The Senate voted on Tuesday against amending a bill to reform NSA domestic surveillance programs, making it all but certain the bill will win final passage and head to President Barack Obama’s desk, ending a drawn-out showdown on Capitol Hill that saw counterterrorism provisions expire.
The Senate cleared a key procedural hurdle on Tuesday morning to move toward passage of the USA Freedom Act in a resounding 83-14 vote, but three amendments Senate Republican leaders said would toughen the House version before a final vote failed later in the day.
That move drew heavy fire from supporters of the current bill and from GOP House leadership, who warned the proposed changes wouldn’t pass muster in the House.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell conceded Thursday before the vote that those efforts were “an uphill battle.”
“We were not going to simply rollover and accept the House bill without debating it and attempting to amend it,” McConnell said Tuesday afternoon. “There are a number of us who feel very strongly that this is a significant weakening of the tools that were put in place after 9/11.”
Despite that position, McConnell finally relented on Sunday and begrudgingly endorsed the USA Freedom Act — seeing it as the last hope to keep counterterror programs alive — after pressure from House Republicans, the Obama administration and staunch reform advocates in the Senate, like Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who helped force the expiration of the Patriot Act provisions late Sunday.
The House bill requires the government obtain a targeted warrant to collect phone metadata from telecommunications companies, makes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (known as the FISA court) which reviews those warrant requests more transparent and reauthorizes Patriot Act provisions that lapsed early Monday.
House warns against amendments
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy warned the Senate on Tuesday morning those amendments would make it “a real challenge” to pass the bill in the House.
“I think the best approach, at the time and place we are now, and one that guarantees that we can get a bill to the president, is to pass the USA Freedom Act,” the No. 2 House Republican said Tuesday.
McCarthy’s Democratic counterpart, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer of Maryland, said major changes from the Senate would pose a problem in the House, pointing to a “pretty broad ideological spectrum” of House members opposing Senate amendments.
“It’s a shame Senator McConnell waited so long (to move the House bill),” Hoyer said.
The chief Republican sponsors of the USA Freedom Act in the House and Senate are strongly pushing back against any changes too, with Sen. Mike Lee of Utah calling those amendments “poison pills.”
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, the chief sponsor in the House, also called changes “a poison pill” Tuesday morning during a House GOP conference meeting, according to a Republican who attended the meeting.
Senate on different frequency
But Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn said while he is “always worried” about having the votes he needs, he was hopeful amendments to the USA Freedom Act would pass.
“What I’m hearing people say is that the amendments produce good policy and they actually strengthen the underlying bill but we’re afraid the House will not take any changes, which is just absolutely an abdication of the Senate’s role as a co-equal branch of the legislature,” he said.
And he called it a “trumped up idea” that the House would dismiss a Senate-amended version of the USA Freedom Act.
Sen. John Thune agreed, saying he didn’t believe the Senate amendments, which he supports, would endanger House passage, suggesting the House warnings were more bluster than anything.
“If some of these amendments end up getting added, I don’t think it should in any way change the ultimate outcome or what the House? does,” he said. “I think there’s a difference between what they’re saying right now. They’re trying to keep pressure on and keep their bill clean.”
Any changes in the Senate would require the bill go back to the House for another vote, while passage of an identical bill could go straight to President Barack Obama, who has urged the Senate to pass the USA Freedom Act.
And Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, said that process would cause too long of a lapse in the country’s counterterrorism capabilities.
“I think the national security interest of the United States is really best served if we get the program up and running, with the House formula, which is what the president wants. We can amend it later on,” she said. “The most important thing is having functioning tools that can be used. ?I have never seen a time of greater potential danger than right now and I’ve never said that before. So to take away these tools at this time I think is a big mistake.”
The amendment
But intelligence committee chairman Richard Burr, who with McConnell initially sought out a straight reauthorization of the Patriot Act, is looking to get amendments added to the House bill he says would help assuage security concerns.
As telecom companies would hold onto the phone data, instead of the government, under the new legislation, the most popular leadership-backed amendment would make two changes. It would force the phone companies give the government six months notification if they plan to change their data retention policies. Another would require the Director of National Intelligence greenlight the new collection system.
Paul had also planned to offer up his own set of amendments that would push Freedom Act reforms to the NSA even further. Paul ultimately will not get a vote on his amendments, though, but said he will not press his case.
“I think we’re about done,” he said when asked if he would hold up final passage.
But any changes out of the Senate would galvanize Paul’s allies in the House who have said amendments would prompt them to offer up changes of their own.
“If even one comma changes, we have a lot of people on our side of the Capitol who would like to offer our own amendments,” Amash said.
Amash insisted that members across the House Republican conference believe “any changes will be a deal breaker.”