Date: 2010-02-25
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker. it is probably the highest honor of my life is to serve in this House. and as a part of that to serve on the Judiciary Committee. I have great respect for the members of that committee and the work that we do. But in some ways. I would echo the comments of the gentleman from New York. although I would not agree with his conclusions. of the disappointment that this primary obligation of the Judiciary Committee. that is to deal with legislation that goes to the common defense of this Nation. would be viewed in the legislative agenda as an afterthought. I am the author of the sunset provisions from the 2005 extension of the PATRIOT Act. I put those sunset provisions in. or I offered them and got the support of Members on both sides of the aisle precisely because I understood there was some controversy about those three. and that there was a need for us to take a serious look at it. Unfortunately. while we have established other priorities in this Congress. in this House. it does not appear that the PATRIOT Act has been one of them. Because if it were otherwise. we would be spending hours. if not days. on this floor talking about the implications of the PATRIOT Act. And in the context of that debate. I am absolutely assured that the vast majority of this House would support the continuation of these provisions. as is the conclusion of this administration. These three provisions provide tools for our intelligence community to not only connect the dots. but gather the dots. There seems to be a misunderstanding at times that if we were to take some of these provisions and establish a higher degree of proof. or a higher degree of suspicion that somehow that would make these tools more available. That I believe is a misunderstanding of some of these tools. These tools allow to us start the search. You dont know if someone is involved with a terrorist group under some circumstances. Someone like Abdulmutallab. having his father come to the embassy and just report his suspicions about his son would not be sufficient for us to believe that he was necessarily allied with some terrorist group. In fact. you would believe that by the terms of the lone wolf provision. he would be right squarely in the middle of that provision. And yet what did our committee do? Our committee decided that because it had not been used before. we should reject it. Well. you know. we were never hit by airplanes with unbelievable amounts of fuel and human beings into towers in New York until it happened. Now. the argument that. well. it never happened before so we shouldnt have been prepared for it doesnt ring true. And so while I believe that we did take a look at these three provisions in our committee. I was extremely disappointed by the resolution of that review. And we could. it seems to me. if we had this as a priority. bring this bill to the floor. look at it and say if it is important enough for us to have these tools against al Qaeda and similarly situated terrorist groups and individuals. then maybe we ought to extend it for more than a year. Does anybody on this floor. does anybody within the reach of my voice believe that al Qaeda is going to stop 1 year from the 28th of this month? Maybe we have a new 72hour rule. We have been talking about a 72hour rule meaning we should have bills on the floor for 72 hours. Here we have the fact that we wait until we are within 72 hours of the expiration of key parts of the law which allow us to protect ourselves against terrorists before we act. The American people must be scratching their heads and saying. This is the leadership we look for? These are the people who take an oath to the Constitution and to give us the ability to defend ourselves against enemies? Mr. Speaker. I guess I would say as proud as I am of my service on the Judiciary Committee. I am profoundly disappointed that this bill is being brought forward with just a single year. within a 72hour space. and we still have not had an examination on this floor of the seriousness of the profound protections of civil liberties contained in these provisions of the law. This is in fact a good law. These are good provisions of that law being utilized by our intelligence community.