Unanimous Consent Requests

Floor Speech

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Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of legislation to strike the provision in the Federal funding package that would give a windfall to a handful of Republican Senators who the Biden administration investigated in connection with Trump's effort to try to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021. This provision would give those Senators $500,000 for every phone call appearing on a call log, adding up to a corrupt giveaway of hundreds of millions or possibly even billions of taxpayer dollars. One of my colleagues has already bragged about his plans to sue the Federal Government to secure himself a payday.

How did we get here? My staff unearthed this secret provision shortly after the government funding bill was released. The brazenness of this corruption kind of takes your breath away. I immediately blew the whistle about this awful misuse of taxpayer money and alerted the press. Once the public learned of the heist, they were outraged and Members of Congress couldn't distance themselves from it fast enough.

Now, I am outraged over the corrupt Republican payoff, but I completely agree that it is important to notify Senators who have been surveilled by the government. Every American should have the right to be told, eventually, if the government spies on them, which is why I have authored the bipartisan Government Surveillance Transparency Act to do just that.

Notifying Congress when Federal, State, or Local government Agencies spy on it is essential to protecting the separation of powers and our Constitution. The fact is that right now, the FBI, any State attorney general, or even a local sheriff, can obtain the phone records of every Member of Congress, and we would never find out. This poses a major threat to the separation of powers. That is why I have called for Senators to be notified about surveillance in response to overreach by Trump in the past. Once Senator Heinrich's bill passes, I am committed to working with colleagues on both sides of the aisle to address the threat of surveillance by the executive branch.

It is deeply regrettable that my colleagues took a well-intentioned protection against government surveillance and wrapped it in an unacceptable giveaway of Americans' tax dollars to Republican Senators. I am committed to scrapping this provision and passing real protections against government overreach, not just for U.S. Senators, but for every single American.

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