Political Quotes

“On another issue, in just 12 days, section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, along with two other surveillance authorities, will expire. And once again, the Senate Republican leadership is scrambling at the last minute to avoid a crisis of its own making. Last year, we had a chance to pass the USA FREEDOM Act of 2014, and I urged the Senate to pass it. A majority of Senators, but not 60, voted for it because we all knew the expiration date for these surveillance authorities was right around the corner. We knew May 31 would arrive quickly in the new Congress. I did not want our intelligence community to face a period of uncertainty leading up to the sunset, and I also didn't want the American people to have billions of their phone records stocked away in a government database any longer--especially as we have seen, in the case of Edward Snowden, just how insecure that database can be. That is why we spent months holding six public hearings in the Judiciary Committee and even more months negotiating a bipartisan bill, which got the support of the administration, the intelligence community, privacy groups, and the technology industry. I think that is the first time we have had all of them together. Unfortunately, my attempts to avoid this last-minute chaos were blocked by the Republican leader last year. He said this was a matter that could wait for the new Congress. He said the new Republican majority would have a rigorous committee process for important issues.…”