To amend the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to extend the authorities of title VII of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 through October 20, 2027, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1175 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

General Leave

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the Rules Committee met and reported a rule, House Resolution 1175, providing for consideration of H.R. 8035, to amend the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 to extend the authorities of title VII of

the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 through October 20 of 2027 and for other purposes.

The rule provides 1 hour of debate, equally divided and controlled by the chair and ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary or their respective designees and the chair and ranking member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence or their respective designees, and provides one motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, we are here today to debate a rule on H.R. 8035, which would extend FISA 702. Currently, it faces expiration on April 20, 2026.

Let me be clear at the outset. We cannot allow section 702 to lapse, not at a moment when our adversaries are expanding their capabilities, accelerating their operations, and exploiting every gap in our intelligence posture. Allowing this authority to expire would leave the United States blind to threats that move at the speed of modern conflict.

As many here know, FISA 702 was first authorized in 2008 and has since been reauthorized three times, with broad bipartisan support each of those times. Each time, Congress recognized the same truth we face today. This authority is indispensable to protect the homeland from the threats that we face. This extension should be no different.

Section 702 allows the United States Government to collect intelligence on foreign nationals located overseas--I repeat, foreign nationals located overseas who are reasonably believed to possess foreign intelligence information.

The FBI can only access FISA 702 data if the foreign section 702 target is relevant to an existing, open, predicated, full national security investigation. Yes, Mr. Speaker, we are talking about terrorism and narcoterrorism.

Section 702 cannot be used to target any U.S. person at home or abroad. That prohibition is explicit and reinforced by multiple layers of oversight.

I am not saying the 2008 legislation was perfect. It required modifications and reforms. To account for the needed reforms, Congress passed RISAA, the Reforming Intelligence and Securing America Act in 2024, the largest FBI and FISA reform in decades. This law mandated 56 different reforms, including strict limitations on FBI queries involving U.S. persons and a severe reduction in the number of FBI personnel with access to 702 data, from 10,000 to only 3 percent in the Bureau.

Additionally, to address concerns of FBI's compliance on U.S. person queries, RISAA required the Bureau to provide an annual report detailing any noncompliant query and what accountability measures were imposed on each FBI personnel that were determined to have conducted a noncompliant query. This has led to 100 percent of queries on U.S. persons being reviewed by National Security Division and the FBI's Office of Internal Auditing.

These reforms were not symbolic. They were structural, enforceable, and designed to ensure that section 702 remains both effective and accountable. A quick example of effectiveness can be seen when comparing 2021 FBI inquiries, which numbered 2.9 million, to 2025 inquiries, which numbered 7,413.

As effective as RISAA was, over the last few days, it has been clear that this body feels like more reforms are needed before section 702 can be extended again.

Mr. Speaker, at the conclusion of debate, I will offer an amendment to the rule. The amendment will self-execute an amendment in the nature of a substitute consisting of the text of Rules Committee Print 119-25.

The changes being made include: changing the reauthorization period from 18 months to 5 years; enhancing criminal penalties on individuals who unlawfully use or disclose 702 information on a U.S. person or conduct unauthorized queries; ensuring Members of Congress and certain staff may have access to proceedings of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court; ensuring only FBI attorneys can authorize U.S. person queries conducted by the FBI; implementing probable cause requirements for U.S. person targeting; requiring a GAO audit of targeting procedures; and requiring ODNI review of FBI queries of U.S. persons.

The legislative process has worked here, Mr. Speaker. It is time for the House to move this legislation.

Today, our adversaries, state and nonstate actors alike, are investing heavily in cyber operations, covert influence, terrorism networks, and advanced weapons systems. They are moving faster, hiding deeper, and coordinating across borders with unprecedented sophistication. FISA section 702 is one of the few tools that allows us to detect and disrupt these threats before they reach our shores.

Our purpose here today is to give law enforcement the ability to operate in a timely manner to stop terrorist attacks on United States soil. That is it.

Failing to reauthorize this authority would be a massive setback and one that our adversaries would exploit immediately.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to consideration of these pieces of legislation and urge passage of this rule.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I want the American citizens to know we have had an honest debate over the balance between security and the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. Sometimes that debate takes a little longer than we wish it would. I wish my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would read this document, the United States Constitution, just as we as Republicans read it and take it seriously.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx), the chair of the Rules Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I know Mr. Raskin is a very good courtroom lawyer, and I mean that. If I needed a defense lawyer, the gentleman would be one of the first I would hire. I don't need a defense lawyer, thankfully.

I do want to point out a couple of things that did not get mentioned. It is on page 5: ``Any information concerning a United States person acquired under section 702 may not be used in evidence against that United States person pursuant to paragraph (1) in any criminal proceeding if such information was acquired in violation of subsection (o) of such section.''

Now, when you go to subsection (o), warrant requirement for certain targeting--

No, it is not.

It is not.

You can debate that on your time.

Mr. Speaker, there are significant changes here.

One of the other changes that they have not mentioned is that any query against a United States person by the FBI--and this is a new accountability measure--must be reported to the Civil Liberties Protection Officer within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Any query that the FBI does on a United States person must be reported with a justification for the query, not to the Justice Department but to the Civil Liberties Protection Officer within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Mr. Speaker, let me say this about 702. First of all, 702 is not a law enforcement tool. It is an intelligence tool. It is designed to protect Americans in this country from terrorists. That is what it is designed for.

The FBI is actually prohibited from querying 702 data for evidence of a crime. It is an intelligence tool and not a criminal tool. The FBI can only access FISA 702 data if the foreign section 702 target is relevant to an existing, open, predicated, full national security investigation. We are talking about terrorism and narcoterrorism.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to the continued discussion on the rule. I thank my colleague, the chair of the Intelligence Committee, Rick Crawford, for the work that he has done on it. Many people on our side have worked diligently to accommodate people and to make sure that we are doing the things that we need to do to protect Americans and to protect their civil liberties.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, 702 is the intelligence tool that has been reauthorized in a bipartisan manner under both Democratic and Republican administrations. It is an intelligence tool that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle know must be reauthorized to protect the citizens of the United States of America.

This bill coming before us today has additional protections over and above the 56 protections that we adopted, again, in a bipartisan manner, in the RISAA legislation just a few years ago.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to the passage of this rule. I look forward to the passage of the legislation. People on our side have worked in good faith to make sure that we do anything and everything that we can to protect the United States citizens without violating their constitutional rights. That is why the additional provisions have been added in here.

Mr. Speaker, again, I will go back to this provision that I read to you, where if any information is obtained against a United States person, none of that information can be used to prosecute a United States person unless a warrant has been obtained first.

Mr. Speaker, 702 is not a law enforcement tool. It is an intelligence tool. It is an intelligence tool that has been properly designed to protect the United States and its citizens from people who want to destroy us.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Again, 702 is not a law enforcement tool. It is an intelligence tool that is designed to protect the citizens of the United States of America.

There are additional constitutional protections in here. The FBI can only access FISA 702 data if the foreign section 702 target is relevant to an existing, open, and predicated full national security investigation. That is currently the law. That is currently the law.

We are talking about terrorism, and we are talking about narcoterrorism. The FBI is currently prohibited from querying for evidence of a crime. It is not a law enforcement tool. It is an intelligence tool. It is an intelligence tool that has been very effective for our intelligence community, our Department of Defense, and the others that are here to protect the United States of America.

Additional protections that we have added--and, again, they didn't read this. I want to read it to you again, though. Page 5, ``United States Persons,'' line 10: ``Any information concerning a United States person acquired under section 702 may not be used in evidence against that United States person pursuant to paragraph (1) in any criminal proceeding if such

information was acquired in violation of subsection (o) of such section.'' Subsection (o) is the warrant provisions of the language.

Mr. Speaker, this week the House can advance H.R. 8035 and extend FISA 702 under this rule.

This extension, supported by the President, reflects the urgency and importance of FISA.

Since 2008, Congress has always reauthorized section 702 with bipartisan support. When reforms were previously needed, Congress delivered them with RISAA, 56 reforms in a bipartisan manner.

Thanks to the work of many, additional reforms will be voted on tonight in the amendment.

Letting section 702 expire would be a setback. It would be irresponsible. It would put Americans at risk. It would provide an immediate advantage to our adversaries who seek to harm the United States. This authority is vital, and it is time the House finishes this work.

Amendment Offered By Mr. Austin Scott of Georgia

Mr. Speaker, I offer an amendment to the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the amendment and on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding me the customary 30 minutes. I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, are you kidding me? Who the hell is running this place? A 5-year reauthorization--5 years--and Republicans threw it together on the back of a napkin in the back room in the middle of the night.

There have been real bipartisan discussions about adding civil liberties and safeguards. Some Members support them, and some oppose them. Just about everyone agrees that this is serious stuff, the kind of debate that Congress ought to have in the open. Instead, Republican leadership just jammed us.

Does anybody actually know what the hell is in this thing? It is 11:30 at night. The bill was changed just minutes ago--just minutes ago--and they had to post a corrected version already. That is how sloppy all of this is.

Let me be crystal clear to my colleagues across the aisle. This is too damn important to do it this way, way too important--no hearings, no markups, no real process, no transparency, no time to read it, no time to vet it. Yet, we are told that there are major reforms in this bill. There is no real explanation, no real accountability, and basically no time for anybody to figure out what the hell is going on.

Now, we are all supposed to act like this is normal. Give me a break. We will have to live with this for 5 years. The American people have to live with this for 5 years. Democrats and, quite frankly, a whole lot of Republicans, too, have barely had enough time to read the text, let alone understand any of its implications.

I bumped into a handful of Republicans on the way up here. They asked me: What is going on? What changes have been made? What is in this bill? Your own Members don't know what the hell you are doing.

This mess did not come out of nowhere. Republicans knew for months that the April 20 FISA deadline was coming. They knew they had a vote problem before the Easter recess. Instead of staying here and doing their jobs, or spending the district work period trying to work it out, they kicked the can down the road and made this mess even worse.

Now, everybody can see the chaos. It is out in the open. They barely got a rule out of the Rules Committee. Three Republican Members in the Rules Committee had to skip the vote just so the rule could be reported out. That is how divided this Republican Conference is.

Donald Trump had to jump in and tell Republicans to ``unify'' just to drag this thing forward. That is how pathetic this has all gotten.

We are standing here more than 36 hours after we were supposed to debate this rule--36 hours--with a bill dumped on the House and the American public in the middle of the night as the deadline looms.

I have to tell you that this is not leadership. This is not legislating. This is not governing. This is not a functioning majority. This is a disaster. This is incompetence. This is incompetence.

After all the chaos and all the delays and all the backroom dealing, we are still left with the same question: What the hell is going on here?

Mr. Speaker, this process is embarrassing. This majority is incompetent.

If this is how Republicans handle something as serious as national security surveillance, then they have no business being in charge.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the chairwoman of the Rules Committee, this process stinks. She thanks all of her colleagues for coming together to try to work out this deal. As far as I can tell, it is a handful of people in a back room somewhere who put this together. Some of this is handwritten. This was not the result of everybody participating in an open and transparent process. This is a backroom deal.

It is 11:40, and people are going to see this for the very first time. Some of us, myself included, were hoping that we would have a serious warrant requirement in section 702. I talked to a lot of my very conservative Republican colleagues, and they agree with me that that was something that they thought was important.

This so-called warrant requirement in this draft that you just gave us has nothing to do with section 702. It is already the law that if the FBI has probable cause, they can go to court and seek a warrant.

What we are trying to solve is a different problem. Section 702 takes in a massive amount of U.S. person information, and nothing in this bill stops the government from searching it or requires them to go to a judge.

The gentleman from Georgia, who the chairwoman says knows everything about everything, let me ask: Is there anything new in this bill that requires a warrant to query U.S. persons in section 702?

That is a question.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to yield for an answer.

Let me answer it since I am not getting an answer from the people in charge. The answer is no. The answer is no.

If anybody here is voting for this because they think that this issue has been resolved, please know it hasn't. If you vote for it, you are a cheap date because it doesn't solve the problem that we have had many discussions about.

We found this out in the 50 minutes that we had to read the text. Again, we just got this bill. Who knows what else we will find in a day or a week when experts have a chance to analyze it? Again, this is an important matter.

The privacy of American citizens is an important matter. The national security of our country is an important matter, and you are just piecing this together in a couple of minutes and saying: Take it. Trust us. We just pieced this together in a back room, just take it.

Well, we are not. This is a lousy process. This reflects the incompetence of the leadership of this House. It is a disgrace.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thought the gentleman was going to answer my question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland.

Will the gentleman yield? Because that is already in the law.

It is.

Mr. Speaker, this is all so damned frustrating because, basically, what the gentleman has done is kind of restated current law. The big reform that he is bragging about is that the administration has to report something to the administration. I mean, give me a break.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the gentleman how many other people on his side want to restate current law.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, it is no accident that at midnight we are debating this. This is intentional. Again, this bill was kind of pieced together in a back room somewhere here in the Capitol Building with a handful of people. Here we are, and no one knows what the hell is in it.

I mean, the gentleman from Georgia is basically reading talking points that, quite frankly, are a restatement of current law that don't address any of the issues that many of us had with this legislation that we were trying to work out in a bipartisan way. We have been debating some of these issues for years.

When the gentleman says that his side has been working in good faith with us, this is good faith? We just got the text of this minutes ago. We were told to be on the floor at 11:30, and let's begin this debate with major changes in the text.

That is good faith? Boy, you and I have a different idea of what good faith is. I think good faith was some of the conversations that were ongoing leading up to this moment. You tossed that out the window like it doesn't matter.

Again, this process stinks. This is not the way you should be bringing important legislation to the floor.

Let me just say to my friends on the Freedom Caucus: I don't know. You know, I disagree with you on most things, but every once in a while, we find areas of agreement, oftentimes on issues of privacy protection and protecting and upholding civil liberties.

I appreciate when we can come together on that. I thought that that is what we were doing. That is what we were trying to get to. I am looking for some of my Freedom Caucus friends to defend this, so maybe there is something here that I don't see, but they are not here defending this.

The bottom line is there is nothing new in here to protect people in section 702. There is no warrant requirement that you need to go get a warrant from a judge in section 702. That is what we were asking for. That is what we were fighting for. That is not in this. Don't try to sell a bill of goods that somehow this legislation does something it does not. It fails in that regard. It fails in that regard.

You control everything, so you can bring bills up at midnight and have these debates and say whatever you want to say, but you should be ashamed of this process.

Again, this is not a sense of Congress resolution. This is an important matter. It is important not just for our national security, it is important for the privacy of American citizens to make sure that information gathered on them is not misused.

Unfortunately, most of the American public at this point is asleep, so they are not even paying attention to any of the things that we are saying here today because, again, it is midnight when you are bringing this up.

I would just close by saying this is a lousy way to run a Congress. My friends on the other side of the aisle who are trying to defend the indefensible, quite frankly, should be ashamed of themselves. People should vote against this rule, certainly. This is not the way we should bring legislation to the floor, and they should vote against the underlying bill.

Every time I think I can't get more disappointed with the way Republicans are running this place, you come out with something like this. Again, the gall and the incompetence is stunning. Again, shame on my Republican friends.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, please forgive me because I didn't even have 15 minutes to read it. I had to drive down from Maryland's beautiful Eighth District, so I have had about 90 seconds to review this product that we were supposed to have been working on for the last several months.

Let me do my best to try to analyze for people what is happening because already the machinery of propaganda and disinformation has set in, and people are talking about a magic warrant requirement which has appeared in here, which is complete and utter nonsense.

Let me start by echoing the distinguished ranking member of the Rules Committee that this is an appalling Kafkaesque process leading to an absurd Orwellian result. This is much worse than what was being offered before of the clean 2-year reauthorization. The substance of this proposal is utterly appalling.

They say you shouldn't look to see how the sausage gets made. This isn't even sausage. This is scrapple. It is scrapple with dogfood mixed inside of it.

Mr. Speaker, I am going to have to try to read through it to understand what they are doing.

Let's start with this: Originally, they proposed an 18-month clean reauthorization, and the Democrats and some members of the Freedom Caucus were very skeptical of the enterprise. They said: 18 months? That is not like any short-term extension we know around here. Usually, we talk about 72 hours or 1 week or 2 weeks. Eighteen months? That is a huge, massive expansion.

Then they went into some kind of compromise session with the White House. None of us were invited, so we don't know who was there or what was spoken, but they went from 18 months to 5 years. They went from a clean 2-year reauthorization to a 5-year dirty deal. The saving grace of it is supposed to be a so-called warrant requirement--which I will investigate in a second--which doesn't kick in for another 2 years.

We have 2 years without their illusory Band-Aid that they are putting on this process, this fake warrant requirement, so the Trump administration can do whatever they want even without this mythical, inscrutable warrant requirement, and then we get 5 more years of this.

This is the compromise that they worked out behind our backs, and all we could rely on was the goodwill of the handful of members of the Freedom Caucus who were standing up for the Constitution and the civil liberties and civil rights of the people.

I don't think that our friends in the Freedom Caucus have done the American people any favors if they are signing off on this.

The first thing that they do is they change the terms of the length of the legislation, a 5-year authorization with the fraudulent warrant requirement not kicking in for 2 years.

Let's look at the much-vaunted warrant requirement, which appears on page 3. Let's start with this in trying to understand the gobbledygook here. ``The Federal Bureau of Investigation may not ingest unminimized information acquired under this section into its analytic repositories unless the targeted person is relevant to an existing, open, predicated full national security investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. If the subject of such predicated, full national security investigation is a United States person, for purposes of this paragraph, the investigation must be supported by probable cause.''

This is supposed to be the big concession to the people who were saying that the Constitution governs and the Fourth Amendment is still alive, right?

Well, what is the first thing that I notice as someone who spent 25 years as a constitutional law professor? Well, the operative part of it is the last eight words there: ``the investigation must be supported by probable cause.''

It doesn't say it has to be supported by a search warrant, much less does it say it has to be supported by a search warrant or probable cause determined by a judge, by a court. That is not in there.

Who is going to figure out whether it is supported by probable cause? We are not talking about evidence of a crime. We are talking about a predicated, national security investigation. If you flip the page, you find out that the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence shall jointly establish procedures and standards for officers and employees of the United States Government to determine the existence of probable cause. Well, there goes the requirement, the constitutional requirement of an independent magistrate issuing a warrant. The FBI will be the judge of its own warrant. In other words, we are right back to the problem that got us here in the first place. Mr. Speaker, look above there. We are told, ``Pursuant to subsection (b), no officer or employee of the United States Government may intentionally target for acquisition the communications of a United States person pursuant to an authorization issued under subsection (a). Pursuant to other provisions of this Act and the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, the Government may seek a warrant or other appropriate order supported by a probable cause showing to target for collection the communications of a United States person if there exists probable cause that the United States person . . . is a foreign power,'' et cetera, et cetera. May.

Suddenly, we go from the Constitution's imposition of a mandatory requirement for a warrant, right, that no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause and there must be a warrant for a search unless there is a specific exception to it. But this simply says they may seek a warrant. They don't have to. They may seek a warrant.

In other words, this provision, too, is meaningless. It just returns us to exactly where we were.

It takes us right back to the status quo.

It says that the Attorney General, that would be Todd Blanche, or the Acting Attorney General, and the Director of DNI, shall establish the procedures for determining if there is probable cause. I thought that James Madison and George Mason had taken care of that. I thought the Constitution established the meaning of probable cause.

Now, it is being delegated to the Acting Attorney General. It doesn't even say the acting but whoever the Attorney General might be. Perhaps acting is imported through this language. Who knows?

Do we really want Pam Bondi or Kash Patel or Todd Blanche figuring out what our Fourth Amendment rights are and then they get to decide for themselves without going to a court? At the very least, even if we are not going to have an actual warrant, there must be an independent judge, a magistrate, involved in defining whether or not there is probable cause to search American citizens. That is the bottom line here.

Everybody knows and understands our Constitution and, yes, our Constitution applies in peacetime. It applies in wartime. It applies to American citizens in America. It applies to American citizens abroad.

Mr. Speaker, we are very willing to sit down to try to figure out some way we can deal with this thorny area of the law, but sneaky meetings at the White House behind everybody's back and then votes at 2:30 in the morning are not going to do it for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentleman from

Georgia for his points, but I hope that their entire case doesn't rest on the argument that he just advanced from page 5. He quoted the section saying that any information concerning a United States person acquired under 702 may not be used in evidence against that person in any criminal proceeding if such information was acquired in violation of subsection (o).

If you go to subsection (o), it says: ``Pursuant to subsection (b), no officer or employee of the United States Government may intentionally target for acquisition the communications of a United States person. . . . ''

That is precisely the law today. This is a restatement of what is already the law.

FISA is called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It is all about the surveillance of people abroad. It is not about surveilling the people here.

If somebody were deliberately targeted, every judge in the land, even those most faithfully reporting to Donald Trump, would say: I am sorry. You can't target U.S. citizens on that under FISA.

This is all about the collection of incidental data. I thought that everybody understood that that was the premise of our whole legislative discussion here, that this is about the collection of incidental data affecting hundreds of thousands of American citizens. That is what we are talking about.

The passage that the gentleman just read is a restatement of what the law is today, which is that if they set out to go after American citizens here, of course, the exclusionary rule operates at that point. It would be prohibited. The question is, what happens if they incidentally collected. Under this new language, nothing happens unless somebody permissively decides that they want to adopt a rule over at the Department of Justice making it a problem.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Georgia for yielding time, and I thank him for the yeoman's work that he does as a member of the Rules Committee, a member of the Agriculture Committee, and a member of the Intelligence Committee. He knows what he is talking about here tonight because of the work that he has done over the years, particularly on the Intelligence Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I don't think anybody in this country can deny that we are living in a very dangerous world. We are dealing with terrorism and narcoterrorism constantly.

I want to compliment all the segments of our Conference. Many people don't realize the range of ideas and talents that we have in the Republican Conference. It does sometimes take us a while to consider all the ideas that Members have, but we have some very strong people in our Conference whose reason for being here is to protect the American people. It takes a while sometimes for the Conference parts to come together to do what we are elected to do: use the agencies of the Federal Government to protect the American people.

The people's House is doing its job tonight by reauthorizing FISA 702 with the excellent reforms that my colleague has outlined.

This is not incompetence. It is responsible legislating, Mr. Speaker. FISA 702 expires on Monday night, April 20, at 12:01. We must pass a reauthorization of that so it can go to the Senate, be passed by the Senate, and signed by the President before it expires.

We are doing our job, Mr. Speaker, as the people's House. I commend my colleague from Georgia for the work that he and all of my colleagues who came together have done to come up with a very good bill that we are going to pass later tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I urge everyone to vote for the rule and to vote for the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, had I been present, I would have voted YEA on Roll Call No. 123.