Floor Statements

Mr. President, on behalf of Senator Inouye, I ask unanimous consent that floor privileges be granted for the remainder of the 110th Congress to Robin Squellati, a detailee from the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps who works with his staff on issues pertaining to a number of different issues over which Senator Inouye has some responsibility.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, the Senate will resume consideration of S. 2248 as soon as I leave the floor. This is the FISA legislation. There will be no rollcall votes today. As a reminder, Senators have until 1 p.m. today to file germane first-degree amendments to the Rockefeller substitute.

Mr. President, as I said twice yesterday--and I will just say it briefly this morning--Democrats believe there are a lot of bad people out there and that there should be some form of collecting information over the telephone. But we believe it should be done in an orderly way in keeping with our Constitution. It appears, based on Republican actions yesterday, they want no controls whatsoever on the President. They want exactly what he has been doing now, which is violating the law.

Mr. President, we have offered a 2-week extension of the bill, a 30- day extension, a 15-month extension. If this bill that we have now before us is not enacted, it is not because of Democrats, it is because the Republicans, in conjunction with Vice President Cheney and the President, have made some determination that there should be no FISA legislation.

I, frankly, do not think that cloture will be invoked Monday afternoon. That being the case, it is virtually legislatively impossible to do anything by February 1. Remember, the House is out of session all but 1 day next week.

So the record should be very clear, we believe there are very bad people out there. We believe there should be some way of collecting information. But we believe, as does the vast majority of the American people, it should be collected in some way that is within the bounds of our Constitution.

Mr. President, I certainly join with my friend from Kentucky in

the respect we show for this young man.

Mr. President, we have lost about 4,000 soldiers in Iraq. Thirty-five thousand have been wounded. About a third of them have been grievously wounded. As we know, about 40 percent of the men and women coming back from Iraq have what is now called--we used to call it, after the Second World War, shell shock. Now they call it post- traumatic stress syndrome.

I just wrote a letter to the Nevada parents of a young man who was killed. I have done that lots of times. I was unable to speak to them, and that is why I wrote the letter. Most of them I try to visit. But the family has been split up a little bit, and it was not possible for me to do that.

Mr. President, I hope we can figure out a way to get our troops home soon. General Petraeus said the war cannot be won military, and every day that goes by that is proven certainly so. The Iraqi Government has nothing to move toward a settlement of this situation. There are far too many stories like Josh.

I hope we can work on a bipartisan basis on many matters. We hope, for this package which is coming from the House maybe sometime next week dealing with the stimulus, that we can work on a bipartisan basis. From all accounts I got yesterday, that, in fact, will be the case. Senators Baucus and Grassley, who have jurisdiction of 85 or 90 percent of the potential matters that go into the bill, have indicated they are going to have a bipartisan markup next week, and hopefully we can take a look at that piece of legislation in a bipartisan way and get it to the President as quickly as possible. There are many other things we have to work on, on a bipartisan basis, and I look forward to that.

I say with all due respect to my friend--and he is my friend--the Republican leader, that one thing the President has done and done very well these past years is frighten the American people, and it appears we are entering into another zone of frightening the American people. It started a couple of days ago with the Vice President, and the President followed him by a day, and we have the State of the Union coming. It is obvious that this FISA bill--which I hope something works out so it can be passed, but unless there is a way to amend it, it certainly doesn't appear that it is going to be. The President's State of the Union and certainly leading up to it will, again, frighten the American people. The best way to take that away is for the President to work with us. Are we asking for the impossible?

There have been efforts to amend this FISA legislation. In title I, there are probably five or six amendments we would want to vote on. Title II, which deals with immunity, Senators Dodd and Feingold for a long time have said they wish to have a vote on that. That is not unreasonable. Many of us support that. I can't imagine why we can't move forward on that, unless this is something the President wants to ratchet up so that he has something to frighten the American people about on Monday night when he gives his State of the Union, that we are not protecting the American people. We are protecting the American people, just as this young man, Josh, was, whom the Republican leader talked about. I wrote a letter, as I indicated, to the Gaul family a couple of days ago.

We need to enter into a new era of bipartisanship where we are not frightening the American people but we are trying to work with the American people, to move out of some of the areas in which we find ourselves bogged down. I hope this year will allow us to do that.

Mr. President, I understand S. 2556 is at the desk and due for a second reading.

Mr. President, I object to any further proceedings with respect to this bill at this time.

Mr. President, there is no question that Senator Rockefeller and Senator Bond have worked hard on this legislation. Also, we have had good work from Senator Leahy and Senator Specter of the Judiciary Committee. Senator Rockefeller wants a piece of legislation to pass very badly. He does not support cloture in this effort that is going to take place on Monday because he believes the bill needs to be changed. Just because there is a bill that comes out of committee doesn't mean we shouldn't deal with it here on the floor. Senator Rockefeller is not going to support cloture on this bill on Monday. It is a decision he made, and he has made it because we have not had the opportunity to do things to this piece of legislation that he believes should happen. It is a rare piece of legislation that comes out of one of these major committees that comes to the floor that doesn't require some improvement.

So it is simply unfair to say that Senator Rockefeller and Senator Bond's piece of legislation should go through as if it were written in script on top of some big mountain. It was written in a committee room with a lot of discussion and votes, and some of the amendments passed, some didn't. It came to the floor. We all are happy it came to the floor. But at this time, even Senator Rockefeller believes there should be changes in it, and he will not support cloture, as he told me last night, because he feels it has been handled so poorly by the minority here on the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Madam President, today, we are going to quickly resume consideration of S. 2248, the FISA legislation. Currently, the Judiciary Committee substitute amendment is pending. We hope to reach a time agreement with that amendment soon. I hope we can do it prior to the 12:30 event that we Democrats always have on Thursday. I hope we can do that. I hope there will be a number of rollcall votes today on FISA-related amendments, that we can complete action on this important legislation as quickly as possible.

Madam President, as I indicated, we started this debate again last evening. Both the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees have jurisdiction over this legislation. Senators Rockefeller and Bond, Senators Leahy and Specter worked very hard on their particular aspects of this legislation.

We, under the regular order, in a case of sequential referral--that is what we have in this matter--the Intelligence Committee text is the underlying bill, and the Judiciary Committee text is automatically pending as a complete substitute.

Last night, Chairman Leahy, with the authorization of a majority of the committee, sent a slightly modified version of the Judiciary Committee amendment to the desk. We will have a vote on that amendment sometime today. The Judiciary Committee made what I believe to be some important improvements in this legislation, adding protections for the privacy of law-abiding Americans.

This is a strong bill. I will support it. I encourage my colleagues to do so as well.

In the event the full Judiciary Committee bill is not accepted by the Senate, I hope we can adopt some of the individual improvements from the Judiciary bill that is now in the form of an amendment.

Several of my colleagues, many of whom serve on the committees of jurisdiction; that is, both committees, plan to offer pieces of the Judiciary Committee bill as separate amendments.

In addition to considering the procedures included in title I of the bill, we will also debate the question of whether telephone companies that allegedly facilitated President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program should be granted retroactive immunity from civil lawsuits.

Senators Dodd and Feingold will seek to strike that immunity title. They will seek to strike it in its entirety. I personally oppose immunity and will support that amendment. But, of course, others disagree. If this amendment is not adopted, there will be other amendments to limit the immunity provisions in the Intelligence bill.

I hope there will not be extended time on these amendments. We can work through this. Friday is tomorrow. We have to finish this legislation, and we have to do it this week. It is an important piece of legislation. I have requested a 30-day extension. That is not going to be given. So everyone should understand, we have to go forward with this legislation.

Senators Specter and Whitehouse have an amendment they plan to offer, as do Senators Feinstein and Nelson of Florida.

As I have said before, if there are Senators who do not like these amendments and think they should be subjected to 60-vote thresholds, these Senators are going to have to engage in an old-fashioned filibuster. We are not going to automatically have these 60-vote margins. These amendments are by and large germane. They should be adopted if a majority of the Senate supports them.

Finally, yesterday, as I have indicated, I sent a letter to the President asking for a brief extension. I have heard from many sources that is not going to be granted.

The Senate will work as quickly as we can, but I think it is going to be very difficult for both Houses to negotiate and pass a final bill prior to the February 1 expiration date. But that is what we have to do, so we have no alternative.

Republicans have objected to my requests for a 30-day extension of the act, as I have mentioned. This matter is too important for us to be bogged down in procedural matters at this time.

I look forward to working with my colleagues on a bipartisan basis to provide our intelligence professionals with the tools they need to combat terrorism, while protecting the privacy of law-abiding American citizens.

Mr. President, there will be an amendment offered by Senators Rockefeller and Bond. It is a substitute that will be pending for a while. What we are going to try to do over here, I have spoken to a number of Members who want to offer amendments relating to title I. We are working out an order in which they will be offered. What we would like to do is have a number of them offered, debated, and have a time this afternoon that we can vote on all of them in succession. We will try to finish all the title I amendments, and then we will move to title II. We hope there isn't a lot of time spent on each amendment, but Members have a right to take whatever time they want. In an effort to make this more understandable, rather than jumping back and forth, title I and title II, on this side we will try to offer amendments as they relate to title I.

We understand there is no requirement to do this. But if there are amendments the minority wants to offer, we will certainly be cooperative and make sure we have the ability to go back and forth.

Mr. President, the Senator from Wisconsin has been very patient. As soon as Senators Rockefeller and Bond finish offering their substitute, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Feingold have the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, is one of the managers on the floor? Yes. I have been in contact with the distinguished Republican leader. I ask unanimous consent that Senator Kennedy be recognized for 5 minutes for purposes of offering an amendment, and following his 5 minutes, that Senator Feinstein be recognized for 5 minutes, and following their statements and their attempt to offer amendments, that I then be recognized.

Following their 5-minute statements, I be recognized.

So you have no objection to Senator Kennedy being recognized for 5 minutes and Senator Feinstein being recognized for 5 minutes?

And then following their statement, that I be recognized?

Mr. President, yesterday our Vice President gave a speech at the Heritage Foundation talking about the need to pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Today, the President gave a statement; it was a brief statement. The President gave a statement following up on the Vice President's speech yesterday. The Vice President gave a speech; the President gave a statement today.

Among other things, he said:

If Congress does not act quickly, our national security

professionals will not be able to count on critical tools

they need to protect our nation, and our ability to respond

to new threats and circumstances will be weakened. That means

it will be harder to figure out what our enemies are doing to

recruit terrorists and infiltrate them into our country. . .

.

So I ask congressional leaders to follow the course set by

their colleagues in the Senate Intelligence Committee, bring

this legislation to a prompt vote in both houses. . . .

Congress' action--or lack of action--on this important

issue will directly affect our ability to keep Americans

safe.

Let the record be spread with the fact that all 51 Democrats joined with 49 Republicans in that we want to do everything we can to make our homeland safe. We want, if necessary, within the confines of the law, to do wiretapping of these bad people. But having said that, we want to do it within the confines of the law and our Constitution. We want to make sure this wiretapping does not include innocent Americans who happen to be part of what they are collecting. That is what the American people expect us to do.

So I again say, no one can question our patriotism, our willingness to keep our homeland safe. We have tried to move forward on this legislation. We have tried in many different ways. What we have been doing today and yesterday is moving forward on this legislation. As the distinguished Senator from California said, there are amendments that will make this legislation better. That is in the eye of the beholder, and we all understand that. But shouldn't the Senate have the ability to vote on those amendments because no matter what we do as a Senate, it has to have a conference with the House. They have already passed their legislation. We have been stalled every step of the way--every step of the way.

The Feingold amendment, for example, was offered. It certainly is germane. But we are being told he cannot get a vote on this amendment because it concerns FISA's court orders. His amendment was discussed at length previously. Half of it was accepted on a bipartisan basis, the other half was not. But certainly he is entitled to a vote.

Senator Feingold and I do not mean to embarrass him--is a legal scholar. He is a graduate of one of our finest law schools in the world. He is a Rhodes Scholar. Senator Whitehouse has been attorney general of the State of Rhode Island and is certainly known all over the country as someone who understands the law. He has been a tremendously good person as a Member of the Senate. He serves on both committees, the Intelligence Committee and on the Judiciary Committee, and he is a thoughtful person.

He thought the legislation that came out of the Intelligence Committee should be improved, and as a member of the Judiciary Committee, he worked to have it improved. He sought to offer a germane amendment a short time ago concerning minimization. What does that mean? That means if you pick up by mistake an American, that you drop it. You push that out of the way, that isn't going to be made public in any manner. We want to vote on that amendment. It seems everyone would vote for it. I certainly hope so. But there is an objection to even having a vote on that amendment.

Senator Cardin, a long-time Member of Congress, a relatively new Member of the Senate, but a long-time, experienced Member of the Congress of the United States sought to offer a germane amendment shortening the sunset provision. The bill that is before us that came out of the Intelligence Committee is for 6 years. Things are changing rapidly in our country and in the world as it relates to electronics. We don't know what is going to take place in regard to terrorism, violence or what is going to take place with our ability to do a better job electronically to uncover some of what we believe should be uncovered. He wants this legislation to be for not 6 years but 4 years. That is a pretty simple amendment. I support it. I think it is a good amendment. But he has been unable to offer that simple amendment.

Senator Feinstein has given a very fine statement seeking consent to offer a germane amendment on exclusivity, meaning that FISA is the only basis for the President's eavesdropping. There have been editorials written virtually in every State of the Union in the newspapers saying that should be the law, but she has not been able to offer that amendment.

Senator Kennedy wanted to offer an amendment that is so rational, so important. He says: Let's have the inspector general do an investigation about the whole wiretapping program to find out what has taken place, who has been involved in it, and report back to Congress, not tomorrow; he sets a reasonable time that be done. But guess what. We cannot even vote on that amendment. He cannot even offer the amendment.

I say to my friends it does not matter what we try to do, we cannot do it. It appears the President and the Republicans want failure. They don't want a bill. So that is why they are jamming this forward.

I am going to vote against cloture. It is not fair that we have a major piece of legislation such as this and we are not allowed to offer an amendment as to whether the bill should be 4 years or 6 years, and we are not allowed to offer an amendment as to minimization, that is whether Americans picked up by mistake are going to be brought out in the public eye, or Senator Feingold's germane amendment dealing with how court orders are issued, a real good amendment, an important amendment.

If there were ever a Catch-22, this is it because what we are being asked to do is irrational, irresponsible, and wrong. From where does this ``Catch-22'' come? We all know it was a bestseller. Joseph Heller wrote this book. He was a pilot during World War II. Joseph Heller thought he was crazy. He was a bomber pilot. We all know how difficult it was to fly those big airplanes in World War II. The casualty rate was high. If you were crazy and you said so, you would be grounded from flying these big bombers. But the officials of the military would say: We are not going to let you not fly airplanes because you have to be crazy to fly one of these in the first place. That is what Joseph Heller was stuck with because it was crazy to fly bomber missions, and they would immediately make you fly more bomber missions.

That is what we have today. We are trying everything we can do, but no matter what we do, we step on each other in the process.

I suggest we were doing this the right way. We were looking at title I, which deals with procedures of this FISA legislation, and then we were going to come later and offer amendments to title II. For example, one of the difficult issues is whether there should be retroactive immunity for the phone companies. Senators Dodd and Feingold want to offer an amendment to strike from the provisions of the bill retroactive immunity. That is something on which we should be able to vote.

Senator Levin came up with the idea, and there are others--I believe Senator Whitehouse also wanted to offer an amendment dealing with substitution,

saying: OK, if there is going to be retroactive immunity, have the Government pay for it, not the phone companies, because if, in fact, they were entitled to immunity, that means they were forced into something they shouldn't have been forced into. That is something I think is reasonable and logical to vote on, but we will not be able to vote on it.

I asked unanimous consent that we extend this matter for 30 days because it is very apparent, unless cloture is invoked--and I say to my Democratic colleagues I think this is an example of something on which we should not invoke cloture--if cloture is not invoked, this bill is not going to be finished by February 1 and this program will expire.

So we say to the President, who gave this statement today saying he wants the program to continue, he needs to talk with his Republicans in the Senate and say: OK, let's get an extension; let's see if we can work something out. Two weeks, a month, we are willing, if the President wants, to continue this awful program for a year, 15 months, wait until the next President comes along. We are willing to do that, and he will still have his authority.

We know one of his counsel, Mr. Yu, says he doesn't need this anyway; he can do what he wants without this legislation. But we are willing to do whatever is within the realm of possibility.

I said we will take a 30-day extension. We will take a 2-week extension. We will take a 12-month extension. We will take an 18-month extension. I tell all my friends, I have been told--and I appreciate very much my distinguished counterpart, Senator McConnell, who has told me he has a cloture motion, it is all signed, and he is going to file it as soon as I yield the floor to him--I say to all my friends, under the regular order, we will have this vote Monday. If, in fact, cloture is invoked, we will have to have the vote early Monday because the 30 hours begins running, and we will have to finish it because we have so much to do before the final week. I explained all this to the distinguished Republican leader.

If cloture is going to be filed, and I know it is going to be, and if cloture is invoked, we have to have a vote no later than 1 p.m. on Monday, so the 30 hours runs out at a reasonable time on Tuesday so we can do other things. If cloture is not invoked--and I am not going to vote for cloture--unless the President agrees to some extension of time, the program will fail. I don't know any way out of that. But I, in good conscience, cannot support this legislation, at least unless we have a vote on retroactivity of immunity. I can't vote for cloture unless some of the very basic amendments that people want to offer are allowed. They all have asked for very short time limits. No one is questioning spending a lot of time. We Democrats are not in any way trying to stall this bill. We have been trying to expedite it for a long time now.

For purposes of making the record clear, and for my distinguished counterpart, I ask unanimous consent that the Judiciary Committee be discharged from further consideration of S. 2541, which is a 30-day extension of FISA, and that the Senate then proceed to its consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid on the table.

Mr. President, we have, Republicans and Democrats--I acknowledge more Democrats than Republicans--who believe this Intelligence Committee bill can be improved upon, and I so appreciate the Judiciary Committee working in good faith with the Intelligence Committee. We think there are some tuneups that can be done to this bill to make it much better, and it is not fair, I say respectfully to my friend from Kentucky, it is really not fair that we be asked to just accept this without the ability to have a vote on a single amendment.

So I respectfully object to my colleague's request to modify the unanimous consent request.

Mr. President, I am now going to ask unanimous consent to pass the House bill, which was passed by the House last November.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 517, H.R. 3773, which is the House-passed FISA bill; that the bill be read three times, passed, and the motion to reconsider be laid upon the table.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I am, of course, disappointed we are where we are, but that is where we are. I have had a conference just now with the distinguished Republican leader, and what we are going to do is to vote on this cloture motion at 4:30 on Monday. I have gotten agreement, and we will formalize that in just a bit. I have agreement that the vote will be as if it occurred at noon that day, so if in fact cloture is invoked, we can start something at 6 o'clock on Tuesday because we have a lot to do.

So having said that, Mr. President, we have one call to make, which I think will be fine, and I will make the request at a later time when we do have agreement of what we want to do. I will formalize that as soon as we make a phone call.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote on the cloture motion just filed occur on Monday, January 28, at 4:30 p.m.; that the requirements of rule XXII be waived; that if cloture is invoked, all postcloture time during a recess or adjournment would be counted.

Also, Mr. President, when we get the vote, the vote be deemed as having occurred at 12 noon on Monday, January 28.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.