Less than 24 hours after the Senate voted 96-1 to approve legislation that would broaden federal phone and electronic surveillance capabilities and make it easier for government officials to obtain suspects phone, Internet and business records, the House voted 337-79 to pass similar language.
"I believe this bill is needed and we have no time to waste," Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., said during the debate, expressing the widely voiced view of the mostly Republican majority that voted to approve the bill.
Nearly all House Republicans opposed the anti-terrorism measure. More than 125 Democrats also voted in favor of the legislation.
Encapsulating the arguments of the Democrats who argued against the bill, House Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Democrat John Dingell, D-Mich., said, "the United States is not so threatened that we have to throw away our rights without careful consideration."
Before today, the House appeared to be pushing toward a bipartisan vote on a compromise anti-terrorism measure that was passed unanimously by the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month.
Although lawmakers from both parties had urged the House leadership to allow a vote on that bill, called the Provide Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT) Act of 2001, House leaders jettisoned the measure, replacing it with a bill that is far closer to the Senate language.
"This is basically the Senate bill without [a] money-laundering provision," Center for Democracy and Technology attorney Jim Dempsey said Friday. "The bill is really a frontal assault on the concept of a limited government."
The Bush administration gave its stamp of approval to the Senate bill and had stumped hard to use that language in lieu of the compromise House package.
Although similar to the Senate bill in many ways, the PATRIOT Act included a sunset clause that would have required the government to reassess the expanded surveillance powers contained in the legislation after two years.
The bill approved by the House today includes a five-year sunset provision, but Dempsey said that the sunset clause could easily evaporate when the Senate and House confer to work out differences between the two bills.
The Senate could also choose to pass the House bill as is.
House Democrats and civil liberties advocates today also complained about the manner in which the anti-terrorism legislation was brought up for a vote.
The House Rules Committee sent the bill to the floor under a "closed rule" that prevented members from making any amendments or changes to the legislation.
David McGuire, Newsbytes
