William F. Smith: “Madam Speaker, after nearly a year of delays and months of negotiations, the House today will finally vote on compromise…”

“Madam Speaker, after nearly a year of delays and months of negotiations, the House today will finally vote on compromise legislation that gives our intelligence community the tools that it needs to protect America. America's enemies take on many forms, terrorist groups, foreign governments and spies who all pose serious threat to America and its allies. Last August, Congress passed the Protect America Act which provided a temporary solution to the problem. The PAA expired in February. As a result, our intelligence community could not gather two-thirds of the foreign intelligence they needed to protect American lives. From day one, we insisted that any legislation passed by Congress must not interfere with our fundamental ability to collect foreign intelligence. This legislation accomplishes that goal. H.R. 6304 does not extend constitutional protections to foreign terrorists and other foreign targets overseas. The bill does allow the intelligence community to target a foreign person overseas without a court order if critical intelligence would be lost or not collected in a timely manner.”