Speech of Senator Russ Feingold
National Capital Region ACLU
March 15, 2005
Thank you very much for that kind welcome. It is truly a pleasure
to be here among so many good friends. And I am deeply honored to follow
such a distinguished group of awardees. What an inspiring evening this
has been.
I want to pay particular tribute to Laura Murphy, who I and my staff
have worked with for so long on so many issues. Laura’s energy,
skill, and devotion to the cause of civil liberties are second to none.
And I am particularly proud and pleased that our disagreement on one
important issue with First Amendment ramifications -- campaign finance
reform – has not hurt our ability to work together so fruitfully
on the whole range of other issues that are so important to all of us
here tonight. I will miss you Laura, and more importantly, our country
will miss you. Thank you for all you have done.
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
it has 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 in this second term of the Bush Administration. They are legion.
Instead, I want to speak to you briefly tonight about the Patriot Act,
and particularly about the reauthorization of certain provisions of
the Act that is on the horizon this year.
I’m sure everyone in this room has vivid memories of September
11. Those of us who worked on the legislation that followed that horrible
day will never forget the atmosphere of fear, of pressure, of intimidation
that enveloped this city as Congress considered the anti-terrorism legislation
that eventually became the USA-Patriot Act. It’s hard to believe
when you think about how major legislation, like the McCain-Feingold
bill for example, often takes years and years to pass, that the initial
DOJ draft of an anti-terrorism bill was sent up to the Hill on September
19, 2001, and the Senate passed it on October 11. A conference report
came back to us on October 25. President Bush signed the bill into law
the next day, October 26, 2001. Remember also that the anthrax episode
in the Hart Building was on October 15, 2001, adding to the urgency
and pressure behind this bill. 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.
One provision that recognized that this kind of hurried legislating
might not be such a great idea was the sunset provision in the bill
that 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.
There is no question that the atmosphere is different now. But not
that different. Unfortunately, the chances that this issue will be examined
dispassionately and without fearmongering are slight. Nonetheless, we
can be thankful -- I certainly am thankful -- that more than one Senator
now supports significant changes to the Act. We have bipartisan support
in both the House and the Senate for the SAFE Act, which is the most
significant bill proposing modifications to the Patriot Act. One of
our Republican supporters last year is now the Chairman of the Senate
Judiciary Committee. Indeed, Senator Specter also led off his questioning
of Attorney General Gonzales at his nominations hearing by asking about
possible overreaching by the Patriot Act.
Groups on both the left and the right are raising questions about the
Patriot Act, and four states and more than 350 local communities have
expressed deep concerns about the threat to civil liberties that it
poses.
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 from the President’s and former Attorney
Ashcroft’s aggressive promotion of reauthorization last year,
including a veto threat for the SAFE Act even before any congressional
consideration had occurred, that the pressure will be great to make
the Patriot Act permanent. And we know from what happened on the intelligence
reform bill that DOJ and its allies in the Congress will use the reauthorization
bill to seek to expand the Patriot Act, including pushing some very
frightening provisions from the so-called Patriot II, a draft of which
was leaked last year.
We must begin work now to make the record that the Patriot Act should
be modified. We need to make the case clearly and rationally, 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 do think it is the only way to win
this fight. 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. No matter what the audience is, people applaud
when there’s a simple reference to the fact that I voted against
it. Back home, I saw it in the very first weeks after the vote. 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 and pride.
So I thank you for standing up with me. 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.
|
