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Senate Democrats on Monday defeated a GOP motion to end debate on a bill overhauling U.S. foreign-intelligence surveillance law, setting up a showdown with the White House over whether to protect the phone companies that participated in the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program.
The motion to invoke cloture failed 48-45, 12 votes short of the 60 needed to succeed. The underlying bill, passed on a bipartisan vote by the Senate Intelligence Committee last fall, would grant retroactive immunity to carriers and overhaul the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
But many Democrats want to narrow, if not strike, the language on immunity, and they intend to offer a series of amendments before an interim wiretapping bill expires on Feb. 1. Congress passed a GOP-written bill, the Protect America Act (PAA), last summer under heavy White House pressure, but included a six-month sunset.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), backed by most Democrats, has called for a 30-day extension of the PAA to allow the Senate to consider further amendments. But Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) last week filed to invoke cloture, effectively prohibiting any further amendments to the underlying bill.
Reid’s motion to end debate on his amendment for the 30-day PAA extension also failed Monday, 48-45. Afterwards, McConnell said he would be open to a short-term extension, although he did not say for how long. McConnell and other Senate Republicans support the Senate Intelligence Committee bill in large part because it includes immunity for the telecommunications companies. President Bush has called on Congress to pass that bill this week.
Meanwhile, several Democrats, led by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), support stripping the immunity provision from the Senate Intelligence Committee bill and allowing the 40-odd lawsuits pending against the telecommunications firms to go forward.
The House is scheduled to vote on a 30-day extension of the PAA Tuesday morning, according to Reid. It passed a Democratic-written bill last fall that did not include any immunity provision and increased the power of the FISA court, which has oversight over foreign-intelligence surveillance on U.S. soil.
Underscoring the importance of the vote, Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) left the campaign trail to vote against McConnell’s cloture motion.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) also voted against ending debate on the underlying bill, even though he backed his panel’s measure with the immunity provision intact.
“The White House is gambling with the safety of Americans and the continued cooperation of companies that we rely on to aid in our efforts to protect our country,” Rockefeller said in a statement.
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