Fallen Servicemembers Religious Heritage Restoration Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, when I was majority leader in 2008, Mr. Blunt, who was then in the leadership of the Republican Party, Senator Kit Bond, and Senator Jay Rockefeller, who co-chaired the Intel Committee in the United States Senate, and I worked together in a very difficult context.

That context was that the Bush administration had asked for information from the telecoms. The telecoms had given them information, and there were really no firewalls as to what that information was.

The four of us worked with the Intelligence Committee of the House to come up with legislation which would solve the problem of making sure that we were secure as a country and that the privacy of our citizens was secure. We think we accomplished that objective.

In fact, the leadership in the Senate voted for it. President Obama, then a Member of the Senate, voted for it. Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Clyburn, and I voted for it, along with others. The Republicans were overwhelmingly for it.

In September 2012, we did it again. Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Hoyer, and Mr. Clyburn voted for it. We did it again in January 2018, and Pelosi, Hoyer, Clyburn, Ryan, McCarthy, and Scalise all voted for it.

The point I will make is, this has been a bipartisan process with bipartisan Presidential buy-in to the necessity to have this legislation adopted to keep Americans safe while also adopting significant reforms in 2008 and some reforms thereafter to provide for the privacy protections to the American people.

It is a balance, but it is a balance that I think we have achieved. I think we ought to pass this legislation. I urge my colleagues to do so.

Our FISA reauthorization bills are how Congress ensures that our Nation is protected in the first instance against threats from terrorist groups and foreign adversaries. Our intelligence services have the difficult task of catching threats before they materialize and are providing critical information to national security leaders.

As many here will remember, the attacks of September 11, 2001, occurred after our national security agencies failed to identify, track, and coordinate known threats. Twenty-five years later, we have learned these lessons, and we continue to grapple with essential questions about how to balance the needs of our national security with protecting Americans' liberties.

That is an ongoing process, of course, and I know Democrats on the committee, led by Ranking Member Himes, were diligent in pushing for reforms to section 702 that would make those protections stronger for Americans while still delivering the tools needed. This bill does not include all the reforms.

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Mr. HOYER. None of the bills that we consider have all the things we would like to have in them, but in testimony from Avril Haines, who headed up the DNI under the Biden administration, she believes this is absolutely essential. Other members of the Obama administration and the Biden administration believe this legislation is essential.

I believe this legislation is essential, and I urge my colleagues, having worked on this since 2008, to adopt this legislation and make America as safe as we possibly can.

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