The House today passed a bill that would extend by 15 days a law that expanded the Bush administration’s powers to conduct anti-terrorism surveillance without warrants. The law is set to expire Friday. The original measure called for a 30-day extension.
Here are debate excerpts from Democrats John Conyers of Michigan and Jane Harman of California. Conyers said the temporary extension would give Congress more time to reach agreement on “responsible” reform to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that governs such wiretaps.
Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., also addressed the wiretapping debate in a press conference.
Sen. Russell Feingold has been a leading voice against the Bush administration’s surveillance tactics in the war on terrorism. In this interview with the blog Open Left, the Wisconsin Democrat said he illustrates the depth of the surveillance by telling audiences that even e-mail he reads on his BlackBerry from his daughter in England is subject to government monitoring.
“[T]he government can suck up all your e-mails and all your phone calls, whether it be to your son or daughter in Iraq or your child that’s [in her] junior year abroad … and there’s no court oversight of it at all,” Feingold said. “It’s just ‘Trust us’ by the administration.”
President Bush today outlined a legislative wish list for Congress to address between now and Christmas once lawmakers return to work next week, and emergency funding for U.S. troops is at the top of the list.
Bush warned that Defense Secretary Robert Gates is prepared to layoff civilian Defense Department employees, terminate contracts and reduce operations at other U.S. bases across the globe if necessary to give U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq what they need until Congress provides enough money. “Military leaders have told us what they need to do their job,” he said in his weekly radio address. “It is time for the Congress to do its job and give our troops what they need to protect America.”
The president’s other priorities include an update to and extension of the law that governs anti-terrorism surveillance, a change to the alternative minimum tax that is aimed at ensuring that all Americans pay at least some taxes, and finalizing a fiscal 2008 budget that isn’t loaded with “earmarks and pork-barrel spending.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee is expected to vote this week on the nomination of Michael Mukasey to be the next attorney general, and President Bush made the case for Mukasey’s confirmation in his weekly radio address.
Democrats initially voiced little opposition to Mukasey’s nomination, but his refusal to take a hard line against an interrogation technique known as “waterboarding,” which some critics consider torture, has made the push to confirm Mukasey more challenging. Bush reiterated Mukasey’s qualifications for the job, including his tenure as a federal judge, and chastised some Democratic senators for delaying action on the nomination.
“Congressional leaders should not make Judge Mukasey’s confirmation dependent on his willingness to make a public judgment about a classified program he has not been briefed on,” Bush said. “If the Senate Judiciary Committee were to block Judge Mukasey on these grounds, it would set a new standard for confirmation that could not be met by any responsible nominee for attorney general.”
The Democratic address, given by Washington Sen. Patty Murray, focused on veterans’ affairs. Murray responded to a pointed speech Bush had given at the conservative Heritage Foundation by chastising the president for ignoring and underfunding the VA system even as he continues to spend tens of billions of dollars on military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“Under President Bush, the number of uninsured veterans has skyrocketed,” she said. “The personal data of millions of vets was lost. And yet, the president let three months go by before even nominating a new secretary of veterans’ affairs.
“The crisis at Walter Reed Medical Center was just one visible product of this categorical neglect for our veterans. In spite of all these failures, the president continues to offer little more than speeches and scare tactics.”
The first time in 20 years that Congress has not sent the president even one annual appropriations bill by this time of the year. The Senate’s longest delay in 20 years to confirm an attorney general. The prospect of unfunded troops in the field without funding. Twenty million more Americans subject to the alternative minimum tax. An outdated intelligence surveillance law.
If you’re a Republican in the Senate and add it all up, as some of them did at a press conference today, it equals Democratic mismanagement of Congress. “It’s time to start doing things that are important to the country,” said Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
The do-nothing-Democrats theme has been embraced by Republicans from President Bush on down in recent weeks. In the past, the GOP has accused the Democratic leadership of fostering chaos and breakingpromises.
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