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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Bush Rejects Extension of Temporary Electronic Surveillance Law Bush Rejects Extension of Temporary Electronic Surveillance Law By Tim Starks, CQ Staff As the House prepared to consider a 21-day extension of a temporary law governing electronic surveillance, President Bush said Wednesday he would refuse to sign it. House Republicans forced a series of procedural votes in a bid to derail the extension, arguing that the House should simply take up and send to the White House a surveillance overhaul bill (HR 3773) that was passed by the Senate on Tuesday. The extension (HR 5349) is designed to give House and Senate conferees time to resolve their differences over the long-term legislation overhauling the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A temporary law (PL 110-55) expires Feb. 16, a day after lawmakers leave for the Presidents Day recess. “Congress has had over six months to discuss and deliberate. The time for debate is over. I will not accept any temporary extension,” Bush said. He added, “If Republicans and Democrats in the Senate can come together on a good piece of legislation, there’s no reason that the Republicans and Democrats in the House cannot come together and pass the Senate bill immediately.” House leaders have resisted pressure from the White House and Senate Republicans to take up the Senate version (S 2248) of the bill, a carefully negotiated bipartisan measure that was passed Tuesday by 68-29. A major sticking point is retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies facing lawsuits for their alleged participation in warrantless surveillance. The Senate bill would grant such immunity, while the House-passed measure would not. Bush has said he will veto the House version. “If these companies are subjected to lawsuits that could cost them billions of dollars, they won’t participate; they won’t help us; they won’t help protect America,” Bush said Wednesday. “Liability protection is critical to securing the private sector’s cooperation with our intelligence efforts.” Republicans are raising the specter of a hobbled intelligence community if the temporary surveillance law expires this weekend and the Senate-passed FISA bill does not become law. But legal experts say the implications of any expiration are mixed. They note that any spying orders already in place would remain in effect long after the temporary law lapses. At the same time, most experts agree that the administration would have to go back to the secret FISA court created by the 1978 law (PL 95-511) to obtain warrants in cases where foreign-to-foreign communications are routed through the United States’ telecommunications infrastructure. That poses little immediate threat, they say, but if a backlog of warrant applications were to build, as happened last summer, it could begin to cause problems. And because Bush administration officials have repeatedly claimed that the president has all the authority he needs to conduct a surveillance program in the service of national security, some experts argue that the administration is likely to do as it pleases regardless of what happens in Congress. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., blamed GOP intransigence for the current impasse. “Senate Republicans and the White House have spent many weeks slow-walking the bill as part of a Republican strategy to jam the House,” he said Wednesday. “I believe it is wrong and irresponsible for the White House to do this.” He said that if the temporary extension is defeated or vetoed by Bush, “the responsibility for any ensuing intelligence collection gap lies on his shoulders and his alone.” Source: CQ Today Online News
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