Excerpts of Senate Floor Speeches on USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization Conference Report
Statement of Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin):
December 14, 2005: Credit ... has to go to the American people who stood up despite the dismissive and derisive comments of Government officials and said with loud voices: The PATRIOT Act needs to be changed. And these voices came from the left and the right, from big cities and small towns all across the country. So far, over 400 State and local governmental bodies have passed resolutions calling for revisions to the PATRIOT Act. I plan to read some of those resolutions on the floor of the Senate in this debate, and there are a lot of them. Nearly everyone mentions section 215.
Statement of Senator Richard Durbin (D-Illinois):
December 14, 2005: In the last 4 years, 400 communities in 45 different States have passed resolutions expressing concerns about the PATRIOT Act . The American people are sensitive to the fact that this could be an infringement on their basic rights. The communities that passed these resolutions represent about 62 million people across this country from every corner of the United States.
Senator Craig and I introduced the SAFE Act to address these concerns. Three Republican Senators, three Democratic Senators, we came together across the aisle to try to find a bipartisan and sensible approach to dealing with this issue. The SAFE Act , as I said, would not eliminate the PATRIOT Act . It would only reform it.
Statement of Senator Larry E.Craig (R-Idaho):
December 15, 2005: Mr. President, let me, for a moment, touch on something I think is important. This issue has spread beyond these walls and beyond this building.
The Idaho Legislature, my legislature in Idaho, by a resolution, a house joint memorial and a senate joint memorial to the Congress, asked that we support the SAFE Act . The SAFE Act was the passage of amendments that the Senate Judiciary Committee incorporated within our version of the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act that passed this body unanimously.
From the beginning, those of us who have concerns about PATRIOT have had an uphill battle. Practically before the ink was dry on our bill--and certainly well before any committee had reviewed it--we faced a veto recommendation. Before they even read our reform proposals, some of PATRIOT's defenders charged us with wanting to repeal the law and do away with all the tools it provided law enforcement to protect our country against terrorism.
Those charges were not true when we began, and they're not true today. We are not trying to undo PATRIOT . If some Senators still believe that, well, the rest of the country does not.
Statement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-Massachusetts):
December 16, 2005: In the wake of the tragic events on September 11, Congress, the administration, and the country faced the urgent need to do everything possible to strengthen our national security and counterterrorism efforts, and the original PATRIOT Act was our response to that need.
Even at that time, many of us had concerns about whether the law went too far. In November 2001, Nancy Talanian and a small group of neighbors in western Massachusetts came together to launch the Bill of Rights Defense Committee--what has now become a nationwide movement to protect the Bill of Rights.
This small Massachusetts group encouraged similar community discussions across the country. Seven States and hundreds of local governments engaged in vigorous public debate on the scope of the PATRIOT Act. As of this week, 400 resolutions have been passed.
These efforts can't be casually dismissed because the administration claims there have not been any ``verified abuses'' of the PATRIOT Act.
Statement of Representative James R. Langevin (D-Rhode Island):
December 14, 2005: Madam Speaker, today I rise in opposition to the conference report on H.R. 3199, the USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization. While I do not advocate permitting many of these important terrorism-fighting tools to expire at the end of the year, the American people would be better served by a bill that strikes a more reasonable balance between protecting civil liberties and fighting the war on terrorism. I am disappointed that the conference report does not closely mirror the bipartisan compromise that unanimously passed the Senate. I urge my colleagues to reject this conference report and take a bipartisan approach to protecting Americans' lives and liberties.
Since the USA PATRIOT Act was enacted shortly after 9/11, I have met with many constituents and countless groups to discuss the details of this controversial legislation. Last year, I hosted a town hall meeting to hear what my constituents thought about the USA PATRIOT Act . While some agreed that the act was necessary to prevent another terrorist attack, most of the crowd, as well as most Rhode Islanders, believed we have already ceded too much ground with respect to our civil liberties. In my State, seven cities and towns have passed resolutions opposing parts of the USA PATRIOT Act , and my constituents understand what this bill means to them and their freedom.
Statement of Representative Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas):
December 14. 2005: Madam Speaker, I join my many colleagues, many victims of terrorism, and many victims of racial and religious profiling in opposing this legislation, H.R. 3199, for several reasons. First, we never have been given the facts necessary to fully evaluate the operation of the underlying bill, the USA PATRIOT Act . Second, there are numerous provisions in both the expiring and other sections of the PATRIOT Act that have little to do with combating terrorism, intrude on our privacy and civil liberties, and have been subject to repeated abuse and misuse by the Justice Department. Third, the legislation does nothing to address the many unilateral civil rights and civil liberties abuses by the administration since the September 11 attacks. Finally, the bill does not provide law enforcement with any additional real and meaningful tools necessary to help our Nation prevail in the war against terrorism. Since 2002, 389 communities and 7 States have passed resolutions opposing parts of the PATRIOT Act , representing over 62 million people. Additionally, numerous groups ranging the political spectrum have come forward to oppose certain sections of the PATRIOT Act and to demand that Congress conduct more oversight on its use, including the American Civil Liberties Union, American Conservative Union, American Immigration Lawyers Association, American Library Association, Center for Constitutional Rights, Center for Democracy and Technology, Common Cause, Free Congress Foundation, Gun Owners of America, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People--NAACP, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, People for the American Way, and numerous groups concerned about immigrants' rights.
Statement of Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan):
December 14, 2005: Madam Speaker, if only what my good friend, the chairman, said was accurate, we would not be here to ask that this measure be turned down and that we pass a 3-month extension, as I have proposed and is in legislative form, so that the PATRIOT Act and intelligence reform would not be stymied.
It is like coming to a meeting and we have forgotten all the things that most of the Members on my side of the aisle on the Judiciary Committee agreed with is wrong with the PATRIOT Act , but that we have ignored the fact that many other organizations are not for the PATRIOT Act .
Now, what safeguards are being preserved is very interesting for me because the opponents of the PATRIOT Act , including seven States that have passed resolutions opposing parts of the PATRIOT Act and a number of communities that have done so, represent over 62 million Americans.
Additionally, numerous groups ranging across all parts of the political spectrum have come forward to oppose sections of the PATRIOT Act and demand that the Congress conduct more oversight, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, the American Library Association, the Center For Constitutional Rights, the Center For Democracy and Technology, Common Cause, Free Congress Foundation, Gun Owners of America, the Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Criminal Defense Lawyers, People for the American Way, and numerous other groups concerned about immigrants' rights.
Statement of Representative Tom Udall (D-New Mexico):
December 14, 2005: I rise today in opposition to the PATRIOT Act reauthorization conference report. As a former Federal prosecutor and New Mexico's Attorney General, I am familiar with both the needs of law enforcement to pursue suspects and a strong supporter of law enforcement. I am also a strong supporter of civil liberties and believe that our Constitution must be guarded against encroachment even in the name of security.
On October 24, 2001, a justified sense of urgency resulted in an unjustifiably rushed vote on the PATRIOT Act. [...]
Many of us had little time to study the bill which became law. A bipartisan bill was junked by the majority's Rules Committee in the middle of the night. Since this legislation was enacted, over 385 cities, towns, and counties in 43 States passed resolutions concerning the PATRIOT Act . In New Mexico alone, 10 cities and four counties have adopted resolutions calling for reform. I have received thousands of letters from Americans worried about excessive government power without judicial oversight.
Statement of Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio):
December 14, 2005: Today, the House will ignore more than 400 local communities and seven States that have passed resolutions asking for PATRIOT Act reform. This legislation fails to provide reasonable sunset provisions that guarantee future congressional review. The bill retains 4-year sunsets for only two of the 16 PATRIOT Act provisions and only one of two expiring provisions in the 2004 Intelligence Reform Act . All other intrusive powers are either made permanent or remain permanent.
This bill continues to allow roving wiretaps that permit Federal agents to tap communications of a target where neither the target nor the phone is identified. Criminal wiretaps require one or the other, and the 10-day after-the-fact notice requirement is no substitute for privacy safeguards in the criminal wiretaps.
The bill continues to permit sneak-and-peak searches of a person's home or business to remain secret indefinitely. It drops a Senate provision supported by the Chamber of Commerce, conservatives, libraries, civil liberties organizations that set limits on secret court orders for library, medical, and other personal records. Instead, the bill establishes a false right to judicial review. A recipient must challenge before a preselected group of three court judges and go to the expense of hiring a lawyer with a security clearance who the FISA court agrees can appear before it.
So people have to essentially fight for their rights to be free of the scourge of wiretaps and to be free of the scourge of having the FBI reach into their library records, their reading records, their medical records.
Where are we going with this country? It is not the America it used to be. It has become something that is hard to recognize for many Americans.
Vote against this bill.
Statement of Representative Mark Udall (D-Colorado):
December 14, 2005: The conference report does not do enough to reduce the potential that the authority it gives to the FBI and other agencies could be abused or misused in ways that intrude on Americans' privacy and civil liberties--a potential that has led more than 300 communities and seven States, including Colorado--governments representing over 62 million people--to pass resolutions opposing parts of the Patriot Act .
· The Senate, to its credit, did a better job than the House in responding to the concerns that prompted such resolutions , while still providing ample tools that the government can use to work against the threat of more terrorist attacks, at home and abroad.