[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 3]
[House]
[Page 3652]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                FISA AND THE HOUSE DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP

  (Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico asked and was given permission to address 
the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend her remarks.)
  Mrs. WILSON of New Mexico. Madam Speaker, my colleague from Kentucky 
has just raised an important point, which is that we need to revise the 
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. But I think he's a little 
misinformed.
  He says that there are bipartisan negotiations going on. The Speaker 
hasn't even appointed conferees. You can't even have negotiations with 
the Senate. The negotiations are going on between the Democrat 
leadership and the conservative Democrats that want to pass a 
bipartisan Senate bill and have written a letter to your leadership 
about it.
  We are now on day 25 when we have had the Protect America Act expire. 
All we need to do is to be able to listen to foreigners in foreign 
countries without a warrant. The Senate bill has unprecedented 
protections for Americans' civil liberties, more than are in the 1978 
law that all of us in this House support. But, instead, the liberal 
Democratic leadership is blocking the will of the majority of this 
House.
  It is time for Democrats to stand up to your own leadership and 
demand that the protection of this country is more important than 
special interest groups that have a hold on the Democratic leadership.
  Security must come first.

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