[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Page 850]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  FISA

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, as I said twice yesterday--and I will just 
say it briefly this morning--Democrats believe there are a lot of bad 
people out there and that there should be some form of collecting 
information over the telephone. But we believe it should be done in an 
orderly way in keeping with our Constitution. It appears, based on 
Republican actions yesterday, they want no controls whatsoever on the 
President. They want exactly what he has been doing now, which is 
violating the law.
  Mr. President, we have offered a 2-week extension of the bill, a 30-
day extension, a 15-month extension. If this bill that we have now 
before us is not enacted, it is not because of Democrats, it is because 
the Republicans, in conjunction with Vice President Cheney and the 
President, have made some determination that there should be no FISA 
legislation.
  I, frankly, do not think that cloture will be invoked Monday 
afternoon. That being the case, it is virtually legislatively 
impossible to do anything by February 1. Remember, the House is out of 
session all but 1 day next week.
  So the record should be very clear, we believe there are very bad 
people out there. We believe there should be some way of collecting 
information. But we believe, as does the vast majority of the American 
people, it should be collected in some way that is within the bounds of 
our Constitution.

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