Yesterday, the Senate did the right thing by passing a strong, bipartisan bill that strengthens national security and protects the American people. House Democrats must act now before critical tools that help our intelligence officials monitor terrorist communications overseas expire.

The Senate bill represents a strong compromise between Congress and the Administration. The bill rightly restores the original intent of FISA by ensuring that intelligence officials can conduct surveillance on foreign targets without a court order, while still protecting the civil liberties of the American people. It also grants liability protection to telecommunication companies that helped the government after September 11. If we allow these companies to be the subjects of frivolous lawsuits, we will lose their cooperation in the future, crippling America’s counterterrorism efforts.

After seven months of stalling and a 15-day extension, the House Democratic Majority is coming perilously close to threatening the safety of America. The time for partisanship is over. The time to act is now.

The intelligence community needs a long-term fix to gaps in our intelligence laws—not a 21-day delay. Another extension represents yet another failure of the Democratic Majority—a failure to act, a failure to lead and a failure to protect our country. If Congress fails to meet this deadline, House Democrats will have no one to blame but themselves.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 13th, 2008 at 2:30 pm and is filed under Homeland Security, Politics .