Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Speaker, I rise to caution my colleagues about this false dilemma of security versus freedom and about supporting and defending our Constitution against all enemies foreign or domestic by abridging the rights and freedoms protected by our Constitution. I want to applaud, frankly, the behind-the-scenes folks on the committees who worked hard to make this bill better than the status quo. Many of my colleagues will look at this, and, frankly, that has been the argument by the ranking member and the chairman that this bill really isn't that good of a bill, that it is really not what we should do, but it is better than the status quo. Too often that is what happens here. I think that might leave people with the false perception that we couldn't do better. But the reality is there is bipartisan agreement and bicameral agreement on the Safeguarding Americans' Private Records Act. The bill that the committee was going to move forward with was pulled. The committee process didn't take place because there was a bipartisan coalition of conservatives and progressives who had a plan to amend the bill. It may, in fact, have been a completely different bill. We also didn't take it through committee.…”