[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Page 989]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                  FISA

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, I want everyone--especially my Republican 
colleagues and especially the people in the White House--to listen to 
what I am going to say. FISA, if we don't do something on it today, 
will expire. It will be out of business. The House is going out of 
session tonight, so unless we get to them the 30-day extension we have 
tried to move forward five or six times, unless we have an extension of 
18 months, a year, 2 weeks, whatever the Republicans think is 
appropriate--if they think nothing is appropriate--then the full brunt 
of this law expiring is on their shoulders because it is virtually 
legislatively impossible to get anything done today. Remember, the 
House has already done what they are going to do. If we took what the 
Intelligence Committee passed, which is likely not going to happen, we 
would have to have a conference with the House. They are going out of 
session tonight. They are out of town on Wednesday and Thursday and 
Friday. So unless we do something today, the bill is not going to be 
enacted and the legislation we passed last August will expire.
  Now, the orders that have been sought and accomplished during the 
time since last August will still be in effect, and, of course, there 
will be an opportunity under the old FISA law to work on an emergency 
basis for new things they want to do.
  We want to maintain the ability to go after the bad people. We 
believe there is a necessity for intercepting telephone conversations 
between people who are trying to do bad things. We think it should be 
within the constitutional framework, and we believe that is what the 
Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee have done. But I 
again say, without getting into any details, unless we do something 
today, unless someone can explain to me how we can pass something here 
in a matter of a few hours, how we can have a conference with the House 
in a matter of a few hours and then bring those two conference reports 
to the House and the Senate in a few hours--I say that is legislatively 
impossible.
  So I am saying again to my Republican colleagues: Agree to some 
extension of time or the burden of this legislation not passing is on 
your shoulders because we have had no attempt to legislate. We have not 
had the opportunity to offer amendments, let alone vote on them.
  Our goal is to provide the intelligence community with all of the 
legal tools it needs, while protecting the privacy of law-abiding 
Americans. So I would hope that in the next hour or so, we can work 
something out before the House leaves town or nothing will have been 
accomplished.

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