One Last Patriot Point

Some reader responses and emailers argue that the GOP defectors should be cut slack because they voted against reauthorization not because they opposed the Patriot Act provisions at issue but to defend the principle that all bills should make time for debate and for proposed amendments, etc. This argument has some cosmetic appeal, especially after the way the Democrats ran Congress from 2007 through 2010. But ultimately, it's unpersuasive in this case.

This was not an attempt to jam a radical and/or voluminous proposal through Congress by some Parliamentary chicanery. We are talking about a short bill dealing with three narrow provisions that are quite familiar to most concerned people. Though they should long ago have been made permanent (or as permanent as any statutory law can be), Patriot's roving wiretap, business records, and lone wolf provisions have been sunsetted repeatedly, resulting in reauthorization debates every few years.

Moreover, there was a fair trade-off here: though amendments were not allowed (the point was to reauthorize old law, not make new law), the three provisions could not pass on a simple majority; a super majority of two-thirds was needed. That's why the bill lost -- it would have been approved easily if only 50 percent plus one had been required. But the point is that a speedy passage was only possible if there was overwhelming consensus. That's reasonable.

This wasn't anything like the healthcare process and similar appalling congressional practices. It is not just that, on Patriot, we've been retreading the same ground for a decade. Anyone who was newly elected to Congress and had been living under a rock before then could have gotten up to speed in about a half-hour by perusing the ABA's Patriot Debates series, which is online and fairly presents both sides of each disputed Patriot provision (and several others that were previously reauthorized, nothwithstanding the caterwauling of civil liberties activists).

The streamlined procedure used was fair, and it made lots of sense if you take the position that Congress should be devoting its finite debate time for urgent matters like the national debt rather than things it has already spent hundreds of hours on. As far as I'm concerned -- for what little that may be worth -- if you voted against reauthorization, it's because you opposed the renewal of these important national security measures. I'm not buying this business about defending the principle of procedural regularity.

Andrew C. McCarthy