The Senate remained at an impasse on Thursday on how to proceed with changes to the NSA’s surveillance capabilities, as Mitch McConnell, the Republican majority leader, continued to voice his opposition to reforms.

In a speech on the Senate floor, McConnell criticized the USA Freedom Act passed by the House of Representatives earlier this month – a bill that if also passed by the Senate would end the bulk collection of phone records by the agency.

“We need to recognize that terrorist tactics and the nature of the threat have changed,” McConnell said. “At a moment of elevated threat, it would be a mistake to take from our intelligence community any – any – of the valuable tools needed to build a complete picture of terrorist networks and their plans, such as the bulk data collection program.”

The issue is urgent because a key provision of the Patriot Act, the piece of the law that enables the NSA to sweep millions of Americans’ phone records without a warrant, is due to expire on 1 June. The Senate is due to go into recess this weekend until that date, so the issue needs to be resolved before they go or this provision will temporarily lapse. If they do not come to an agreement on the issue on Friday, they may be forced to stay in DC on Saturday and do so.

McConnell has been pushing for a two-month renewal of the Patriot Act in its current form, while Richard Burr, the intelligence committee chairman, has been working on another compromise that would establish a two-year transition period before the bulk collection ends.

Under the USA Freedom Act passed by the House, that transition period is only six months.

Republican leaders have said the USA Freedom bill would not have the 60 votes it needs to clear the Senate, but they also suggested on Thursday that a two-month renewal to the Patriot Act’s key provision would lack enough support to pass.

The Senate will hold two procedural votes – one on the USA Freedom Act and another on the short-term extension to the Patriot Act provision – after lawmakers complete work on a bill supporting the “fast-track” authority that Barack Obama says he needs to complete a 12-nation Pacific Rim trade deal.

By Friday afternoon, timing remained uncertain.

The lack of agreement on both trade and the Patriot Act all but guarantee that the Senate will work through Saturday absent any breakthrough.



The White House slammed Senate leaders on Friday for stalling on the USA Freedom Act in perhaps the Obama administration’s strongest words yet on the issue.

Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, said the House bill was a compromise proposal “that was painstakingly crafted with significant input from the intelligence community”.



“After thousands of hours of meetings and painstaking work on what everyone would acknowledge is a complicated policy issue, a reasonable bipartisan compromise emerged,” Earnest told reporters at his daily press briefing. “We’ve spent a lot of time talking before about how difficult this Congress in particular has found it to be to do even simple things … this policy proposal is extraordinarily complicated and one that has significant consequences for the national security in this country and the basic civil liberties of the American people.



“The point is, the hard work on this has been done,” he added, while warning about the possible lapse in the Patriot Act on 1 June. “There is no plan B.”

Earnest declined to say if Barack Obama would sign a short-term extension of the Patriot Act, pointing out that it was unclear if there were sufficient votes in the Senate for such a measure to pass.

