Dan Coats: “I regret that I just have 2 minutes. It is unfortunate that a bill with this amount of consequence for Americans is…”

“I regret that I just have 2 minutes. It is unfortunate that a bill with this amount of consequence for Americans is being debated in such a limited amount of time. We have 2 bills, one produced by the intelligence community, written and supported by the chairman, a Democrat from California, and by the vice chairman, the Republican from Georgia, and it passed on a bipartisan basis with more than a 3-to-1 ratio. Here we are trying to go forward, allowing only one vote on one different bill. Why do we have to rush this through in a lameduck session when it has such consequences and when the director of the agency that oversees this, when asked by me what are the ultimate consequences of this, his answer was: A compromise of our ability to detect terrorist attacks-- and the consequence will be Americans will die. And when that happens, and when those of us who go everyday to the Intelligence Committee know what the threat is--the threat is greater than it has ever been--we need to understand that eventually something will happen here, and people will turn to us and say: Did you have every possible tool in place to try to stop this from happening? If you didn't, why didn't you? Let's not have a repeat of 9/11 when the commission then comes to us and says get the tools that you need. This program has been so mischaracterized in terms of what it does and doesn't do. Even as I talk to my colleagues, they don't have a full understanding of what it doesn't do.…”