After last-minute votes on Thursday, Congress narrowly avoided allowing funding to lapse on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), pushing the deadline on debate to reform the bill’s programs into June. On Thursday, the U.S. Senate rejected a bill from the U.S. House that would fund FISA for three years, instead unanimously passing a bill to extend FISA funding for another 45 days. The U.S. House then passed the Senate bill 261-111, sending it to the desk of a supportive President Donald Trump. The funding for FISA Section 702 was scheduled to expire at midnight on Thursday.

Despite dozens of reforms to the program, many House conservatives still feel that FISA, which the Obama administration Department of Justice used to perpetrate the Russia collusion hoax against then-candidate Trump, still lacks sufficient safeguards to protect the rights of American citizens against a program designed to counter foreign security threats.

“I still have grave reservations about that,” confessed Rep. John Rose (R-Tenn.) on “Washington Watch” Wednesday. “I feel like I’ve achieved some wins and some movement there in terms of safeguarding the liberties of the American people. But I am a ‘no’ and plan to stay there at this point. … We shouldn’t sacrifice our liberties and freedoms that were hard-won. Despite obviously the need for intelligence tools that are effective at helping us stop terrorism … it’s just a price that’s too high to pay.”

On April 19, one day before FISA was set to expire, proposals to reauthorize FISA for five years, and then 18 months, failed in succession. The House finally agreed to extend the act for 10 days, to allow more time for negotiations.

But the new deadline of April 30 was hardly an easier lift. On Wednesday, House leadership finally carried a bill over the finish line that would reauthorize FISA for three years. The vote was 235-191, and even that required help from more than 20 Democrats.

“One of the concessions I’d asked for was to make it a year, instead of three years,” Rose recalled, “because I think the more often that the Intelligence Community knows that the Congress is going to be looking at this, the more careful they will be about how they use it.” Family Research Council President Tony Perkins agreed. “It should be less than three years … because Congress has a two-year term,” he said. “It ought to coincide with the Congress and their service” so that “members of Congress are keeping those who are using these policies and these statutes accountable.”

However, to win over reluctant conservatives, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) attached a measure to the FISA bill that would prohibit the U.S. from adopting a central bank digital currency.

“We think that’s pretty important that the government never have the ability to spy on you through your financial transactions,” affirmed Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) on “Washington Watch.” “The Democrats believe that the federal government should have the ability, just like China does, to monitor all your financial transactions — and in that way limit what financial transactions they allow you to make.”

However, the central bank digital currency ban faced bipartisan opposition in the Senate, leading Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) to declare it “dead on arrival.”

The “Senate wouldn’t take that up. So they sent us what we call a ‘clean’ month-and-a-half extension of the act,” Harris explained. “They attached part of the central bank digital currency ban to the housing bill, but they watered it down. They let it expire. This should be a permanent ban. … It’s a constitutional issue. The government should never have the ability to monitor your financial transactions and control them. So we’re going to hold out for a permanent ban.”

Thune said the short-term extension left more time for further negotiations after Congress returns from a May recess. The bill included some FISA reforms, but it failed to include some key demands such as a warrant requirement for searches.

This week, however, Congress was simply out of time. The Senate passed its short-term FISA extension bill within 24 hours of the deadline, forcing the House to turn around and advance it the very same day. Congress can move quickly when they have a deadline.

However, some House conservatives were still not happy with the Senate’s buzzer-beater bill. “Look, I’ll just add the Senate, supposedly the greatest deliberative body in the world, is yet again not deliberating,” complained Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas). “What do they do? They just do a [unanimous] consent [motion] to kick the can down the road.” In his mind, the bill was simply a punt. And, in four to six weeks, Congress will be right back in the same situation again.