Our country has not been attacked since September 11, 2001 because our intelligence community has been doing its job.  Listening to calls of known terrorists has played an important role in keeping Americans safe.  While the Senate voted to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), House Democrats put politics above security and allowed the law that lets our intelligence community monitor calls expire.

On February 12th, the Senate passed the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, permanently strengthening and improving FISA.  This bill had the full support of leading Senate Democrats including the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Intelligence, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, who said, “We spent months, under tense negotiations, to craft provisions that would modernize and strengthen FISA while protecting Americans right to privacy.  That is what this bill will do, and that is why it should be passed and signed into law.”

Instead of bringing the Senate’s permanent extension up for a vote, House Democrats played a dangerous game of politics and let this law expire.  We are currently without the “real time” intelligence capability that has kept us safe for the last six years. My hope is that we can move quickly to solve this problem by joining the Senate and sending the President a long term extension of FISA.