WASHINGTON — President Bush said Saturday that lawmakers’ failure to renew an eavesdropping law will make it more difficult to track terrorists, and “we may lose a vital lead that could prevent an attack on America.”
Democrats faulted the president, who taped his weekly radio address before he left on a trip to Africa, for “whipping up false fears and creating artificial confrontation.”
“Their true concern here is not national security,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement. “Rather they want to protect the financial interests of telecommunications companies and avoid judicial scrutiny of their warrantless-wiretapping program.”
At issue is a law that made it easier for the government to spy on foreign phone calls and e-mails that pass through the United States. It was to expire at midnight Saturday.
The president wanted the House to approve a Senate bill that would have renewed the law. Lawmakers left for a 12-day recess without extending the law. The Senate measure included legal protections for telecommunications companies that helped the government wiretap U.S. computer and phone lines after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks without clearance from a secret court that oversees such activities.
“Some congressional leaders claim that this will not affect our security,” the president said. “They are wrong. Because Congress failed to act, it will be harder for our government to keep you safe from terrorist attack.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a former U.S. attorney and Rhode Island attorney general, responded for Democrats.
“We know this president dislikes compromise, but this time he has taken his stubborn approach too far,” Whitehouse said. “He is whipping up false fears and creating artificial confrontation.”
