Tiffany joins conservatives in voting against NDAA

With both the U.S. House and Senate signing off with large bipartisan support, Congress passed and sent to the White House its annual National Defense Authorization Act, a massive bill that will spend $886 billion on the military and includes a 5.2-percent raise for service members.

Bipartisan though it was, the bill was not without drama, with significant minorities of left-wing Democrats and right-wing Republicans peeling away their support.

The Senate passed the measure 87-13; the House, 310-118. In the House, 73 Republicans and 45 Democrats opposed the final defense bill.

The biggest controversy was a short-term extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that sanctions the U.S. government’s warrantless surveillance of foreign nationals. The extension lasts until April 19. 

The program allows the government to collect the communications records of non-Americans overseas. Supporters of the provision, first authorized in 2008, say it is a vital tool in preventing terrorism and that it produced critical information leading to the killing of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

But conservatives say there are loopholes that allow the FBI to search that data for information on Americans, all without a warrant.

Inclusion of the temporary extension prompted the opposition by some progressive Democrats and conservative Republicans, including such conservative House stalwarts as Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, and Northwoods Rep. Tom Tiffany. 

This past summer Tiffany had supported an earlier version of the bill because of the 5.2 percent the pay raise for service personnel, improved housing, and greater access to health care.

But Tiffany said back-door dealing and the FISA extension were steps too far.

“After voting for the bipartisan House NDAA earlier this year that gave our troops a well-deserved pay raise, the final version we considered today was unfortunately crafted behind closed doors and allows the uncontrolled surveillance of Americans to continue unabated,” Tiffany said. “I cannot and will not vote to allow the federal government to continue engaging in the unconstitutional and widespread warrantless surveillance of American citizens.”

Over in the Senate

The 13 senators who opposed the legislation included six conservative Republicans and six progressive Democrats, as well as progressive independent Sen. Bernie Sanders.

In addition to Sanders, the senators opposing the measure were Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Mike Braun (R-Indiana), Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyoming), Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon), Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), Peter Welch (D-Vermont) and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon). 

On the Senate floor, Paul had urged his colleagues to reject the extension. The specific vote to remove the extension garnered 35 votes, six votes short of ending domestic spying authority.

“So far as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act allows our government to spy on U.S. citizens without a warrant, it is unconstitutional,” Paul said on the Senate floor. “Section 702 expires at the end of this year. Members of Congress anticipated using this deadline as an opportunity to not just make meaningful changes to 702, but to reform FISA generally to better protect Americans’ civil liberties.”

But that wasn’t happening, Paul said, and he blamed what he called Washington’s uniparty, a term describing what many believe is an alliance of establishment Republicans and establishment Democrats who together run Congress and the country.

“But it appears not to be so,” he said. “Though we have known when 702 would expire for years, the uniparty never seriously considered or prioritized reforms. And now we are told that we simply have no choice but to extend Section 702 into 2024.”

But extending Section 702 robs Congress of the ability to make reforms now, Paul said, and likely would rob Congress of the opportunity to make reforms any time in the next year. 

“That means, once again, the intelligence agencies that ignore the constraints on their power will go unaddressed and unpunished,” he said. “And the warrantless surveillance of Americans, in violation of the Bill of Rights, will continue.”

The problem with section 702, Paul said, is that Americans’ communications content and metadata is inevitably swept up and kept in government databases without a warrant. 

“Law enforcement agencies then access Americans’ communications without a warrant,” he said. “In other words, your texts, emails, and phone calls are collected and stored in a government database without a warrant and then searched by government law enforcement without a warrant.”

Paul said that those who make what he calls the “lazy and predictable argument” that government is your only shield from threats always fail to mention that government itself often is the threat. 

“I think it is high time we quit letting fear overrun our constitutional duty,” he said. “The members of this body should do themselves the honor of standing by their oath to the Constitution. To protect our civil liberties and the integrity of the congressional conference committee process, we must strip this extension of domestic spying authority out of the defense bill.”

Conservatives were also upset that some of the social policy prescriptions the House had passed last summer were left out of this bill, including stripping out a policy that pays for service personnel to travel out of state for abortions and other reproductive care services.

“Our Service members and their families are often required to travel or move to meet our staffing, operational, and training requirements,” defense secretary Lloyd Austin wrote in a 2022 memo. “Such moves should not limit their access to reproductive health care.” 

The bill authorizes $886 billion for national defense programs for the current fiscal year that began Oct. 1, about 3 percent more than the prior year. 

The bill establishes a special inspector general to watchdog and oversee the spending of taxpayer dollars in Ukraine. It also establishes a training program with Taiwan, and provides for access by Australia to nuclear-powered submarines.

Richard Moore is the author of “Dark State” and may be reached at richardd3d.substack.com.