PATRIOT ACT’S FUTURE UNCERTAIN AS SENATE VOTE LOOMS SUNDAY NIGHT,
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Friday urged the Senate not to let the National Security Agency's power to collect Americans' phone records expire, warning that U.S. intelligence agencies could be left in the dark.
Meeting in the Oval Office with Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Obama said the renewal of authority is being held up by a “handful of senators”—despite approval by the House of Representatives and concern in the intelligence community.
“Heaven forbid we've got a problem where we could have prevented a terrorist attack or apprehended someone who was engaged in dangerous activity, but we didn't do so simply because of inaction in the Senate,” Obama said.
The president said he's told Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other Senate leaders that “I expect them to take action and take action swiftly.”
Unless the Senate acts by Sunday at midnight, three provisions of the 9/11-inspired USA Patriot Act will expire, including the controversial Section 215, which authorizes the NSA to collect Americans' telephone records.
Obama said a compromise has been struck to assuage privacy concerns about Section 215.
“This is not an issue where we have to choose between security and civil liberties,” he said. “This is an issue in which we, in fact, have struck the right balance and shaped a piece of legislation that everybody can support. So let's go ahead and get it done.”
McConnell has called the Senate back early from its weeklong Memorial Day recess to make a final push at a rare Sunday session to renew the Patriot Act before the authorities lapse. But standing in his way is a fellow Kentucky Republican, Sen. Rand Paul, who is pledging to block the spying powers as he makes the issue the centerpiece of his presidential campaign.
“When the Senate comes back into session on (Sunday), there will be just eight hours for spy state apologists to reach a deal to keep these programs going. Eight hours!” Paul said in a fundraising email on Friday. “I'm determined to do whatever I can to stop them.”
A political action committee backing Paul launched an aggressive ad on Friday in the style of a pro wrestling promotion, bellowing, “Sunday, Sunday, Sunday! Get ready, America, for the biggest brawl for liberty of the century!”
McConnell is in a bind. Just 45 senators, far less than the 60 needed, backed his attempt last weekend to extend the NSA spying powers. A House-passed bill, the USA Freedom Act, which would change the phone data collection program while renewing less controversial provisions in the Patriot Act, also failed to pass the Senate, but by just three votes.
McConnell opposes the USA Freedom Act, under which phone companies would keep the records instead of the government. (The NSA could access the data with a secret court order.) McConnell argued against the change on the Senate floor, declaring that it would be “slower and more cumbersome than the one that currently helps keep us safe.”
Allowing another vote on the USA Freedom Act, though, could be McConnell's only hope of getting something passed quickly. McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said Friday that McConnell “hasn't announced” how he is going to proceed on Sunday night. He noted McConnell has called the Senate back “to make every effort to provide the intelligence community with the tools it needs to combat terror.”
Critics, including Paul, insist the surveillance has never stopped an attack, but administration officials described them as critical tools in tracking terrorists.
The intelligence community would lose “important capabilities” for new investigations if the provisions lapse, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper warned Friday.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest mocked the Senate standoff between McConnell and Paul, suggesting it was rooted in the “long history in the commonwealth of Kentucky of pretty heated feuds going all the way back to the Hatfields and McCoys.”
He added, “Unfortunately, the victim of that feud right now is the amount of risk that's facing our national security and legislation that would protect the privacy and civil liberties of our people.”