U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra discusses the need to permanently modernize American's laws governing surveillance of terrorist communications on Bloomberg's 'Money & Politics'
Washington,
Mar 15 -
Joining me now, Democrat Sylvestre Reyes of Texas and Republican Pete Hoekstra.
Does the president still hold the upper hand here?
Well, we now forward our version of the amended bill to the Senate for their consideration. They've got two options: Either adopt our bill or somehow you amend it further and send it back. That's where we're at.
Congressman Hoekstra, your take on this legislation. Why are the courts allowing the companies to make their case specifically to a judge -- judge without the plaintif lawyers present? Why is that not adequate?
This is just a fig leaf. This is just a protection measure for the Democrats in the House today to allow them to go home and say they did something where in reality America is going to be less safe the next two weeks than they have the last four weeks. Our intelligence capabilities continue to erode. It's still a very dangerous time. The reason that this convoluted proposal for testing immunity doesn't work. What's going to happen to these cases when the judge reaches a conclusion? Are the plaintiffs going to be able to appeal? It has no precedent in American history. It's going to continue the long process and subject these companies and the government to years of litigation. We are at war. We need to give our intelligence professionals the tools we need to keep us safe, and all we're doing is delaying. We could have and should have passed the Senate bill today. That got 68 votes in the Senate. The Democrats went on purely a partisan vote. We actually picked up 12 Democrats to vote with the Republicans who thought that our idea was better, but the Democratic majority and the Democratic leadership just decided to block this vote on a Senate bill, not enable us to move forward and leave us as risk as we go home.
Chairman Reyes, are you putting the nation's security at risk?
Absolutely not. And I'm disappointed that Mr. Hoekstra continues that party line rhetoric. The reality is our nation is not at risk because of the expiration of the Protect America Act. Peter knows that. The other part of this is that at least a couple of members have been contacted by the telecommunications companies that said this was an acceptable compromise. Now this piece of legislation goes to the Senate. When Mr. Hoekstra talks about the House version versus our version, his word, that's exactly why it was important for us to carefully look at what the Senate sent to us, do our due diligence, put in the kinds of changes that we think better protects our country and protects the Constitutional rights of americans.
Congressman Hoekstra, how about that? The telecom companies, this Democratic alternative would be sufficient to them? If that's the case, why this battle? It's not sufficient to them. Doing due diligence? We've been working on the FISA issue for years. Twenty-one days ago the House Democrats said give us the information, we'll get it done. Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence -- this is a professional in the intelligence community, someone that was part of President Clinton's national security team -- he asays that we are at greater risk for not passing a FISA modernization bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- she was one of the leaders in the House in 2001 that was briefed by the president, by the national security team and she agreed to move forward with modernization of FISA. The very things she embraced in 2001 are now the very things she's not even letting come to the House for a vote.
