Mitch McConnell expected to swallow USA Freedom Act
The clock ticks to midnight on expiring PATRIOT Act surveillance authority.
By MANU RAJU and SEUNG MIN KIM 5/31/15 8:17 AM EDT Updated 5/31/15 3:42 PM EDT
The Senate is expected to advance the USA Freedom Act as soon as Sunday, despite the opposition from GOP leaders to the House-passed surveillance plan, according to several Republicans.
The ultimate question will be whether detractors like Rand Paul delay final passage of the bipartisan measure past midnight, when three key surveillance authorities expire. Few expect the presidential hopeful, who has called for a repeal of the PATRIOT Act, to relent.
In a rare Sunday session, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to bring the House’s USA Freedom Act back up for another vote, despite his own opposition to the plan. The measure fell three votes short of breaking a filibuster recently, but Senate Republicans are expected this time to let the bill come to the floor for debate. Republicans hope they will be able to amend the plan and send it back to the House, but support for major changes at this late juncture would be an uphill climb.
The GOP Conference is expected to hash out this strategy in a closed-door meeting Sunday afternoon.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid told POLITICO Sunday he had not spoken to McConnell over the recess but spoke with Paul a “few times” Saturday.
Reid said Democrats “would agree to take” the amendments Paul demanded before the Memorial Day recess, assuming they are “limited to two.” He said the two did not discuss Paul’s demands that they be adopted on a 51-vote threshold, rather than 60.
Asked if he wanted to weigh in on Sunday’s events, McConnell said “not yet” and declined further comment.
Behind the scenes, McConnell and Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) have been working to flesh out an agreement with detractors of the bill for a series of amendments in order to move the final bill toward passage.
Paul announced Saturday that he would not consent to any effort to speed up debate on the House-passed surveillance reform bill – which has wide support on Capitol Hill and is backed by President Barack Obama – nor any extensions of the current law. That would effectively force the controversial national security law, enacted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, to expire at least temporarily.
“I am ready and willing to start the debate on how we fight terrorism without giving up our liberty,” the Kentucky senator and 2016 hopeful said in a statement on Saturday announcing his plans to block any movement on surveillance legislation. “Sometimes when the problem is big enough, you just have to start over.”
Paul’s aggressive approach is sure to frustrate fellow senators who are pushing for an overhaul of the controversial National Security Agency programs and believe that passage of an alternate NSA reform bill is inevitable.
“Sen. Paul and I share similar concerns about the collection of bulk metadata,” Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union.” But “we do differ [on strategy] … I don’t agree with his approach and I’ve taken a different approach here.”
The Obama administration has warned repeatedly of serious national security risks if the PATRIOT Act provisions — the most controversial of which is the bulk phone records program first revealed by Edward Snowden — are allowed to expire.
“I don’t want us to be in a situation in which, for a certain period of time, those authorities go away, and suddenly we’re dark, and heaven forbid we’ve got a problem where we could’ve prevented a terrorist attack or could’ve apprehended someone who was engaged in dangerous activity but we didn’t do so simply because of inaction of the Senate,” Obama said Friday. “So I have indicated to Leader McConnell and other senators I expect them to take action and take action swiftly.”
Kentucky Republican gubernatorial candidate Matt Bevin addresses the media following the results of the recanvas of the state primary, Friday May 29, 2015, in Frankfort, Ky. A review of the primary election certified that Bevin defeated second place finisher James Comer by 83 votes. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley)
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McConnell, who has been staunchly opposed to the PATRIOT Act revisions passed by the House, is still hoping for an 11-hour deal that gives the Senate time to iron out what many Republicans see as flaws with the popular House bill. The majority leader appeared likely to move the House bill despite his own opposition, according to sources, because of the broad support for the USA Freedom Act in Congress.
Senate Republicans will meet privately at 5 p.m. at the Capitol to strategize on the issue.
“The leader has called the Senate back prior to the expiration of the expiring provisions to make every effort to provide the intelligence community with the tools it needs to combat terror,” McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said Saturday in response to Paul’s threat.
Paul’s procedural war against the controversial Bush-era national security law was not a surprise, considering he’s seized on privacy issues as his defining platform as he runs for the White House.
He staged a marathon talk-a-thon earlier this month and thwarted McConnell’s attempts to keep the government surveillance programs alive for even a day. He has roused supporters on Twitter with claims of an upcoming “spy state showdown,” and insisted in an interview last week that he was being reasonable with his demands for amendment votes aimed at unraveling the PATRIOT Act.
Without consent from Paul or other like-minded lawmakers, the Senate could still go through the procedural hoops to advance and ultimately approve surveillance legislation. It just would take considerably longer and would certainly blow through the PATRIOT Act’s expiration date, unless Congress quickly moves to briefly extend those provisions – which Paul has also threatened to block.
Even if the Senate were to somehow get Paul to go along, the House would present another challenge.
If the Senate passes anything other than the USA Freedom Act, the House will have to greenlight it as well. House lawmakers won’t be able to vote on anything until they return to Washington on Monday evening — hours after the PATRIOT Act provisions would’ve expired.
Democrats have aligned almost unanimously behind the USA Freedom Act, which cleared the House with 338 votes and earned the endorsement of the Obama administration. Senate Democrats and key GOP backers of the bill have pressured McConnell for a vote on the House measure, arguing that it would easily pass the chamber once the majority leader stops whipping his members against it.
“Because opponents of reform have run out the clock and jam the Senate, we are not left with much time,” Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chief Senate Democratic sponsor of the USA Freedom Act, plans to say when the Senate returns Sunday. “But the Senate could consider a limited number of amendments now. We can get this done today. If we pass the USA FREEDOM Act, the President can sign it tonight.”
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