Motion to Go to Conference on H.R. Usa Freedom Reauthorization Act of 2020
Floor Speech
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 1 of rule XXII, and by direction of the Committee on the Judiciary, I offer a motion on the bill (H.R. 6172) to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 to prohibit the production of certain business records, and for other purposes.
The Clerk read the title of the bill.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, for purposes of debate only, I yield 30 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), and I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, bills like the USA Freedom Reauthorization Act touch deeply held beliefs on all sides.
The bill we intended to consider last night strengthened privacy protections and made substantial improvements to the law. The bill, as amended by the Senate, is a good and important package of reforms.
Now, you may disagree with that assessment, you may genuinely believe that the bill doesn't go far enough to reform the FISA system or perhaps that it goes too far with those reforms. If you disagree with me on the merits of the bill, I respect that disagreement.
What I cannot accept, and what I suspect many Americans will not accept, is a transparent, inexplicable, totally unjustified flip-flop on this bill, a bill important both to the security and the privacy of the United States.
Just a few weeks ago, 126 Republicans joined 152 Democrats in support of a nearly identical measure, different only in that the Senate has added one amendment, a good amendment with almost universal support. Virtually all of those 126 Republicans changed their position in the past 24 hours.
Madam Speaker, the American people see through those excuses. Nobody believes that this sudden reversal has anything to do with complaints about proxy voting. Nobody believes that the flip-flop is about Michael Flynn or Roger Stone, or even President Trump, whose cases have nothing to do with the authorities we hope to reform.
There have been no real policy demands to explain the sudden reversal, no demands for changes in the bill. If my Republican colleagues had asked for substantive changes to the bill, we would have heard them out and tried to address their concerns.
But that is not what happened. The Republicans abandoned this bipartisan project for one reason, and one reason only: the President tweeted, on a whim, and told them to oppose this bill.
Madam Speaker, this is just one more example of how the President and his enablers in this body have stood in the way of national security, of civil liberties, and of our responsibility as Members of Congress.
I refuse to let our efforts to reform FISA die simply because Republicans are unwilling to stand up to the President's whims.
This legislation ends the NSA's call detail records program; it applies the cutting edge of Fourth Amendment privacy protections to section 215; it forces the government to disclose years of secret FISA court opinions; it increases transparency across the board; it raises the stakes for any government attorney who would dare mislead the court; and it dramatically expands the role of the amicus to be an advocate for privacy and civil liberties and to push back against claims that should have been rejected by the court long ago.
It is our responsibility to continue our work, to pass this bill, to send it to the President's desk, and to ensure that these reforms are made law.
None of us should rest until we have done that work.
I would be very interested to hear what changed in the bill between yesterday morning and yesterday evening that caused the Republicans to withdraw their support from a bill they had agreed to, from provisions they said were improvements to national security, from provisions they said were improvements to civil liberties of American citizens, and suddenly all oppose it. What changed, other than the President's tweet?
Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this motion and send the bill to conference where we can do the job we were sent here to do.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I am glad the gentleman learned all this since noon yesterday when he testified in front of the Rules Committee in favor of this bill.
I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished majority leader.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, let me just say, first of all, of course, much of what the distinguished gentleman from Ohio said is fiction, as we all know.
But, second of all, this bill as of yesterday noon was supported by Republicans and was supported by the gentleman from Ohio as making sufficient reforms, as making the reforms that we all recognize we need in the FISA system.
Madam Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), who is the distinguished majority leader.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I listened to the distinguished gentleman a moment ago: We shouldn't pass any legislation that the President won't sign.
The King of England used to have the royal prerogative, an absolute veto. The President of the United States does not.
This House and the Senate should do its job and pass proper legislation, and let the President do his job. We had two-thirds of the votes in this House for this bill.
Yes, the gentleman from Ohio mentions the Lofgren-Davidson amendment. I support that amendment. If we had gone forward, we could have gone with it. But the fact of the matter is, they have withdrawn their support because of the President's tweet, and for no other reason, we are where we are now.
To preserve the ability to have the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and preserve national security as well as the improvements in the act embodied in this bill and in the Senate version of the bill that improves security while improving privacy protections against surveillance, we must approve this motion to go to conference.
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Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Madam Speaker, I repeat what I said before. We have a choice. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as everybody agrees, is not in good shape. FISA is necessary to preserve the security of the United States. I think everyone agrees with that. But we need improvements to FISA to make sure that while we protect the security of the United States against foreign aggression and foreign subversion, such as the Russian attempt to subvert our elections 4 years ago, we also must improve FISA to provide greater protections against unwarranted surveillance and provide greater protections for American civil liberties and privacy.
This bill does that. It may not do it as much as some people want, but it goes a heck of a lot further than what we have now. This bill must be passed if we are going to have the protections of civil liberties that we want.
Madam Speaker, this bill is a decent balance. I urge its adoption. To do that, we have to go to conference. I urge the adoption of the motion to go to conference, and I yield back the balance of my time.
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