USA Freedom Act of 2015--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. PAUL. Mr. President, let us be very clear about why we are here this evening. We are here this evening because this is an important debate. This is a debate over the Bill of Rights. This is a debate over the Fourth Amendment. This is a debate over your right to be left alone. Justice Brandeis said that the right to be left alone is the most cherished of rights. The right to be left alone is the most prized to civilized men.

Let us be clear. We are here tonight because the President continues to conduct an illegal program. The President has been rebuked by the court. In explicit terms, the President has been told that the program he is conducting is illegal. Now, the President opines on television. The President wants to blame--he says: Anybody but me.

But you know what. The President started this program without congressional permission. Even the authors of the PATRIOT Act say that the PATRIOT Act in no way gives authority to the President to collect all of your phone records all of the time. If there ever was a general warrant, if there ever was a generalized collection of information from people about whom there is no suspicion, this is it.

We are not collecting the information of spies. We are not collecting the information of terrorists. We are collecting all American citizens' records all of the time. This is what we fought the Revolution over. Are we going to so blithely give up our freedom? Are we going to so blithely go along and just say: Take it. Well, I am not going to take it anymore. I do not think the American people are going to take it anymore.

Eighty percent of those under 40 say we have gone too far--that this whole collection of all of our records all the time is too much. The court has said: How can records be relevant to an investigation that has not started? The court has said that even under these lower standards, even under these standards of saying that it would be relevant, all of the stuff they are collecting is precisely irrelevant.

Now people say: Well, they are not looking at it. They are not listening to it. It is the tip of the iceberg, what we are talking about here. Realize that they were dishonest about the program until we caught them. They kept saying over and over: We are not doing this. We are not collecting your records.

They were. The head of the intelligence agency lied to the American people, and he still works there. We should be upset. We should be marching in the streets and saying: He has to go. We cannot allow this. We cannot allow the rule of law to be so trod upon that we live in an arbitrary governmental world where they collect anything they want anytime they want.

This is the tip of the iceberg. They are collecting records through Executive order. They are collecting records through section 702. People say: How will we protect ourselves without these programs? What about using the Constitution? What about using judicial warrants? About the Tsarnaev boy, the Boston Bomber, they say: How will we look at his phone records? Get a warrant. Put his name on it. You can get a warrant. There is no reason in the world--the guy had already bombed us. Do you think anybody was going to turn down a warrant? We should have gotten a warrant before.

Get warrants on people we have suspicion on. The Simpson guy that was shot in Garland had already been arrested. We had suspicion.

Let's hire 1,000 more FBI agents. Let's hire people to do the investigation and quit wasting time on innocent American people. Let's be very clear why we are here: President Obama set up this program, the President Obama who once was against the PATRIOT Act. President Obama once said: You know what; we should have judges write warrants.

President Obama, who once believed in the Fourth Amendment, is the President who is now scooping up all of your records illegally. Then he feigns concern and says: Oh, we need to pass this new bill. He could stop it now. Why won't someone ask the President: Why do you continue? Why won't you stop this program now? The President has every ability to do it. We have every ability to keep our Nation safe. I intend to protect the Constitution.

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