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Dead Constitution See other Dead Constitution Articles Title: Blue Dogs Defect on Surveillance Bill Blue Dogs Defect on Surveillance Bill By Tim Starks, CQ Staff A day of intense House debate over an update of electronic eavesdropping rules ended with a rebuff of Democratic leaders — and little clarity about what would come next. The House rejected Wednesday a 21-day extension of a temporary law governing electronic surveillance. Dozens of Democrats defected, as the short-term bill (HR 5349) failed, 191-229. The defeat followed a parliamentary battle that raged all day on the floor. Democrats closed ranks to kill a Republican procedural move to replace the Democratic leaders’ short-term bill with a White House-backed Senate bill that would rewrite and extend surveillance laws for six years. But that victory was short-lived. No Republicans voted for the 21-day extension, while 34 Democrats — a mix of liberals and conservatives — voted “no.” “We need to address this and get it over with. I want us to vote on the Senate bill,” said Lincoln Davis, D-Tenn., one of 21 conservative Blue Dog Democrats who have endorsed the Senate bill and who voted against the short-term extension. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., said Democrats would continue to negotiate a compromise with the Senate, which passed its surveillance overhaul bill a day earlier on a 68-29 vote. Hoyer would not rule out bringing another extension to the floor, and on Wednesday night the House Rules Committee approved a rule that would allow Democratic leaders to bring to floor Thursday “any bill related to foreign intelligence surveillance.” A senior Democratic aide said the rule was approved because “we’re keeping our options open.” A temporary surveillance law (PL 110-55) enacted in August is set to expire Feb. 16, a day after Congress begins its Presidents Day recess. Democratic leaders said the government can continue activities now in progress and obtain warrants for new surveillance under a permanent spying law known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA, PL 95-511). Republicans said expiration of the temporary law would harm the nation’s security, and President Bush has threatened to veto the short-term extensions, saying it is time for Congress to act on a long-term bill. Procedural Fights The short-term extension was intended to give House and Senate conferees time to resolve their differences over the long-term legislation (HR 3773). “All we’re asking for is an extension of 21 days,” said Michael Arcuri, D-N.Y. “When you think of it in the grand scheme of things, 21 days to think about whether this bill continues to give the American people the liberty they have had, that’s not much to ask.” But Wilson said Democrats could not continue to authorize surveillance on “a month-to-month basis” without harming intelligence operations. And Bush drew a hard line against another extension. “Congress has had over six months to discuss and deliberate. The time for debate is over. I will not accept any temporary extension,” the president said. House Republicans — emboldened by the support of 21 Blue Dog Democrats for the Senate version of the bill — engineered procedural protests against the 21-day extension. In their most direct challenge to the House legislation, Republicans offered a “motion to recommit” the stopgap bill with instructions to amend it with the text of the Senate bill. Had the move succeeded, the House would have moved to an immediate vote on the Senate’s long-term extension of spying laws. But the GOP’s effort was ruled non-germane by the chair. Republicans sought to appeal the ruling, but Democrats moved to table, or kill, that GOP effort. The Democratic motion was adopted, 222-196. On that vote, all but one Democrat — centrist Christopher Carney of Pennsylvania — voted with the party leadership. Such procedural votes are considered tests of party unity, and members typically are loath to buck their leadership on such votes even when they disagree on the substance of the legislation. Resisting Pressure House leaders have resisted pressure from the White House and Senate Republicans to take up the Senate version of the House-passed bill, a carefully negotiated bipartisan measure that was put together by the Senate Intelligence Committee with input from the Bush administration. 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 would veto the House version. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Hoyer blamed the GOP 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,” Reid said. “I believe it is wrong and irresponsible for the White House to do this.” He said that if the temporary extension was defeated or vetoed by Bush, “the responsibility for any ensuing intelligence collection gap lies on his shoulders and his alone.” Hoyer said Republican claims “that somehow the intelligence community will not be able to do their duty” were not true. If that was true, he said, the president would not have threatened to veto an extension of it. But Republicans maintained the expiration of the temporary law, called the Protect America Act, would threaten the homeland. “Allowing the Protect America Act to expire would undermine our national security and endanger American lives, and that is unacceptable,” House Minority Leader John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, said. Lydia Gensheimer contributed to this article.
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I heard Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, on the radio this morning. He seems determined to defy the White House's threats. So it looks as if the "Protect America Act" really is going to expire tomorrow, and the old FISA law to go back into effect.
To reason, indeed, he was not in the habit of attending. His mode of arguing, if it is to be so called, was one not uncommon among dull and stubborn persons, who are accustomed to be surrounded by their inferiors. He asserted a proposition; and, as often as wiser people ventured respectfully to show that it was erroneous, he asserted it again, in exactly the same words, and conceived that, by doing so, he at once disposed of all objections. - Macaulay, "History of England," Vol. 1, Chapter 6, on James II.
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