Ed Royce: “we are back on the floor today deliberating another short-term extension on electronic surveillance legislation, and I…”

“we are back on the floor today deliberating another short-term extension on electronic surveillance legislation, and I would understand a stopgap measure if we were at an impasse. But yesterday the other body passed a bipartisan permanent rewrite of this essential national security legislation. They did it with 68 votes. They did it overwhelmingly on what some here have called a contentious issue. Well, 21 Members of the majority here have written the Democratic leadership supporting the Senate's version. The President has said he will sign it. Mr. Speaker, let's bring that bill to the floor and pass it today. If the current authority is allowed to lapse 3 days from now, most experts agree that the administration would have to go back to the original FISA statute for new warrants in cases where foreign-to-foreign communications are routed through the U.S. telecom infrastructure, causing us to miss important information on terrorists that are trying to attack Europe, trying to attack us here, trying to attack in the Middle East. That's a situation we cannot go back to.”