Motion to Go to Conference on H.R. Usa Freedom Reauthorization Act of 2020
Floor Speech
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Mr. DAVIDSON of Ohio. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Madam Speaker, as the majority leader well knows better than most of us in the room, for a bill to become law, the President of the United States must sign it, and he has made clear that he is not going to sign this product. So, it is a complete waste of everyone's time to send over a bill that has no chance to become law.
Rather than make this bill better, rather than make this bill something that could become law, we are going to run out the clock on more broken process. Why are we going to do that? We are going to do that because the people who are working to preserve the broken status quo of warrantless spying on American citizens want to keep that status quo in place.
So, rather than allow real reform, we have had a process that bypassed the Judiciary Committee. When Chairman Nadler realized he didn't have the votes to move his own product through the committee, he pulled the whole committee process. In a committee process, amendments would be able to be offered, and because they knew the amendments would be offered in accordance with the rules of the House and would be adopted if they were given a chance to vote, they had to pull it.
So, they didn't run it through the committee. The people who are represented by all 435 of us in this body had no chance to have their voices heard in a regular process. Leadership jammed through this broken bill to try to put some window dressing of reform on it.
Some of them are important; they are better than the status quo. But they are just modest reforms. That is why they had so much support from the people who want to preserve it. Then, when there was a real reform, you saw that drop off. Then, when there was the Lofgren-Davidson amendment that really would reform it and stop warrantless spying on Americans' internet browser data, when it was spying on Americans, they stopped it--not a single vote on an amendment in the people's House of the United States of America to preserve and protect the freedoms guaranteed in the Fourth Amendment.
Yes, we must make our Nation secure. But we must do it constitutionally in full compliance with the Bill of Rights. No one is exempt, Article I, Article II, or Article III.
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