Ensuring Tax Exempt Organizations the Right to Appeal Act

Floor Speech

Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I am wondering whether the Senator from
Kentucky would be good enough to confirm for me where I think the issue
is that is before the Senate today. So if I might, I will speak for a
few minutes about what I think is the core issue before us on the floor
and then ask the Senator whether he would confirm that this is his
understanding as well.

At the outset, I will say it is relatively rare for my colleague from
Kentucky and I to come to the floor in agreement on an issue, but it
has happened before on exactly this issue. I think it is important that
it be clear to folks that there are concerns on both sides of the aisle
on the critical underlying issues about how we balance privacy and
liberty, security and our civil liberties.

For nearly a decade, our government has operated a program that
collects massive amounts of information from innocent Americans without
any specific suspicion they have done anything wrong. Let me put that
another way. For years, any American's communication data could have
been tracked and collected by the government, whether or not they were
suspected of a crime.

That program has been carried out under Section 215 of the PATRIOT
Act based on flimsy or mistaken interpretations of the original law,
all in the name of our national security. Yet the bulk collection
program has had disputed and not arguably clear benefit to our national
security. There is not one clear publicly confirmed instance of a plot
being foiled because of this section 215 program. I have long been
concerned about the scope and the reach of our intelligence community's
bulk collection program.

That is why in 2011 I voted, along with my colleague from Kentucky,
against the straight reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act. I believed
then, as I believe now, it would be irresponsible for Congress to
continue reauthorizing the law without taking steps to address concerns
about unlawful surveillance it has allowed, particularly given the fact
that earlier this month a U.S. Federal circuit court specifically
deemed this program illegal.

Fortunately, we have an alternative, which I believe the Senator from
Kentucky has been expounding on behalf of, the USA FREEDOM Act, a
bipartisan bill passed by the House just last week by an overwhelming
margin--I think it was 338 to 88. It would end bulk collection by only
allowing the Federal Government to seek call records retained by the
telecommunications industry once it has established a record is
relevant to an ongoing investigation.

Records would no longer be stored by the government but would remain
in the hands of telecommunications companies, which under FCC rules, in
order to ensure that there is customer access to records in the case of
a dispute, they are retained for 18 months. This bill strikes an
important balance by protecting American's privacy and ensuring our
government can still keep our Nation safe.

In fact, there are some who might argue that the USA FREEDOM Act
would allow a stronger and more robust and more effective series of
actions to keep our Nation safe. I urge my colleagues to support it. I
know these are difficult decisions for us to make. I know we all have
concerns about our Nation's security, but we have to all have concerns
about our Nation's freedom.

We fought for it from the very beginning of our country. I want to
just thank and salute Members here, colleagues, and in particular my
colleague from Kentucky for being insistent that we have clarity about
time. We were told 4 years ago, when the reauthorization fight was
happening, that time had run out and that we needed to reauthorize it,
without considering needed reforms that were discussed and debated in
the Judiciary Committee.

Two years ago, some of the core elements of this were exposed to the
world. A lot of my constituents raised legitimate and serious concerns
about it. Whether we are being asked to extend it for 2 week or 2 days
or 2 hours, I think time has run out for us to even discuss
reauthorizing a program that has explicitly been held illegal. We
instead need to come together and take up and pass the USA FREEDOM Act.

Would my colleague from Kentucky confirm that is the situation on the
floor at the moment and on behalf of which he was speaking?

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