Frank Pallone: “President Bush and congressional Republicans are playing politics with our national security. After slowing down the…”

“President Bush and congressional Republicans are playing politics with our national security. After slowing down the process of withholding key documents in the Senate, President Bush and congressional Republicans are demanding the House take immediate action on a Senate FISA bill that just passed the Senate yesterday. The Protect America Act is a law that was pushed by the President, and yet today he says that he will oppose any attempts by Congress to extend that law for 3 additional weeks. The House has passed its own bill, the RESTORE Act, that will modernize FISA by giving the intelligence community the tools it needs to track terrorists while protecting the constitutional rights of innocent Americans. If Congress does not extend the Protect America Act, the intelligence community will still have all the tools it needs to continue current surveillance and begin new surveillance on any terrorist threat. Mr. Speaker, if the President was serious about our national security, he would stop playing politics over a very serious issue.”