Political Quotes

“2 years ago the American people first became aware that the National Security Agency was collecting private information about their phone calls. This is called the Snowden revelation. Under the banner of national security, the National Security Agency was mining information about home phone calls and how long they lasted. They found out whom they were calling--and not only that. They found out whom the call was between. They also determined how long that call lasted. NSA essentially was conducting a dragnet, without first attempting to determine whether that information was relevant to a national security problem. NSA ran this program under the authorities granted to them by section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which expires on June 1 of this year. The American people were outraged by these revelations and Congress rightly acted. Last year, the House passed a bill by a vote of 303 to 121 to end the NSA's so-called bulk metadata collection program and reform and extend the authority for this program. I brought a similar bill to the floor authored by Senators Leahy and Lee. There was a bipartisan group of Senators who joined them to call for its passage. But sadly, the majority leader--at that time the minority leader--stood in the way of bipartisan reform. Instead of passing meaningful reform, he led a Republican filibuster of this bill. That was one of a couple hundred that was led by my friend.…”