[Congressional Record Volume 151, Number 162 (Friday, December 16, 2005)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13768-S13769]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            USA PATRIOT ACT

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, this morning the Senate voted to continue 
debating on the conference report on the PATRIOT Act. Clearly, Senators 
believe we can do better in protecting the privacy of innocent 
Americans while we fight terrorism. No one seriously believes that the 
expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act should be allowed to lapse while 
this debate continues.
  I am disappointed that our distinguished majority leader objected 
twice to a unanimous consent to extend the expiring provisions of the 
act for 3 months. I cannot believe that my distinguished friend, the 
majority leader,

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wants these authorities to expire. I do not believe the President of 
the United States would be willing to let these provisions expire when 
we all agree they are important tools for our Nation's law enforcement 
authorities. It would be irresponsible and a dereliction of duty for 
the administration to allow these provisions to expire. By refusing to 
reauthorize these parts of the PATRIOT Act, the President and the 
Republican leadership are playing politics with the American people's 
safety.
  We have bipartisan support for reauthorizing the PATRIOT Act. That 
was proven in a unanimous vote in the Senate. We want a 3-month 
extension of the PATRIOT Act in its current form so that we can pass a 
better bill than the one that came before the Senate today in the form 
of a conference report, a better bill that will have the confidence of 
the American people. The American people are afraid. They are afraid of 
Big Brother. We, this great country, should not become Big Brother. We 
need more checks in this law to protect the privacy of ordinary 
American citizens who have nothing to do with terrorism. I support 
giving the Government the tools it needs to fight terrorism. I voted 
for the first PATRIOT Act, but we need more oversight and checks to 
protect against Government overreaching and abuse of these tools.
  We have had these years to find out how the first PATRIOT Act worked. 
We know there were problems with the first PATRIOT Act. We need to 
correct these problems. Just as Senator McCain persuaded the President, 
we needed to check potential excesses in interrogation tactics. We also 
need to ensure that we have put in place checks on the Government's 
power to trample on the privacy of innocent Americans.
  I would hope people would understand that legislation is the art of 
compromise and that the Republican leadership in the Senate, in the 
House, and the White House should move to work on a compromise, accept 
our 3-month suggestion, giving Senators Leahy and Specter, the leaders 
of our Judiciary Committee, time to work out the differences.

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