Obama cannot avoid new government spying battle

So far this year, Obama has yet to wade into the explosive debate over sweeping U.S. government surveillance of its citizens sparked by Edward Snowden’s National Security Agency leaks.

Now leading Republicans are forcing him to take a position on the incendiary issue that could easily spill into the Democratic primary and press Hillary Clinton to lay out her views as well.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., late Tuesday night guaranteed an intense congressional debate over the limits of government spying over the next few weeks by introducing a straight five-year renewal of the Patriot Act late Tuesday night.

McConnell’s re-authorization, introduced with the support of the Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., includes no limits on the government’s ability to collect bulk phone data and sweeps aside months of work last year by a bipartisan group of House and Senate colleagues to reform the law.

Revelations that the government was broadly collecting and storing of Americans’ phone records divided both parties, sparking a national uproar with supporters arguing that the surveillance is critical to national security and guarding against terrorist attacks while critics assailed it as an intrusive dragnet that trampled on personal privacy protections.

After the Snowden revelations, the president issued executive orders limiting the bulk collection of data. He also supported a bipartisan reform bill known as the USA Freedom Act, but that failed to pass the Senate late last year when that chamber was still under Democratic control.

That measure had the backing of key Republicans in the House and Senate, but a powerful contingent — McConnell, Burr and Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa — opposed it.

So far this year, the president has not made it clear whether he would back an entirely new reform effort or would rather Congress simply retain most or all of the intelligence-gathering powers of the original bill.

On Wednesday White House spokesman Eric Schultz said he would get to reporters with more information about Obama’s position once he had a chance to look into the issue.

“It’s important to note that this is gong to be something that requires bipartisan support,” Schultz said Wednesday. “Democrats and Republicans are going to have to work together on this … so we look forward to some earnest legislating.”

The same day Burr said it’s time for the White House to weigh in on the issue.

“The White House usually keeps everything close to the vest until all of a sudden you produce a piece of legislation, and then they’re open to share with you their problems with it,” Burr told reporters. “Their shoulder at the wheel might help, actually.”

For Obama — and Clinton by extension — the issue is political dynamite that they would rather largely avoid as long as possible — especially in the middle of a battle over trade that has fractured the Democratic party.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee and was one of the most vocal and early opponents of bulk phone records collection, said McConnell’s decision to “re-up” the Patriot Act provisions without any reforms is “fundamentally flawed” and won’t pass muster with the vast majority of senators who have spent so many long hours forging compromises last year.

“It flies in the face of the fears of millions of Americans,” he said.

Still, he said, no matter what happens to the measure in Congress, Obama has the power to end the collection of Americans’ phone records.

“My hope is that the president would make it clear that if this legislation doesn’t pass, he’s not going to re-up the collection of data – he does have the administrative authority to do that,” Wyden told the Washington Examiner.

McConnell and Burr have already signaled that their straight authorization bill renewing the law is meant to counterbalance proposals working their way through the House — and that it’s not the final version of the measure.

“I can’t tell you what the point is that we’re going to end, but it’s somewhere between” the straight reauthorization and the House version.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking members of the Senate Judiciary, as well as Rep. Bob Goodlatte, a Virginia Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, are in the process of finalizing a reform-minded bill.

But in introducing the bill the way he did, which would allow him to fast-track it to the Senate floor without consideration by the Judiciary Committee, McConnell appears to be trying to preserve key aspects of the bulk collection program.

McConnell and many other Republicans and argue that the program is vital to national security — especially in light of the increased terrorist threat to the homeland the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the foreign fighters flocking to the group pose.

In addition, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., who chairs the Armed Services Committee, told the Examiner Wednesday that support for the Patriot Act has grown in Congress because of increased cyber crimes.

“A lot of us are deeply concerned about the threats that we’ve been hearing about in terms of cyber attacks from China and Russia and non-state players,” he said. “It’s really rather serious.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat and the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, said it’s only the beginning of an intense process to reauthorize the surveillance provisions.

The president and large contingents in Congress on both sides of the aisle, she said, have strong feelings about the holding of Americans phone data.

Obama’s executive order last year ends the U.S. government’s ability to collect the data and instead requires the telecom companies to do so. If the government wants to query the data they must get permission from a special court.

“I actually think that that’s the best way to proceed so the only question that would be left is whether you require the telecoms to hold the data for one or two years,” she said.

“I do not believe that people on my side would go for a straight reauthorization … so we have to come together and we will,” she said.