Not many people are familiar with the House Rules Committee, or why it has so much power to determine what legislation passes the House. Simply put, the Committee sets the terms for debate of all significant legislation–how long a bill is debated, who may offer amendments, what amendments may be offered, etc. Before a bill goes to the House floor, the Committee meets to review amendments, hear testimony from interested parties, and discuss how to structure the floor debate. Rules Committee Chair Louise Slaughter did something unusual however, in the hearing on legislation to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act–she announced at the start of the hearing that no amendments of any type would be allowed for debate. Committee Democrats followed Slaughter’s lead and voted against amendments to: authorize surveillance of those engaged in the creation of Weapons of Mass Destruction; authorize surveillance of foreign terrorists outside the United States; extend liability protection to telecommunications companies that relied on government directives and shared information deemed necessary for protection from terrorist attack; and, allow a debate on the Bush administration’s alternative. This is a reckless way to handle national security. House Democrats have once again shut Republicans out of the debate completely (as they did just yesterday in debate on the Internet Tax Freedom Act). They’ve used their position of power to give terrorists working with WMD a ‘grace period’ while U.S. intelligence agencies go to court for permission to tap them. They’ve abused the process to preserve the fatal flaws in their own bill:
- The Democratic bill specifically requires a court order to monitor conversations between terrorists abroad and people in the United States. So if Osama bin Laden called an al Qaeda cell in the United States, the intelligence community could not listen to the communication without a court order.
- It imposes FISA requirements on the US military–creating a perverse situation where it’s easier to kill a suspected terrorist than monitor his calls.
- It creates a database of U.S. citizens suspected to be terrorists–a database that must be shared across agencies and with (notoriously leaky) members of Congress and their staffs.
- In specifically denying protection to telecommunications companies, it exposes those companies to lawsuits and creates a strong incentive for them not to cooperate with future surveillance activities.
House Democrats are shutting down debate to ram through a bill that will ensure repeats of episodes like this one, where U.S. soldiers in Iraq had to wait for hours to search for a missing comrade, while lawyers in Washington prepared a legal brief:
And here’s the $64,000 question: why are Democrats closing down all debate? Because they know a majority of the House is against the Democratic leadership on this and other security issues. When the House approved a temporary extension of FISA that was consistent with White House recommendations, 41 Democrats voted with nearly all House Republicans to pass a strong bipartisan bill. Democratic leaders couldn’t allow that to happen again. We can only hope that the Members of the Rules Committee who imposed this reckless plan to shield terrorists face stiff questions from their constituents. Those members are Jim McGovern (D-MA), Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Doris Matsui (D-CA), Dennis Cardoza (D-CA), Peter Welch (D-VT), Kathy Castor (D-FL), Michael Arcuri (D-NY), and Louise Slaughter (D-NY). UPDATE: House rules preserve the right of the minority to offer one ‘motion to recommit’ the bill. When that vote comes up, Republicans will call for a vote on whether to amend the bill to include the following simple language:
Do Democrats really want to go on the record shielding terrorists? This vote will give them that chance.
