Cornyn: Troop Funding Must not Fall Victim to Partisan Games

WASHINGTON—U.S. Sen. John Cornyn a member of the Senate Armed Services and Judiciary Committees said in a speech on the Senate floor Tuesday that the Senate must pass emergency funding for our troops without further delay and act now to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has yet to schedule a vote on either of these critical bills.  FISA reform must be acted on before February to ensure that critical intelligence gathering tools remain in place.

“The Secretary of the Department of Defense has told us if they don’t get emergency supplemental funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan they’re going to have to begin to give people notice that they’re going to run out of money in February. But they have to issue the notices 60 days in advance which means by December 15 there are going to be a lot of folks getting pink slips just in time for Christmas” Sen. Cornyn said on the Senate floor.

“Frankly I don’t think we ought to be in that position. Number one it’s completely inconsiderate of the families and of those individuals doing their best to support our men and women in uniform. Second it is just completely unnecessary. If we would simply take care of our business and quit playing political games by tying deadlines to the appropriation of emergency funds to support our troops we could fund our troops and continue to have the debates in the United States Congress about what our policy ought to be.  

“Those debates are important. I respect people with different opinions than mine but we shouldn’t be doing it at the expense of our men and women in uniform or putting people’s jobs in jeopardy who support our men and women in uniform in civilian clothes by tying the appropriation of this emergency funding to these deadlines. I hope we will get this done and get it done quickly” Sen. Cornyn added.

Sen. Cornyn also called on the Senate to update FISA before the Protect America Act expires early next year: “We need to make clear that when it comes to monitoring the communications of foreign terrorists that it’s not necessary to prepare a mound of paperwork and have an army of lawyers process it through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in order to get a permit to do so.

“While the Protect America Act that passed provided a temporary fix to the problem it will expire in February. And I just ask our colleagues on the other side of the aisle why are we delaying the passage of this important fix? Isn’t it important enough to make sure that we do everything possible not to hamper our intelligence-gathering capability? We are in fact a nation at war and we ought to act like it. And that means arming our intelligence community with the tools they need to detect terrorist communications and to deter future terrorist attacks.

“I know 9/11 seems like a long way off in the minds of many and many have acted like it never happened. But the fact of the matter is unless we have robust intelligence-gathering capability and unless the Senate acts promptly to permanently grant the power to our intelligence community to detect these communications we are at grave risk. And we should not be as a result of Congress’ inaction” Sen. Cornyn concluded.