As you may be aware, Sens. Leahy and Sununu introduced a legislation to extend the expiring provisions of the PATRIOT Act by 3 months so that the reauthorization legislation can be debated thoroughly before most of the act becomes permanent.

It is critical to pass this extension before the Senate recesses for the holidays, and I’ll leave it to you to imagine the political calculus, given that 16 provisions will expire on 12/31.

The bill number is S. 2082, and it currently has 48 sponsor+co-sponsors. If we have 3 more senators onboard, the bill will have the 51 votes required to pass. Please help push it past that mark.

Key Words: Patriot Act, Defense spending bill, National Deficit, Legislative Activism, Activism
Please call your senators and:

  1. request them to sign-on as a co-sponsor to the bill S. 2082
  2. ask them to strip ANWR drilling from the Defense spending bill H.R. 2863.
  3. tell them that in the so-called “Deficit reduction and budget reconciliation” bill S. 1932:
    • the $781 Billion increase in the Debt ceiling should be stripped or replaced with a much smaller amount.
    • that you are opposed to cuts to social programs in that bill
    • that you disapprove of tax cuts and reliefs to special interests in that bill

Please visit these Senators’ sites for more information on the subjects above:

  • Sen. Leahy’s senate page, and his joint letter (pdf) with Sen. Sununu inviting their fellow-Senators to support the S. 2082 measure. It provides justification behind that mesaure.
  • Sen. Kent Conrad (ranking member on the Budget Cmte)’s senate page, and his budget page
  • Sen. Maria Cantwell’s senate page, and her statement on the ANWR drilling issue.

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Senate Proceedings Video: You may want to watch the Senate proceedings on C-Span 2 stream at this page.

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Note: Ideally, it would be perfect to provisionally authorize the “senate version” S. 1389 for a period of 3 months, and to debate the bill extensively. But in the balance of things, extending the current act for 3 months seems to be a better alternative than having a less than perfect version passed with most of it becoming permanent (except for 3 provisions that will be sunset for 4 years).

Your opinions are welcome.

Thanks.

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