American Housing Rescue and Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008

Floor Speech

AMERICAN HOUSING RESCUE AND FORECLOSURE PREVENTION ACT OF 2008 -- (Senate - June 25, 2008)

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Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, I come to the floor today to express my strong opposition to H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act, and my opposition to invoking cloture on the motion to proceed to this legislation.

Let me tell you what I think this debate is about and what it is not about. What it is not about is whether anyone in the Senate or the Congress is not going to do everything he or she can to protect the American people from another terrorist attack. It is not about whether we are going to be as vigorous as we can in hunting down terrorists. It is not about whether we are going to be vigilant in the war against terrorism. That is what it is not about. What it is about essentially is whether we can be forceful and successful in fighting terrorism while we protect the constitutional rights that make us a free country. That is what this debate is about.

I happen to believe that with strong law enforcement, with a strong and effective judiciary, with a Congress working diligently, we can be vigorous and successful in protecting the American people against terrorism and we can do it in a way that does not undermine the constitutional rights which people have fought for hundreds of years to protect--the Constitution, which today remains one of the greatest documents ever written in the history of humanity.

We hear a whole lot about the word ``freedom.'' Everybody in the Senate and the House is for freedom. But what do we mean by freedom? What we mean by freedom is that we want our kids to be able to read any book they want to read without worrying that the FBI is going to come into a library or a bookstore to check on what they are reading. We want people to be able to write letters to the editor critical of the President, critical of their Congressmen or their Senator without worrying that somebody is going to knock on their door. We want people to have the freedom to assemble, to demonstrate without worrying that someone has a camera on them and is taking notes and later on there will be retribution because they exercised their freedom of assembly and their right to dissent.

That is really what the debate is about. It is not whether you are for protecting the American people against a terrorist attack. That is not what the debate is. The debate is whether we, as a great country, will be capable of doing that within the context of our laws, within the context of our Constitution, and understanding that we are a nation of laws and not of men, regardless of who the President is.

Before I go into deeper concerns, I begin by recognizing the very hard work done by members of both the Intelligence Committee and the Judiciary Committee in the Senate and in the House. We all know these are not issues resolved, and while I have strong disagreements with the final product, I know that the intentions of all the Members on both sides of the aisle were honorable.

Although there have been some improvements made to this bill that the Senate passed earlier this year, including having the inspector general review the so-called terrorist surveillance program and making it clear that FISA and criminal law are the exclusive process by which the electronic surveillance can take place rather than some broad power of the President, this final legislation is something I simply cannot support.

This legislation does not strike the right and appropriate balance between ensuring that our intelligence community has the tools it needs to protect our country against international terrorism and protecting the civil liberties of law-abiding Americans. Instead, it gives a get-out-of-jail-free card to companies that may well have violated the privacy and constitutional rights of millions of innocent Americans.

I am proud to be a cosponsor of the amendment that will be offered, as I understand it, by Senators Dodd, Feingold, and Leahy to strike title II of the Intelligence bill which deals with retroactive immunity. This is a very important amendment, and I hope a majority of the Members of the Senate will support it.

It is important in this debate to put the discussion of this FISA legislation in a broader context. The context, sadly, in which we must view this legislation has everything to do with the history of what this administration currently in power has done since 9/11. Sadly, what they have done is shown the people of our country and people all over the world that they really do not understand what the Constitution of the United States is about and, in fact, they do not understand, in many instances, what international human rights agreements, such as the Geneva Convention, are all about.

So when we enter this debate, we should not look at it that this is the first time we are addressing the issue of fundamental attacks on American civil liberties. This has been going on year after year. This is more of the same from an administration which believes, to a significant degree, that they are an imperial Presidency, that in the guise of fighting terrorism, a President has the right to do anything against anybody for any reason without understanding what our Constitution is about or what our laws are about.

Let me give a few examples to remind my colleagues what kind of credibility, or lack thereof, this administration has in the whole area of civil liberties.

Among other things, this administration has pushed for, successfully, the passage of the original PATRIOT Act and the PATRIOT Act reauthorization. Under that bill, among many things, an area I was involved in when I was in the House was a provision that says, without probable cause, the FBI can go into a library or bookstore and find out the books you are reading, and if the librarian or bookstore owner were to tell anybody, that person would be in violation of the law. Do we want the kids of this country to be frightened about taking out a book on Osama bin Laden because somebody may think they are sympathetic to terrorism? I don't think so. What freedom is about is encouraging our young people and all Americans to investigate any area they want. I don't want the people of this country to be intimidated. That is not what free people are about.

Further, under this administration, we have seen an illegal and expanded use of national security letters by the FBI.

We have seen the NSA's warrantless wiretap program, which, in fact, is what we are discussing today.

We have seen the President using signing statements to ignore the intent of Congress's law in an unprecedented way. The President says: Oh, yes, I am going to sign this bill, but, by the way, I am not going to enforce section 387; I don't like that section. Mr. President, that is not the way the law works. If you don't like it, you have the power to veto. You cannot pick and choose what provisions you want. But that is, to a large degree, what this President has done.

What we have seen in recent years is a profiling of citizens engaged in constitutionally protected free speech and peaceful assembly. As I mentioned earlier, the right to dissent, the right to protest is at the heart of what this country is about. I do not want Americans to be worried that there is a video camera filming them and they will be punished somewhere down the line because they exercised their freedom of speech.

We have seen data mining of personal records.

We have seen the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, which has embarrassed us before the entire world.

We have seen a broad interpretation of congressional resolutions regarding use of military force as justification for unauthorized surveillance and other actions.

We have seen extraordinary renditions of detainees to countries that allow torture. All over the world, people are looking at the United States of America and saying: What is going on in that great Nation? We tell them to be like us, to support democracy, to support human rights, and then we engage in torture and we pick people up and we take them to countries where they are treated in horrendous ways. This is certainly one of the reasons respect for the United States has gone down all over this world, which is a tragedy unto itself but obviously makes it harder for us to bring countries together in the important fight against international terrorism.

We have seen an administration that has gotten rid of the rights of detainees to file habeas corpus petitions--simply put people away, deny them access to a lawyer, deny them the right to defend themselves.

We have seen political firings in the Office of the U.S. Attorney.

We have seen destruction of CIA tapes.

The list goes on and on.

So the issue we are debating today has to be seen in the broader context that for the last 7 years, there has been a systematic attack on our Constitution by an administration which believes that, in the guise of fighting terrorism, they can do anything they want against anybody they want without getting court approval or without respecting our Constitution and the rule of law.

I wish to touch on one point. I know Senator Feingold, Senator Leahy, and Senator Dodd have touched on this bill at great length. I just want to focus on one issue, and that is the retroactive immunity granted to the telecommunications companies.

Why is it important that we support the amendment which does away with that retroactive immunity?

It is very simple. The argument is that the President of the United States went to these companies and said: Look, I need your help in doing something, and the companies obliged.

Then the issue is, well, why are we punishing them, even if they broke the law? And the answer is pretty simple: It is precisely that we are a nation of laws and not of men. If we grant them retroactive immunity, what it says to future Presidents is, I am the law because I am the President, and I will tell you what you can do. And because I tell you what to do or ask you to do something, that is, by definition, legal. Go and break into my political opponent's office. Don't worry about it; I am the President. I am saying it is for national security. Those guys are bad guys, just do it. I am the President, and that is all that matters.

That is the precedent that we are setting today, and I think it is a very bad precedent. Trust me, Verizon and these other large telecommunications companies, multi, multibillion-dollar companies, have a lot of lawyers. They have a lot of good lawyers. And what we know, in fact, is that some of the telecommunications companies--at least one that comes to mind--said: No, Mr. President, sorry, that is unconstitutional. That is illegal, I ``ain't'' gonna do it. I applaud them for that. But others said: Hey, the President is asking us, we are going to do it.

The point is, the President is not the law. The law is the law. The Constitution is the law. And I don't want to set a precedent today by which any President can tell any company or any individual: You go out and do it; don't worry about it; no problem at all. That is not what this country is about.

So let me conclude, Mr. President, by saying this is a very important issue which concerns millions and millions of Americans. Bottom line, every American, every Member of the Senate understands we have to do every single thing we can to protect the American people from terrorist attacks. There is no debate about that. Some of us believe, however, that we can be successful in doing that while we uphold the rule of law, while we uphold the Constitution of this country, which has made us the envy of the world and for which we owe the Founders of our country and those who came after, fighting to protect those civil liberties, so much.

Madam President, I yield the floor.

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