By Tim Starks, CQ Staff

Final Senate action on an overhaul of electronic surveillance rules could slip to after the July Fourth recess as the chamber juggles other priorities and procedural snarls.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid , D-Nev., said clearing the bill (HR 6304) this week is less important than completing work on housing (HR 3221) and Medicare (HR 6331) legislation.

The spying bill would rewrite the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA, PL 95-511).

Reid said Republicans have been holding up the housing bill, thus causing a delay of the FISA legislation, which is supported by the Bush administration.

Reid said Wednesday that he still planned to move the FISA bill this week — even though he opposes it — because he has an “obligation” to act on the measure. It has the support of a majority of senators, including many Democrats.

“I’m going to try to do that,” Reid said. “The only reason why I wouldn’t is . . . if we’re stuck on the housing thing and I can’t get to that.”

But he left open the possibility that the FISA vote could be delayed until July.

“There are two things we have to do before we go home for July Fourth: housing and Medicare,’’ he said Tuesday evening. “We do not have to do, if the Republicans don’t want to do it, we don’t have to do FISA and we don’t have to do the supplemental” spending measure for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (HR 2642).

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R-Ky., said Tuesday evening that he is eager to resolve the “complicated legislative tangle” and that he has the same goal as the Democratic leader: to “get all of those things done in the next few days.”

Senate liberals have been throwing up procedural roadblocks to the FISA bill, which they object to because it would effectively grant retroactive legal immunity to telecommunications companies being sued for allegedly aiding the Bush administration’s warrantless surveillance program.

They also argue that court and congressional oversight provisions in the measure are not enough to defend the privacy of U.S. citizens whose communications with foreign spying targets may be monitored without a warrant under the legislation.

Democrats Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut said they intend to force procedural votes on the legislation.

Liberal activists have argued that in order defeat the bill, they will need to slow its momentum. If there was a vote on the bill this week, it would almost certainly pass.