Reid Renews Call for Extension to Surveillance BillSenate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has a busy week ahead of him. And near the top of the list is somehow getting a surveillance bill through the Senate in the next week. On February 1st, the administration’s Protect America Act expires.
When he tried to get a thirty-day extension to that date last month, Republicans blocked it. So this morning he said on the Senate floor that he’d try again. The time pressures are real, he said, and suggested that even if the Senate were to somehow pass a bill, it would be mighty difficult to get it through the House and to the president’s desk before February 1st. The Senate itself will be a high hurdle, with Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) filibustering over a retroactive immunity provision on the one hand and Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) saying that the authority for warrantless wiretapping stems from the Constitution on the other.
“Failure to extend the present law for one month could lead to the laws no longer being something that guides what happens in this country,” Reid said, adding “some may want that.”
Stay tuned.