On the recordFebruary 10, 2011
There have been some great questions raised about these provisions in the Patriot Act; but it's hard to believe that for all of last year, when Democrats had the majority in this body, that if those same arguments had been made to Speaker Pelosi and to Chairman Conyers, that they would have just continued to deny for an entire year the chance to have a hearing on these things. Either, surely, they were not asked for the hearings on those things when they had the majority and could have done it, or they did ask. But if they did ask, why would they elect the same Speaker to be their leader going into this term if she was so entirely nonresponsive to their pleas like they've made on the floor this year? Now, look, going back to 2005, for that first extension, we had some very heated debates, as Chairman Sensenbrenner will remember, in private over what we should do. And there were a couple of us that fought hard in private to have sunsets on those provisions. And my friend, Mr. Lungren, happened to have the amendment there that would allow the sunsets on these. And some of those concerns are the very concerns that have been brought up by my Democratic friends here. We want to make sure the abuses are not occurring, but so far we have not gotten the information from this administration to tell us what they have been doing. And one of the reasons we have sunsets on there is so that we can force them to be accountable as they have not for the last 2 years.
