Patrick Leahy: “On a September morning 4 years ago nearly 3,000 lives were lost on American soil, and our lives as Americans changed in…”

“On a September morning 4 years ago nearly 3,000 lives were lost on American soil, and our lives as Americans changed in an instant. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Congress moved swiftly to pass anti-terrorism legislation. The fires were still smoldering at Ground Zero in New York City when the USA PATRIOT Act became law on October 30, 2001, just 6 weeks after the attacks. Many of us here in the Senate today worked together in a spirit of bipartisan unity and resolve to craft a bill that we had hoped would make us safer as a nation. Freedom and security are always in tension in our society, and especially so in those somber weeks after the attacks, and we tried our best to strike the right balance. One of the fruits of that bipartisanship was the PATRIOT Act's sunset provisions. These key provisions set an expiration date of December 31, 2005, on certain government powers that had great potential to affect the civil liberties of the American people. Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey and I insisted on these sunsets to ensure that Congress would revisit the PATRIOT Act within a few years and consider refinements to protect the rights and liberties of all Americans more effectively, and we prevailed. Sadly, the Bush administration and the Republican congressional leadership have squandered key opportunities to improve the PATRIOT Act.…”