Jon Kyl

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Madam President, last week marked the 47th anniversary of the founding of the U.S. Peace Corps. Since its inception in 1961, 190,000 Americans have served in 139 countries around the globe. Currently, 126 Arizonans are Peace Corps volunteers, dedicating their time and hard work to projects in 51 countries. The Peace Corps is an organization through which many Americans have made meaningful service and have contributed to the well-being of peoples in other lands. A spirit of generosity and volunteerism helped build our Nation; in that same spirit, these Peace Corps volunteers are helping others to build theirs. Peace Corps volunteers are also ambassadors of American culture-- exchanging ideas and bridging cultural divides are critical to helping people understand America's values and message of freedom. I would like to pass on my thanks and congratulations to those who have served in the Peace Corps, and I applaud their contributions to our Nation and nations abroad.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the DeMint amendment No. 4096 be withdrawn.

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Ensign), the Senator from Wyoming (Mr. Enzi), the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Inhofe), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Isakson), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Alaska (Mrs. Murkowski), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, for the benefit of our colleagues, I will summarize where we are this morning as well. The majority leader and the Senator from Wisconsin offered a resolution, a piece of legislation, and sought to proceed to consider it. Republicans agreed to that. We voted last night to invoke cloture, which means we agreed to proceed to the consideration of that resolution. It has to do with developing a strategy to deal with al-Qaida. It is, as the majority leader said, a debate worth having. As a result, Republicans were happy to engage in that debate and we will throughout the day. After the period of morning business, we are back on the resolution. I would urge my Republican colleagues to let us know, let the leadership staff know, when they wish to be here to speak on the matter so the schedules can be coordinated, that everyone can debate the issue as they see fit, and that the minority and majority leader a little later in the day can get together and decide when we might be able to schedule the next vote based upon everyone's desire to speak. So if our colleagues would let us know when they desire to come and make their presentations, that would be very helpful. I would like to correct one thing the majority leader said, in saying Republicans think everything in Iraq is ``just fine.'' I know he did not mean to suggest Republicans believe the situation in Iraq is ``just fine.'' Because clearly it is not. If it were, we could bring our troops home today. Unfortunately, it is not ``just fine,'' although it is steadily improving. And when it gets to the point when it is ``just fine,'' we will be able then to bring the remainder of our troops home. The primary difference between the majority and minority is the majority would like to bring the troops home right now. ``Enough is enough,'' says the majority leader. The Republicans, on the other hand, believe we have to finish the job. And while great progress has been made as a result of the surge implemented by General Petraeus several months ago, the job is not finished. And until the job is finished, there is a great danger that were we to pull out prematurely, al-Qaida, not totally defeated, would infiltrate right back in, reestablish its presence, begin the terrorism which has taken us so many months now to repress, and that we would have to then come right back in again, all at a greater cost than if we simply see the job through right now. It is possible every day to have a headline from a newspaper revealing a suicide bomber attack or some other incident similar to that in Iraq. That is the unfortunate reality. Everything is not yet ``just fine'' in Iraq. But it is also true that because the surge has worked to essentially defeat al-Qaida, it has now resorted to the most reprehensible tactics of all: using women, children, the disabled as suicide bombers to go into places where those people are not suspects and they can blow up innocent people in Iraq. That is the situation we need to help stop, not turn our back and walk away from. It is also true many Iraqis have now been trained by our forces. That is the good news that will enable us eventually, hopefully sooner rather than later, to withdraw our troops from Iraq. We are withdrawing them now. We will, by June as I recall, be down to a level that is very close to the level that existed prior to the surge. We will be able to do that because the surge has worked. What happens after that, we will await a report from General Petraeus when he comes back to the Capitol and briefs us on the situation in Iraq. In the meantime, Ambassador Crocker and others have noted significant progress on the political and diplomatic front as well as the economic front in Iraq. The Parliament there is now engaging in vigorous debate, passing resolutions. I note that one was vetoed yesterday. It kind of reminds me of the process in Washington, where we do not always agree on everything and we have a robust debate about it. We should not be critical of the Iraqis because they cannot agree always on everything, but we should continue to push them to move forward with alacrity, so the things that need to be done politically to enable us to eventually remove our troops can be done. I know we all, Republicans and Democrats, share that goal. So the bottom line is, we will continue this debate today. I would conclude with this point: One of the important reasons for having this debate today about a strategy for dealing with al-Qaida is because there is a difference of opinion between the House of Representatives' leadership and the Senate on this issue. The Senate voted with 68 Senators, Democrats and Republicans, to reinstitute FISA, the law that enables us to gather intelligence on these terrorists abroad. That law had to be reauthorized because it expired 6 months after we first passed it. So we had to reauthorize it and make one additional change; that is, to make sure the telecommunications companies that are cooperating with us are protected from lawsuits that have been filed against them simply for their participation with the U.S. Government in collecting this foreign intelligence. Without that liability protection, they are not likely to continue to help us. So we made that change. It was recommended by the Intelligence Committee on a vote of 13 to 2, a very bipartisan recommendation. The Senate then passed it with 68 affirmative votes. It went to the House of Representatives and there it sits. It sits without a law in force today that enables us to begin new intelligence surveillance activities against terrorists abroad. This represents a deficiency in our intelligence gathering at a time when as both Admiral McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, and Attorney General Mukasey have noted that we are losing intelligence every day that would help us in the war against these terrorists. Every day that goes past that we cannot intercept a communication because the law has not been reauthorized is a day of lost intelligence, intelligence we will never get back. The terrorists are not going to make the phone call a second or third time to accommodate us so we can finally collect the intelligence we need, so we can find out who he is calling and what they are planning. We cannot do that. So phone calls that occurred yesterday or the day before or the day before that, they are gone, they are lost forever. It is critical we reestablish this capability for collecting foreign intelligence on terrorists. The legislation passed by the Senate will do that. The President says he will sign it into law, and it is critical that the House of Representatives' leadership allow the House of Representatives to vote on it. If they do, it will pass and it can be sent to the President and it will be signed. The reason, I gather, it has not been brought forth is because the leadership of the House knows it will pass and, for whatever reason, they do not want this Senate-passed bill to become law. It is critical the Congress fulfill its responsibility to ensure that our intelligence-gathering capabilities continue on. I would urge again that the best strategy for dealing with al-Qaida starts with authorizing the kind of intelligence collection that we understand is critical to understanding al-Qaida's intentions and thus being able to defeat them. So in developing a strategy for al-Qaida, No. 1, the House of Representatives' leadership should bring this legislation up for a vote, allow those who support it to send it to the President for his signature, and we can get on with this important collection. I urge my colleagues to come to the floor and let us know when they wish to speak so we can organize the debate today with an eye toward the minority and majority leader being able to get together and work out a time schedule that would be acceptable to all of us.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Coburn), the Senator from Texas (Mrs. Hutchison), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Missouri (Mr. Bond), the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Coleman), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Minnesota (Mr. Coleman) and the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted: ``yea.''

Mr. KYL

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

Mr. KYL. Madam President, yesterday, I inserted into the Record a couple of items. I wish to speak to them briefly now. The primary item was a letter that had been sent to the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee by Attorney General Mukasey and Admiral McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence. It was a letter that tried to explain the problems we are having in gathering intelligence on terrorists as a result of the lapse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provisions, the so-called Protect America Act. What we are debating right now is a resolution that focuses on when and how we should leave Iraq. Presumably, the next resolution we will be debating focuses on developing a strategy to fight al-Qaida. Most of us appreciate the fact that the best way to deal with terrorists, the very first thing we should do is to have in place a good intelligence- gathering capability, primarily in understanding the communications that terrorists are having with one another abroad. The reason that is the No. 1 part of a strategy in dealing with terrorists is that unlike a war in which we are fighting an enemy with uniforms representing another country, these terrorists are shadowy characters who live anywhere in the world, who travel all around, who get together in cells every now and then and plan some kind of activity which is designed to terrorize, whether in London or Spain or Malaysia or the United States or wherever. In order to fight the terrorists, we first want to understand what they are up to and then prevent it from occurring. If we are having to react to a terrorist attack after it has occurred, we are in a very bad situation. We created the Department of Homeland Security, and we have a lot of different plans and procedures for dealing with an attack after it has occurred. But in many respects, then it is too late. So in this war against these radical Islamists, these terrorists who would kill anywhere they can and target innocent people, the very first thing we want to do is to be able to have good intelligence on that activity. We collect intelligence in a variety of ways, but in modern times, one of the best ways to collect intelligence is by intercepting communications. There are a variety of means by which that is done. One of the things the Congress did was to develop a law that provides protection to American citizens and others to ensure that this intelligence collection does not impinge on our civil rights. We do not want to have the Government eavesdropping on us, and that is appropriate for us to ensure. The problem is, because technology has outpaced the law back when it was written in the 1970s and technology now enables us to do electronic intercepts against foreign targets through some very sophisticated and new means, the law that set up the process for getting approval to do that takes far too long, it is far too complicated and, in fact, the bottom line is it just plain does not work. It is ``paperwork in an electronic era'' kind of comparison. So the President came to the Congress and said: You have to get a new way of doing this activity that enables us to utilize this new technology we have to intercept these communications. And last August, we passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the FISA law--it has another acronym, Protect America Act--which enables us to utilize this new technology and also, importantly, to provide that the telecommunications companies that work with us do not have to worry about somebody suing them because they are helping the U.S. Government collect intelligence. The law we passed had two problems. No. 1, it expired after 6 months because some in the Congress felt they wanted to take another look at it; and, secondly, it did not have liability protection for these telecommunications companies for the previous work they had done for us. It was only for the work going forward. The telecommunications companies essentially said to the U.S. Government: We are not going to continue to do this work for you unless you can ensure we are not going to get sued and that the lawsuits that are currently pending go away. I am oversimplifying. The lawsuit said: You shouldn't have done what you did because the U.S. Government shouldn't have been engaged in this kind of surveillance. That is not the fault of the telecommunications companies. They were simply doing what the Government asked them to do. They were a volunteer to provide their services, their very essential services, to help us collect this intelligence. As with any other volunteer, you should not get sued just because you stopped to help somebody along the side of the road who got hurt in an accident. The same thing is here. The Government asked them to volunteer their services to help collect this intelligence, and they should not be sued. But lawyers being what they are filed some lawsuits, and those lawsuits need to go away. The President said: When you revise the law and pass it in February of 2008, make sure you have liability protection not only going forward but also for the suits that have already been filed. Sure enough, the Intelligence Committee in the Senate, by a bipartisan vote of 13 to 2 or 12 to 2--but a very strong bipartisan vote--agreed to extend the law for another 6 years and add the retroactive liability protection, precisely what is needed. However, when the bill was sent over to the House of Representatives, the House Democratic leadership said: No, we are not going to take this up and promptly went on the recess that we just got back from, a 12-day period in which Congress was not in session. During that period of time, the law lapsed and General Mukasey and Admiral McConnell in this letter made it clear that during that period of time, we lost intelligence that could be very meaningful to us. We don't know whether it is or not because we lost it. We could not collect it. But the kind of intelligence that we have been collecting under this program has been very helpful for us to know what these terrorists are up to so that we can prevent attacks. We are now in a situation where we are not able to commence certain intelligence gathering. In addition, and perhaps more important in the long run, we have not done anything to solve the problem of these lawsuits, the retroactive liability, with the result that, as they write in this letter, the telecommunications companies are becoming increasingly concerned about their ability to continue to help us. They are all responsible to their shareholders, and their shareholders do not like to see their company is getting sued. It reduces the value of the company. It creates problems and costs. When they try to do business with other companies, the other companies say: Wait a minute, are you involved in these lawsuits? If so, we don't want to enter into a new contract with you. They work with companies all over the world. A lot of these companies are concerned that American telecommunications companies are going to have this kind of exposure, and they don't want to get involved in it. It can hurt business substantially, as a result of which some of these companies have conveyed to our intelligence community their distress, anxiety, and concern about continuing to participate in this program. Fortunately, through negotiations, according to this letter, companies are still working with us. They are still participating, but without them we have no program. This is not something the U.S. Government can do on its own. This is something that only works if all of the companies that provide our telecommunications services are working with us. So we have to act pretty soon or we could well be in a situation where the very companies that are critical to the operational success of this program decide that discretion is the better part of valor on their part and they are just not going to be able to continue to help us. At that point, we have lost one of the most important intelligence- gathering operations in this war against terrorists. I want to go back to the days following September 11, 2001. There was a lot of finger-pointing. A commission was established to try to figure out what went wrong. There were a lot of areas identified where we should have known better, and had we done things differently, at least potentially 9/11 could have been prevented. We found that the FBI and CIA were not talking to each other, and the Justice Department had constructed a sort of wall between the two, even within the FBI itself which prevented one hand from communicating to the other very important information. In fact, there is information relating to a couple of terrorists that, had they been able to talk to each other, might well have resulted in these terrorists being picked up in the United States, people who were directly involved in the 9/11 attack and, at least theoretically, could have been prevented had they been able to communicate with each other. The bottom line is, retroactive, after 9/11, we could have been doing more but did not. That report was very critical of the Congress, of the administration, of the intelligence community, of the FBI, CIA, and others for not doing everything that could have been done to prevent 9/ 11. If there were to be, God forbid, another terrorist attack on the United States and the commission that is inevitably going to study what happened would look at the days prior to that event in the Congress, what they would find is a House of Representatives that is sitting on its hands, that is unwilling to take up the Senate-passed bill. That bill passed with 68 Senators voting yes, obviously Democrats and Republicans voting yes, a very strong bipartisan bill. The President says he will sign it. He said we need it. The intelligence community says we need it. Now it has been 2 weeks, and we don't have a law that enables us to engage in this intelligence collection. What happens if before we get that law there is an attack or even an attack after that based upon communications of terrorists that we could have intercepted but didn't because we didn't have the means to do it? There is going to be a lot of finger-pointing, and rightfully so. The Senate said we are going to do our part, we are going to pass this law so there are no gaps in our intelligence collection. The House of Representatives continues to sit on its hands. What will it take to get the House leadership to take up the Senate-passed bill and send it to the President for his signature? I hope it doesn't take another terrorist event. This debate we are having about our policy in defeating al-Qaida and how Iraq fits into that is part of an overall debate about our approach to the war against militant Islam, the terrorists who strike innocent people. As I said in the beginning, the most important thing that we can do in starting our effort in the war is to have good intelligence. In this case, the best offense is not going to war in some foreign country, not bombing somebody, but finding out what these bad actors are up to and preventing them from putting their plans into effect. Partially because it has been quite a long time since 9/11, and partially because it is not possible to talk about some of these events because they are highly classified, the American public probably is not as aware as it should be of the kind of activities that go on every day. What happens every day is that there are all over the world thousands of would-be terrorists meeting, planning, communicating, training, and, in some cases, carrying out their intentions engaging in terrorist activity. And because we have had good intelligence collection, much of which is done through this electronic interception of communications, we have been able to stop specific terrorist attacks. Some of these are chronicled by the communications from the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. Some are laid out in reports from the CIA and other unclassified reports--just to mention one: an effort to blow up elements of the Los Angeles Airport, LAX. There are others. I have kind of forgotten which ones are classified and which aren't, so I am not going to describe any more. But the reality is, it is going on all the time, and only by good intelligence can we find out in advance and then either infiltrate the cell, work with our counterparts in another country to round up the bad guys, or perhaps, if the plans haven't gotten to the execution stage, use our knowledge to gain additional information to track other terrorists. In any event, at some point, when it looks as if the plan may be about to be executed, either we or our allies have to come in and arrest the individuals so that the attack doesn't occur. But we can't do that if we don't know what they are up to. It is unfortunate that a lot of the information about how we collect intelligence has gotten out, but it is fortunate that we have companies in the United States that are willing to cooperate with their Government because they are in a position to help the Government intercept these communications. It just happens to be because of the way the modern telecommunications technology now works. We should be doing everything we can to protect these volunteers, in effect. They have relied, in good faith, on the representations of the Government that the President had the authority to engage in these operations and requested their services. This is not my conclusion, this is the conclusion of the Senate Intelligence Committee in its report on the legislation we passed. It pointed out that it had examined the record and found these communications companies had, in fact, acted in good faith. So there is no reason for them to be subjected to lawsuits. Unless those lawsuits go away, it is quite possible that one by one the companies that are assisting us are going to conclude that it is not in their financial best interests to do so and that, as much as they would like to, they are simply not in a position to continue to be able to do so. That would be disastrous for our intelligence gathering. So, as I said, the fix is the legislation that passed the Senate. It is a good bill. It reauthorizes this program for 6 more years and adds the one important additional element, and that is the protection from liability. It also adds some additional civil liberties protections, by the way, for Americans abroad. One of our colleagues, Senator Wyden, had inserted the provision that adds an extra layer of protection for an American who might happen to be abroad and find himself or herself a target of some of this interception because of a call made to the individual or that individual making a call to somebody else who is under surveillance and so on. It is a rather rare occurrence, but we have provided protections so that a warrant would have to be obtained in that circumstance, and Americans' civil liberties would be protected. So no one should be under the assumption here that somehow or other reauthorizing this law lets the Government loose to begin spying on people. Believe me, there is so much information out there which we don't even have the time or the ability to check out that we are not going to go out of our way to spy on people on whom we have no reason to spy. This is simply a matter of trying to identify those instances in which known terrorists, or people who affiliate with these terrorists abroad, are communicating with each other. By the way, importantly, if that communication comes into the United States, we want to know whom they are communicating with here because that could be the late stages of an operation. That could be an indication that there is an element embedded in the United States--a terrorist cell, perhaps, that is ready or at least is in the process of planning to engage in some kind of attack. So these are the kinds of things we need to know about and which have protected the American public since 2001. It is no accident that America has not had an attack on our soil since 2001. It is also no accident that, frankly, the number of attacks in other places around the world is far less than would have been the case had we and these other countries not had in place good intelligence-gathering operations and good cooperation, I might add, among our intelligence services once we find out something that needs to be acted upon. So as we debate these resolutions that focus on getting at al-Qaida-- our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are insistent that we should be focusing our efforts not on extraneous aspects of this war against terrorists but on al-Qaida--I simply say to all of you that focusing on al-Qaida means first and foremost getting good intelligence on what they are up to. In today's modern world, that cannot be done without a reauthorization of this law that enables us to collect this telecommunications intelligence. That is not going to happen unless the bill passes and is sent to the President. Every day that goes by that the House leadership sits on the legislation we here in the Senate passed and doesn't send that to the President is another day of vulnerability. It is a day in which we will never get back the intelligence we might have collected. This is not something where we can catch up. It is not something where it is not doing us any harm. As General Mukasey and Admiral McConnell pointed out, it is lost information forever. That telephone call we might have communicated is not going to happen again. Now, maybe a subsequent call will, but we will never have the benefit of the communication that occurred yesterday or the day before or later on today because we don't have the ability to engage in that collection. I can't think of anything more important to our national security than getting this legislation adopted. It is one of the reasons we agreed with the majority leader's cloture petition to debate this question of how we should be focusing our effort on al-Qaida, because we wanted to ensure that the American people understood what is at stake here and understood what is at risk by the House of Representatives not taking up and passing the Senate legislation on intelligence collections abroad. Madam President, I hope the House leadership will take this up quickly, will get the bill to the President so that he can sign it into law and Americans will once again be protected by the most advanced techniques and technologies we have. I see my colleague from Tennessee is here, our distinguished conference chairman, and I will relinquish the floor so that he may speak. I thank the Chair.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I will make two quick comments. Certainly I respect the majority leader's comments. He talked about the fact that violence is down in Iraq. But, of course, the suicide bombers continue to wreak havoc. We all deplore that. I was in Israel last week at the border town in Gaza--Sderot is the name--and terrorism from Hamas continues to bedevil the people of that town with rockets coming over every day. But they cannot leave and leave the terrorists to prevail there. I think the same thing is the situation in Iraq. The majority leader talks about the costs, and they are significant. But the costs if we had to come back in and clean up after the terrorists take over, if we left prematurely, could be far greater than what we are expected to have to pay. In any event, it is very difficult to put a price on freedom and security. I think we have had a good debate. We have speakers on our side actually for about another about 4\1/2\ hours or so. But as I told the majority leader, we could yield back some time on our side to work with the majority leader to develop a schedule that would be convenient for all of the Members. At this time, because of the precise nature of the unanimous consent request, I object on behalf of the minority but would suggest it should be possible this afternoon, early this afternoon, for the majority and minority leaders to sit down and work out a schedule that would meet the needs of all of our Members and convenient for the entire body.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I am a little confused. About an hour and a half ago the majority leader brought up a bill. He and the Senator from Wisconsin had filed this bill to leave Iraq in 120 days. And he filed cloture on that to see whether enough Senators would agree to debate the bill. So that we can start to debate it, it took 60 Senators to vote yes. The majority leader must have been surprised when we voted yes because he does not seem to want to take yes for an answer. He filed the bill, wanted to debate it, and presumably have a vote on it. But when we agreed to debate it, he called foul and said: You are trying to stall because you did not vote no so that we can move on to the next bill and then the next bill which will be the economic stimulus package. So I am confused. Maybe I should not be because almost half of the members of the majority voting voted against cloture; that is to say, they voted against proceeding to the bill that the majority leader had filed. Now, ordinarily members of the majority do not vote against these cloture motions that the majority leader files to take up a bill. Ordinarily, all of the members of the party vote with their leader on these votes. I gather that the majority leader must have thought that the bill would not get cloture; that is to say, that we would not start the debate. Then I suppose Republicans would be accused of trying to stall, of not being willing to vote on the bill that he and the Senator from Wisconsin had filed, maybe putting Republicans into a no-win situation, damned if we do and damned if we do not. If we agree with the majority leader and take up his bill to debate it, we are stalling. And if we do not agree, then I suspect we would have been accused of not being willing to debate Iraq and not being willing to vote on the amendments or the bill that he and the Senator from Wisconsin filed. So as I say, I am confused. All Republicans did was to say: OK, you wanted to debate the bill that you filed. We will agree to proceed with that. Now the distinguished minority whip just said Republicans are speechifying this to death. Well, Republicans have spoken about 5 minutes out of the last hour. All of the rest of the time has been taken by members of the majority party. The majority whip himself spoke, I think, a little over half an hour. I do not intend to take that long. But I think it is hard to accuse Republicans of speechifying the bill to death when all we did was, an hour and a half ago, agree to debate, and the minority leader has spoken a total of about 5 minutes. Do you want a debate on Iraq or not? Now that the surge is working, it appears maybe that members of the majority party are not so anxious to have that debate. But as Minority Leader McConnell pointed out, Republicans are willing to have that debate. A group of Republicans were just in Iraq over the course of the last week. Several of us have been there since the first of the year and have a very positive story to report about the work that our troops are doing there and the effect of their efforts. There is a positive report that the American people deserve to hear. So I think you will see Republicans agreeing to debate the resolution. For my purpose, I am perfectly happy to vote on it. But under the rule that the majority leader has taken advantage of, as soon as we have had 30 hours to debate this, then automatically we go to the next Feingold- Reid bill. That is a bill that does not have us get out of Iraq, but rather says we should try to develop a strategy to deal with al-Qaida. Well, of course, the administration's first strategy, as we have discussed on this floor many times, the first, best way to deal with terrorists is to get good intelligence on them to know what they are up to. Maybe we could have prevented 9/11 had we had better intelligence. And so the FISA--this is the law that allows us to listen in on the communications of these terrorists--that bill, that law expired. The President said: We are losing good intelligence. You need to act to reauthorize that law. The Senate did. I think we had 68 votes, a bipartisan vote. We acted in a bipartisan way to support that. Many of our colleagues, I think it was 28 or 29, voted to oppose that. Now the leadership of the House of Representatives has said: Well, let it expire. And they went on the break 12 days ago without having acted to reauthorize the so-called FISA law. That law needs to be reauthorized. Each day that passes that it is not reauthorized, we are losing intelligence. Now, what happens if there is another 9/11 and we later find out that one of the reasons is because for a period of several weeks we could not listen in to what those terrorists were saying? We are missing intelligence. Frankly, we ought not to do anything else around here until we get that law reauthorized and the President can sign it into law. But the majority leader said: First, we are going to have a debate on the Feingold-Reid bill to get out of Iraq in 120 days. Then we need to have a debate on developing a new strategy for dealing with al-Qaida. Okay. Republicans are happy to engage in that debate, as I said. But to be accused by the majority of trying to stall by simply agreeing to the debate that the majority requested, is not correct. Moreover, nobody is trying to stall consideration of a housing bill or an economic stimulus package. We understand that the majority is going to be bringing such a package to the floor. We have not seen it. We do not know what is in it. We are certainly not stalling it. It is not here yet. The majority leader could have brought that to the floor. He could have told us what is in it. He could have filed cloture on it so that we had the vote on whether we are going to take it up, but instead he brought up the first Iraq resolution. Then that is going to be automatically followed by a second resolution dealing with al-Qaida. Then, only after that, apparently, do we get to the economic stimulus or housing package. So it is not Republicans who are holding it up. We have not done anything to hold it up. We have not even seen it yet. So I think this criticism of Republicans for stalling simply because we agreed with the majority leader to take up his bill and debate it is not accurate, and it is not fair to Republicans. Now what about the surge and this Iraq resolution? I think it is interesting that the first criticism was that we had a failed policy in Iraq. So when General Petraeus developed a new policy, the surge policy, which began to work, the debate suddenly began to shift. Now that it is very clear the surge has worked it is shifting even more. It is shifting now to, well, OK, maybe the surge is working, but the Iraqi Government needs to do more. Well, the Iraqi Government is now doing a lot more, too, as we will hear. But I suspect nothing is going to be good enough for those who want to get out of Iraq now because, as the majority whip has pointed out, we really need to improve America's image abroad. And there a lot of people who disagree with us, so that is one of the reasons we need to get out of Iraq. But he also said--how many times--that we are doing better in Iraq. Well, I do not know how many times, but certainly since General Petraeus reported to the Congress, and every week thereafter, there has been improvement. And all we have to do is listen to our colleagues who have been there recently to see this reported progress in Iraq. I do not know why people are so afraid of good news when you are winning in a war. Why is that not a good thing? Why are you not proud of that? Why do you not say: That is great; let's finish the job. I suspect if you ask the majority of our troops: Now that you have got your boot right on the neck of these enemy terrorists, do you think we ought to let it up and walk away or do you think we ought to finish the job? My guess is they would all say: Let's finish the job or you all back in Washington let us finish the job. Do not pull the plug on us so that we have to leave Iraq before we finish the job. It is interesting there is now a new argument: OK, maybe the surge is working. Maybe the Iraqi Government is going to be taking the action we asked them to do. And, in fact, they have. They are now taking action on the so-called reconciliation there on local elections and the like. But now the argument is, well, we could actually spend this money on other things. Of course, you can always spend money on other things. When you are in a war, however, it is a little different. You cannot just pull the plug and say we would rather spend the money on housing or transportation or education than we would on the war. You do not have that option. You cannot just pick up stakes and leave because you have to consider the cost of what you leave behind. Most of the experts who have talked about this have made it crystal clear if we decide we want to leave because we would rather spend the money on something else, the ultimate cost would be far greater than if we finished the job. Because by most estimates, the situation would deteriorate. Al-Qaida would reinfiltrate, and the other enemies of the Iraqi people would create more problems. The next thing you know, we would have to come back in and try to clean up the mess that was created because we left prematurely. The bottom line is, the cost of leaving prematurely would be far greater than the cost of finishing the job once and for all. It is also difficult to put a price on our national security, especially because of those young men and women who have given the ultimate sacrifice. We owe it to them to ensure that what they have done, the sacrifice they have made, is not going to be wasted, is not going to be lost because we were too anxious to get out of there to spend money on something else. That is not good policy. It is not the way to win a war. It is certainly not the way to beat the terrorists. The final point the majority whip made was we should return to the original al-Qaida threat. I get back to the point I made before. If you want to return to the original al-Qaida threat, there is no better way than, A, to finish the job in Iraq where we have al-Qaida on the run-- they are essentially defeated; let's don't let them rise back up again--and B, pass the FISA legislation, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which allows us to collect intelligence on these terrorists abroad. Again, we did that in the Senate, though many on the other side--28--voted against it. The House of Representatives leadership has an obligation to try to get this done. Therefore, I call upon the Democratic House leadership to bring up the bill the Senate passed and see if it will pass the House of Representatives. I suspect the reason it has not been brought up is because they know it would pass. That is a bill the President would sign. Why wouldn't that be a good thing? That is the appropriate way to move forward. Let me try to summarize. Republicans have put us into a stall, our Democratic friends say, because we agreed to debate the bill they wanted us to debate. They expected us to say no, that we wouldn't debate it. Then we would have been accused of trying to avoid debate. But we agreed. We will have the debate. It is only 30 hours. That is hardly enough time for all of my colleagues to be able to say the things they want to say, if we have half of that time, but nonetheless we will try to give the report of the truth of what is happening in Iraq. The American people will be better off for that. So I am glad we agreed with the majority leader to proceed to the debate on this bill. I suspect we will want to do the same thing on the next bill. If and when the Democratic majority puts together an economic stimulus package, then we can take a look at that and see whether we want to debate that as well. But, again, our first priority ought to be to get the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed because every day that goes by that that law is not in effect, we jeopardize our national security. We jeopardize our ability to collect intelligence on al-Qaida and other terrorists, and we put the lives of Americans at risk. That is unacceptable.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have the following letter from the Justice Department commenting on S. 316, the Preserve Access to Affordable Generics Act, printed in the Record.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) and the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, in addition to that, the Department of Justice has issued a news release dated February 23 that is titled ``Statement by the Department of Justice and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Regarding Cooperation with Private Partners,'' which press release makes it very clear that we are having a very difficult time in dealing with the telecommunications companies that are assisting the U.S. Government in the absence of a law which properly provides for liability protection for them and sets out the ground rules for their intelligence collection. I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the statement to which I just referred.

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain), the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker). Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander) and the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn) would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, first of all, I will address an amendment to the underlying Indian health bill. It is amendment No. 3897, offered by my friend from Oregon. It is an amendment which I hope my colleagues will reject. This is an amendment that deals with the way in which moneys are disbursed for health facility construction on Indian reservations. For those of us who represent the majority of our Native American population in the United States, this is a very important proposition because most of the construction, as you could imagine, is on the Indian reservations in the Southwest--in particular, Arizona, New Mexico, and, to a lesser extent, some of the other States. It is wrong, therefore, to try to change the formula by which funding is allocated for construction of these facilities to a broader based around-the- country formula rather than based upon the population we are trying to serve. As a result, I think my colleagues should oppose the amendment. It is helpful that the amendment is not mandatory but, rather, provides that the Secretary can use what is called an ``innovative approach'' and distribute funding equally among the Indian health care regions rather than target funding to areas where the health care services are needed the most. But it still doesn't make sense to try to use this Indian construction funding as kind of a honey pot of money for everybody to share in equally when certain key areas have the bulk of the need based upon their population. I think this priority based upon need is a much more sensible way to serve our Indian population. I disagree that the area distribution fund is the answer. It will turn the current process upside down. It would disrupt pending projects. While it may be well intentioned, the amendment doesn't ensure that Federal dollars will be appropriately allocated based upon the greatest health care needs of the individual members of the tribes. Therefore, I urge my colleagues to oppose that amendment. the fisa legislation Mr. President, I wish to take 2 minutes to address the matter dealt with by my counterpart on the majority side a little while ago, legislation we will presumably have to deal with again--certainly the House of Representatives will--and that is the FISA Act legislation. I wish to put a couple of things in the Record. I will explain what they are, and then I will ask consent to do that. As you know, the Senate has passed this important FISA legislation. The legislation will enable us to continue to collect foreign intelligence on our terrorist enemies. We are waiting for the House of Representatives to act on that legislation so that it can be sent to the President for signature. There has been some confusion about what the effect of the failure of the House to act really is, because the House allowed the current law to lapse. The person who ought to know what the effect is is Admiral McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, who joined with Attorney General Mukasey in writing a letter to the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, dated February 22, in which he addressed the significant concerns we have, given the fact that there is no current law that enables us to appropriately collect this intelligence. I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.

Mr. KYL. Finally, Mr. President, the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral McConnell, was on a television program in which he made some points related to this issue. Among other things, he said: We cannot do this mission, we cannot do this activity without the help of the private sector. Upon expiration of the Protect America Act ``the private sector partner said, `Well, wait a minute, are we now protected?' So we went through a discussion for the entire week. Now, this is the problem. We may have the authority to conduct surveillance, and we do, for example, on al-Qaida, but you can't make that actionable if you don't have something specific to load in our systems to target. So when we wanted to load new information, the private partners said, `We're not prepared to do that.' So we negotiated all week to be able to come to closure.'' The point he is making is, we are in a situation right now of grave vulnerability. Intelligence is not being collected, so there is no law under which it can be collected. The private parties with whom we must work to collect that intelligence are in a position of great vulnerability because of lack of liability protection, as a result of which there can undoubtedly arise a question as to whether they will continue to be able to perform this service for us. That is why we ask the House of Representatives to take up the Senate-passed legislation and to pass it as soon as possible and send it to the President so this vulnerability of which the Director has spoken can come to an end and we can resume collection of intelligence on our terrorist enemies.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I thank the leader. Mr. REID addressed the Chair.

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).

Mr. KYL. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Graham) and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. McCain).