January 25, 2008: Republicans demand 60-vote threshold for amendments to FISA bill

The Senate adjourns

[13:54]
That's it for the day. Amy Klobuchar closed it down just a moment ago. The Senates resumes work at 14:00 on Monday. Don't forget that the State of the Union speech, George W. Bush's last, is slated for Monday night.

Behind the scenes, senators work on a short-term FISA extension

[13:47]
Behind the scenes, senate leaders are trying to agree a short-term extension of the current FISA law, a.k.a. the Protect America Act of 2007, which passed Congress in August but carried a 6-month sunset provision.

You bet we're in a recession, says Casey

[13:26]
You know, for a Friday on which there are no roll-call votes, there have been a lot of senators speaking on the floor today. Right now, Bob Casey (PA). He cites skyrocketing heating prices, something like an 18.9% in one year. Some of the people of Pennsylvania, he says, have felt like they were in a recession for years. He recites the stimulus package t-trio: timely, targeted, and temporary.

He is asking, where can we get bang for our buck with this stimulus? Food stamps is the best bang for the buck. We need people to spend money quickly. Unemployment benefits, he says. And aid to the states, also represent the best return for our money. He is essentially arguing that the stimulus money should go to people whom we know will spend it, not save it. People on food stamps or unemployment probably aren't doing a whole lot of saving. Give them more food stamps and perhaps they'll spend their food budget on something else. Seems reasonable. How much of the tax rebates returned to the middle class taxpayers (as Bush described them, "People earnin' a paycheck.") will get socked away? Of course, that money would be socked away at banks. So maybe this "stimulus" package is just a back-door way to get more money to banks.

As for Casey's view on the stimulus package, he doesn't quite like what he's seen so far. The Bush/House package does not include an increase in food stamp aid.

Wide-ranging Dorgan presentation includes remarks on economy

[13:14]
He started out talking about FISA. He showed a photo of a door to a room that Congress doesn't have access to. What is behind that door? he wondered. Then he talked some about the stimulus package. Then he showed a chart of all of the foreign investors buying up U.S. companies — G.E. plastics, Citigroup, and DOW Chemical. You know who gave them the money to buy these companies? he asks. We did, with our huge trade deficits.

It's true really. We print out the dollars, send them abroad. And then when our economy swoons, the dollars come back in, worth much less but buying U.S. companies. Not a sustainable situation.

Now Dorgan is talking about hedge funds, and how they need to be regulated. They have huge leverage, these funds, huge borrowing. Now $43 (?) trillion or some in credit default swaps. Derivatives. Hedging. Trading risk. A huge risk to the economy, he says. If we don't deal with these areas, we can stimulate forever and it's not going to matter.

Hedge funds are responsible for one-half of the daily trades on the New York Stock Exchange, he says.
[13:22]

Bond says, "60 votes. Period."

[~12:45]
Bond says, well, you make some good points, and you've put a lot of work into this, but, ah, it's not going to come to a vote unless y'all agree to put a 60-vote threshold on amendments to this FISA bill. Bond basically says, either we do 60 votes on amendments or we will vote against cloture (i.e. a 60-vote threshold). So either way, you need 60 votes.

However, the thing is, it's a Republican-petitioned cloture vote scheduled for Monday. Reid last night filed his own cloture petition, a vote by which would arise Tuesday. So, it's possible to have Democrats vote against cloture on Monday and then Republicans votes against cloture on Tuesday.

Who has more to lose here? President Bush has the most to lose, it seems. Imagine FISA expiring on Thursday January 31 2008 as it is set to to (sunset provision in Protect America Act). The surveillance all has to come down (wink wink nod nod). Legally anyway. The Democrats have repeatedly caved to Republican pressure in the Senate (e.g. AMT fix, FISA reform last August) because the Democratic Congress doesn't want to be seen as a failure. But public approval ratings of the Congress are already so low. What does the Democratic leadership have to lose? Make Bush come to Congress and say, fine, vote on your FISA amendments, just get me the bill.

This is a bluff by Bond and Mitch McConnell (KY). We will see if the Democrats call the bluff. As I see it, the Democrats aren't asking for that much. Up or down votes for amendments is a key tenet of the U.S. Senate, especially when the House does not allow bills to be amended. If an amendment gets 51 votes, then the people have spoken in favor of it. Refusing the people votes on a matter of constitutional rights and national security is reckless tactics.

Whitehouse offers compromise amendment on immunity

[12:17]
Well, the Senate came right back and now it's Sheldon Whitehouse (RI). He has got an amendment that would strip retroactive immunity from the bill but would substitute the U.S gov't for the telecom companies as defendants in any suits stemming from the warrantless surveillance. However, he surmises that the amendment might not be germane post-cloture. Maybe it's a situation of me not knowing my way around here yet, he says, but I don't think so. I think this amendment has merit. It's co-sponsored by Arlen Specter (PA), says Whitehouse. So this has nothing to do with me being a Democrat. Why won't the Republicans let me call this amendment up?

I've never seen this where the minority does something like a pre-emptive filibuster by preventing amendments from merely being called up. It's an amendment embargo.

The minority says why not just keep the bill that came out of the intelligence community, the one that passed 13-2 out of that committee? Yeah, says Whitehouse, I was in that committee. And a lot of us at the time stated that we foresaw the ability to make improvements to the bill on the floor. Whitehouse himself wanted to add this amendment during the committee markup but he was told at the time that it had certain technical flaws. He was led to believe he could offer it on the floor. Now that agreement has been dishonored, he says.

Senate has recessed subject to the call of the chair

[12:04]
The Senate is on recess subject to the call of the chair. It could be back in session today or that could pretty much be it for the day.

Compromise is overrated, says Cornyn

[12:02]
He was talking about the Republican retreat yesterday, which he characterized as one of the most hopeful during his time as a U.S. senator. He then goes on to say that "compromise is overrated" because it means sacrificing your positions. The people don't want compromise, he figures. Rather they want you to stand your ground and reach common sense solutions.

Dodd says warrentless spying included e-mails

[11:07]
As Chris Dodd (CT) explains it, the President's warrantless eavesdropping program included the archiving by some telecom companies of phone calls, faxes, and e-mails. Dodd is now speaking in opposition to telecom immunity on the floor. He says that there is a bigger principle in play here. It's about waterboarding, habeas corpus, the destruction of interrogation tapes, the Vice President's "art of secrecy." This is a question, says Dodd, whether we are a nation of laws or a nation of men. In a nation of laws we follow the law, in a nation of men it is men that rule above the law. Dodd is hunkering down on this issue, "the law issue" as he describes it.

He references the Church Report, saying it could have been written this morning. He contrasts the bipartisan work that went into the Church Report with the supine pose of many in Congress today.

It's not as though the FISA courts have refused requests for warrants since the inception of FISA in 1978. Over that time, the courts have approved 18, 748 warrants and refused only 5, according to the Washington Post. [*Note: Byron Dorgan (ND) later posts a board with numbers showing that 2,990 warrants have been issued versus 5 denied at the FISA court between 1975-2006.]

The President wants immunity because immunity means secrecy. And to this administration, secrecy means power. The administration's original proposal for immunity was immunity not just for the telecom companies but for everyone involved in the program. Why did they seek such broad authority to immunize every individual? Why?

If there were a trial, the corporations would walk, says Dodd. They were ordered, they patriotically complied. So why does this administration not want a trial? This is about secrecy, he says.

This is why we have a third branch of government, he says, to declare who is innocent and who is guilty. People deserve their day in court. Their rights can't be decided by the simple majority of the Senate.

Dodd concludes his remarks by asking that his fellow senators vote against cloture on the bill on Monday.

[10:33]
Kit Bond (MO), vice chair of the intelligence committee, says that Republicans will allow the Senate to vote on Democratic amendments to the FISA bill but only if both sides agree that such amendments would pass only with 60 votes.

Bond is out there on the floor calling for bipartisanship and asking the other side of the aisle to end its partisan attempt to pick apart the FISA bill as it was reported out of the intelligence committee. Yet, I would ask him, Whatever happened to the simple process of offering up amendments to a bill and giving them an up-or-down vote by which fifty-one yeas means the amendment is added to the bill? He does not give much of a reason for why the FISA amendments should withstand the 60-vote test, other than to say that the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) does not support the amendments and therefore the President won't sign off on them either.