Chuck Schumer: “if we want to know why people are sick and fed up with Congress, look at this debate. On Sunday the President asked and…”

“if we want to know why people are sick and fed up with Congress, look at this debate. On Sunday the President asked and all the law enforcement people asked for two things, the top two things they needed to fight terrorism. One, taggants. Identifiers in explosives, particularly black power and smokeless; and two, multipoint wiretaps. Neither are in this bill. Neither are in this bill because the NRA did not want it. Neither are in this bill because forces on the extreme dictated what the Republican Party was going to put forward. This bill is a sham. It does a few good things, but it does not give law enforcement what they want, plain and simple. We all know that. All the other provisions are an elaborate smokescreen to hide what everyone in this Chamber knows: that the majority party is not doing what the FBI, the ATF and all the other law enforcement experts have asked for. Mr. Kallstrom, long before this conference, the FBI man in the lead at TWA, said please give us multipoint wiretaps. The majority says no. Mr. Freeh, the head of the FBI, says please give us taggants so we can trace the kind of pipe bomb that blew up at the Olympics. The majority says no. And last night, when we had agreement from the President, the Republican leaders of the Senate, the Democratic leaders of the Senate and the Democratic side of the House, only the Republican majority in the House refused to go along.”