[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 6]
[House]
[Page 8347]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1215
                        TRIBUTE TO MICHAEL BAHAR

  (Mr. SCHIFF asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to Michael 
Bahar, who will be leaving the House Permanent Select Committee on 
Intelligence, where he has served as general counsel since September 
2012, and as staff director and general counsel since early 2015.
  Because of Michael's commitment to always finding a way to ``yes,'' 
he has helped guide HPSCI to a run of remarkable legislative success 
over the past 2 years. In a city of tacticians, Michael's great gift is 
his ability to look at things strategically, even while reacting in 
real time to emerging matters at hand.
  Under Michael's leadership of the HPSCI Democratic staff, we have 
passed two successive bipartisan intelligence authorization acts, both 
of which received multiple and successively larger vote tallies each 
time they came to the floor.
  In June 2015, we passed the USA FREEDOM Act that ended bulk 
collection of telephony metadata under section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, 
replacing it with a new regime more protective of Americans' privacy.
  And later in 2015, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 
was included as part of the 2016 omnibus spending bill. CISA, which 
encourages businesses and the Federal Government to share cyber threat 
information in the interest of national security, could not have been 
timelier.
  Neither bill would have been possible without Michael's tireless 
efforts. He worked on a broad range of issues with a broad range of 
stakeholders, in and out of government, and these measures were 
necessary and effective in securing our liberties.
  Prior to joining the committee, Michael served with dedication in the 
Obama White House as Deputy Legal Adviser to the National Security 
Council staff. He is a Naval reservist supporting U.S. Special 
Operations Command.
  After a well-deserved vacation, Michael will embark on a new career 
as a lawyer here in D.C. On behalf of the entire HPSCI family, I want 
to wish Michael, his wife, Hannah, and their daughter, Rose, the very 
best, and thank him for his years of service to the Nation.

                          ____________________