Blue Dogs to Hoyer: Pass the Bipartisan Senate FISA Bill
Pressure Continues to Build on Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer to End Their Strategy of Inaction on FISA
Washington,
Feb 28, 2008 -
After blocking the Senate-passed bipartisan Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) modernization bill for the last two weeks, House Democratic leaders are feeling the pressure – and it’s not just coming from House Republicans, editorial pages across the country, or the American people, who are increasingly outraged with Congress’ remarkable inaction on a critical bill designed to help keep America safe. Some of the strongest pressure to allow a vote on the bipartisan Senate bill is coming from their fellow Democrats.
As this morning’s Congressional Quarterly story demonstrates, the House Democratic leaders’ strategy of holding phony meetings to give them even more excuses for delaying this legislation has some serious cracks:
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“A cohort of moderate to conservative Democrats is pushing House leaders for another vote on contentious electronic surveillance legislation before an upcoming two-week recess.”
“About 20 ‘Blue Dog’ Democrats met Wednesday with Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., and pressed for another vote before the spring recess, even if it means simply clearing the Senate-passed version of the bill – a course being pushed by the GOP.”
“‘We don’t want for inaction to become the controversy,’ said Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, D-S.D., one of the leaders of the Blue Dog Coalition.”
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This weekend, our nation will begin its third week of being left more vulnerable to terrorist attack because House Democratic leaders continue to block the bipartisan Senate-passed modernization bill. But Democratic leaders seem ready to let the weekend come and go without doing the right thing by bringing the bipartisan Senate-passed bill to the floor.
After House Democratic leaders abruptly pulled an ethics rules package from today’s floor schedule, there was plenty of time to debate and pass the FISA bill, but instead, the Majority has scheduled a handful of non-controversial bills – including two measures dealing with the presidential inauguration, which is more than 10 months away – and plans to adjourn around noon. Two weeks ago, Democratic leaders found themselves in exactly the same position, when Majority Leader Hoyer proclaimed that the House had “space” on the schedule to schedule a politically-motivated contempt of Congress measure but didn’t have “space” to consider the critical FISA bill. This begs the question: is national security really a priority for the Democratic leadership?
David Reinhard, columnist for The Oregonian, doesn’t believe it is. He writes today that because of the Majority’s decision to stubbornly block the Senate’s FISA modernization has given terrorists a critical advantage in the War on Terror:
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“What does her action mean for U.S. surveillance policy? One, we’ve now extended U.S. privacy protections to foreign terrorists overseas. Two, telecom companies that cooperated with the government after 9/11 or agree to in the future will face lawsuits for helping trace terrorist communications. Don’t Pelosi and company have all this exactly backward?
“Say you’re in a hitherto unidentified terror cell operating in Afghanistan and calling someone in Germany to plot the next 9/11. Your call goes through the United States. Our agencies pick up your call while searching out foreign jihadists. Right now, today, thanks to a FISA court ruling and Pelosi’s decision to let the act die, our spies cannot keep listening in on your chat.”
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If you want to figure out why the Democratic leadership has given the green light to the scenario Reinhard has described, look no further than this fact: According to the Center for Responsive Politics, trial lawyers contributed $85 million to Democratic candidates during the 2006 election cycle. And trial lawyers have a significant interest in blocking the Senate-passed bill, which would protect third party firms against frivolous lawsuits for doing their patriotic duty and assisting our intelligence community after 9/11.
In other words, the House Democratic leaders have placed the interests of their trial lawyer allies above the security of the American people. With Blue Dog Democrats, bipartisan majorities in both the House and Senate, and editorial pages across the country applying pressure on them to finally allow a vote on the Senate bill, the question is: how much longer can Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer continue their strategy of inaction?
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