At an event at the FBI building this morning, the president, who wants even more power under FISA, started giving Congress the hard sell.
“The Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, has provided the Congress with a narrow and targeted piece of legislation that will close the gaps in intelligence. In other words, he’s working on the Hill and he’s told members this is what we need to do our job to protect the American people. It’s the bare minimum the DNI said he needs to do his job. When Congress sends me their version, when Congress listens to all the data and facts and they send me a version of how to close those gaps, I’ll ask one question, and I’m going to ask the DNI: Does this legislation give you what you need to prevent an attack on the country? Is this what you need to do your job, Mr. DNI? That’s the question I’m going to ask. And if the answer is yes, I’ll sign the bill. And if the answer is no, I’m going to veto the bill.
“And so far the Democrats in Congress have not drafted a bill I can sign. We’ve worked hard and in good faith with the Democrats to find a solution, but we are not going to put our national security at risk. Time is short. I’m going to ask Congress to stay in session until they pass a bill that will give our intelligence community the tools they need to protect the United States.”
First, the notion that the administration has proposed a “narrow and targeted piece of legislation” is silly; Bush supports a measure, for example, in which Alberto Gonzales would audit the White House’s surveillance efforts, as if he were a neutral check on possible abuses of power.
Second, the president is apparently of the opinion that he will insist that Congress forgo its August break in order to give him the power he wants. Can he do that? As a matter of fact, he can. As the AP noted, “Bush has the authority under the Constitution to call Congress back into session once it has recessed or adjourned.”
Asked if the president would exercise that power now, Dana Perino said it was “premature” to draw any conclusions.
The negotiations aren’t going particularly well.
As of early afternoon, however, it was clear that no deal was imminent.
“It’s up in the air; I think we’re going to be here for a while,” Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said upon emerging from a closed-door meeting of Senate Democrats on the issue.
Earlier Friday, the White House offered an eleventh-hour accord to Democrats in the negotiations over the matter, saying it would agree to a court review of its foreign intelligence activities instead of leaving certification up to the attorney general and director of national intelligence.
But it attached several conditions that could be unacceptable to Democrats: that the review would only be after-the-fact and would only involve the administration’s general process of collecting the intelligence, not individual cases, said a senior administration official speaking on condition of anonymity to more freely discuss internal deliberations.
As it happens, if negotiations can’t produce a result, and lawmakers need to stick around for a while, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Congress has been rushing this bill too much this week anyway.
As Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) said yesterday, “I don’t feel the need to get out of here. I would much rather stay here than have us make a terrible mistake. This is not the kind of thing that should be done on the fly, and I am prepared to stay here as long as it takes to fix it.”
If lawmakers put off a recess to take their time with these issues, that might actually be a good thing.