Senate Intel leaders

Senate Intel leaders aim to restore limits on Trump intelligence activities

By ELANA SCHOR

Both parties' leaders on the Senate Intelligence Committee vowed Tuesday to ensure that the next government funding bill restores limits on the Trump administration's intelligence powers — constraints that were removed in the short-term agreement that ended the shutdown.

At issue for Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-Va.) was a provision in the stopgap spending bill that states that intelligence agencies are not subject to a statute that bars spending on activities not expressly authorized by Congress.

Burr and Warner sought the removal of the provision before lawmakers voted Monday to approve a deal to fund the government until Feb. 8, but their proposal was met with an objection by Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Thad Cochran (R-Miss.).

The language in Monday's stopgap spending bill is structured as a waiver of an existing law, Burr told reporters Tuesday, and "I intend to make sure the waiver is not part of any legislation in the future."

Warner suggested that he and Burr might also examine options to restore the limits even before Feb. 8. The Virginian also questioned why House Intelligence Committee members would assent to a provision in the funding bill that risks limiting their oversight authority.

"I continue to be baffled by the House, and I continue to wonder why House Intel would go along with any of this," Warner told reporters Tuesday. "I’m still curious to find out where this idea originated."

A House Intelligence Committee source said that the panel also registered its objections to the language to no avail: “The House Intel Committee opposed this, but as in the Senate, we were unsuccessful. It passed at the insistence of the Appropriations Committee.”

The Senate appropriations panel pointed to remarks Cochran included in the Congressional Record Monday, in which he noted that the provision Burr and Warner objected to "is consistent with language that has been adopted many times in past continuing resolutions." Cochran also said he would work with the intelligence panel on resolving the matter.