With only days left to act and Rand Paul threatening a filibuster, Senate Republicans remain deeply divided over the future of the PATRIOT Act and have no clear path to keep key government spying authorities from expiring at the end of the month.

Crucial parts of the PATRIOT Act, including a provision authorizing the government’s controversial bulk collection of American phone records, first revealed by Edward Snowden, are due to lapse May 31. That means Congress has barely a week to figure out a fix before before lawmakers leave town for Memorial Day recess at the end of the next week.


The prospects of a deal look grim: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Thursday night proposed just a two-month extension of expiring PATRIOT Act provisions to give the two sides more time to negotiate, but even that was immediately dismissed by critics of the program.

The House just overwhelmingly approved its own bill to reauthorize those sunsetting authorities while reining in the phone records program, and lawmakers in the lower chamber have pledged to fight any Senate attempts to pass weaker or no reforms.

The Senate is stalemated. McConnell (R-Ky.) and Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) want to prolong the authorities for 5½ years untouched. But libertarian-leaning Republicans and Democrats are threatening to let the authorities expire. Just extending them a few months faces long odds of clearing Congress before the break.

“I’m going to filibuster. I’m going to do everything it takes to block a short-term extension,” said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). He and Paul (R-Ky.) have threatened to filibuster any attempt to prolong the bulk collection program.

Later Thursday, when McConnell filed the two-month extension, Wyden tweeted: “Two months is two months too long.”

A short-term extension stands an even worse chance in the House, which voted 338-88 to pass its USA Freedom Act, according to the heads of both chambers’ Judiciary committees.

Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said the House would have “a lot of skepticism” about a clean reauthorization “of any length,” and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) had an equally pessimistic prediction. “I think based on the vote yesterday, that would be very [iffy],” he said Thursday.

“The House bill, I think, sends an overwhelming message to the Senate of what is politically feasible there,” added Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). “The Senate has to look at that and pay attention.”

If lawmakers allow the sections of the PATRIOT Act to expire, the government will lose its ability to launch new investigations authorized by those provisions, including ones involving the controversial phone records program. More routine domestic surveillance activities could also be curtailed. The sunset, however, would not affect a number of other surveillance capacities.

Surveillance hawks, echoing warnings from past fights to extend the PATRIOT Act, say that letting the authorities expire would hinder the government’s anti-terrorism efforts.

But a compromise doesn’t appear imminent.

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 Senate Republican, is more optimistic that lawmakers will prolong PATRIOT Act provisions at least temporarily, but he’s in the minority. “If it comes to letting the thing lapse or doing a short-term extension, I think the votes will be there in the House eventually,” he said.

Surveillance reform advocates in the Senate want the chamber to quickly approve the House bill. Reauthorizing the surveillance program would be folly, they say, after a court ruling last week that found the bulk surveillance program is illegal, in part because Congress has never authorized it.

“How can one reauthorize something that’s illegal?” Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Thursday. “This is not a partisan issue … Democrats and Republicans are united in reforming the National Security Agency and how they collect their data.”

The Obama administration has thrown its weight behind the popular House bill, which came about after weeks of negotiations between the administration, House leadership and the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. As the bill’s authors repeatedly shut down attempts to add stronger privacy protections in the name of preserving the bill’s “delicate compromise,” the White House, the attorney general and the director of National Intelligence publicly backed the bill.

Thune said he believes the House bill will get voted on “in some form,” perhaps as part of a process that allows for a vote on a five-year extension. McConnell hasn’t yet laid out his procedural plans for next week. And Thune said he doesn’t know if there are 60 votes for either the bipartisan House bill or a long-term reauthorization of the current surveillance provisions favored by some Republicans. “I don’t think anybody knows exactly at this point where the votes are,” he said.

“We’re divided on it,” added Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas).

The PATRIOT fight is a test of McConnell’s commitment to a freewheeling amendment process that he’s vowed to uphold as majority leader. In this case, his promise to give both parties a say in legislation is colliding with a packed agenda and precious few days on the legislative calendar to get it all done.

“I think it’s gonna be hard not to fill up the whole week with trade,” Cornyn said Thursday, referring to a bill on the Senate floor to give the president expanded powers to cut free-trade deals.

Many Senate Republicans are squarely in McConnell and Burr’s camp and want the surveillance programs extended until 2020.

“I was here on Sept. 11, 2001. I was part of the PATRIOT Act debate in 2002 and 2003, and its most recent extensions,” Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.) said Thursday. “I think it was the right thing to do. There’s an old saying: ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’”

“I think it’s clear to say that the program as designed is effective,” Burr said. “Members are reluctant to change things that are effective just because of public opinion. And we’ve got a program that’s never had one breach of personal privacy.”

McConnell’s looming decision also puts him in a tug of war between Senate Republicans vying for the 2016 presidential nomination. Paul insists that the PATRIOT Act should be scrapped entirely; Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is demanding a permanent extension of the section used to justify bulk collection.

Ted Cruz of Texas, the third Senate Republican who has announced a presidential bid, is somewhere in the middle — signing on to the USA Freedom Act as one of its five GOP sponsors.

Both Paul and Wyden, who is allying with Paul to write amendments, including one that would end the bulk surveillance program, have vowed to mount filibusters against a clean reauthorization of the expiring PATRIOT Act provisions. Paul, in an interview with POLITICO on Wednesday, declined to rule out a talking filibuster, saying: “We will see what unfolds.”