Bush says Dems’ FISA reform bill is a step backward

President Bush on Wednesday wasted little time in criticizing a proposed update to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), saying the Democratic plan is a step in the wrong direction.

{mosads}Bush said it would be a “grave mistake to weaken” the provisions that currently help protect the country.

After Congress put in place a six-month fix prior to the August recess, Democrats began crafting a permanent update on foreign-intelligence eavesdropping legislation. House Democrats unveiled their proposal Tuesday, but it was met immediately with opposition from leading Republicans.

The proposal eliminates some of the provisions that were included in the interim measure, and it does not include one key element demanded by Republicans: retroactive immunity for the telecoms that participated in the administration's secret Terrorist Surveillance Program without a warrant.

Democrats said their legislation balances security and civil rights concerns and hope to get it to the House floor next week. The House Intelligence and Judiciary panels are marking up the bill Wednesday, and Senate committee action is expected in coming weeks.

“Not only is this bill better than the bill passed in August, it’s better than the original FISA bill in protecting our civil liberties,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told reporters on Tuesday.

Key Republicans, however, blasted the proposal.

House Intelligence Committee ranking member Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said the bill “prevents the U.S. intelligence community from focusing on its core mission of conducting surveillance on radical jihadists and other foreign threats to prevent the next attack.”

“For some reason the Democrats want to tie the hands of our intelligence and counterintelligence people so that they won’t have the information to help us protect the American people,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said about the bill Wednesday.