mr. speaker , i rise in opposition to the motion to recommit . 
good oversight is done by congressional leadership , not by sunsets . 
there has been good oversight over the patriot act right from the beginning . 
the committee on the judiciary has spent a lot of time overseeing the justice department , with oversight letters , questions that the gentleman from michigan ( mr. conyers ) xz4000800 and i have sent jointly to the justice department , inspector general reports , and this is the result of it : almost two feet of responses . 
and what have these responses said ? 
first of all , there has been no provision , of the 16 sunsetted provisions , that have been found unconstitutional by any federal court in the nation . 
the inspector general 's report has found no civil liberties violations under the patriot act , and i think that the question we ought to ask ourselves today is whether we should weigh the potential for abuse of this law against the actual record of abuse . 
there is no actual record of abuse with all of the oversight that we have been doing . 
now , we have had 12 hearings on the patriot act , the 16 sunsetted provisions . 
thirteen of the 16 provisions are noncontroversial . 
there have not been witnesses that have appeared before the committee that have said that there are problems , and that includes the provision that tore down the wall after 9/11 that prevented the cia and the fbi from exchanging intelligence information . 
this motion to recommit will bring that wall back up in 2009 . 
i think we ought to look at the record . 
we ought to look at the actual record of abuse . 
there has been none . 
only 5 percent of our legislation is sunsetted . 
why sunset legislation where there has been no actual record of abuse and there has been vigorous oversight ? 
mr. speaker , i yield to the gentleman from arizona ( mr. flake ) xz4001340 . 
