Two powerful lawmakers warned Thursday that three sweeping national security surveillance authorities could expire next week with Congress at an impasse about how to reform them.
Both proponents and opponents of extending the authorities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, warned Thursday that the three authorities were at risk of lapsing with a March 15 deadline looming. The possibility that the authorities could expire is due to the deep divisions inside both parties over what to do about the law.
House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said he would not support a clean extension of any period, arguing that it’s past time for Congress to reform the surveillance powers to better protect civil liberties.
“I’d rather see it expire than to see it continued as is,” the New York Democrat told CNN. “It’s an important statute. It’s grossly abusive of civil liberties. We’ve been trying to change that for years and years.”
Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr said it was possible that Congress will be unable to pass a short-term extension before the deadline, though he urged a long-term extension of the provisions.
“If people want to have that hanging on their head, they can,” the North Carolina Republican told reporters.
A long-term deal on extending the provisions appears unlikely by the March 15 deadline, lawmakers say, and the deep concerns about the law from both liberals and conservatives in Congress are putting even a short-term extension in jeopardy.
“We’re in quite a pickle with this right now,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican on the Intelligence Committee.
There’s discussion in both chambers — and a desire among party leaders — for a short-term agreement that would prevent the authorities from lapsing and give lawmakers more time to hammer out a deal.
“There would be strong bipartisan support for extending the authorities, even if it was just for a short amount of time,” said Senate Majority Whip John Thune, a Republican from South Dakota.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “no” Thursday when asked if she would be willing to see the FISA authorities expire.
“We have to have a reauthorization of FISA,” said Pelosi, a California Democrat. “We are hoping we could be ready for something next week.”
There are divisions within both parties over how to reauthorize the surveillance provisions, creating a complicated situation that has prevented a deal from materializing as the deadline approaches.
Attorney General William Barr and Senate Republican leaders have pushed for an extension of the provisions, while Barr has said he would move forward on some targeted reforms administratively. But President Donald Trump and his closest GOP allies say that doesn’t go far enough, and are demanding more sweeping changes.
Republicans are up in arms about the way the FISA process was misused against former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, which was documented in a recent inspector general report.
The three provisions that would lapse on March 15 are prized by law enforcement and separate from the ones used against Page, but some Republicans have seized on the reauthorization fight to try to restructure the broader FISA system.
Republicans on both sides of the debate met with Barr and Trump at the White House on Tuesday, and Trump instructed Barr to speak to the lawmakers to try to reach a deal.
House Democrats have their own divisions over the program, as Nadler had to scrap a planned committee meeting to take up the measure after Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat, planned to offer amendments that would have made more sweeping changes to protect civil liberties.
Negotiations are continuing to try to find a path forward. Nadler said he was talking to all sides on the issue, including Republicans, but he didn’t know whether his committee would be able to debate and pass a bill next week ahead of the deadline.
“It’s more complicated than you can imagine,” Nadler said.
While there’s a desire for a short-term extension, the path forward is murky.
Finding a way to pass a clean, short-term extension in the Senate is complicated because just one senator — say Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, an opponent of the surveillance law — can slow the process down.
In a sign of the odd bedfellows that emerge in the FISA debate, Paul told CNN he has had discussion with Lofgren over reforms to the law.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham is investigating the allegations of abuse related to FISA in his committee, but he argued the expiring authorities should be extended because they are unconnected to the 2016 election concerns.
Graham predicted that a short-term extension was the only path forward before a reform agreement could be struck.
“The authorities that are about to expire in March had nothing to do … with the 2016 election: Business records, access, roving wiretaps, the other things, the lone wolf provision really protect our country. They shouldn’t expire, ” the South Carolina Republican said. “But having said that, I think we owe it to the President and the country to reform FISA, so this is less likely to happen again to a future president. I think we can do both, but we can’t do both by March 15.”
Ted Barrett and David Shortell contributed to this story.