Fiery FISA Debate Dominating Senate: GOP Bill Fails Cloture

Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report at 2:06 PM on January 28, 2008.

UPDATE II

Cloture vote fails, 48-45, with Landrieu, Ben Nelson and Mark Pryor voting with the Republicans.

McCONNELL: Urges everyone to vote against 30 day extension. Said they may have to do a "short extension" but the President has said he will veto a 30 day.

REID: House will pass a 30 day extension tomorrow. People crying "wolf" here a bit too often.

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UPDATE

The Republican backed FISA bill is comfortably going down to defeat. It looks like it will receive around 50 votes, when it needed 60. Specter, Bayh and McCaskill to flipped to our side.

The next vote is for a 30 day extension of the current FISA law. That also needs 60 votes to pass, and this time we are the ones looking to round up aye votes. If it fails, expect another vote in a few days.

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In about an hour or so, after several starts and stops, the Senate will take the Bush's administration's surveillance bill -- inappropriately named the "Protect America Act" -- which is set to expire on Feb. 1 (Friday).

Obviously, the looming deadline is hardly conducive to a reasoned debate, and the likelihood of the House and Senate agreeing to a final version before the end of the week is extremely small. Given the circumstances, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid supports a 30-day extension of the status quo -- the surveillance law that exists will continue to exist for another month, while lawmakers hash out the future. The White House has said it would veto any extension, even though it currently has the powers it wants.

Paul Kiel sets the stage for this afternoon:

On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) filed for cloture, forcing a vote which would end debate, preclude any votes on the amendments, and lead immediately to a vote on the underlying Senate bill -- the administration-supported Senate intelligence committee bill, which contains a provision granting retroactive immunity to the telecoms. The Republicans need 60 votes to make that happen.

Now things are at the point where even if the Senate did manage to pass some sort of bill before Thursday, the process of hashing out the differences with the House version (which doesn't contain retroactive immunity) would drag on past the deadline. Reid has said as much: "The president has to make a decision. He's either going to extend the law... or there will be no wiretapping."

Now, it's important to clarify that last point. If the PAA expires, there's one thing that Dems, the Bush administration, and intelligence officials all agree on: the surveillance initiated under the "Protect America Act" will continue for another year, and new surveillance can begin under the old FISA law.

In other words, intelligence officials will continue to monitor the communications of suspected bad guys. Of course, to hear far-right lawmakers tell it, Dems are prepared to give al Qaeda the keys to the Pentagon.

TP has collected a series of very annoying examples of Republicans' dishonest demagoguery.

In his weekly radio address this weekend, Bush ominously threatened that "we cannot afford to wait until after an attack."

Speaking to NPR today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell bellowed, "The American people should be frightened and remember full well what happened on 9/11."

In the Washington Times today, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) continues the fearmongering, writing that "Democrats now come perilously close to threatening every American's safety" if they don't give President Bush everything he wants. But Smith neglects to mention that it is Bush's veto threat that actually threatens to let America's intelligence capabilities lapse.

Moreover, Glenn Greenwald, whose coverage of this has been second to none, describes (among other things) the political environment.

If the Democrats had even the slightest strategic sense and/or courage -- just the slightest amount -- this is a political confrontation they would be uncontrollably eager to have. Just imagine if they sustain the filibuster today and instead pass a 30-day extension of the PAA, and then Bush vetoes it, knowingly choosing to leave the intelligence community without the ability to Listen In When Osama Is Calling. It would be the height of political stupidity for Democrats to be afraid of that outcome.

That's what is at stake today as Senate Democrats try to sustain a filibuster against the Republicans' efforts to force a final vote on the truly pernicious Senate Intelligence Committee bill. Are there any limits at all on the willingness of Congressional Democrats to be bullied and humiliated by Republicans, even by the most transparently disingenuous tactics such as these?

We'll know more soon enough, but I'd just add that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will be in the Senate this afternoon, and both have issued statements expressing opposition to the administration's bill. Both, in other words, will be there and will vote the way they should.

I'll update readers when I know more.

Tagged as: reid, fisa, domestic spying, mcconnell, warranteless wiretapping

Steve Benen is a freelance writer/researcher and creator of The Carpetbagger Report. In addition, he is the lead editor of Salon.com's Blog Report, and has been a contributor to Talking Points Memo, Washington Monthly, Crooks & Liars, The American Prospect, and the Guardian.