Small Business Additional Temporary Extension Act of 2011

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Mr. COONS. I am disappointed my unanimous consent request was not agreed to. I wish to explain my action here today. The comments I am about to give are an explanation of a vote I intended to take later today.

As Senator Chambliss said just before me, the powers of the PATRIOT Act are too important for us to risk their expiration as this body considers whether to amend them or revise them. I could not agree more.

I offered a 1-month extension in order that this body may take the time that is needed and deserved to seriously debate and conduct oversight over the PATRIOT Act. This is a significant piece of national security legislation that I believe is worthy of further consideration and debate.

Law enforcement agencies--Federal, State, and local--work day in and day out to protect all of us from real threats that go largely unknown and unnoticed by most Americans. I want law enforcement to have all the appropriate tools in their toolbox to accomplish this goal.

Unfortunately, there are also, in my view, legitimate concerns about the legislation on which we are about to vote--concerns that my colleagues and I, including the occupant of the chair, on the Judiciary Committee, reviewed and addressed in detail, and in a bill ultimately passed, S. 193, which forms the core of the Leahy-Paul amendment of which I am a cosponsor. We put those provisions before this Chamber. I am disappointed we don't have consent to move forward in order to have time to debate these reforms to the PATRIOT Act. As Americans, the choice between liberty and safety is not one or the other. We expect and demand both. Balancing the two responsibly requires careful consideration to each.

We must be cognizant of our Nation's very real enemies who intend to do us harm, just as they did on September 11. It was awareness of this danger in the world that motivated this Congress, as we have heard in previous speeches, to enact the PATRIOT Act, nearly 10 years ago now, in the wake of those attacks. A grave new threat called for bold new authorities. Though I was not then in the Senate, I likely too would have voted for its passage.

But this body's passage of that act did not amount to a permanent choice of security over liberty. Because of the broad scope of the new authorities in the PATRIOT Act, the bipartisan drafters of the bill insisted upon placing key sunset provisions in the bill to ensure that Congress periodically reviewed how they were being used and assessed whether they were still essential to our security.

Even in the unnerving weeks after Ð9/11--an extraordinary time in the history of this Congress and this Nation--the authors of the PATRIOT Act knew that the powers they were granting needed to be monitored.

Sunsets are critical to ensuring that the PATRIOT authorities are not abused by the government. They are critical.

It's because of sunsets that every 4 years, the FBI must return to Congress and justify its use of the PATRIOT Act overall and three provisions in particular: the roving wiretap, the lone wolf authority, and §215 orders, which allow the government to demand virtually any document or other evidence pertaining to an individual from a third party.

Sunsets only work, however, if we in Congress have the innate courage to ask the difficult questions when they arise. If, instead, Congress shies away from the tough debate and simply extends the sunsets for another 4 years, we surrender our responsibility to consider whether specific provisions should be amended, reauthorized, or allowed to expire.

If the proposed 4-year extension passes without amendment, it will have been 9 years before Congress votes on reforms to PATRIOT--9 years.

What is the point of having sunsets in this bill if we are going to ignore our oversight responsibilities?

Regretfully, I cannot support any measure that extends controversial and searching PATRIOT authorities until 2015 if this body does not first consider whether the act is in need of amendment. And so I must.

The Judiciary Committee did exactly what it is supposed to do and has worked for months on improving the PATRIOT Act ahead of this deadline. It was a difficult, bipartisan debate but the bill we produced is strong and deserved to be considered by the full body. Chairman Leahy deserves credit for crafting a set of commonsense, responsible amendments.

In each of the last two Congresses, the Judiciary Committee reported a bipartisan PATRIOT reauthorization bill. In each case, the bills would have made important revisions to PATRIOT without compromising national security. Also in each case, the bills were reported out in plenty of time for this full body to consider them. In each case, no floor action was taken until such a late hour that meaningful debate over the expiring provisions has been precluded.

The Judiciary-reported bill, S. 193, which forms the basis of the Leahy-Paul amendment, deserves consideration. It deserves consideration because our serious consideration of reforms sends the strong message that the PATRIOT authorities are not a blank check, that we in Congress are watching closely to make sure that the use of PATRIOT is consistent with our shared national respect for individual liberty and freedom.

The Leahy-Paul amendment also deserves consideration because the last 5 years have shown us that substantive revisions to PATRIOT are called-for and, indeed, necessary. I would like to speak briefly about just one necessary change, those to the national security letter program.

National security letters, or NSLs are administrative subpoenas that allow the government to demand subscriber information from third parties without even having to go to a judge. These orders are also extraordinary in that they prohibit recipients from telling anyone of their existence.

In 2007 and 2008, the Department of Justice inspector general found massive abuses in the NSL Program, with tens of thousands of NSLs issued for purposes that had nothing to do with national security. Further, in 2008, a court found that the gag order in each NSL was unconstitutional.

Plainly, NSLs are in need of revision, both to bring them in line with the Constitution and to guard against abuses that have nothing to do with national security. I support legislation that would require that DOJ maintain sufficient internal guidelines to ensure that NSLs are only issued when the agents issuing them state facts that show relevance to national security. I also favor amending the gag order so that any recipient can immediately challenge it in court.

These simple reforms as well as the others contained in the Leahy-Paul amendment, do not make our Nation more vulnerable to attack. That is why, in 2010, the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence sent a letter to Congress expressing the view that legislation almost identical to Leahy-Paul ``strikes the right balance by both reauthorizing these essential national security tools and enhancing statutory protections for civil liberties and privacy in the exercise of these and related authorities.''

These reforms make our Nation more secure because they strengthen our place in the world as the cradle of liberty.

I don't want to repeal the PATRIOT Act, but at this moment we have a choice, and a chance--our last chance for 4 years--we can push forward with a bill that does nothing to improve PATRIOT--nothing to factor in everything that is changed in the last 5 years, or we can vote down this long-term extension, vote for a short-term extension and move to debate of the reforms that the Judiciary Committee has already worked up.

The PATRIOT Act is important to our national security, but I cannot support the abdication of Congress's role in strengthening it.

If I might, in summation, simply say this: If we were today to pass a 4-year extension, without amendment or revision, it will have been 9 years that Congress does not act in any substantive way on the amendments. I join Senator Leahy in intending to vote ``no'' today, not because I believe the PATRIOT Act is fundamentally flawed or because I believe the United States doesn't face real enemies, but because I think this Congress has not taken seriously its very real oversight responsibilities, its need to strike that balance. The Judiciary Committee did that hard work. For this Congress to not amend this bill with the simple balanced and reasonable amendment offered in the Leahy-Paul amendment, I believe I am compelled to strike the balance between security and liberty on the side of liberty today, by saying this body has failed to act and to appropriately conduct thorough oversight of this bill before we send it 4 years into the future.

I yield the floor.

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