being how the Transportation Committee handles the Coast Guard. The president would incorporate the Coast Guard in the new department, but some lawmakers say that could diminish its non-security functions such as search-and-rescue missions.

Five former Coast Guard commandants sent a letter to House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., Wednesday supporting the president’s plan and saying the Coast Guard must remain intact if it is to continue to fulfill its traditional missions.

The Senate is expected to act on its version this month as well, with the goal of sending the president a bill in September.

“It is crucial we take this historic step,” White House homeland security adviser Tom Ridge told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday. The new department is to handle security functions now spread among more than 100 agencies with budgets totaling $37 billion. Bush wants the new department running by Jan. 1.

One big issue Wednesday was what agency should handle the 10 million visa applications every year that come in now. House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., tried to move all visa operations from the State Department to the new agency, saying State “has repeatedly proven that it is the wrong agency to exercise power to grant visas.”

But in an 18-15 vote, the committee accepted a proposal by House International Relations Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., that is in line with the president’s plan: It would leave consular activities at State but give the new department power to train consular officials and review visa applications with security questions.