Roy Blunt

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.

Mr. BLUNT. I would be happy to yield to Mr. Hill.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam Speaker, I would yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam Speaker, I believe I have the time.

Mr. BLUNT. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Speaker, I would like to clarify. The only work done between now and the end of the day tomorrow would be the anticipated eight bills, one tonight and seven tomorrow that we had expected to get done this week on the suspension calendar; is that right?

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I'm here to say that I am fully supportive of the prerogatives of the Congress. I think the Congress has a right to ask for, receive, demand information from the administration; but I don't think that right extends to this case. I think the idea that we would expect to get information that is dealing with advice to the President on the status of at-will employees is a loser for us on the House floor. It's a loser for us in court. It will set back the prerogatives of the Congress; and beyond that, I think the idea that we're here today, as we see the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act get less value to us every day because we're unwilling to deal with a permanent solution, this is the wrong debate to have at any time. It's certainly the wrong debate to have at this time. And the idea that somehow if we extend that act, if we've done all we could do by trying to extend an act, a bipartisan group of Members of this Congress for various reasons said we don't want to extend and then we come back today and we take our time focusing on a contempt charge on two dedicated civil servants is the wrong thing to do at any time, and it's particularly the wrong thing to do at this time.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I would say, of course, we come to the floor today with lots of disappointment on what we are failing to do today. We think we should stay until we get other matters done. But on this issue that relates to the activities of the day, first of all, I was at the memorial service, as many of you were. I was privileged to be there. Frankly, there are very few Members of Congress, in the history of the Congress, that could have, on the very short notice that we would have this sad service today, would have the Foreign Minister of Israel, the Secretary of State, the head of the United Nations, the Speaker of the House present. It was an impressive service, and I hate that we are having this debate around any lack of respect for that service. On the other hand, the only work we had to do today was 1 hour of debate on a rule that would then also replace the debate. One hour of debate. The service was scheduled to last from 10 o'clock until 11:30. It turned out it lasted until 11:50. But it was scheduled to last from 10 o'clock until 11:30. When at 10:45 the majority decides we are going to start the 1 hour of work we have to do today at 11, the majority should expect the other side to complain. If in fact Mr. Diaz-Balart had not had his objection, 50 minutes of that 1-hour debate would have gone before I ever walked out of the memorial service. The vote lasted 50 minutes, or thereabouts. Apparently, Members couldn't even get in to vote for 50 minutes, let alone to get in to participate in the debate. Of course, we should have said, let's not start the debate on the only work we are doing today while we are passing up the work on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. We are voting to talk about how you can kill rats in the technical correction to the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. That is the only debate we were going to have during 50 minutes of the 1 hour of the memorial service. And of course Lincoln Diaz-Balart or somebody should have stepped up to stop that, and thank goodness he did. I am really sad that a service we should have all agreed on would be the priority of the morning, we couldn't manage for that to be the priority of the morning. We had to start the 1 hour of work we had to do 50 minutes before that service turned out to end and 30 minutes before it was scheduled to end. I am regretful that my good friend had to rise to this moment of personal privilege, but I certainly support him in seeking this privilege and hope that the Members of the House will understand what happened here and appreciate the great respect we all have for Tom Lantos.

Mr. BLUNT. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of inquiring about next week's schedule, I yield to my friend, the majority leader from Maryland, to give us that information.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that information. Regarding FISA, regarding the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, I hope that we are moving toward a long-term resolution of that. I know the Senate, we believe, will pass a long-term bill possibly as early as tomorrow. On the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as we hopefully move toward a longer-term bill, we had a 6-month extension the first of August. We did a 2-week extension last week. I think the Senate will send over a bill that has a longer term and includes things like liability protection for companies that cooperate with the government under the law. I also understand that at least 21 Members of the majority have sent a letter saying they would like to see a long-term solution dealt with next week. I wonder if my friend has any sense of how that may go next week and, again, I am hoping that we encourage a longer-term solution before this short-term extension runs out.

Mr. BLUNT. Well, I appreciate that; I hope we can. I do think that there is the likelihood that a very quick problem develops if you don't have the ongoing ability that we currently have to try to intercept communications. There is some argument even about the short-term of that, and I think almost any expert will say that the long-term challenge there actually becomes a short-term problem pretty quickly. We saw how encumbered the FISA Court became when this law was not in existence and how difficult it was. I hope that the Senate can act quickly. We saw them act quickly today, certainly. In fact, today is a good example of what we can do working together. The House worked together. We sent a bill to the Senate, the House stood firm in defense of that bill, and at the end of the day the Senate sent a bill back pretty quickly with improved changes that the House could agree to. I would like to see us respond to a bipartisan Senate bill, and I anticipate that would be the case with a bipartisan House vote. Even though we had sent a bill initially over a long time, this issue has been out there a long time. I think the documents that the leader was talking about were available at the White House at an earlier time, but I am glad those documents are now available in a way more easily accessed over the next few days for our Members. Hopefully, that resolves what the leader has just described as the last significant outstanding issue, and that we get this done. A significant amount of what we know about our enemies in the world is found out today through the structure of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and we want to continue that.

Mr. BLUNT. I am hopeful of that, too. I appreciate that. In an article from the New York Times, January 23, 2008, that the leader was able to share a part of with me on that date, Kenneth Wainstein, who is the Assistant Attorney General for National Security, said in an interview, according to the Times, ``that if the August bill was allowed to expire in 10 days,'' that was 10 days before the expiration date, ``intelligence officials would still be able to continue'' the word he used was ``eavesdropping on already approved targets for another year under the law.'' I think that essentially verifies my friend's comments on that and possibly, as you have explained it to me, the admiral's comments this morning. But Mr. Wainstein went on to say but ``there is a risk'' that the officials would not be able to use their broadened authority to identify and focus on new suspects and would have to revert to the more restrictive pre-August standards if we wanted to eavesdrop on someone. I think we want to not revert to that if we don't have to. I believe that the 2\1/2\ months we have waited for the Senate and now the 2 weeks that we have had in addition to that time hopefully will turn out to be appropriate; and certainly as we have worked together this week to get the stimulus package off the floor, this is a critical item that I hope we can all work together next week to try to find a permanent solution on.

Mr. BLUNT. So the schedule for next week is Tuesday through Friday, and we are looking at the items we discussed plus the possibility of other work that might come from the Senate. I yield.

Mr. BLUNT. Well, if I determine to make that argument, I will tell my friend, I will make it in good faith, and we do have a difference of opinion on this. Hopefully, the Senate will get its work done in a way that we will have a maximum amount of time in the relatively short time available here to look at this, and we won't have to have the argument about how critical that change is. I personally believe that the 1978 law was written in a way where it was not anticipated that we would have to go to the FISA Court to listen to people in a foreign country who were making calls or communicating, and because of the way the law was written, it had come to mean that by now.

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that, and we will see where we are next week, and I look forward to the review that you and I will both have a chance to make of those documents. You didn't mention it, but I heard there is a possibility we may take up an energy-related tax bill next week, something similar to the energy-related tax provisions that we had in the first year of this Congress in December of last year. I wonder if there is any information you can give me on that topic.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that information.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I want to rise to follow up on the announcement that my good friend Mr. Skelton from Missouri just made. Of course, all Missourians are proud of President Truman and his family. He was a man of great humility. In fact, one day recently in Washington I happened to be driving by, on Connecticut Avenue, the small apartment that he and Margaret and Mrs. Truman lived in when he was Vice President and for I think the first 3 days of his Presidency. Not the grandeur that anybody would expect, but something that the Trumans, a family who actually never lived in a house that they owned for most of Margaret Truman's life, appreciated. I was just sharing with Mr. Skelton the memory of Margaret Truman when we recommissioned the Battleship Missouri when it went back into active duty in 1985 or 1986, and I had the honor at the recommissioning dinner in San Francisco to introduce Margaret Truman, who had been the principal sponsor of the ship the first time when her father was in the Senate. By that point in the evening, about every speaker had pronounced the name of our State differently. Some said ``Missouri,'' some said ``Missoura,'' and I made a couple of comments about that. And Margaret Truman got up and she said, ``It is `Missoura.' My father always said `Missoura.' My family always said `Missoura.' I was there when this ship was commissioned. We commissioned it the `Battleship Missoura,' and that should settle it.'' But she was a lady that led an interesting life, the truly adored daughter of her father, and she saw politics the way that very few people do. I appreciate her life and her family.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for those views. I know that the majority is going to have their planning retreat for the rest of this week. Hopefully our staff is already and will continue to go through these documents that we were concerned we hadn't had, or the majority was concerned we hadn't had earlier, and look at those. I would suggest that the penetrating analysis in one paragraph probably doesn't totally go away from the individual who was given so much credit in the next paragraph. The only thing I would say about the FISA Court, I would really say two things. I missed some of this debate today, as you might be able to tell, because of another commitment I had to be off the floor as we were debating this. The FISA Court, I believe, in 1978 was created for domestic cases. That is maybe an underlying difference here in the way we view this. And the backlog I would submit would develop again pretty quickly. It might not be a problem for 2 days; it might not even be a problem for a week. But that backlog of every case from all over the world that suddenly wound up going to the FISA Court because of changes in technology quickly gets the FISA Court to where a 72-hour problem is a big problem because they just can't deal with it. I would yield.

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that. I do hope we can find a permanent solution here. I think that the 2 weeks is important. I also think it's important that that law not be allowed to expire, which made this 2 weeks a significant development. At the same time, the question of immunity hasn't been addressed, and I don't think we can continue to put that question off. I did notice last week when we discussed this, an article that I hadn't seen yet, and my good friend the majority leader read from that article to me a section that indicated that the work was in progress could keep on in progress for a long time. That was in the New York Times on January 23. There was another paragraph that I surmised at the time might be there, but was there, that said ``There is risk,'' according to this assistant Attorney General Mr. Weinstein, Weinstein said, ``the officials would not be able to use their broadened authority to identify and focus on new suspects and would have to revert to the more restrictive pre-August standards if they wanted to eavesdrop on someone.'' Those pre-August standards were, in my view, troublesome. I hope we don't revert to them, but we can't put the immunity issue off forever, and I am going to do everything I can, as I believe the majority leader is inclined to do as well, to encourage the Senate to move this process along so we can bring it to some conclusion. I yield.

Mr. BLUNT. Well, I agree, and I intend to work to see that it passes so this works in the best possible way. I hope we take maximum advantage of this 15 or 16 days that we have now given ourselves to look at the information to try to do what we can to see that we come up with a permanent solution that deals with both the technological questions and the question of immunity for people who may have helped the government in a way that they now somehow could be held in legal limbo for until we have addressed this. I hope we do, and I pledge myself to work with you and others to see that we get that done.

Mr. BLUNT. I appreciate that, and I also appreciate the work we all did this week on the stimulus package, to see that it is sent over on the timeframe that we have all discussed. As you mentioned in your remarks on the floor today, a timely, a targeted, and a temporary bill has to meet all of those things. Timely and temporary both have to mean that we get this done in a quick way. I am hoping that we can work with our friends on the other side of the building and get that done. The other thing that we worked together on this week was to get an extension until the middle of February on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act as it is currently in place, and has been since the first of August. I am hopeful that we don't run up to the deadline again in this 15-day opportunity that we have. I am wondering if the gentleman has any thoughts as to what we might be able to do even next week on that bill. I would yield.

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for that information. I am wondering, if those bills don't materialize, is it still an option for Friday, if those bills don't materialize, since we don't have any scheduled work for Thursday and Friday, are we committed for Friday to be a definite day here? Is that still going to be an option as the week develops? I will yield.

Mr. BLUNT. Mr. Speaker, I would yield to my friend from Maryland, the majority leader, for information about the schedule.

Mr. BLUNT

Mr. BLUNT. I thank the gentleman for his views on that, and I would hope that the Protect America Act is not allowed to lapse. I'm not as comfortable as the article that my good friend referred to or this article may have created comfort for him and other information, particularly about any new targets that might fit some past definition that arose. We've debated this before; we will debate it again. I would think that allowing this act to expire on the basis that somehow we have a 12-month window would not be something that either I would be comfortable with or the intelligence community would be comfortable with. And we would have another day to debate that. I do hope we continue to work both to resolve this issue permanently. The issue of immunity is an issue that's been out there long enough now that we should be able to bring it to some resolution, and I hope we can find a way to do that; and I would hope we could find a way to do that before February 1, which would almost require action next week. I understand that if the Senate doesn't bring their debate that would be initiated this week to some conclusion, it's hard for us to get that permanent solution at that time frame. But I do think a permanent solution is important here, and I don't have the confidence that my good friend does that we would have a lot of time beyond February 1 where there is no harm by not having the ability to look quickly in those areas involving foreign individuals in foreign countries who come to our attention that are not to our attention today, but I would yield.

Mr. BLUNT. I'd yield.