Congress moves to fund military

WASHINGTON - The President Barack Obama’s administration squared off with skeptical lawmakers Tuesday over efforts to terminate the government’s authority to collect phone records of millions of Americans, a proposition that exposed sharp divisions among members of Congress.

With a vote nearing on amendments to a $598.3 billion bill to fund the military, the White House raised the alarm over a move to end the National Security Agency’s authority under the USAPatriot Act, preventing the secretive surveillance agency from collecting records unless an individual is under investigation.

And in an unusual, last-minute lobbying move, Gen. Keith Alexander, head of the National Security Agency, traveled to Capitol Hill to urge lawmakers to oppose the amendment in separate, private sessions with Republicans and Democrats.

“We oppose the current effort in the House to hastily dismantle one of our Intelligence Community’s counterterrorism tools,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said in a late-night statement. “This blunt approach is not the product of an informed, open or deliberative process.”

Carney said Obama is still open to addressing privacy concerns in the wake of documents leaked last month by former agency systems analyst Edward Snowden that revealed the vast nature of the agency’s phone and Internet surveillance. But he said Obama wants an approach that properly weighs what intelligence tools best keep America safe.

The proposal offered byRep. Justin Amash, R-Mich., dovetails with another amendment to the defense bill to cut off funds for the agency. The House is likely to vote on the amendments today.

The fierce debate over privacy and national security has divided Congress.

Tea party conservatives and liberal Democrats have backed the amendments, joined by libertarians like Amash who have expressed serious concerns about the government’s surveillance. But national-security hawks have strongly defended the programs, as have House leaders such as Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich.

In the Democratic-controlled Senate, the leaders of the Intelligence Committee have opposed the amendments, arguing that the surveillance programs have helped disrupt numerous attempted terrorist attacks.

“Any amendments to defund the program on appropriations bills would be unwise,” Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the panel, and Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the top Republican, said in a statement Tuesday.

The overall defense spending bill would provide the Pentagon with $512.5 billion for weapons, personnel, aircraft and ships plus $85.8 billion for the war in Afghanistan for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.

The bill is $5.1 billion below current spending and has drawn a veto threat from the White House, which argues that it would force the administration to cut education, health research and other domestic programs to boost spending for the Pentagon.

The House also will consider an amendment that would bar funds for any military action in Syria if it violated the War Powers Resolution. Another amendment would prohibit money to fund military or paramilitary operations in Egypt.

The debate over Syria comes as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said establishing a no-fly zone to protect Syrian rebels would require hundreds of U.S. aircraft at a cost of as much as $1 billion a month with no assurance it would change the momentum in the 2-year-old civil war.

In a letter to the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Martin Dempsey outlined the risks, costs and benefits of five potential steps as the Obama administration weighs its next move to help the opposition battling the forces of President Bashar Assad. The sectarian conflict has killed at least 93,000, according to United Nations estimates, and displaced millions, prompting more calls on Capitol Hill for greater American action.

Dempsey said the decision to use force in Syria is not one to be taken lightly.

“It is no less than an act of war,” he wrote. And once that decision is made, the U.S. has to be prepared for what may come next. “Deeper involvement is hard to avoid,” he said.

Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, said he is opposed to any American intervention, including providing weapons to vetted Syrian rebels, irrespective of the costs.

“It’s a very messy civil war with some bad people on both sides and maybe some good people on both sides,” Paulsaid. “I’m not in favor of sending arms or weapons or boys or girls to fight some war for stalemate.”

That position is opposed by others in his party, such as Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

The United States has been providing humanitarian assistance to the opposition seeking to overthrow the Assad government.

The administration has recently taken steps to arm rebels with weapons and ammunition, a move welcomed by some in Congress but troubling to other lawmakers.

Separately, members of the House Intelligence Committee who had balked weeks ago at the Obama administration’s first attempt to pay for lethal aid for the Syrian rebels said Monday that their concerns largely had been addressed.

Money to arm the rebels would come from current classified intelligence budgets.

At a Capitol Hill news conference Tuesday, Boehner expressed his support for the move.

“I think their effort to help the right set of rebels in Syria is in our nation’s best interest,” he told reporters.

Dempsey spelled out costs, ranging from millions to billions of dollars, for options that included training and arming vetted rebel groups, conducting limited strikes on Syria’s air defenses, creating a no-fly zone, establishing a buffer zone and controlling Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons.

Information for this article was contributed by Bradley Klapper, Richard Lardner and Nedra Pickler of The Associated Press.