In the end, Rand Paul’s Patriot Act filibuster failed to crack his previous record, clocking in at around 10 and a half hours. (His 2013 drone filibuster lasted nearly 13 hours.)
The green-sneaker-clad senator rose to the floor at 1:18pm and departed at 11:48 p.m. Wednesday.
“I will not rest. I will not back down. I will not yield one inch in this fight so long as my legs can stand,” Paul said in a statement before he began. He had promised the week before to filibuster Mitch McConnell’s attempt to extend the Patriot Act through 2020 with no privacy reforms.
“There comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer,” he began. “That time is now. And I will not let the Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic of acts, go unchallenged.”
Paul railed against the government’s bulk data collection, likening it to Revolutionary-War-era invasions of privacy. He called for individualized, rather than general, warrants.
“The president began this program through executive order,” he said. “He should immediately end it through executive order.”
To the delight of libertarians and other civil liberties advocates, he also talked about civil asset forfeiture and how the Patriot Act became a tool in the drug war.
“We’re using the Patriot Act to put [drug offenders] in prison,” he said.
Of course, being Rand, the night would not be complete without plugging some of his infamous 2016 swag.
On Twitter, he advertised his “filibuster starter pack,” complete with a T-shirt, bumper sticker and “spy blocker”:
Just added to our store! The “filibuster starter pack” Get yours and show support to #standwithrand https://t.co/P2G8xOiN9h
— Dr. Rand Paul (@RandPaul) May 21, 2015
There was some disagreement as to whether all this actually merits the name “filibuster,” in the traditional sense of something that stops Senate business from moving forward. His staff was quick to argue that it did:
Senator Paul’s 10.5 hour filibuster delays Patriot Act action by at least one day. Stopped cloture motion from being filed today.
— Doug Stafford (@dougstafford) May 21, 2015
Throughout the day, he was helped by several other senators, including Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Ron Wyden.
“It is abundantly, abundantly clear that a clean reauthorization of the Patriot Act ain’t passing this body, and it certainly ain’t passing the House of Representatives,” said Cruz. Cruz is on the record supporting the reform bill, the USA Freedom Act, which recently passed the House. Paul opposes this same bill, as it still extends the majority of the Patriot Act’s provisions.
“I said many times I will go to my grave in debt to Sen. Rand Paul that the first opportunity I had to speak on the Senate floor was in support of his epic filibuster,” Cruz reminisced.
When finally wrapping up, Paul joked, “Thank you for staying and not throwing things.”
He confirmed to reporters that, even with better shoes than the ones he chose last time, his feet were still in a world of pain.
Watch an excerpt from the filibuster below, via C-SPAN:
