Senators from Kentucky and Oregon launch bipartisan filibuster to prevent a vote on extending the law without amendment

Kentucky senator Rand Paul and Oregon senator Ron Wyden are teaming up in a bipartisan filibuster to block renewal of the Patriot Act.

Key provisions of the controversial legislation, including one which allows bulk collection of phone data by the NSA, are set to expire at the end of June. Many Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans support reforming the Patriot Act through the passing of the USA Freedom Act. However, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, has been pushing to renew the Patriot Act without amendment.

Although it is unlikely that any clean reauthorization of the Patriot Act would receive a majority in the House of Representatives, the threatened filibuster by Paul and Wyden,first reported by Buzzfeed, would make it impossible for McConnell to even get a vote on extending the Patriot Act. Wyden’s office confirmed the planned filibuster to the Guardian.

With the clock ticking, the question is whether there is any compromise that can receive support in both the House of Representatives and the Senate. While the USA Freedom Act appears likely to be passed by the House, its prospects in the Senate are far from certain.

In 2014, a vote on the USA Freedom Act received the support of 58 senators, two short of the 60 votes needed to end debate and proceed to a final vote. The bill received support of 54 out of 55 Democrats then in the chamber as well as four Republicans, including the 2016 presidential hopeful Ted Cruz. Paul voted against the bill as he did not see it as going far enough.

However, since the last vote on the USA Freedom Act, the shift in Senate control to the GOP has led to several Democratic surveillance skeptics being replaced by Republicans who appear far more comfortable with controversial NSA programs.

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said this week that he intends to mount a fight against the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the post-Sept. 11 law that gives the National Security Agency much of its authority to conduct surveillance programs.

"I'm going to lead the charge in the next couple of weeks as the Patriot Act comes forward. We will be filibustering. We will be trying to stop it. We are not going to let them run over us," Paul told the New Hampshire Union Leader on Monday.

The Patriot Act expires June 1, but Congress must effectively renew the law by May 22nd because of a scheduled weeklong break. Paul, a civil libertarian who hopes to capture the 2016 Republican nomination for president, has consistently spoken against reauthorizing the law, going so far as to oppose a 2014 bill that would have ended controversial NSA phone record collection because it left the government's broad authority to conduct surveillance intact.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/11/rand-paul-filibuster-patriot-act_n_7258460.html