News Conference With Senator Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader, Senator Christopher Bond, And Senator Jon Kyl: The FISA Court, The First Seven Months Of The 110th Congress
Statement
SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, good afternoon, everyone. I think we're getting toward the conclusion of the Congress prior to our August break. That of course will depend entirely upon an ability -- on the willingness of the other side to solve the FISA modification problem.
Senator Bond, the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, and I have placed on the calendar a couple of days ago a proposal that Admiral McConnell, the DNI, will certify to the president gets the job done to fix the anomaly in the 1978 FISA law that you are all familiar with, that both sides agree needs fixing. The issue is how to fix it.
Since Admiral McConnell seems to enjoy strong support on both sides of the aisle in terms of his credibility, believability and understanding of what's needed for the job, it strikes the president and it strikes all of us that he is the best one to determine whether a proposal we might pass actually achieves the fix that is needed to protect us here at home into the future.
So the McConnell-Bond proposal that's at the desk in the Senate will do that job. It is highly likely that at some point in the next few hours Senator Bond and I will make an attempt to go to that measure. And it is our hope that it will pass the Senate at some point later today.
With that, let me call on the vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Bond.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Q Why all this sudden urgency to have this passed? We're hearing about this all this week --
SEN. BOND: Well, the urgency was in April, and he testified before our committee in May. And several people on the committee wanted to have opinions and legal justifications for other parts of the bill, and the discussions over that were holding up the larger bill.
So he came before the Congress -- excuse me -- before the Senate, and I believe some 42 or 45 senators were there, and he addressed -- the leadership of both sides were there. He addressed the fact that this was an urgent need and that we must do it before the August recess because of the threat level that they were picking up, indicating that something was in the works.
And it came down to last week, when he said that this is something that cannot be postponed to September. He proposed a slimmed down version. And in response to suggestions made by Democratic chairmen, he incorporated the -- those provisions in their request that would not interfere with his ability to collect useful information.
Q Senator Bond, could you support a shorter sunset, as Senators Byrd and Feingold and -- (off mike)?
SEN. MCCONNELL: Negotiations are over.
SEN. BOND: This is the -- the negotiations are over. The six- month sunset, I think, is the -- the DNI would agree to a six-month sunset.
This is not my bill. This is not a Republican bill. This is an Admiral Mike McConnell bill based on what he sees the intelligence community needs. And most of the people with whom I talked felt that six months was appropriate.
SEN. MCCONNELL: Let me just add, as I think you know, the president just said within the last hour that he will veto any bill that's not acceptable to the DNI. (Chuckles.) The DNI's not in politics. This is a career military man. His job is to protect us. It's time for the political games to stop. It's time to approve this. The nation's security depends on it. And we will make sure that the Senate votes on the proposal that Senator Bond and I have placed at the desk, because it will get the job done, according to the DNI, who is -- everybody believes is a trustworthy individual, whose sole responsibility it is -- is try to protect the United States from foreign attack.
SEN. BOND: I would add that Admiral McConnell has done a heroic job. He's admitted ruefully that he's not experienced in politics, and I suggested to him that he is getting a whole lot of experience very quickly.
But he is an honorable man who's worked maybe 20 hours a day on this, and I believe that this does reflect his best judgment.
Yes?
Q Mr. Leader, did you --
Q Did you sense that this is the -- (off mike) --
SEN. BOND: I'm sorry?
Q I'm sorry. You say -- you've said that intelligence agencies would be deaf without this legislation in the month of August. Does that mean they're deaf now?
SEN. BOND: It means that over the last several months they have been unable to collect a very significant amount of intelligence that they otherwise would be collecting were it not for the operations of the FISA law, which the FISA judges have expressed to us is outvoted and is focusing too much of their attention on foreign sources with minimal impact on protecting the privacy of United States persons.
Yes, ma'am.
Q My question is for Leader McConnell -- (inaudible). I am curious in your assessment now seven months into the Democratic- controlled Congress what House Democrats have done -- (off mike)?
SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, they've managed to achieve an astonishing thing, which is to have the lowest approval ratings anyone can find for Congress in history and have done it in a record short period of time of about seven months. I think the message that comes out of this for the new majority is don't do things like they're doing today. The American people are not at all interested in seeing us play political games with their security here at home. We have here the word of a career military professional, not a politician, as to what he needs to fix the problems that Senator Bond has outlined. We should do it, we should do it now, and we should quit playing games with it.
Now, that is the reason, in my judgment, that they have managed to lose the support of the American people. A good time to start regaining that I would suggest to the majority is by passing this McConnell-Bond bill shortly.
SEN. JOHN ENSIGN (R-NV): Let me just address -- the Democrats were elected and they ran on that they were going to do things differently around here, that they were going to work together. The American people, based on all of the research and the exit polls and everything that I have seen, didn't elect the Democrats to enact their agenda. They enacted the Democrats -- or elected the Democrats to work together, to bring something different to Washington. The exact opposite has happened.
When you compare when we took over the Congress back in 1995, we actually accomplished a tremendous amount in the Contract with America, got it actually signed into law -- the vast majority of the Contract with America. What they have done this year is they've gotten almost nothing done, nothing signed into law from the president. It is time for us to start working together for the benefit of the American people, and that is the message. And that's the reason, I think, that the approval rating is so low, is because they are bringing things to the floor; they fill up the tree -- all the procedural things they do to shut out the minority. They need to work together across party lines to be able to accomplish things for the American people.
SEN. KYL: I'd just like to add one more thing. You guys are real good reporters and sleuths, and I heard something this morning that I would encourage you to follow up on. I'm not alleging this to be a fact, but I have it on good authority that we should go a little lighter on our colleagues. Because my understanding is that they have or are about to try to hotline another 17 courthouse namings. So if that's true, they may have some more accomplishments to add to those other 20 courthouses. You might want to check that out.
Q Senator McConnell, you can talk about the Democrats. But what can the Republicans go home and cite as accomplishments to their constituents?
SEN. MCCONNELL: We're not in the majority here. What we have done is say, to the Democrats and to the American people, when the majority is right, we will try to help them. We met them in the middle on 9/11, after they got rid of their effort to pay back their union buddies by having collective bargaining for transportation security workers. We supported them by and large on the ethics and lobbying reform, which started off at the beginning of the year as a Reid-McConnell bill.
We will support them when we think they're heading in the right direction. And look, you all have covered the Senate for a while. It takes 60 votes to do most things in the Senate. That's an open invitation to do things on a bipartisan basis because if you don't, you're not likely to accomplish much.
And we're not here to make them look bad. We'd rather do things for the American people, and the way you do that is with bipartisan compromise. And the way you don't do it is an example of what we were talking about earlier, is to play political games with the nation's security. That is a really bad mistake.
And if they've taken any message out of their low poll standing, they can correct -- begin to correct it this afternoon.
Q Senator McConnell, it sounds like one of your better -- one of your -- (off mike) -- is blocking some of these Democratic proposals. What do you think is the most important action on those lines so far?
SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, I mean, we obviously believe, for example, that getting rid of the secret ballot in the labor union elections is a terrible idea. When 80 percent of union members themselves think it's a bad idea, you -- that pretty well defines a bad idea. We will make no apologies for stopping legislation like that. We did, and we're happy to talk to the American people about it. So that's an example of something that I think should not have happened, that Republicans prevented from becoming law.
Q Senator McConnell, how much confidence do you have in Attorney Gonzales?
SEN. MCCONNELL: The attorney general has really one person he has to please, and that's the president of the United States. The president is sticking with the attorney general. And we've already confirmed him in the Senate, and he will serve as long as he enough the confidence of the president.
Q Senator McConnell --
SEN. MCCONNELL: Yeah?
Q -- do you still feel that Republicans can prevent the override of a veto on appropriations bills?
SEN. MCCONNELL: Oh, my goodness. It'll depend on the bill and what it looks like. You know, one of the additional failings of this Congress, particularly in the Senate -- we passed one appropriation bill, one. We took a lot of grief and probably and deserved it from them early this year for only passing two of 13 appropriation bills last year. They had done exactly the same thing in the fall of 2000 (sic; 2002), before we came back to the majority in January of 2003. So we both had a malfunction on the basic work of government that we do here, and that's the appropriation bills. How in the world the majority thinks that we're going to get the appropriation bills done, having only acted on one before the August recess in Senate, is truly astounding. We're going to have another train wreck. It's absolutely clear.
I think the president will not sign bills that are in excess of his cumulative number. And we can either bring in the bills at an appropriate budget amount, or we're going to have a series of vetoes here. So that's just another way in which the new majority, at least in the Senate, seems to me, has been irresponsible and not doing just the basic work that we're supposed to do here.
Okay, well --
Q Last question. (Off mike) -- votes -- (off mike) -- 68 votes -- (off mike). Would you encourage the administration to take -- (off mike) -- at that bill now since you're --
SEN. MCCONNELL: Well, as you know, David, a different version of the same bill in the House had over 200 votes in opposition to it. I think the president's made pretty clear that what he'd like to do here is to continue the children's health care program for low-income children, and we're having a big debate around here about whether to take that beyond low-income children, maybe even take it to relatively affluent families in some states.
So nobody's against health insurance for truly low-income children. We'll just have to see what the bill looks like at the end. Certainly, the House-passed version seems to have a veto-proof --
Q No, but in the House -- you could make an argument that the House -- (off mike) --
SEN. MCCONNELL: I believe this -- I was not happy with the outcome in the Senate, although we were not too far short of 34 that would be needed to sustain a veto. We'll have to see how it plays out. We got a long way to go in children's health care before we get to the end of the trail, but hopefully at the end we'll have a program for low-income children, which is what was designed to do 10 years ago.
Thanks a lot everybody.
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