Political Quotes

“again I rise to thank Chairman Rockefeller, the members of the committee on both sides, and our very able staffs for a lot of hard work, particularly by members of the committee but by many Members who are not on the committee, who took their time to learn what the electronic surveillance capabilities are, to learn what guidelines and protections there are to protect the privacy rights and constitutional rights of American citizens and help us pass this bill. This is a bill which I hope we will at least, in large part, find the House agreeable to and that we can send it to the President. This has been a very long procedure. The chairman just pointed out that we have been working on this almost a year. We worked very hard after the August recess to come up with a good bill. I know we had some very warmly felt and vigorously argued amendments, but the fact that these would make it difficult for the intelligence community to collect the intelligence necessary to protect our interests, our allies, our troops abroad, and us here at home led a significant bipartisan majority to improve it. Again, my sincere thanks to the leadership on both sides for allowing us to get to this important measure.”