After vigorous debate and intense last-minute pressure by Republican leaders, the Senate on Saturday rejected legislation that would end the federal government's bulk collection of phone records.
With the death of that measure - passed overwhelmingly in the House earlier this month - senators then scrambled to hastily pass a short-term measure to keep the program from going dark when it expires June 1 but failed. The disarray in Congress appeared to significantly increase the chances that the government will lose systematic access to newly created calling records by Americans, at least temporarily, after June 1.
"This is a high-threat period," said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, who was felled in his efforts to extend the program even for a few days by the junior senator for his home state, Rand Paul.
The Senate will reconvene on May 31 to try again. But any extension is far from certain to get approval from the House, which is in recess until June 1, with at least one member threatening to block it.
"Any extension is going to be problematic in the House," said Representative Adam B Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Schiff noted that many of the votes against the measure in the House were by members who didn't think it went far enough. The matter is likely to come up after the one-week recess.
Under the bipartisan House bill, which passed 338 to 88 last week, the Patriot Act would be changed to prohibit bulk collection by the National Security Agency of metadata charting telephone calls made by Americans.
However, while the House version of the bill would take the government out of the collection business, it would not deny it access to the information.
The measure failed in the Senate 57 to 42, with 12 Republicans voting for it, shortly after midnight because Paul, a candidate for the White House, dragged the procedure out as he promised to do in fund-raising tweets and emails.
Another bill, which would have extended the program for two months, also failed.
Even if both chambers do agree to an extension of the statute, the program might still lapse. President Obama would have to make the legal and political decision to ask the nation's intelligence court for a new order authorising the bulk phone logs program, and a Federal District Court judge on the court would have to agree that he was authorized to issue such an order, even though a federal appeals court recently ruled that the statute cannot be legitimately interpreted to permit bulk collection.
Still, while a short-term lapse in the bulk phone records collection could have large political repercussions, it might have only a limited operational impact on counterterrorism investigations. Throughout the lifetime of the once-secret program, which began in October 2001, it has never been the difference maker in thwarting any terrorist attack, according to testimony and government reports.
Senator Patrick J Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, slowly and painstakingly brought nearly every member of his caucus to support the House bill, losing only Senator Angus King, an independent representing Maine. But Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah, who was the point man for his side of the aisle, was unable to convince a handful of wavering Republicans to support the bill and defy McConnell, who with many senior Republicans on the Intelligence Committee spoke out against the measure.
McConnell wanted to extend the program as it exists, but realised this week that he had nowhere near the votes to get that done. On Friday, he held a last-minute session before an extensive vote on a trade package to twist senators' arms and to convince them that a short-term extension would allow a compromise to be hammered out in June.
The debate over the federal program, which became intense after the government's extensive surveillance efforts were exposed by Edward Snowden, was complicated by a federal appeals court ruling last week that found the NSA's bulk collection of phone records illegal.
©2015 The New York Times News Service
