The House on Wednesday voted to repeal a measure that creates a new legal avenue for senators to sue the government for at least $500,000 each if federal investigators access their phone records without notifying them.
The unanimous 426-to-0 vote reflected the deep well of bipartisan fury that built up over the provision, quietly inserted by Senate Republicans into legislation to reopen the government, that blindsided senior lawmakers overseeing spending bills.
But the repeal is likely to die in the Senate, where G.O.P. leaders appear intent on preserving the provision, saying that it protects their members against investigatory overreach.
“I am not backing off,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, one of eight Republican senators whose phone records were obtained as part of a special prosecutor’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. “I am not going to take this crap anymore. I am going into court and we’ll see what happens.”
The measure was tucked into the four-bill spending package, totaling 394 pages, to fund the government and end the nation’s longest shutdown, which was released mere hours before the Senate began voting to advance it.
It would make it a violation of the law to fail to notify senators if their phone records or other metadata were taken from a service provider like a phone company. And it would sharply limit the government’s ability to fight a lawsuit over such a search, by nullifying any claim of qualified or sovereign immunity that would usually protect the government or federal officials from liability for an official action.
Because the provision is retroactive to 2022, it would appear to make eligible the eight Republican senators whose phone records were subpoenaed by investigators examining efforts by President Trump to obstruct the results of the 2020 presidential election. They have been vocal about their outrage at Jack Smith, the special counsel who ran the inquiry, for accessing the material.
Most lawmakers became aware of the measure only hours before the Senate was set to pass the spending bills, as they were under heavy pressure to reopen the government after the 43-day shutdown. Leaders of the Appropriations Committee in both chambers said they had been unaware of the measure’s inclusion.
“We are not included in the discussions at all,” said Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who heads the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“Did I know about this provision in the bill? No,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma and the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. “Do I think it needs to be in a funding bill? Not particularly.”
The measure prompted deep bipartisan opposition in the House, whose members, unlike senators, would not be eligible to be compensated by taxpayers under the new provision.
“What they did is wrong,” Representative Austin Scott, Republican of Georgia, said of the Senate. “This should not be in this piece of legislation, and they can say it’s about good governance all they want to. When they made it retroactive, all of a sudden it was no longer about good governance. There’s actually a list of people that know they will get paid as soon as this thing is signed.”
Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a conservative Republican who was one of the harshest critics of the Justice Department under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., said it was “beside my comprehension that this got put in the bill, and it is why people have such a low opinion of this town.”
Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and the majority leader, conceded on Wednesday that the provision could have been handled better but said he still backed its underlying goal.
“I take that as a legitimate criticism in terms of the process,” he said of complaints that top lawmakers were in the dark about the proposal that advanced in the last-minute scramble to end the shutdown. “But I think on the substance, I believe that you need to have some sort of accountability and consequence for that kind of weaponization against a coequal, independent branch of the government.”
Mr. Graham and other Republicans have noted that Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, consented to the measure. But Mr. Schumer said he now supported scrapping it.
Mr. Schumer said his intention had been to provide some future protection for Democratic senators from potential politically motivated investigations by the Justice Department headed by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Senator Adam Schiff of California has been among the department’s prominent Democratic targets.
“The bottom line is Thune wanted the provision,” Mr. Schumer said. “And we wanted to make sure that at least Democratic senators were protected from Bondi and others who might go after them. So we made it go prospective, not just retroactive. But I’d be for repealing all the provisions — all of it. And I hope that happens.”
In contrast with Mr. Graham, most of the Republican senators who would be eligible to sue the government under the new law have since sought to distance themselves from it.
“I am for accountability for Jack Smith and everyone complicit in this abuse of power,” Senator Bill Hagerty, Republican of Tennessee, wrote on social media. “I do not want and I am not seeking damages for myself paid for with taxpayer dollars.”
Mr. Graham said his interest was not financial but was intended to deter unlawful acts. “This is not about the money as much as it is to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
Though she said she had nothing to do with the provision, Ms. Collins, who is up for re-election, is already the subject of a campaign attack ad accusing her of including a “sneaky payout” in the spending bill. The online ad was paid for by a group affiliated with a political action committee tied to Mr. Schumer.
Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.
Catie Edmondson covers Congress for The Times.
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