Texas Insider Report: WASHINGTON, D.C. – Later today, the U.S. House of Representatives is expected to vote on an amendment to defund the National Security Agency’s (NSA) blanket collection of millions of Americans phone records. The NSA 
held 4 hours of “top secret” briefings Tuesday to lobby members against the amendment in order to continue funding the secret surveillance program, and the White House very much wants it to lose. Here are a few reasons why.
The head of the NSA, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, held a two-hour briefing with Republicans at 11 a.m., and Democrats followed at 1 p.m.
Alexander urged House lawmakers during the two classified briefings to oppose an amendment from Cong. Justin Amash (R-MI.,) that would defund the NSA’s bulk collection of telephone records.
Then, in a rare statement Tuesday night from White House Press Secretary Jay Carney slamming the Michigan Republican’s amendment was sent to reporters, and the agency is vigorously lobbying members to oppose it.
On Tuesday morning, Amash praised the House’s Leadership for allowing his amendment, along with other amendments that would prohibit funding for military operations in Syria and Egypt. Asked why he thought leadership 
had agreed to make the amendments in order, Amash said leadership “came to [the] conclusion” that those were amendments that had enough support to be brought to the floor for a vote.
“Overall leadership did a great job working with us and came to a reasonable resolution. There were enough people concerned about those amendments not coming to the floor [that] I think leadership would have had a difficult time bringing the bill to the floor,” said Amash.
Amash said the details regarding the collection of phone records had already been declassified largely by the Director of National Intelligence. In fact, he said, you could go to the DNI’s website and find information about how they are collecting phone records, noting that there was “widespread disapproval” of the program.
“I think my amendment has the votes to pass,” Amash said.
The vote is expected to be the last in a series of 100 amendments to the Defense spending bill.
Here are a few reasons why the amendment would cause trouble for the White House:
1. A move by the House to eliminate one of the major programs exposed by Edward Snowden would to some degree validate him.
2. The last thing the White House needs as it engages in a worldwide effort to convince countries to deny Snowden asylum is the “People’s House” giving him validation as a whistle-blower.
3. Democratic defections. President Barack Obama has, to date, been able to skate past objections from the left on many of his hardline anti-terrorism policies, some of which he continued from the Bush administration. But at least on the Amash amendment, there is a bipartisan push — including the co-sponsor, Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
4. Passage of the amendment would provide more momentum for NSA skeptics in the Senate. As in the House, any Senate proposal to cut funding or downsize the program could get broad bipartisan support.
Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-IL.,) has tried for years to eliminate what he saw as the National Security Agency’s overreach in data collection, and is currently crafting his own Defense spending bill as chairman of that Appropriations Subcommittee. He has opposed the NSA spying program since before it was made public, and may attempt to eliminate or scale back the data collection programs.
“I’ve offered several [proposals] over the years, and I’m prepared to offer them again,” Durbin said recently.
“I think there are ways to make this more specific so that any data collected is specific to a suggestion that an individual is … engaged in conduct that endangers America.”
Durbin indicated the NSA may be casting too wide a net.
Of course, Durbin may not decide to include such a provision in his bill, considering he is not only in Democratic leadership, but is also close to the president as Senator from Illinois. However, the probability of the issue being raised by the likes of Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., or Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is high.
5. Finally, but importantly, the Obama Administration believes the program is critical to national security. Carney’s statement read, “We oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our Intelligence Community’s counter-terrorism tools.”
But, says Sen. Durbin, “I’ve tried to be careful in how I expressed concern, because we’re dealing with classified information. I’ve come to the floor, gone to the Senate Judiciary Committee, offered amendments. I’ve tried to be as careful there in my language as I could be.”
In fact, at a 2009 markup of a Patriot Act reauthorization, Durbin prophesied that a day like this one would come.
“The real reason for resisting this obvious common-sense modification of Section 215 is cloaked in secrecy. Someday the cloak will be lifted and future generations will ask whether our actions today meet the test of a democratic society — transparency, accountability and fidelity to the rule of law and our Constitution,” Durbin said on Oct. 1, 2009.
“I believe our oath of office requires every member of this Committee to seek a classified briefing to truly understand this issue.”
