Political Quotes

“I thank my colleagues for agreeing on a way forward on this bill. This is a very important bill, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the FISA Act, of 2008. It gives the intelligence community the tools it needs right now and over the next 6 years to protect the country. The Protect America Act we passed in Congress and the President signed last August allowed the intelligence community to close critical intelligence gaps, but that legislation expires in less than 2 weeks. We cannot let those gaps reopen. We passed a short-term extension, and that extension will expire when we are preparing to go out on the President's Day recess. We cannot leave our country blind and deaf to threats that terrorists might bring. We were delayed in December by filibuster, which is the right of all Senators to have extended discussions. And there are those who say we need more time to look at this measure because it is very important and it is very technical and it is controversial. But the Intelligence Committee spent over 9 months looking at FISA modernization. We held hearings, we reviewed the Terrorist Surveillance Program, we looked at the implementation of the Protect America Act, and after that, we came up with a solid bipartisan bill.”