Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for yielding to me, and I want to also thank the efforts of the Judiciary Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence for the broad and intense work they have done on this bill. The USA FREEDOM Act starts with the right concept, and that is that the civil liberties of Americans were at risk. Even though we have very few examples of people being victimized by it, there is not a level of comfort in this country. And so the move to block the Federal Government from storing metadata and still allow for them to be able to set up under a FISA warrant a query through privately held data is the right way to go. It is a conclusion that I drew early on in the many hearings that I have been to, both classified and unclassified hearings. I quizzed the witnesses, and I put my mark down on those committee hearings, but what happened was the process moved quickly, and over a weekend there was an intense job to write a bill that turned into a substitute amendment, and a debate in the Judiciary Committee referred over to the Select Committee on Intel. Both committees acted quickly. I offered an amendment before the Judiciary Committee. It was voted on. But I have to say that, in my opinion, it was not considered in a fashion that would have allowed for the full judgment of the Judiciary Committee to weigh in.…”