On the recordMay 13, 2015
I thank the chairman. Mr. Speaker, each person who comes up here will talk to you about the painstaking work that the chairman and the ranking member went through to craft a bill that would both strengthen our security, following on with things we have learned since the enactment of the PATRIOT Act, and also make changes based on both lessons learned of things the PATRIOT Act overdid and excesses by the Presidential usurping of the intent of Congress. We have achieved that by a 25-2 vote in our committee, a vote that is almost unheard of. I think, most importantly, though, we are doing something the American people need to know, and that is we are bringing transparency to the process for the first time. Under this legislation, a FISA court, working in secrecy, that makes a decision to expand or to in some other way add more surveillance will have to publish those findings, declassify them, and make them available not just to Congress but to the American people. We cannot guarantee that behind closed doors secret--and necessarily secret--judge actions would always be what we would like, but under this reform, we can ensure that Congress and the American people will have the transparency and oversight as to those actions, not by whom they were after but what they did. That is going to bring the true reform that has been needed in a process in which the trust of the American people has been in doubt since the Snowden revelation.…
