Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told
Newsmax TV on Tuesday that Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is virtually alone on Capitol Hill in his concern over NSA bulk metadata collection.
"I appreciate that Sen. Rand Paul has a deep libertarian concern about this," Gingrich told "Newsmax Prime," "but frankly when I look at ISIS cutting off people's heads, when I look at children being turned into suicide bombers, when I look at the effort to get nuclear weapons by a terrorist, I worry a lot more about American national security than I do about the government gathering up what is quantitative data."
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Gingrich said he doesn't see much of a split in the Republican Party on the issue.
"You have Rand Paul, who values personal security over national security. You have virtually everybody else on the other side," he said.
Many senators are angry over Paul's procedural maneuvers that allowed the provisions of the Patriot Act to expire before they could be renewed, Gingrich said. "They could easily have extended them for two or three weeks while they finish negotiating," he said.
The programs are aimed at terrorists, not the average American, Gingrich said. "There's no evidence that any of this information has ever been used to harm innocent Americans."
Despite Paul's efforts,
the USA Freedom Act passed the Senate on Tuesday, and President Barack Obama is expected to sign it.
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