By Tim Starks, CQ Staff

House Democratic leaders said Tuesday they expect a new electronic surveillance overhaul bill that bucks the White House’s wishes to pass when it hits the floor Thursday.

“I feel very confident,” said House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn , D-S.C., who added that he has spoken to many conservative Blue Dog Democrats, 21 of whom have endorsed competing Senate legislation backed by the Bush administration. “There’s great support among members for this legislation.”

The bill does not grant retroactive legal immunity to companies that allegedly assisted the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance program, and instead would give those companies a legal avenue they currently lack to defend themselves against civil lawsuits. Bush has insisted on retroactive legal immunity, which is included in Senate-passed legislation (HR 3773).

House leaders plan to bring the legislation to the floor Thursday, under a rule that would strip and insert it into the Senate’s version of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA, PL 95-511) rewrite.

Negotiations between the House and Senate over the retroactive immunity provision have stalled action on a long-lasting FISA overhaul, and the new House legislation is not expected to resolve that dispute. “It would be incorrect to say there is agreement between the House and Senate,” said House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer , D-Md.

Still, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., called the House bill “a tremendous step forward, and I would hope the Republicans would recognize that.”

And Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV , D-W.Va., said the new bill “is a step in the right direction.

“As soon as the House sends us this new bill, we will once again roll up our sleeves and get back to work on a final compromise that the House, Senate and White House can support,” Rockefeller said.

House Republicans meanwhile signaled their intent to turn up the political pressure on Democrats. GOP leaders assailed Democrats for planning to leave for a two-week recess at the end of this week without enacting a final electronic surveillance law, and tied up the House floor for hours with a number of procedural votes aimed at forcing consideration of the Senate-passed bill.

“We are going to do everything we can to call attention to the fact that Democrats are not bringing up the bipartisan FISA solution that a majority of House members support. Instead, they are going through a number of antics that will produce no bill and then we will leave here for two weeks with the country in considerable jeopardy on this issue,’’ Minority Whip Roy Blunt , R-Mo., said.

The civil lawsuits against the telecommunications companies allege they violated constitutional privacy rights and consumer privacy laws. Because the Bush administration has invoked the state secrets privilege in the lawsuits, the companies complain they have had difficulty introducing evidence to defend themselves.

In criminal cases, judges can hear classified evidence, but in civil cases, they may not. The House legislation would extend that ability to federal court judges in civil cases.

“We think it’s very important before we leave on recess that we come forward and push this subject matter as far as we can. ... What we know is that we are not going to cave in to a retroactive immunity situation,” House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. , D-Mich. said.

The legislation would create a National Commission on Warrantless Surveillance, a bipartisan commission modeled after the Sept. 11 commission with subpoena power and one year to delve into the administration’s program and make recommendations.

A House Democratic official said the hope is that the commission might have a better chance of getting information that Congress has not.

The new bill, like the one the House passed in November, would allow the secret FISA court to issue “basket” warrants for the surveillance of a broad number of targets who might communicate in the United States. As an example, Hoyer said that would include a warrant for any al Qaeda members.

It would require the FISA court to approve targeting procedures and “minimization” procedures — a term describing how the government reduces retention and dissemination of information on U.S. citizens — before surveillance begins.

The Senate bill allows warrantless surveillance of foreign targets who may be communicating with people in the United States to go on while the court reviews spying procedures. Both bills would require a warrant for the surveillance of U.S. citizens even if they are overseas.

Like all the legislation under discussion, the new House bill would grant the telecommunications companies legal immunity for future actions.

It would adopt language similar to that offered unsuccessfully in the Senate by Dianne Feinstein , D-Calif., broadly affirming that FISA is the “exclusive means” of conducting foreign intelligence surveillance in the United States. It would require an inspector general report on the president’s warrantless surveillance program, sunset after two years and bar “reverse targeting” of U.S. citizens, a term used to describe surveillance targeted at someone overseas but designed to conduct surveillance of someone domestically.

The White House signalled its opposition to the proposal even before Democrats unveiled it, citing news reports. The administration wants Congress to adopt the Senate bill, which comes closest to reauthorizing the short-term surveillance law that expired in February, known as the “Protect America Act” (PL110-55).

If reports are accurate, the House Democratic leadership’s proposal has a number of serious flaws which would make it dead on arrival,” White House spokesman Dana Perino said.

“The priorities of House leaders are dangerously misplaced. Instead of providing liability protection to companies that did their patriotic duty, House leaders would establish a commission to examine intelligence activities in the past that helped protect the country from further attacks after 9/11. We can draw only one conclusion from this – House leaders are more interested in playing politics with past efforts to protect the country than they are in preventing terrorist attacks in the future.”

But Democrats said they were not daunted by the resistance.

“This is a good balance,” said House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes , D-Texas. “Not everyone is going to be happy about it, but compromise is not about making everyone happy.”

Molly Hooper, Kathleen Hunter and Edward Epstein contributed to this story.

First posted March 11, 2008 3:57 p.m.