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Children’s healthcare easier for Dems than issue of spying |
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By Mike Soraghan
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Posted: 10/25/07 07:10 PM [ET] |
Democratic leaders are focusing their energy on the winning issue of children’s healthcare and postponing work on the thorny topic of foreign intelligence surveillance.
When House leaders called off the vote on a Democratic-written measure last week after GOP procedural maneuvering threatened to kill the bill, they promised to bring it back up this week. But now, a delay looks likely.
“Apparently, it isn’t going to come up this week,” Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.), a member of the House Intelligence and Rules committees, said Wednesday.
Some House leaders officially maintain that the bill remains on the table. But their aides said the caucus is focusing on coming up with a new version of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP.
That means the surveillance bill will have to wait.
Democrats have until February to come up with a re-write of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), after Congress in August passed a six-month interim measure that was widely criticized by party liberals and civil libertarians. House Democrats say their new bill, which Republicans and the White House oppose, will allow the U.S. to spy on foreign terrorists while protecting Americans’ privacy rights.
The House Intelligence and Judiciary panels have already approved a measure that strengthens congressional and legal oversight of foreign intelligence surveillance. But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) indicated Tuesday that Congress could pass short-term extensions if it had to, leaving the pre-August law intact.
“You know, you get to Feb. 5, maybe you go to March 5. Then you go to April 5,” Hoyer said at his weekly briefing for reporters. “The FISA law is in place.”
Hoyer is irate that the White House has declined to give most members of Congress access to administration documents explaining the legal underpinnings of the administration’s terrorist surveillance program. In particular, he and other Democrats have blasted the White House for providing those papers to the Senate Intelligence Committee alone after the panel reportedly said it would grant immunity to the telecom companies that cooperated with the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program. The Senate panel overwhelmingly passed a FISA re-write bill with an immunity provision last week, but many Democrats in both chambers remain skeptical.
“This is not a dictatorship. This is a democracy,” Hoyer said. |
