Sen. Joe Lerberman (I-Conn.) says the legislation 'got a bad name under the Bush adminstration.' House votes to renew Patriot Act

After a wave of news about attempted domestic terror attacks, Democrats facing a tough election year quietly voted this week to extend the Patriot Act legislation that many of them had decried under former President George W. Bush.

The House passed a one-year reauthorization of the Patriot Act Thursday night 315-97, just a day after the Senate moved the bill on a late-evening unanimous voice vote.


With the law facing a sunset date of Feb. 28, the Senate opted to vote for the extension of three crucial provisions of the act rather than opening debate on a revised bipartisan plan passed by the Judiciary Committee in October that would have imposed stricter privacy safeguards.

“In the end, it became non-controversial,” Senate Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) told POLITICO. “[There was] the growing concern about increase on the pace of attacks on the homeland... and frankly, I think the Patriot [Act] got a bad name under the Bush Administration.”

Lieberman said FBI Director Robert Mueller and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano emphasized to his committee the importance of extending the three renewed provisions: authorizing court-approved roving wiretaps that cover multiple phones or computers a suspect may use, court-approved search and seizures, and allowing surveillance of “lone wolf” non-U.S. citizens not affiliated with organized terrorist groups.

The Homeland Security Chairman never was on board with the Patriot Act amendments passed in the Judiciary Committee this fall that would have added additional privacy protections, which were supported by Republican leaders Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas).

Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) expressed disappointment Thursday that his bill never made it to the floor.

“I wish eventually we could have what we put through committee—it was a bipartisan change—I think it improved it.” Leahy conceded.

Democratic leadership passed the extender bill Wednesday with little fanfare—bundling all reauthorization votes of expiring legislation into one, under the name of a Medicare reform act, and putting out a release afterward only criticizing the Republican opposition to the failed provisions with no mention of the Patriot Act's passage.

More progressive members of Democratic caucus, including Judiciary Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), lamented the loss of GOP support for the once-embraced committee legislation Thursday even as they acknowledged that passing the extension was necessary.

“It had to happen,” Whitehouse said of reapplying the current law. “There was a sense that even the bipartisan supporters of the bill that came out of Judiciary could no longer be counted on to vote for it... positions had changed since the agreement was reached in committee.”

With the attempted Christmas Day bombing and the attacks at Fort Hood affecting public perception and jam-packed domestic legislative calendar, many Democrats felt they had little choice but to reauthorize the bill. Meanwhile, Republicans have scored the vote as a victory, with one GOP aide saying that security realities have caught up with politics for those who once contested the act.

Cornyn, who is chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, pointed to Majority Leader Harry Reid’s tight Senate schedule and the Obama administration’s recent national security stumbles as possible reasons why the extension got a hushed approval Wednesday night.

“I think the majority leader probably just decided that was one fight he didn't have time for on the Senate floor,” Cornyn told POLITICO. “National security is pretty important. I think the White House, and particularly the Department of Justice, stubbed their toe on things like interrogation of detainees, mirandizing terrorists and the like, and so those issues no doubt would have come up.”

The relative silence of Senate Democrats sharply contrasts with the fire they threw at Republicans during the Bush Era, and Whitehouse said the muted tone came from the turnover in the Oval Office.

“I think there's probably a stronger sense that the civil liberties concerns are less likely to be triggered by Obama administration activities than the Bush administration activities... that really damaged its credibility as any kind of guardian of American civil liberties,” Whitehouse said. “Maybe that's the reason they let this thing go without too much of a fight.”

But civil rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union haven’t accepted that idea, and continue to argue that the Patriot Act’s provisions enable the abuses of power regardless of who is in the Oval Office.

An ACLU spokesman expressed disappointment that Congress failed to enact any “substantive change” to the act, adding that the organization realizes that Democrats felt this was a “very inopportune time” to pass a revised bill.

Several congressmen against reauthorization also spoke out Thursday.

“I understand that we are facing a deadline this weekend, but I also believe that we have an obligation to do more than punt. That is effectively what we are doing today. We are punting to the next Congress,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said on the House floor. “I regret that we are not going to continue this process of improving the Patriot Act. Our nation, and our liberties, will suffer. I hope that this vote today will not stop my colleagues from continuing to improve our intelligence gathering laws.”