White House Press Secretary Dana Perino responds to a question, Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2007, in the White House press briefing room in Washington
Dana Perino: (speaking about The Protect America Act) …the law that the Congress passed last August put a six-month sunset on the bill. The President said that we would -- we had to have the closure of the intelligence gap. So we said that we were willing to go forward with the bill for a six-month period because we had to -- we had a situation in which we really needed to make sure that we were gathering all the intelligence that we could get. But we said that we would revisit this in the fall.The President has said one of the things he has to have is permanency. You want the intelligence community to know that they're going to have these tools and the flexibility they need to protect the country. This bill that the Democrats have put forward only gives you a one-year extension; actually, I think it goes through December 2009. That is not permanent. And this is a debate that the President thinks we should settle here and now.