NSA Reform
The fight over NSA surveillance is just beginning -security hawks are trying to block any new legislation to reduce NSA surveillance.
Volz and Fox
Voltz, Dusten. Lauren Fox "The War Over NSA Spying Is Just Beginning." NationalJournal. National Journal Group Inc., 03 June 2015. Web. 5 July 2015.
Now that Congress has passed the USA Freedom Act, a surveillance overhaul bill that will shutter the National Security Agency's bulk gathering of U.S. call data—having done so while shutting down attempts from the Senate Majority Mitch McConnell to weaken it—reform-minded legislators are emboldened. But while reformers hope Tuesday's victory is an appetizer to a multiple-course meal to rein in the NSA, security hawks—many of them Republicans vying for the White House—hope to halt the post-Snowden momentum behind surveillance reform. And some already are talking about unraveling the Freedom Act. "What you are seeing on the floor of the Senate is just the beginning," said Sen. Ron Wyden, a civil-liberties stalwart in the upper chamber who serves on the intelligence committee and has worked for more than a decade to reform government surveillance. "There is a lot more to do when—in effect—you can ensure you protect the country's safety without sacrificing our liberty." Wyden used the Freedom Act's passage to call for additional intelligence-gathering reforms that he has long advocated, such as closing the so-called "backdoor search loophole" that allows U.S. spies to "incidentally" and warrantlessly sweep up the email and phone communications—including some content—of Americans who correspond with foreigners. He added he plans to move quickly on reworking Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, before Congress is up backed up against its renewal deadline in 2017. The Oregon Democrat also supports tech companies in their ongoing tussle with the administration over smartphone encryption as a key priority. While Google and Apple have begun to build their phones with "too-tough-to-crack" encryption standards, the FBI has warned that the technology locks out the bad guys and the good—and can impede law-enforcement investigations. Wyden and his allies, though, are bumping up against an impending presidential campaign, where many Republicans will jockey with one another to look toughest on national security. Few issues divide the GOP White House contenders more than NSA surveillance, as defense hawks such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio continue to defend the NSA bulk metadata program as necessary to protect the homeland, while libertarian-leaning agitators such as Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz warn voters of the privacy perils associated with the government's prying eyes. Rubio, who has said he'd prefer that the NSA's phone dragnet be made permanent, issued a statement after the Freedom Act's passage saying it fell to the next president to undo its policies. "The failure to renew the expiring components of the PATRIOT Act was a mistake," Rubio said in a statement after the vote. "The 'USA Freedom Act' weakens U.S. national security by outlawing the very programs our intelligence community and the FBI have used to protect us time and time again. A major challenge for the next president will be to fix the significantly weakened intelligence system that the current one is leaving behind." Paul, meanwhile, continues to fundraise on social media and in campaign emails off his hardline opposition to "illegal NSA bulk data collection." The Kentucky senator succeeded in drawing enormous attention to the issue by forcing a temporary lapse this week of the Patriot Act's spy authorities, and has vowed to limit the agency's mass surveillance practices "on day one" if elected president. But Paul also was a major obstacle for the Freedom Act's passage, repeatedly voting against it and helping delay its consideration on grounds it didn't go far enough—and codified parts of the Patriot Act he thinks should stay dead. Cruz, meanwhile, represented the middle ground and was a chief GOP backer of the legislation, setting up a potential argument with Paul on debate stages about who has done more to fight against mass surveillance. Any jockeying between the two will expose them to sniping from candidates on the other side of the debate, including potential candidate Chris Christie, the New Jersey governor, who often goes out of his way to condemn those who criticize government snooping. Rand Paul already has become a regular punching bag for the GOP field's security hawks.Back on Capitol Hill, many of the same members who were trying to block reform warn that it only takes one security setback for Congress to stop taking powers away from the NSA. "The next time there is a terrorist act within the United States, the same people are going to be coming to the floor seeking changes to the tools that our intelligence community, our law enforcement community has at their disposal because the American people will demand it," said Sen. Richard Burr, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Sen. Susan Collins, who also serves on the intelligence panel, recognized that reforms and oversight will likely continue now that the USA Freedom Act has passed, but she said she's not so sure supporters of the Freedom Act won't have buyer's remorse down the line. "I believe it is actually going to expose Americans' data to greater privacy risk and to vulnerability from computer data breaches," Collins said. The momentum to end the NSA's phone dragnet snowballed over the past year and a half as two review panels deemed it ineffective. President Obama pledged to end it "as it currently exists" and a federal appeals court deemed it illegal. But further reforms—such as to the Internet surveillance program known as PRISM, which Snowden also revealed—are likely to be tougher sells in Congress. For PRISM especially, that's in part because the program is considered more useful and because it deals primarily with surveillance of foreigners. U.S. tech companies that are subject to PRISM, including Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, have called for changes to the program. Yet when asked about whether he would work to take down PRISM, even Wyden bristled at the question. "I am going to keep it to the three that I am going to change," Wyden said. Even reformers outside the confines of the Senate recognize that ending PRISM is a complicated pursuit. "It is not going to be quite as easy to drum up the same support," says Liza Goitein, codirector for the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Though PRISM may prove difficult to upend, other efforts, such as a broadly supported push to update the decades-old Electronic Privacy Communications Act, may prove more palatable. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee, the lead authors of the Freedom Act in the upper chamber, indicated their desire to move quickly on passing legislation that would update the law to require law enforcement obtain warrants before accessing the content of Americans' old emails. The immediate next battlefield for civil liberties groups will find them on the defense, as they attempt to prevent legislation that would increase the sharing of certain cyber data among the private sector and the government in order to better fend off data breaches. Such proposals, which already passed the House and are likely to be before the Senate in the coming weeks, could grant the NSA access to more personal data, privacy advocates warn. No matter how the looming debates shake out, for now, one thing is clear: the fight over the government's surveillance operations is far from over.
Obama will push for changes to the NSA, but congress is content with the status quo
Wagenseil in 13 (Paul Wagenseil; heads security coverage for Tom's Guide, “6 Ways Tech Companies' 'Reform Government Surveillance' Fails”, Tomsguide.com, 12/9/13, website, 7/5/15, http://www.tomsguide.com/us/reform-nsa-fail,news-17959.html)
Despite the constant chatter of concern in the highbrow media, there doesn't seem to be a lot of outrage among ordinary Americans about NSA spying. Nor is there much support among U.S. politicians for limiting the NSA's abilities, which have been carefully designed to be entirely legal. A handful of congressmen on the left and right have called for reform, but the majority will be content to let the status quo continue. Obama has called for "self-restraint" on the part of the NSA, and he will push for minor changes, such as an adversarial process at the secret court that oversees NSA operations inside the United States. But the essential structure of NSA surveillance will remain the same. The next president, whether a Democrat or a Republican, will be no different. Libertarians don't win many elections, and few politicians get votes by promising to expand civil rights when none have been demonstrably broken.
Metadata/NSA Recent congressional inaction proves reluctance to take on reform of NSA – specifically metadata collection
Hattem 15
Hattem, Julian. "Expansive Surveillance Reform Takes Backseat to House Politics." TheHill. The Hill, 30 Apr. 2015. Web. 05 July 2015. http://thehill.com/policy/technology/240641-expansive-spying-reforms-take-backseat-to-house-politics
Congress is waving the white flag about moving forward with more expansive intelligence reform. As lawmakers stare down the barrel of a deadline to renew or reform the Patriot Act, they have all but assured that more expansive reforms to U.S. intelligence powers won’t be included. It’s not because of the substance of the reforms — which practically all members of the House Judiciary Committee said they support on Thursday — but because they would derail a carefully calibrated deal and are opposed by GOP leaders in the House and Senate. The House Judiciary Committee killed an amendment to expand the scope of the USA Freedom Act — which would reform the National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk collection of Americans’ phone records and some other provisions — by a vote of 9-24. “If there ever was a perfect being the enemy of the good amendment, then this is it,” said Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), a supporter of the idea behind the amendment who ultimately voted against it. “What adoption of this amendment will do is take away all leverage that this committee has relative to reforming the Patriot Act. ... If this amendment is adopted, you can kiss this bill goodbye,” he added. The amendment from Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) would block the spy agency from using powers under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act to collect Americans’ Internet communications without a warrant. The NSA has relied on the powers of Section 702 to conduct its “PRISM” and “Upstream” collection programs, which gather data from major Web companies such as Facebook and Google, as well as to tap into the networks that make up the backbone of the Internet. The amendment would have also prevented the government from forcing tech companies to include “backdoors” into their devices, so that the government could access people’s information. “Unless we specifically limit searches of this data on American citizens, our intelligence agencies will continue to use it for this purpose and they will continue to do it without a warrant,” Poe said. “A warrantless search of American citizens' communication must not occur.” The discussion during Thursday’s markup offered a fascinating glimpse into the political calculations and sacrifices lawmakers make in order to advance legislation. While every committee member who spoke up was in support of the amendment, it ultimately failed because of fear that it would kill the overall bill. “We have been assured if this amendment is attached to this bill, this bill is going nowhere,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said. “This amendment is objected to by many in positions who affect the future of this legislation.” In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) have introduced legislation to renew the Patriot Act without changes. If the USA Freedom Act were to be scuttled because of the new amendment, backers said, that Senate effort would become the default path forward. The move to drop the fix was all the more frustrating, supporters of the amendment said, because Congress overwhelmingly voted 293-123 to add similar language to a defense spending bill last year. “How can it be when the House of Representatives has expressed its will on this very question, by a vote of 293-123, that that is illegitimate?” asked Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who supported the amendment. While lawmakers blocked Thursday’s amendment, many suggested that it would be brought up as an amendment to various appropriations bills in coming months. The 702 powers are also set to sunset in 2017, which should force a debate on them then. Goodlatte also pledged to hold a hearing on the matter “soon.” But that provided little reassurance to critics of the NSA’s powers. “We’re talking about postponing the Fourth Amendment and allowing it to apply to American citizens for at least two years,” said Poe.
Congress won’t pass reform to limit collection of metadata – even limited reforms cause political battles
Hattem 15 4/30/15, Julian Hattem (staff writer at The Hill, B.A. in Anthropology at University of Chicago) “Expansive surveillance reform takes backseat to House politics”, https://thehill.com/policy/technology/240641-expansive-spying-reforms-take-backseat-to-house-politics
Congress is waving the white flag about moving forward with more expansive intelligence reform. As lawmakers stare down the barrel of a deadline to renew or reform the Patriot Act, they have all but assured that more expansive reforms to U.S. intelligence powers won’t be included. It’s not because of the substance of the reforms — which practically all members of the House Judiciary Committee said they support on Thursday — but because they would derail a carefully calibrated deal and are opposed by GOP leaders in the House and Senate. The House Judiciary Committee killed an amendment to expand the scope of the USA Freedom Act — which would reform the National Security Agency’s (NSA) bulk collection of Americans’ phone records and some other provisions — by a vote of 9-24. “If there ever was a perfect being the enemy of the good amendment, then this is it,” said Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), a supporter of the idea behind the amendment who ultimately voted against it. “What adoption of this amendment will do is take away all leverage that this committee has relative to reforming the Patriot Act. ... If this amendment is adopted, you can kiss this bill goodbye,” he added. The amendment from Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) would block the spy agency from using powers under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act to collect Americans’ Internet communications without a warrant. The NSA has relied on the powers of Section 702 to conduct its “PRISM” and “Upstream” collection programs, which gather data from major Web companies such as Facebook and Google, as well as to tap into the networks that make up the backbone of the Internet. The amendment would have also prevented the government from forcing tech companies to include “backdoors” into their devices, so that the government could access people’s information. “Unless we specifically limit searches of this data on American citizens, our intelligence agencies will continue to use it for this purpose and they will continue to do it without a warrant,” Poe said. “A warrantless search of American citizens' communication must not occur.” The discussion during Thursday’s markup offered a fascinating glimpse into the political calculations and sacrifices lawmakers make in order to advance legislation. While every committee member who spoke up was in support of the amendment, it ultimately failed because of fear that it would kill the overall bill. “We have been assured if this amendment is attached to this bill, this bill is going nowhere,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said. “This amendment is objected to by many in positions who affect the future of this legislation.” In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) have introduced legislation to renew the Patriot Act without changes. If the USA Freedom Act were to be scuttled because of the new amendment, backers said, that Senate effort would become the default path forward. The move to drop the fix was all the more frustrating, supporters of the amendment said, because Congress overwhelmingly voted 293-123 to add similar language to a defense spending bill last year. “How can it be when the House of Representatives has expressed its will on this very question, by a vote of 293-123, that that is illegitimate?” asked Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), who supported the amendment. While lawmakers blocked Thursday’s amendment, many suggested that it would be brought up as an amendment to various appropriations bills in coming months. The 702 powers are also set to sunset in 2017, which should force a debate on them then. Goodlatte also pledged to hold a hearing on the matter “soon.” But that provided little reassurance to critics of the NSA’s powers. “We’re talking about postponing the Fourth Amendment and allowing it to apply to American citizens for at least two years,” said Poe.
Ideological division in senate over Meta Data specifically Republicans in Senate
STEINHAUER and WEISMAN in 2015 (JENNIFER STEINHAUER and JONATHAN WEISMANMAY are both Writers for the New York Times; “Battle Lines in G.O.P. Set Stage for Surveillance Vote” Published: May 30, 2015 Accessed: 7/5/15; http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/31/us/surveillance-vote-in-senate-is-tangled-in-gop-debate.html?ref=topics)
WASHINGTON — Since 2011, when Republicans took control of the House, Congress has lurched from one deadline to the next, as Republicans and Democrats have sparred bitterly over funding for the government, the ability to lift the debt ceiling and other policy matters. But unlike those fights, the Senate’s showdown this weekend over the future of the government’s dragnet of American phone records is not a result of a partisan fracas. It is an ideological battle within the Republican Party, pitting the Senate majority leader against the speaker of the House and, in the Senate, newcomers against long-serving members, and defense hawks against a rising tide of younger, more libertarian-minded members often from Western states. Senate leaders are expected to try to assemble a compromise surveillance bill on Sunday that can get the required votes to proceed before the authorizing law expires Monday. President Obama and his director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper Jr., added more pressure with sharp statements on Friday and Saturday calling for immediate approval of a surveillance bill passed by the House. “A small group of senators is standing in the way, and, unfortunately, some folks are trying to use this debate to score political points,” Mr. Obama said in his weekly address. “But this shouldn’t and can’t be about politics. This is a matter of national security.” Even if a compromise can be reached in a rare Sunday session in the Senate, all signs point to at least a temporary expiration on Monday of a key section of the Patriot Act that the government has been using to sweep up vast amounts of telephone “metadata.” Last month, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would overhaul the Patriot Act and curtail the metadata surveillance exposed by Edward J. Snowden, the former contractor for the National Security Agency. But in the Senate, that measure failed on a procedural vote this month, and efforts to pass a short-term extension collapsed under objections by three senators. On Sunday, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, will try again. But opponents of a quick resolution, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, can easily force a delay. Mr. Paul said Saturday that he would move to end the current law, although he was silent about passing a new one. “Tomorrow I will force the expiration of the N.S.A. illegal spy program,” he said in an email to supporters. Representative Devin Nunes of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said, “They can take things into the middle of the week.” He added, “This is very likely to go on for a few days.” Over the congressional recess last week, Senate Republican leaders reached out to Representative Robert W. Goodlatte of Virginia, the House Judiciary Committee chairman, to see if he would negotiate a compromise with Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman and a strong opponent of changes to current law. Mr. Goodlatte declined. Several factors have combined to force the showdown. The revelations of the breadth of the program have increased voter distrust of it, members of Congress said. American companies have complained that foreign customers have been turned off by their products because of fears that their privacy would be at risk if they purchased computers and cellphones made in the United States. Democrats and an increasing number of Republicans make up a growing alliance of members as concerned with civil liberties as national security. “People who could not agree on anything have come together on this issue,” said Neema Singh Guliani, a legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union. “That has created a different dynamic in Congress, which has been so partisan over the last several years. These divisions are not along party lines. They are over something else entirely.” Under the bipartisan bill, known as the USA Freedom Act, changes would be made to the Patriot Act to prohibit bulk collection, and sweeps that had operated under the guise of so-called national security letters issued by the F.B.I. would end. The data would instead be stored by the phone companies and could be retrieved by intelligence agencies only after approval of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court. That has been strongly opposed by Mr. McConnell and over two dozen other senators who fear that ending the program would endanger national security. Mr. Nunes said negotiators on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees had laid out a series of options to revise the USA Freedom Act. They include adding a certification process to ensure that the technology is ready to move metadata storage to the telephone companies, allowing for a longer transition to telephone company storage of the data and making permanent two other provisions: authority to track a “lone wolf” terrorism suspect not connected to a state sponsor and to conduct “roving” surveillance of a suspect, rather than of a phone number, to combat terrorists who frequently discard cellphones. Mr. McConnell most likely will not know what combination of those changes might garner the necessary votes until senators have gathered Sunday, Mr. Nunes said. But he was optimistic that a deal that would pass the Senate and House could be reached, even if that took a few days. “I believe that on Sunday night, they’re going to come up with a path forward or take the bill as is,” he said. Among the 12 Republicans who voted for the House bill last weekend, clear trends have emerged. Ten are freshmen, and all but one are younger than 60, below the average age for senators. A majority are from Western states. Five — Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Jeff Flake of Arizona, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Mike Lee of Utah and Tim Scott of South Carolina — voted in opposition to the senior and older Republican senator from their state. The perspective they share “is that if there is any way to do intelligence and keep us safe but not touch Americans’ private records, we should do that,” said Mr. Lankford, who fits all four trends. In the House, longstanding national security hawks have bent to the will of younger members or evolved in their thinking about the law. In 2013, Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin and an author of the Patriot Act, wrote to the attorney general at the time, Eric H. Holder Jr., to say, “I am extremely troubled by the F.B.I.’s interpretation of this legislation.” He is an author of the House bill that would change the law. Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio has been convinced that the House bill would improve the current law, including adding emergency authority to continue collecting metadata if someone already lawfully targeted by agents unexpectedly showed up in the United States. In the search for a compromise, the biggest issue is a dispute between House Republican leaders and Mr. McConnell over whether the National Security Agency can develop the technology that will allow phone companies to store massive amounts of phone records, search that data when the government presents a warrant and then transmit the search results to the N.S.A. Mr. McConnell and Mr. Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, say it cannot be done in the six-month transition period mandated by the USA Freedom Act. Mr. Burr has demanded a two-year wait. House leaders from both parties say that is unnecessary, but Mr. Nunes proposed a compromise: inserting a certification process into the legislation so the technology could be proved before the six-month window closed. If it could not, a longer transition would be put in place. Many architects of the USA Freedom Act oppose even that, although they are confident such a certification could be met. Mr. Nunes said if a compromise like that could win overwhelming Senate support, it would overcome such reservation in the House.
WOT Reform Anti-terrorism laws and how hard it is to repeal them depends on many things- the ratchet effect is to blame
Givens in 2013 (Austen D. Givens, a PhD student in the Department of Political Economy at King’s College London, “The NSA Surveillance Controversy: How the Ratchet Effect Can Impact Anti-Terrorism Laws”, July 2, 2013, http://harvardnsj.org/2013/07/the-nsa-surveillance-controversy-how-the-ratchet-effect-can-impact-anti-terrorism-laws/, 7/5/15)
The ratchet effect can occur because anti-terrorism laws are effective. Anti-terrorism laws may stick simply because they work. If so, then scaling back or reversing an effective anti-terrorism law would increase a nation’s vulnerability to terrorism, pulling it back toward a condition that existed before the law initially went into effect. This goes against national security interests, so it makes sense to leave these laws on the books. The ratchet effect can occur because anti-terrorism laws may address multiple threats. Anti-terrorism laws may come about because of a particular terrorist group or incident. But that does not necessarily mean the laws will work only for that group, or apply only to similar types of terrorist attacks. Al-Qaeda’s attack on 9/11 spurred the creation of the USA PATRIOT Act. Yet today the Act’s provisions can also impede domestic terrorist organizations like the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and Earth Liberation Front (ELF) by facilitating intelligence sharing for law enforcement purposes. The ratchet effect can occur because it is challenging to repeal laws in democracies. Absent “sunset” provisions, which force certain portions of a law to expire after a pre-determined amount of time, it can be difficult to repeal a law under normal circumstances—let alone when that law concerns something as serious as terrorism. It requires careful political maneuvering to reverse an anti-terrorism law because the law itself may enjoy popular support, be seen as effective, or be linked to vested economic interests. These obstacles can promote a legal inertia that resists efforts to scale back or reverse the law. The ratchet effect can occur because elected officials do not want to risk repealing anti-terrorism laws. Here is a political nightmare: for whatever reason, a legislator or government executive spearheads an effort to reverse an anti-terrorism law. The anti-terrorism law is repealed. Within a week, a terrorist attack occurs. Being wrong about terrorism can carry devastating political consequences for incumbents. But being specifically identified as the one who “turned off the alarm system” is a political death sentence. Under this scenario, even if there is no direct causal link between the law’s repeal and the attack, the two are easily correlated because of their temporal proximity to each other. It makes no sense for an elected official to open herself to the possibility of this scenario without a clear, compelling reason—and, even then, scaling back an anti-terrorism law may still be too politically risky a proposition to entertain seriously. For these reasons, anti-terrorism laws can remain in effect beyond the end of the crisis that brought them into existence. The ratchet effect can occur because there is increased public deference to government during crises. Legal scholars and political scientists have explored the effect of terrorism on public deference to democratic governments.[10] While the specific reasons for this vary, the research overwhelmingly points toward increased trust in government authorities in the immediate wake of terrorist attacks, though this can wane over time. Popular support can provide the political capital necessary for legislators and executives to quickly craft and implement anti-terrorism laws. Over time, despite some slippage, public approval of these laws can continue—particularly when the crisis that prompted the laws’ creation continues. The ratchet effect can occur because anti-terrorism laws create a new security paradigm. An aggressive anti-terrorism law can fundamentally alter societal approaches to terrorism. Surveillance may increase. Police powers can expand. Intelligence efforts may grow. Public expectations of privacy can diminish. In the aggregate, these types of changes can represent a drastic change in a government’s approach to terrorism, and effectively create a “new normal” level of security. Because this “new normal” is linked to the law itself, reversing the law begins to dismantle the new security paradigm. From the public’s perspective, this might be an unacceptable option because it may increase societal vulnerability to terrorism. Government agencies also risk losing resources—personnel, money, and political support—by returning to the status quo ante.
Plan’s unpopular – it gets spun as “letting the terrorists win” which erodes support – it outweighs outside lobbying
Greenwald, 14 (Glenn Greenwald, journalist, constitutional lawyer, and author of four New York Times best-selling books on politics and law, 11-19-2014, "Congress Is Irrelevant on Mass Surveillance. Here's what Matters instead", The Intercept, https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/11/19/irrelevance-u-s-congress-stopping-nsas-mass-surveillance/)
The “USA Freedom Act”—which its proponents were heralding as “NSA reform” despite its suffocatingly narrow scope—died in the august U.S. Senate last night when it attracted only 58 of the 60 votes needed to close debate and move on to an up-or-down vote. All Democratic and independent senators except one (Bill Nelson of Florida) voted in favor of the bill, as did three tea-party GOP Senators (Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Dean Heller). One GOP Senator, Rand Paul, voted against it on the ground that it did not go nearly far enough in reining in the NSA. On Monday, the White House had issued a statement “strongly supporting” the bill. The “debate” among the Senators that preceded the vote was darkly funny and deeply boring, in equal measure. The black humor was due to the way one GOP senator after the next—led by ranking intelligence committee member Saxby Chambliss of Georgia (pictured above)—stood up and literally screeched about 9/11 and ISIS over and over and over, and then sat down as though they had made a point. Their scary script had been unveiled earlier that morning by a Wall Street Journal op-ed by former Bush Attorney General Mike Mukasey and former CIA and NSA Director Mike Hayden warning that NSA reform would make the terrorists kill you; it appeared under this Onion-like headline: So the pro-NSA Republican senators were actually arguing that if the NSA were no longer allowed to bulk-collect the communication records of Americans inside the U.S., then ISIS would kill you and your kids. But because they were speaking in an empty chamber and only to their warped and insulated D.C. circles and sycophantic aides, there was nobody there to cackle contemptuously or tell them how self-evidently moronic it all was. So they kept their Serious Faces on like they were doing The Nation’s Serious Business, even though what was coming out of their mouths sounded like the demented ramblings of a paranoid End is Nigh cult. The boredom of this spectacle was simply due to the fact that this has been seen so many times before—in fact, every time in the post-9/11 era that the U.S. Congress pretends publicly to debate some kind of foreign policy or civil liberties bill. Just enough members stand up to scream “9/11″ and “terrorism” over and over until the bill vesting new powers is passed or the bill protecting civil liberties is defeated.
FISA FISA reform creates backlash – alienates war hawks and intelligence – they’ll blame Obama
Liebelson, 14 (Dana Liebelson, political reporter for Mother Jones, 1-16-2014, "Obama's NSA reforms are going to tick off everyone", Mother Jones, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/01/obama-nsa-reforms-spying-telephone-mad-privacy)
If Obama Reforms the Top-Secret Spy Court… Who gets mad? The top-secret spy court and the NSA Some judges will no doubt be outraged if Obama makes any changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, the top-secret spy court that approves or denies many of the government's surveillance requests. Obama is expected to appoint a privacy advocate to advise the court on civil liberties issues. But on January 13, US district Judge John Bates, the former presiding judge of the FISA court, wrote in a public letter that "a privacy advocate is unnecessary." Bates also decried the presidential panel's recommendation that the government require judicial approval for all National Security Letters—secret requests the FBI and other government agencies use to force businesses to hand over records. According to Bates, subjecting these requests to the FISA court's scrutiny would be a "detriment to [the court's] current responsibilities." (If the FISA court emerges untouched by Obama's reforms, privacy advocates will be irate.) Obama faces a tricky challenge. He clearly believes some NSA reform is necessary, yet, for good or bad, he doesn't want to alienate the intelligence community. This might lead him to a position that does not produce sufficient change to allay the concerns of techies, civil libertarians, and Americans who worry the surveillance state has gone too far—but still manages to tick off the intelligence officials he counts on to defend the nation; and the national security hawks on and off Capitol Hill who are always ready to assail the president. Obama has often talked about the need to balance national security and civil liberties. His effort to deal with the Snowden-prompted NSA scandal shows how tough a political task that is for him.
PRISM Curtailing internet surveillance triggers massive fights in congress—backlash from hawks over national security – PRISM uniquely controversial
*note – also under “Link – Soft on Terror”
Volz and Fox, Reporters for the National Journal, 6-3-2015
(Dustin and Lauren, “THE WAR OVER NSA SPYING IS JUST BEGINNING,” http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2015/06/war-over-nsa-spying-just-beginning/114394/)
But while reformers hope Tuesday's victory is an appetizer to a multiple-course meal to rein in the NSA, security hawks—many of them Republicans vying for the White House—hope to halt the post-Snowden momentum behind surveillance reform. And some already are talking about unraveling the Freedom Act. "What you are seeing on the floor of the Senate is just the beginning," said Sen. Ron Wyden, a civil-liberties stalwart in the upper chamber who serves on the intelligence committee and has worked for more than a decade to reform government surveillance. "There is a lot more to do when—in effect—you can ensure you protect the country's safety without sacrificing our liberty." Wyden used the Freedom Act's passage to call for additional intelligence-gathering reforms that he has long advocated, such as closing the so-called "backdoor search loophole" that allows U.S. spies to "incidentally" and warrantlessly sweep up the email and phone communications—including some content—of Americans who correspond with foreigners. He added he plans to move quickly on reworking Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, before Congress is up backed up against its renewal deadline in 2017. The Oregon Democrat also supports tech companies in their ongoing tussle with the administration over smartphone encryption as a key priority. While Google and Apple have begun to build their phones with "too-tough-to-crack" encryption standards, the FBI has warned that the technology locks out the bad guys and the good—and can impede law-enforcement investigations. Wyden and his allies, though, are bumping up against an impending presidential campaign, where many Republicans will jockey with one another to look toughest on national security. Few issues divide the GOP White House contenders more than NSA surveillance, as defense hawks such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio continue to defend the NSA bulk metadata program as necessary to protect the homeland, while libertarian-leaning agitators such as Sens. Rand Paul and Ted Cruz warn voters of the privacy perils associated with the government's prying eyes. Rubio, who has said he'd prefer that the NSA's phone dragnet be made permanent, issued a statement after the Freedom Act's passage saying it fell to the next president to undo its policies. "The failure to renew the expiring components of the PATRIOT Act was a mistake," Rubio said in a statement after the vote. "The 'USA Freedom Act' weakens U.S. national security by outlawing the very programs our intelligence community and the FBI have used to protect us time and time again. A major challenge for the next president will be to fix the significantly weakened intelligence system that the current one is leaving behind." Paul, meanwhile, continues to fundraise on social media and in campaign emails off his hardline opposition to "illegal NSA bulk data collection." The Kentucky senator succeeded in drawing enormous attention to the issue by forcing a temporary lapse this week of the Patriot Act's spy authorities, and has vowed to limit the agency's mass surveillance practices "on day one" if elected president. But Paul also was a major obstacle for the Freedom Act's passage, repeatedly voting against it and helping delay its consideration on grounds it didn't go far enough—and codified parts of the Patriot Act he thinks should stay dead. Cruz, meanwhile, represented the middle ground and was a chief GOP backer of the legislation, setting up a potential argument with Paul debate stages about who has done more to fight against mass surveillance. Any jockeying between the two will expose them to sniping from candidates on the other side of the debate, including potential candidate New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who often goes out of his way to condemn those who criticize government snooping. Rand Paul already has become a regular punching bag for the GOP field's security hawks. Back on Capitol Hill, many of the same members who were engaged in defeating metadata reform warn that it only takes one security setback for Congress to stop taking powers away from the NSA. "The next time there is a terrorist act within the United States, the same people are going to be coming to the floor seeking changes to the tools that our intelligence community, our law enforcement community has at their disposal because the American people will demand it," said Sen. Richard Burr, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Sen. Susan Collins, who also serves on the intelligence panel, recognized that reforms and oversight will likely continue now that the USA Freedom Act has passed, but she said she's not so sure supporters of the Freedom Act won't have buyer's remorse down the line. "I believe it is actually going to expose Americans' data to greater privacy risk and to vulnerability from computer data breaches," Collins said. The momentum to end the NSA's phone dragnet snowballed over the past year and a half as two review panels deemed it ineffective. President Obama pledged to end it "as it currently exists" and a federal appeals court deemed it illegal. But further reforms—such as to the Internet surveillance program known as PRISM, which Snowden also revealed—are likely to be tougher sells in Congress. For PRISM especially, that's in part because the program is considered more useful and because it deals primarily with surveillance of foreigners. U.S. tech companies that are subject to PRISM, including Facebook, Yahoo, and Google, have called for changes to the program. Yet when asked about whether he would work to take down PRISM, even Wyden bristled at the question. "I am going to keep it to the three that I am going to change," Wyden said. Even reformers outside the confines of the Senate recognize that ending PRISM is a complicated pursuit. "It is not going to be quite as easy to drum up the same support," says Liza Goitein, codirector for the Liberty & National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. Though PRISM may prove difficult to upend, other efforts, such as a broadly supported push to update the decades-old Electronic Privacy Communications Act, may prove more palatable. Sens. Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee, the lead authors of the Freedom Act in the upper chamber, indicated their desire to move quickly on passing legislation that would update the law to require law enforcement obtain warrants before accessing the content of Americans' old emails. The immediate next battlefield for civil liberties groups will find them on the defense, as they attempt to prevent legislation that would increase the sharing of certain cyber data among the private sector and the government in order to better fend off data breaches. Such proposals, which already passed the House and are likely to be before the Senate in the coming weeks, could grant the NSA access to more personal data, privacy advocates warn. No matter how the looming debates shake out, for now, one thing is clear: the fight over the government's surveillance operations is far from over.
Drones
Drone legislation is incredibly controversial – senators aren’t sure of the best way to regulate this new technology
Curry ‘13(Tom Curry, March 20, 2013. NBC News, “Lawmakers voice concerns on drone privacy questions”, http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/20/17389193-lawmakers-voice-concerns-on-drone-privacy-questions?lite)
It was very clear Wednesday at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on drones that senators in both parties are worried about the threat to Americans’ privacy posed by the personal, commercial and law enforcement use of drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Senators expressed deep concerns about the spreading use of a technology that is rapidly evolving and comes at a relatively affordable price tag. But it was equally clear that they’ve only just begun to grasp the dimensions of the drone controversy, and are very far from being decided on whether a federal law is need to regulate the use of drones inside the United States -- much less what legislative approach to use. Last year, Congress gave the Federal Aviation Administration until 2015 to devise rules to integrate drones into the national airspace system. The agency predicted last year that 30,000 drones will be traveling the skies above America in the next 20 years. University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo and Ben Miller, the Unmanned Aircraft Program Manager for the Mesa County Sheriff, discuss privacy concerns during a Senate hearing on drone use Wednesday. To some degree senators at Wednesday’s hearing were still caught up in marveling at the gee-whiz, technological capabilities of UAVs. “How small can these things get?” asked Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn. A drone as small as a hummingbird is being developed, replied a witness at the hearing, Amie Stepanovich, director of the Domestic Surveillance Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). “The technology is increasing at an exponentially rapid rate.” “Presumably at some point you could have one the size of a mosquito that has a battery that operates for weeks and you could have the mosquito following you around and not be aware of it,” said Franken. “God help us if an adolescent boy gets hold of one of these.” One witness at Wednesday’s hearing, Benjamin Miller of the Mesa County, Colo., sheriff’s office, who was representing the Airborne Law Enforcement Association, brought a small two-pound UAV with him to the hearing and assured committee members that his department was using its UAVs for traditional law enforcement functions. His office used a UAV last May to search for a missing woman, saving much time by searching large areas at low cost. And cost is a major factor in domestic law enforcement drone use: “drones drive down the cost of aerial surveillance to worrisome levels,” said University of Washington law professor Ryan Calo, adding that he could imagine drones flying around with chemical sensors in order to detect drug trafficking. Miller estimated that “unmanned aircraft can complete 30 percent of the missions of manned aircraft for two percent of the cost.” He assured Judiciary Committee chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont that domestic law enforcement agencies would “absolutely not” seek to arm UAVs with lethal weapons. Miller also testified that hours and hours of tracking a criminal suspect was “not affordable” and that need for “persistent surveillance” – whether using an airplane or a drone -- was “relatively low.” But EPIC’s Stepanovich told Leahy “persistent surveillance” was the greatest threat from domestic use of drones. Some senators’ questions reflected a fear of an Orwellian Big Brother monitoring Americans. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he had “very deep concerns about the government collecting information on the citizenry, and with the ease and availability of drones, I think there is real concern that the day-to-day conduct of American citizens going about their business might be monitored, catalogued, and recorded by the federal government.” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., addresses witnesses on Capitol Hill Wednesday during a hearing on the evolving use of unmanned aircraft. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., voiced similar fears: “I know what drones can do … I’ve seen drones do all kinds of things and those all kinds of things bring on great caution,” she said, alluding to her role as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. After she left the hearing Feinstein told reporters more of her worries, “You can say that you won’t permit any drone to be armed but how do you see that that (restriction) is carried out? Can a drone look into somebody’s window and photograph them in the privacy of their home?” She added, “The technology is way ahead of our ability to know how to cope with it.” Asked whether she supported EPIC’s call for requiring a warrant whenever a domestic law enforcement agency uses a UAV for surveillance, she said, “It all depends. If it’s surveillance, yes. If it’s traffic guidance, that kind of thing, for which a drone, much like a helicopter, can be very useful, we have to think this thing out. I don’t really want to commit myself because I don’t really know at this stage.” While law enforcement agencies can get permission from FAA to use drones, private-sector commercial operators for now are limited to experimental uses for tests, demonstrations and training. But Michael Toscano, the president of the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI), told the committee that drones are poised to be one of America’s growth industries, with 70,000 new jobs, just as soon as federal regulations are set in the next few years. Asked after the hearing about the possibility that Congress might crimp this commercial development, Toscano said, “I think you’ll find that we’ll be able to come to a meeting of the minds” to allow commercial use of drones while not violating privacy rights. He said that “Congress shouldn’t knee-jerk into passing legislation that would be prohibitive” and should allow the continued development of unmanned air systems. But Stepanovich said after the hearing that “we hope to see (legislative) action, if not in this term of Congress, then definitely prior to 2015 when the amount of drones in the U.S. is expected to increase pursuant to the FAA regulations.” She also noted that a pending court challenge might affect the legal landscape for drone use. The Customs and Border Protection agency, a part of the Department of Homeland Security, lends out its Predator drones to local law enforcement agencies to conduct operations unrelated to the border control mission. In North Dakota in 2011, a man was accused of stealing cattle. Police called in a Predator drone which flew over his property and helped police find and arrest him. He is now challenging the use of the drone in federal court as a violation of his Fourth Amendment rights. The police in that case did not seek a warrant before using the drone, Stepanovich said. In 1989 the Supreme Court upheld police use of a helicopter flying 400 feet above a person’s property to see marijuana growing in a greenhouse. Since the helicopter was in navigable airspace, where any member of the public could have flown, the justices ruled that a search warrant was not required. If a police helicopter can observe you or your house from 400 feet, what limits should there be on a drone? The Congressional Research Service said in a report last year the crucial question is “whether drones have the potential to be significantly more invasive than traditional surveillance technologies such as manned aircraft or low-powered cameras — technologies that have been upheld in previous cases.”
Limiting drone access ensures congressional battle- support for their use is strong
Uberti 13- David Uberti, April 7th 2013, “Drone makers struggle for acceptance”, The Boston Globe, http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/04/06/massachusetts-national-drone-companies-are-struggling-gain-public-acceptance-face-controversy/qtCg0CxAIUfrW7applrKWL/story.html
WASHINGTON — The Danvers-based drone manufacturer CyPhy Works doesn’t build flying robots that rain Hellfire missiles on people or record license plate numbers from 40,000 feet. Its drones are designed for peaceful missions — aerial inspections of buildings and bridges, or observing crime scenes. But CyPhy and other manufacturers are battling the negative images of better-known military drones as they struggle to win public and political acceptance for commercially marketed drones for domestic airspace. The consequences are significant for a nascent industry that claims the potential to create 70,000 US jobs by 2017, including 2,000 in Massachusetts. The use of drones to combat terrorism overseas is attracting increasingly negative attention in Washington. President Obama is considering taking its lethal drone program away from the Central Intelligence Agency and placing it in the hands of the Pentagon, which has greater restrictions and accountability. Lawmakers, meanwhile, including Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts, a candidate for Senate, are introducing legislation to limit how drones can be used by law enforcement, firefighters, farmers, the media, and others in American skies. The domestic drone industry is scrambling to respond in Washington in public testimony, lobbying, and trade conferences — with limited effectiveness. Companies are trying to purge the word “drone’’ and its lethal connotations from the lexicon — an effort that is failing dismally so far. “I appreciate you telling us what we should call them. You leave that decision to us,” Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick J. Leahy snapped, as an industry association representative vainly sought to persuade senators at a hearing to use terms like “pilotless vehicle.’’ Founded in 2008, CyPhy unveiled its first commercial drone models in December. They are nothing like the American robotic weapons flying over Pakistan and Yemen. CyPhy’s EASE drone, ideal for aerial inspections, fits into a backpack, while the PARC model is tailored to longer-term observation of crime scenes or disaster areas.Other companies producing drones boast of firefighting capabilities and real-time weather analysis. The largest industry trade group — the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International — predicts that most manufacturing growth will be spurred by agriculture demand and law-enforcement work. But civil liberties advocates unleashed a torrent of criticism last year when Congress mandated the Federal Aviation Administration to craft regulations for drone use in US skies by the end of 2015. Fears of unwarranted privacy violations, domestic spying, and even questions about armed attacks on US soil reached a crescendo this month and forced the industry into a defensive posture.
At: Plan is Bipart- Gridlock Overwhelms Congressional gridlock occurring now, despite all efforts to cooperate
Miller & Dinan ‘15 [S.A Miller & Stephen Dinan, 1/07/15, Washington Post, “Gridlock in Congress rekindled quickly despite Democrat, Republican calls for cooperation”] Accessed Online: 6/22/15 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/7/gridlock-in-congress-rekindled-quickly-despite-dem/?page=all
Four months after they joined Republicans in voting to tweak the Dodd-Frank law, House Democrats reversed themselves and killed similar legislation Wednesday, sending the latest grim signal that the last year’s elections did little to break gridlock on Capitol Hill. On the second day in session, the conflicts were piling up. House Republicans plan votes next week to undo President Obama’s deportation amnesty, and both chambers will test the White House on veto threats issued in defense of Obamacare and in opposition to building the Keystone XL pipeline. All sides pleaded for cooperation, with Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who took over this week as majority leader, saying the decision rests with Mr. Obama, who must unleash fellow Democrats to pursue bipartisan solutions. “Bipartisan compromise may not come easily for the president. The president’s supporters are pressing for militancy these days, not compromise,” Mr. McConnell said in his first major floor speech as leader, in which he challenged Democrats to reject European-style welfare state policies and work for a leaner government. But the new Senate Republican majority and extra Republican troops in the House are being matched by a renewed shift to the left among Democrats, who argue that their losses in last year’s elections were the result of a muddled message and a six-year itch with Mr. Obama, not to a rejection of their policies. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat whom liberals have embraced as a standard-bearer, told the AFL-CIO in a keynote address Wednesday that “democracy doesn’t work when congressmen and regulators bow down to Wall Street’s political power.” Republicans blamed that kind of rhetoric for the defeat of the Dodd-Frank tweaks bill in the House. In September, a similar bill got 320 votes, including support from 95 Democrats. But the legislation garnered just 35 Democrats Wednesday for a total of 274, just short of the two-thirds majority needed for passage under expedited rules. Democrats said the bill was significantly different from last year’s legislation and would benefit big banks. They objected to speeding the legislation to the floor on the second day of Congress without having gone through regular debate in the Financial Services Committee. “House Republicans need to rethink their special-interests-first plan for this Congress,” Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said after leading the revolt. The number of her top lieutenants switched from “yes” to “no” votes this time. “Wall Street giveaways introduced in the dead of night are no way to govern.”
Obama Fights Plan
Obama would use PC to fight against the plan- favors expansion of surveillance
Farnia in 2011 (Nina Farnia, “Shoring Up the National Security state”, JSTOR.org, Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) summer 2011, 4 pgs. 7/3/15, http://jstor.org/stable/41407966
Many expected the Obama administration to slow or altogether stop the growth of the national security state that its two predecessor administrations brought into being, but just the opposite has occurred. Prisoners are still held without charge at Guantanamo Bay; the Patriot Act is still the law; the administration has retained the use of rendition and protected state secrets with punitive vigor. President Barack Obama's Justice Department has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all others combined. In key respects, indeed, the Obama administration has expanded and institutionalized the national security state. On the one hand, the administration is reinvigorating age-old policies such as the Espionage Act of 1917, which it is using to try whistleblowers. One the other hand, it has attempted to bring previously unprotected law enforcement and detention practices, such as military tribunals and the suspension of habeas corpus, under the umbrella of legality. Unlike the Bush administration, which often acted outside the law, the Obama administration is intent on protecting itself by using the law. In fact, an article by civil rights attorney Bill Quigley reports that over 2,600 activists have been arrested since Obama was elected. While this figure is surely below the actual number, it reveals a steady increase over previous years. And the Obama administration has yet to abandon the Bush administrations racial and religious profiling. To the contrary, the Obama administration has also begun a widespread effort to prosecute individuals based on political and ideological profiling. The Bush administration often targeted Muslim charities and mosques, accusing them of material support for terrorism. But during Bush's eight years in office, that charge was rarely used against non-Muslims. Now the Obama administration is using the same allegation to go after primarily non-Muslim activists engaged in international solidarity with Palestine. Two ongoing cases illustrate the extent of profiling in government investigations and the continuity between administrations in shoring up the national security state.
President Obama defends NSA and other programs- The president supports every part of the NSA
Reilly in 2013 (Mollie Reilly, Political Editor, 6/18/13, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/17/obama-nsa-surveillance_n_3455771.html, 7/3/15)
President Barack Obama further defended the National Security Agency's collection of phone and other electronic records to PBS' Charlie Rose, calling the program "transparent." In a pretaped interview set to air Monday evening, Obama gave a forceful defense of the program, saying that the NSA had not unlawfully targeted Americans. "What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails … and have not," Obama said, according to a transcript provided by PBS. Rose pressed Obama on the point, according to the transcript: Rose: So I hear you saying, I have no problem with what NSA has been doing. Obama: Well, let me — let me finish, because I don’t. So, what happens is that the FBI — if, in fact, it now wants to get content; if, in fact, it wants to start tapping that phone — it’s got to go to the FISA court with probable cause and ask for a warrant. Rose: But has FISA court turned down any request? Obama: The — because — the — first of all, Charlie, the number of requests are surprisingly small… number one. Number two, folks don’t go with a query unless they’ve got a pretty good suspicion. Rose: Should this be transparent in some way? Obama: It is transparent. That’s why we set up the FISA court. Later in the interview, Obama said the program had "disrupted" terrorist plots in the United States as well as overseas. The president pointed specifically to the prosecution of Najibullah Zazi, who was arrested in 2009 as part of a plan to bomb the New York City subway system. "Now, we might have caught him some other way. We might have disrupted it because a New York cop saw he was suspicious," Obama said. "Maybe he turned out to be incompetent and the bomb didn’t go off. But at the margins we are increasing our chances of preventing a catastrophe like that through these programs." While Zazi's name has come up frequently in defense of the NSA, the Associated Press and others have thrown cold water on the talking point, stating that the email the NSA says led to the plot's disruption could have been intercepted without the PRISM program. Obama struck a similar tone during a June 7 speech in San Jose, Calif., saying that Congress has been briefed on the programs' details. "The programs are secret in the sense that they are classified. They are not secret, in that every member of Congress has been briefed," he said. "These are programs that have been authored by large bipartisan majorities repeatedly since 2006." White House chief of staff Denis McDonough also stood by the program on Sunday during an appearance on CBS' "Face the Nation," insisting that Obama "does not" have privacy concerns related to the NSA's phone records collection. "The president is not saying, 'Trust me,'" he said. "The president is saying, 'I want every member of Congress, on whose authority we are running this program, to be briefed on it, to come to the administration with questions and to also be accountable for it.'"
Controversy Drains PC
Controversial policies drain political capital
Burke, University of Vermont political science professor, 9
(John P., Presidential Studies Quarterly 39.3 (Sept 2009), “The Contemporary Presidency: The Obama Presidential Transition: An Early Assessment”, p574 (31). Academic One; accessed 7-15-10)
President Obama signaled his intention to make a clean break from the unpopular Bush presidency with his executive orders and early policy and budget proposals. At the same time, he also sought to tamp down public expectations for quick results on the economy. Early--and ambitious--actions were taken, but as he cautioned in his inaugural address, "the challenges we face are real" and they "will not be met easily or in a short span of time." His initial political capital seemed high. But was the right course of action chosen? The decision was made to embrace a broad range of policy reforms, not just to focus on the economy. Moreover, it was a controversial agenda. His early efforts to gain bipartisan support in Congress--much like those of his predecessors--seem largely for naught and forced the administration to rely on narrow partisan majorities. The question that remains is whether his political capital, both in Congress and with the public, will bring him legislative--and ultimately policy--success. Good transition planning is propitious, but it offers no guarantees. Still, without it, political and policy disaster likely awaits. So far, President Obama seems to reside largely on the positive side of the equation. But what the future might portend remains another matter.
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