House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer is urging Senate leaders to end the government’s bulk collection of phone records.
The Maryland Democrat said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) should scrap plans to extend existing provisions of the Patriot Act — including the controversial language used by the National Security Agency (NSA) to justify its controversial surveillance program — and instead adopt the bipartisan House bill that ends the bulk collection.
{mosads}”I don’t know what the Senate’s going to do, but I think the House is going to pass a bipartisan bill which I think has broad support and the Senate would be, I think, wise to take that up and pass it,” Hoyer said Tuesday during a press briefing in the Capitol.
“The House version is a good model for the Senate to follow, and I would hope they would do it.”
GOP leaders in the two chambers are at odds over how to extend certain provisions of the Patriot Act, which expire June 1.
The House is expected Wednesday to pass the USA Freedom Act, a bipartisan bill that would end the NSA’s bulk collection and require the agency to make specific record requests to private companies.
McConnell and Senate GOP leaders are instead pushing for a clean extension of the existing law, including the controversial Section 215 language governing the NSA’s surveillance program.
The House bill, McConnell warned last week, “will neither keep us safe nor protect our privacy.”
The debate intensified last week when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the NSA’s bulk collection is illegal without a warrant — a major victory for opponents of the program.
Hoyer said he’s hoping the court’s decision will make the House bill “more palatable” in the eyes of lawmakers like McConnell as they work to extend the Patriot Act ahead of the June 1 deadline.
“The court decision has got to have made … somewhat of an impact on his thinking,” Hoyer said. “It should have.”