Senate Delays Patriot Act Vote

[David]

AP


Congress slowed renewal of a central part of the administration's war on terror amid a standoff over how long to extend the USA Patriot Act and a filibuster threat by senators opposed to new power it would grant the FBI.

"I believe that more time is necessary," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania said Friday. "The bill is not now generally understood because of its volume and because of not enough time to really digest the changes."

Specter said a compromise is reachable when Congress returns in December from a two-week vacation for the Nov. 24 American Thanksgiving holiday.

"If further changes are not made, we will work to stop this bill from becoming law," GOP Sens. Larry Craig, John Sununu and Lisa Murkowski and Democratic Sens. Dick Durbin, Russ Feingold and Ken Salazar said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees Thursday.

On Friday, the bipartisan group of lawmakers declared victory, saying they had gathered enough votes to block the Republican leaders from forcing a vote on a proposal put forth by negotiators trying to merge House and Senate versions of the bill. The Patriot Act provisions expire Dec. 31 if not renewed by Congress.

"This is an issue that we need to see the fine print on," said Craig, an Idaho Republican. "I think there is ample time."

Most differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill had been bridged when lawmakers supervising the effort to merge them met last week. But differences emerged about whether provisions governing wiretapping and other Federal Bureau of Investigation information-gathering should be extended for another seven years or just four years.

Specter said Friday that bridging that gap proved the stickiest point. He said House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin doesn't want the provisions to die until 2012, a presidential election year.

Sensenbrenner said seven years simply splits the difference between 10 years in the bill the House of Representatives passed and four years in the Senate version.

Beyond the issue of when the law should lapse, some senators griped that the compromise draft removed a Senate proposal that would mandate judicial reviews when authorities used the law to search financial, medical, library, school and other records.