Speech of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
At the ACLU of Florida's 40th Anniversary Dinner
May 7, 2005
Thank you very much for that kind welcome. It is truly a pleasure
to be here among so many good friends. I am honored be introduced by
my friend and colleague Senator Bill Nelson. What an inspiring evening
this has been.
My friends, there are many crucial issues on which we have worked together
over the years – reproductive freedom, the Federal Marriage Amendment,
the death penalty, to name just a few. I could literally speak to you
for an hour about these issues and just scratch the surface. But although
this been an exciting and heartwarming evening, it has also been a long
evening. So I will spare you a laundry list of the challenges we face.
They are legion. Instead, I want to speak to you tonight about what’s
on the horizon as many Members of Congress – and the Administration
– push for parts of the Patriot Act to be renewed this year.
I’m sure everyone in this room has vivid memories of September
11. After the horror of that day, I found myself, like the rest of the
nation, coping with that terrible tragedy. Emotions ran high everywhere,
including in Congress, where members quite understandably felt an urgent
need to take action, to strike back against those who would so brutally
attack our country and to do what we could to prevent future attacks.
But despite those good intentions, in the weeks after the attacks Congress
rushed through legislation to respond to concerns about our security
without doing enough to protect our civil liberties. Those of us who
worked on the legislation that followed that horrible day will never
forget the atmosphere of fear, of pressure, that enveloped Washington
as Congress considered the anti-terrorism legislation that eventually
became the USA Patriot Act.
This was legislation on the fly, unlike anything I had ever seen in
my career, and, I hope, unlike anything that we see in the future.
In the end, there was just one provision of the Patriot Act that recognized
that this kind of hurried legislating might not be such a great idea.
That was the sunset provision in the bill, which will cause certain
provisions of Title II to expire at the end of this year if they are
not renewed. I think some thought then that the crisis atmosphere might
have ended by 2005 and we could undertake a reexamination of the provisions
subject to the sunset in a calm and dispassionate way. In those dark
days at the end of 2001, December 31, 2005, seemed a long way away.
But here we are, staring the end of 2005 in the face. And we have a
tough fight ahead of us -- the atmosphere may be calmer and more dispassionate
than it was in the fall of 2001, but, as you can see from the resistance
to even the smallest changes to the Act, we are still a long way from
where we ought to be.
But we can be thankful -- I certainly am thankful -- that more than
one Senator now supports significant changes to the Patriot Act. We
have bipartisan support in both the House and the Senate for the SAFE
Act, which is the most significant bill proposing changes to the Patriot
Act to protect personal freedoms.
Groups on both the left and the right are raising questions about the
Patriot Act, and six states and more than 350 local communities have
expressed deep concerns about the threat to civil liberties that it
poses – including five cities and counties right here in Florida.
And I’m sure some of you in this room had quite a bit to do with
that.
These are all positive signs, but we cannot sit back, because if we
do a steamroller will hit us in September with the pressure of the sunset
deadline behind it. We know all too well what we are going to hear from
the other side. When it comes to the PATRIOT Act , the President and
former Attorney General Ashcroft have given the American people the
hard sell. It’s clear that renewing these controversial provisions
is a high priority for this Administration. So high that when we came
out with the SAFE Act, the President threatened a veto -- even though
the bill hadn’t yet moved on Capital Hill. That just goes to show
how pressured the atmosphere in Washington still is when it comes to
the PATRIOT Act. Just the mere suggestion of changes to this Act –
even the most modest changes to protect people’s freedoms –
can make the President reach for his veto pen.
Without a doubt, there will be enormous pressure to make the Patriot
Act permanent with no, or only minimal, changes. And we know that they
are likely to much further than that. This isn’t just about making
the PATRIOT Act permanent – it’s about expanding the Patriot
Act, including pushing some very frightening provisions from the so-called
Patriot II bill, a draft of which was leaked during the last Congress.
We’ve gotten off to a strong start as we fight these efforts,
but we still have a tough road ahead.
We’ve got to keep making our case – a case that focuses
the American people on threats to their liberties, but without overstating
the problems with the law, and without leaving the impression that we
think terrorism is not a serious threat. It is. We know that. The issue
here is not choosing between national security and liberty. It is convincing
the public and the Congress that we can have both -- that we can both
protect this country from terrorism, and protect our civil liberties
at the same time.
This is not an easy task, but I think it is the only way to win this
fight. And we have already made progress. In a remarkable reversal of
the prior Attorney General’s position, Attorney General Gonzales
just last month acknowledged that changes need to be made to Section
215 of the Patriot Act, the provision that authorizes the FBI to secretly
obtain business records of Americans without any demonstration that
the records pertain to a terrorist or spy, and without any way for the
recipient of the order to challenge it in court. Now, I may not agree
that the specific changes proposed by the Attorney General are enough
to fully protect civil liberties. And the Attorney General continues
to argue vehemently against most of the SAFE Act. But after three years
of the Justice Department drawing a hard line, the very fact that the
Attorney General is allowing for the possibility of any changes at all
to the Patriot Act shows just how far we have come.
The American people do not want to give up security, and they shouldn’t
have to. We need to convince them that they can have security, and also
greater protection from violations of their civil liberties. The 9/11
Commission understood this. The Commission urged that there should be
a full and informed debate on the Patriot Act. And it recommended the
following:
"The burden of proof for retaining a particular governmental power
should be on the executive, to explain (a) that the power actually materially
enhances security and (b) that there is adequate supervision of the
executive's use of the powers to ensure protection of civil liberties.
If the power is granted, there must be adequate guidelines and oversight
to properly confine its use. "
I think the American people instinctively understand this as well. I
have to tell you, I have never seen a response to anything like I’ve
seen to the Patriot Act. It was a tough and lonely decision to vote
No on the Patriot Act. But no matter what the audience is, people applaud
when there’s a simple reference to the fact that I voted against
it. Back in October 2001, I returned to Wisconsin the weekend after
the Patriot Act vote, and not without some trepidation. But I was surprised
and gratified to discover that in conservative counties and in liberal
counties when I held listening sessions, my vote against the Patriot
Act was something that touched a chord. And it still does today.
Now, it’s obvious that not everybody knows what exactly is in
the law. Clearly, they don’t. But, there is a strong sense out
there that the government grabbed for power in the Patriot Act, power
it doesn’t need, power that is a potential threat to innocent
law-abiding Americans. People in this country have a well-developed
sense of skepticism about government power. That skepticism was certainly
challenged by 9-11, but it is still there and it is still strong.
So this task is not an impossible one. But we have to be willing to
work hard and work quickly. And I know I can count on the ACLU to be
there every step of the way. You understand the issues, you understand
their importance, and you are not afraid to stand up and face government
power with courage and conviction.
I’m here tonight to say that I’m proud to stand with you.
And together, I hope that we can turn back efforts to blindly reauthorize
the Patriot Act, or expand it even further.
I believe that the expansion and protection of civil liberties since
this nation’s founding is one of the great legacies of democracy
and one of the great lessons of our history. We are about to write an
important new chapter in that history. Let us work together to make
it a chapter of which this country can be proud. Thank you very much.
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