The Senate early Saturday failed to find agreement on passing a bill to extend a federal surveillance law and will instead reconvene in an unusual Sunday session next week to try again.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., adjourned the Senate until Sunday May 31, one day before the expiration of a law that permits the National Security Agency to conduct anti-terrorism surveillance.
McConnell announced the plan after the Senate rejected a series of measures in post-midnight votes that would have extended the law for a short period of time while lawmakers worked out a longer term solution.
The Senate also turned down a House-passed measure, the USA Freedom Act, that would have reformed the NSA spying law in a way that ended a controversial bulk data collection practice.
That measure, which passed the House overwhelmingly last week, failed in the Senate by a vote of 57-42, three votes shy of the 60 needed to prevent a filibuster.
In a 45-54 vote, lawmakers then rejected a two month extension, followed by objections by McConnell to extend the law until June 8, June 5, June 3 and June 2.
McConnell then ordered the May 31 session, which is particularly rare because it will come at the end of a week-long recess.
“We’re left with this option only,” McConnell said. “The law expires at midnight Sunday next week and I doubt if there are many of us who are comfortable with that. Maybe a handful, but we need to act responsibly here on behalf of the American people.”
The opposition to the NSA law included a bipartisan alliance of lawmakers, many who wanted to reform the law and some, including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who want to eliminate the law entirely.
Paul this week commandeered the Senate floor for an 11-hour speech criticizing the NSA law. He objected to McConnell’s attempts to extend the law on a short-term basis.
Paul opposed the reform measure because he believed it would simply transfer the power to use dragnet data collection to the phone companies.
“A single name of a single company can be used to collect all the records, all of the phone records of all of the people in our country with a single warrant,” Paul said. “Our forefathers would be aghast.”
McConnell and other Republicans, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., said the USA Freedom Act would render the NSA surveillance program useless and would leave the nation exposed to undetected terrorist activity.
He proposed a plan that would require a two-year transition period from the current surveillance practices to one where the phone companies hold onto the data.
But the Burr measure also lacked enough support and didn’t even get a vote.
Opponents instead advocated for the USA Freedom Act, pointing to a recent federal court ruling that found the NSA’s bulk data collection practice to be illegal.
“The USA Freedom Act is the only way to do it,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., the Intelligence Committee ranking member said. “The House has passed it, the president wants it. All the intelligence personnel have agreed to it. And I think not to pass it is really to throw the whole program … into serious legal jeopardy.”
