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 )  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 ?  