Legislative Program

Floor Speech

LEGISLATIVE PROGRAM -- (House of Representatives - January 29, 2008)

(Mr. BLUNT asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I would yield to my friend from Maryland, the majority leader, for information about the schedule.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

The schedule for the week of February 4 is attenuated, to some degree obviously, by the 22 States that have a primary on February 5. Both Democrats and Republicans obviously will be involved in those to one degree or another. Monday and Tuesday the House is not, therefore, in session.

On Wednesday, the House will meet at 2 p.m. for legislative business. Votes will be postponed until 6:30 p.m. On Thursday and Friday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. We will consider several bills under suspension of the rules. A list of those bills will be announced by the close of business this week. In addition, we will consider H.R. 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act.

That is the schedule. Of course, I will tell my friend that we obviously have a couple of bills that we passed today that we want to see move as quickly as possible, and if we could move those next week, we would certainly try to do so.

Thank you for yielding.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that information. I am wondering, if those bills don't materialize, is it still an option for Friday, if those bills don't materialize, since we don't have any scheduled work for Thursday and Friday, are we committed for Friday to be a definite day here? Is that still going to be an option as the week develops?

I will yield.

Mr. HOYER. We only have, as you know, essentially 2 days and the evening of Wednesday, because we come in Wednesday at 6:30. So I am reluctant to give away Friday, given on this side we have worked so hard to get done in a relatively quick fashion, I think quick fashion, not relatively, on our stimulus package. So I do not want to speculate on giving that day away at this point in time, nor do I want to speculate that we will give the day away. If we do not have work to do, obviously we will not require Members to be here.

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that, and I also appreciate the work we all did this week on the stimulus package, to see that it is sent over on the timeframe that we have all discussed. As you mentioned in your remarks on the floor today, a timely, a targeted, and a temporary bill has to meet all of those things. Timely and temporary both have to mean that we get this done in a quick way. I am hoping that we can work with our friends on the other side of the building and get that done.

The other thing that we worked together on this week was to get an extension until the middle of February on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as it is currently in place, and has been since the first of August. I am hopeful that we don't run up to the deadline again in this 15-day opportunity that we have. I am wondering if the gentleman has any thoughts as to what we might be able to do even next week on that bill.

I would yield.

Mr. HOYER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

He and I share that concern, of course. As I indicated, and he well knows, we passed a bill on November 16 of last year, which means that was 2 1/2 months ago that we passed a bill. We have been waiting for the Senate to pass a bill. They have two bills, as you know: one out of their Intelligence Committee, one out of the Judiciary Committee. They have been unable to reach compromise. Two days ago, they had votes on cloture and did not receive that, either for the extension or for essentially the Intelligence bill.

As a result, we are very frankly in, as you well know as well as anybody, we are waiting on the Senate to pass a bill so that either our bill, we can send that to the President; their bill, send it to conference, or whatever option. But we need them to take some action. We are hopeful they will take some action soon.

I met, along with other members of the leadership on our side of the aisle, just a short time ago, informed them that we had passed by vote an extension of 15 days, urged them to move as quickly as they could. The leader indicated to me that he was hopeful that they would be able to address that this week. I think he is going to be talking to the Republican leader to see what possibly could get 60 votes to move something to the floor and through consideration. But I am unable to tell you what we are going to do until such time as the Senate acts. As you and I have discussed, you have been there.

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that. I do hope we can find a permanent solution here. I think that the 2 weeks is important. I also think it's important that that law not be allowed to expire, which made this 2 weeks a significant development. At the same time, the question of immunity hasn't been addressed, and I don't think we can continue to put that question off.

I did notice last week when we discussed this, an article that I hadn't seen yet, and my good friend the majority leader read from that article to me a section that indicated that the work was in progress could keep on in progress for a long time. That was in the New York Times on January 23.

There was another paragraph that I surmised at the time might be there, but was there, that said ``There is risk,'' according to this assistant Attorney General Mr. Weinstein, Weinstein said, ``the officials would not be able to use their broadened authority to identify and focus on new suspects and would have to revert to the more restrictive pre-August standards if they wanted to eavesdrop on someone.''

Those pre-August standards were, in my view, troublesome. I hope we don't revert to them, but we can't put the immunity issue off forever, and I am going to do everything I can, as I believe the majority leader is inclined to do as well, to encourage the Senate to move this process along so we can bring it to some conclusion.

I yield.

Mr. HOYER. I thank my friend for yielding, and I do want to comment, because our perspectives are somewhat different on the risks that would be created by failure to act or not have an extension, so we would be operating, as you pointed out, under the old FISA statute.

Very frankly, the good news is that the backlog that confronted the court now no longer exists.

Secondly, as you know, under the old law, the 72-hour period in which the Government could take action and then get sanction of the court after the fact is in the law.

So I believe that second paragraph, while I don't disagree with his speculation, I disagree with his conclusion in the sense that I think that the Government, the NSA or another agency, could in fact act within that 72 hours and get approval from the FISA Court for its actions. And, as the gentleman knows, the FISA Court rarely, if ever, and I don't know of an incident off the top of my head where they have disapproved an action that was taken and stopped it at that point in time.

So, I think the risk is minimal, because I think the old law, while, yes, they have to go to the court, and very frankly, this is why it was created, to be a check and balance on what might be, and I don't allege that this is happening, but certainly it was a check on arbitrary and capricious action by those in the Government. I happen to think that check and balance is an appropriate one; although, under the statute we passed, we gave broader authority, blanket authority, as you know.

But we are hopeful, as you are, that the Senate will act, that we be able to go to conference. We need to deal with the immunity issue, which is the difference between the two Houses, although they haven't passed a bill, but the bill that passed out of the Intelligence Committee did give retroactive immunity. That is controversial.

And we have just got, as I told you, the documentation last Friday that we have been asking for an opportunity to review to determine, A, the justification for the action of the telecom companies and the actions for which immunity is being sought. We think that is appropriate for us to know before we act.

But in any event, I did inform, as I told you, the leader that we had acted, and indicated to him I hope that they would act as soon as possible so that we could resolve this in conference.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for those views. I know that the majority is going to have their planning retreat for the rest of this week. Hopefully our staff is already and will continue to go through these documents that we were concerned we hadn't had, or the majority was concerned we hadn't had earlier, and look at those.

I would suggest that the penetrating analysis in one paragraph probably doesn't totally go away from the individual who was given so much credit in the next paragraph.

The only thing I would say about the FISA Court, I would really say two things. I missed some of this debate today, as you might be able to tell, because of another commitment I had to be off the floor as we were debating this.

The FISA Court, I believe, in 1978 was created for domestic cases. That is maybe an underlying difference here in the way we view this. And the backlog I would submit would develop again pretty quickly. It might not be a problem for 2 days; it might not even be a problem for a week. But that backlog of every case from all over the world that suddenly wound up going to the FISA Court because of changes in technology quickly gets the FISA Court to where a 72-hour problem is a big problem because they just can't deal with it.

I would yield.

Mr. HOYER. I would agree with that. I think we solved the technological problem in the bill we passed. Very frankly, the only problem that I think the administration would have with our bill which we passed through the House would be the immunity issue.

The technological issue I think is addressed by the blanket approval by the court. Although the court has to approve certain objects and processes, it does not, as you know, need to approve specific instances of intercepts or specific targets of intercept.

So, from that standpoint, I think our bill solved that problem. But our bill has not been enacted so the technological issue of where the communication now goes through a U.S. switch, that is the technological difference now, and then goes back out, that needs to be addressed. It was addressed in our legislation, but the legislation needs to pass.

Mr. BLUNT. Well, I agree, and I intend to work to see that it passes so this works in the best possible way. I hope we take maximum advantage of this 15 or 16 days that we have now given ourselves to look at the information to try to do what we can to see that we come up with a permanent solution that deals with both the technological questions and the question of immunity for people who may have helped the government in a way that they now somehow could be held in legal limbo for until we have addressed this. I hope we do, and I pledge myself to work with you and others to see that we get that done.

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