The Senate is thumbing its nose at a House-passed extension of a government surveillance program over the attachment of a central bank digital currency ban included by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) as part of a deal with conservative holdouts.
Instead, the upper chamber plans to move forward on Thursday with a clean extension of section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which will last several weeks and does not include the digital currency attachment. The Senate plans to send the clean extension back to the House and then leave Washington for more than a weeklong recess.
The FISA program is set to expire on Friday at midnight unless both chambers can pass an agreement to extend its authority, which grants the government warrantless spy powers over foreign nationals abroad.
The House sent its three-year extension of section 702 to the Senate on Wednesday. The House-passed legislation includes oversight guardrails and penalties for abuses of the spy program.
But as part of House GOP leadership’s deal with conservative holdouts, the digital currency ban was also attached to the reauthorization bill before it was sent to the Senate. The ban has long been a source of disagreement between the chambers. It would prohibit the Federal Reserve from establishing a digital currency, which proponents of the ban say would infringe on privacy rights because the federal government could more easily track digital currencies.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has warned Johnson that the House version would be dead on arrival, given the need to overcome a 60-vote filibuster with Democratic support. Senate Republicans are pushing a 45-day clean extension, but were in negotiations with Democrats for as short as three weeks.
“In my view, it’s going to take a certain amount of time,” Thune told reporters Thursday while advocating a 45-day extension. “I think that gives us a sufficient amount of time.”
OVER 40 HOUSE DEMOCRATS BAIL JOHNSON OUT ON THREE-YEAR EXTENSION OF GOVERNMENT SPY POWERS
That same morning, Johnson said the “simplest” way to pass a reauthorization of the surveillance program would be for the Senate to pass the House’s three-year extension.
“That is the simplest way out of this,” Johnson said. “All that we did was add the anti-CBDC provision, and that’s something that’s broadly supported. Every House Republican does. I think some Democrats in the House support that provision.”