María Elvira Salazar: “once again I thank the distinguished Senator from Vermont and the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania for their…”

“once again I thank the distinguished Senator from Vermont and the distinguished Senator from Pennsylvania for their leadership on this effort. I wish to take this opportunity to once again express my serious concerns about the PATRIOT Act conference report that is currently before the Senate. As I stated yesterday, as a former attorney general, I am very familiar with the needs of the more than 800,000 men and women working in law enforcement throughout our country, including those engaged in the fight against terrorism. For that reason, I support extending all the expiring powers of the USA PATRIOT Act. I firmly believe we can extend those powers while at the same time providing sufficient checks on those powers to protect America's fundamental civil liberties. That is what the bipartisan SAFE Act did. That is what the bipartisan, unanimously supported Senate bill did. That is what this conference report could have done if it simply addressed the modest concerns my colleagues and I laid out in our letter to conferees with respect to section 215, national security letters, and sneak-and-peek searches. Unfortunately, these concerns were not addressed in the conference report, and I am left with no choice but to work with my colleagues, both Democrats and Republicans, to defeat the bill before us.…”