Reid (D-Nev.) skillfully kept his party nearly unified throughout a week and a half of harried voting.Īt the same time, he appeared only too happy to point out the foibles of McConnell, who had broken with Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and showed an inability to gauge the temperature of his own party.
The Senate Democratic leader relished every chance he got to lambaste his counterpart, GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.). The push was aided by the authoritative voice of Sensenbrenner, the original author of the Patriot Act, who made clear he never intended for the NSA to collect millions of Americans’ phone records. The lawmakers had to hold off multiple attempts at amending the bill, which, they said, would disrupt its careful calibration.īut in the end, 338 lawmakers voted for the bill in the House - an extraordinarily high number in a time of intense partisanship. That way, they made sure the legislation would hold up to scrutiny from the intelligence committee. Goodlatte (R-Va.), the committee’s chairman Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) Conyers (D-Mich.) and Nadler (D-N.Y.) negotiated not just among themselves but also with leaders of the House Intelligence Committee and with the Obama administration. The four lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee carefully crafted a compromise bill that, while not going as far as many would have liked, nonetheless secured a huge win in the House. Bob Goodlatte, Jim Sensenbrenner, John Conyers Jr., Jerrold Nadler In the process, the lawmakers demonstrated the new power of a growing coalition of liberal Democrats and libertarian Republicans, which can undermine Republican leadership. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Lee (R-Utah) are separated by 32 years in age, hundreds of miles between their states and a partisan divide that is as stark as it has ever been.īut the veteran liberal and upstart Tea Party favorite were the driving force behind the USA Freedom Act, and they twisted enough arms in both parties to bring home 67 votes on Tuesday evening.
Here’s who came out on top and who let themselves get trumped: Lawmakers on both sides of the debate threw punches and took their fair share of lumps over the USA Freedom Act, which renewed lapsed portions of the Patriot Act and ended the National Security Agency’s controversial phone data collection.īut some jabs stung a little harder than others.
The fight over the Patriot Act left a lot of bruises in Congress.
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