On the recordFebruary 16, 2011
I want to say again, first of all, the Judiciary Committee under my chairmanship reported out a Patriot Act unanimously in October of 2001, and that ranged from people like Maxine Waters on the left to Bob Barr on the right. We did reform the Patriot Act in 2005 when it came up for renewal last time, and I fulfilled my promise, number one, to oppose a premature elimination of the sunset, and, number two, to have hearings on each of the then 17 expanded provisions of law enforcement that were sunsetted at that time. Fourteen out of the 17, there was no complaint about. Even the American Civil Liberties Union testified on behalf of the fact that there were no abuses whatsoever in those 14. There was concern about the three that are in the underlying bill today, and at the insistence of the gentleman from California, Mr. Lungren, we put a sunset on it. That expired in 2009, and there have been two extensions that were voted on by the then-Democrat Congress, but they really didn't get at what the complaints of the gentleman from Colorado, Mr. Polis, have been.
