Conference Report on H.R. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, with respect to the discussion about who is controlling the time, I would rise in true opposition to claim time.
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Mr. ROY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the National Defense Authorization Act, and I say that respectfully to both sides who negotiated the bill, but I think the points that have been made here make my point.
The fact of the matter is what is being stated is that it is impossible to oppose the National Defense Authorization Act because we put a pay raise in it, or because we put something in there that is seemingly so important that we have to ignore the critical destruction of our civil liberties by adding FISA extensions right on the top of it, without doing the reforms necessary to protect the American people.
We do this every year. Then we are told: Oh, congratulations. We just had a conference committee.
No, we didn't. Five people didn't even sign the conference report.
What happened was a deal was cut by leadership, by the four corners, to shove down a predetermined bill into the conference, and said: Take it.
Five people didn't sign it. They sent that conference report back to us, and they said: Take it, pass this before Christmas or you are going to leave our men and women in uniform stranded.
That is what occurred. That is what is actually happening.
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I want to clear up one misconception, that somehow there was a block of us who were denying the ability to have a rule on the floor with respect to FISA 702.
The fact is, the question was, was there going to be a rule for something called queen of the hill, in which two bills would have been put forward with no amendments, none. There would have been no debate on the House floor. There would have been no ability to amend it here on the floor.
As usual, it would have been the people who say they are the only ones who know the information needed to make the decisions for the American people to do it in a committee, behind closed doors, often in the SCIF, without half of us knowing any of the information, and then bring it to the floor and say take it or leave it. That was what was going to occur.
We said we shouldn't do it that way, that what we should do is bring a bill to the floor that would reform FISA, allow us to offer amendments, have a debate on the warrant requirements, have a debate on who it applies to, and decide whether or not we are going to actually protect the civil liberties of the American people.
Instead, no, no, what we are going to do is pile on an extension of FISA on the back of our defense authorization; that is, on the back of our men and women in uniform. We are going to allow it to be extended and the procedures extended until April of 2025. That is what your people's House is going to do.
Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Montana (Mr. Rosendale).
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I would note that even if section 702 lapses at the end of December, the intelligence community will remain able to conduct 702 collection and queries until April 11, 2024. By the way, that is even setting aside Article I authority, which the President of the United States can go exercise under the current FISC certification.
Number two, if the NDAA is passed with a FISA extension, as I said before, to April 19, 2024, it will enable the Biden administration to seek another yearlong certification which would kick it until April of 2025.
Both of those points have been independently corroborated by CRS attorneys as recently as August of this year and by Trump administration attorneys under similar circumstances as reported in The New York Times in 2017, an article that laid that out.
Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry).
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The question is: Who gets to decide? That is the question. Who gets to make these grand pronouncements of who is going to compromise? It sure as hell wasn't any of us. That wasn't the deal.
What was tried to be done with FISA was to bring two bills to the floor unamendable and decided by only small groups of people. That is what was occurring.
With respect to this, it was decided by leadership, both sides, to take and jam the FISA extension on the back of our men and women in uniform and bring that to the floor in violation of our rules for single subject, and then they say take it or leave it. That was what was done. That was the compromise.
If you poke the bear in this town, they don't like to be poked because it changes the way this town works, heaven forbid. It has been going so well and so beautifully that we are $34 trillion in debt, and we have rampant spying on the American people that is occurring.
In 2020 and early 2021, the FBI conducted 278,000 improper searches of Americans, according to the 2022 FISC report. We are supposed to trust the FBI to fix that.
In June 2022, an FBI analyst conducted four queries of section 702 information using the last names of a United States Senator and a State senator based on information that a foreign intelligence service was targeting those individuals.
We have rampant abuses going on, and this body is just going to extend the very mechanism of those abuses on the back of the National Defense Authorization Act. They say: Have a nice day. Merry Christmas. Go home and have your turkey. Go home and be with your families.
That is what is actually occurring.
Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gaetz).
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Mr. ROY. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, we are here because it is right before Christmas and everybody says we must pass this. Okay, we should pass the National Defense Authorization Act.
We should deal with FISA, but it shouldn't be an extension of FISA that continues the same procedures that have been abused. It extends those procedures through April 2025. That is what we are going to do.
The fact of the matter is, there was an NSA analyst's backdoor search for the communication of two individuals the analyst had met on an online dating service. There was an NSA analyst's backdoor search for the communications of a prospective tenant of a rental property they owned.
A backdoor search was conducted for the names and dates of birth of individuals who were registered competitors at an athletic event, a backdoor search for 1,600 Americans who had flown through an airport during a particular date range and were either traveling to or returning from a foreign country, all according to a report from the Privacy and Civil Rights Oversight Board.
The FISA Court issued opinions in 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022 decrying FBI agents' persistent and widespread violation of such safeguards.
Now, I do believe we have bipartisan reforms. We just passed a good bill out of the Judiciary Committee. I believe it was a good bill that was passed out of the Intelligence Committee. I prefer the Judiciary Committee bill. I think we should be debating those. I think we should have one bill on the floor, and I think we should amend them.
We have 18 days remaining in the calendar year before FISA allegedly expires, which I already detailed. CRS attorneys and other outside experts are detailing how they will continue to be able to collect data under 702. Nevertheless, we could get it done by December 31 if we actually did our job.
Instead, what we are going to do is kick the can down the road, and we are going to empower the court to be able to set the procedures in place for another 16 months because that is what we do. We are the House of kicking the can down the road. That is what we do every year. We are doing it right now, and we are doing it today.
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Mr. ROY. I yield myself the balance of my time to close.
Madam Speaker, another point that I think merits observation is that, as we speak, with the 18 days remaining, the Senate, rather than working on ensuring that we get a better NDAA--but, more importantly in this context because that process is kind of played out--rather than figuring out how we are going to deal with FISA and reform it to make sure Americans' civil liberties are protected, we have the Senate in negotiations with the White House on figuring out what crumbs can be given for border security to be attached to Ukraine funding while Zelenskyy is paraded around Washington trying to demand more money for Ukraine when our border is wide-open.
So the Senate has plenty of time to hold themselves here in negotiation with the White House so we can beg for crumbs for the protection of our sovereignty and security of the people of Texas and the people of this country, but we don't have time to figure out how to fix FISA. It is pretty extraordinary. It is pretty extraordinary.
In the meantime, in this very bill is $600 million authorized for Ukraine. Now, I am actually not personally all that troubled by those provisions. We supported them in the authorization bill in July, but I would note, importantly, to my colleagues on this side of the aisle, a majority of Republicans opposed an amendment for the continuation of that funding to Ukraine in a September vote on the floor.
A majority of Republicans opposed that funding, and, yet, we are authorizing it here on the back of a number of provisions that we don't support and on the back of FISA being piled on the top of that Defense authorization bill. For the life of me, I do not understand why this is how Republicans think we should end the year heading out for Christmas.
Madam Speaker, in closing, we have come to the floor today on a bill that all of us want to see passed. Every single one of us wants to pass a National Defense Authorization Act. Every single one of us wants to ensure that our men and women in uniform are paid appropriately, have the tools they need to carry out their job, have the care they need when they get home, and that we do our job. Every single one of us wants to make sure that we do that.
Nevertheless, we are doing a terrible disservice to the people of this country by piling on an extension of a FISA regime that was abused--notably and clearly abused--against American citizens without reforming that piece of legislation by kicking the can down the road and by extending it not just through April but through April of 2025.
A vote for this bill is not just a bill for pay raises and support for our men and women in uniform. A vote for this bill is a perpetuation of the woke policies undermining our military, breaking down morale, driving down recruiting, and now undermining the civil liberties of the American people by not reforming FISA.
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