The Obama administration “strongly” backs legislation to halt its NSA snooping program, the White House budget office said in a policy statement Monday, a day ahead of a first showdown Senate vote.
“The bill strengthens the FISA’s privacy and civil liberties protections, while preserving essential authorities that our intelligence and law enforcement professionals need,” the budget office said in the statement, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that governs the National Security Agency’s snooping.
Officials said they believe they will still be able to collect information on people when they need to, but will no longer do the bulk-type collection that had snared most Americans’ phone metadata.
The Senate will vote Tuesday on a bill by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, known as the USA Freedom Act. It is designed to make sure the Patriot Act can no longer be used to justify collecting the phone records.
Even as it was releasing a policy statement backing the Senate bill, the White House budget office released several statements promising vetoes of House GOP legislation reining in the administration.
The bills would have required the EPA to do more to back up the science it uses for its regulations, but the administration said that would complicate the agency’s work.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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