WASHINGTON — The House on Thursday passed a short-term extension of a key surveillance power, sending it to the White House just hours before it is set to expire at midnight.

The bill, which would extend Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act through June 12, passed amid bitter disagreements over a longer-term extension.

The Senate passed the short-term extension via voice vote hardly an hour before the House took it up under suspension of the rules, which requires a two-thirds majority. The final tally was 261-111.

“I don’t like kicking the can down the road. Not my jam, but that’s where we are,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Thursday after the vote. “Hopefully the House will be able to agree to this, and then we’ll get to work in earnest and try (to) find something that actually enables us to do a long-term extension of the authorization.”

Section 702 allows the U.S. government to collect digital communications of foreigners located outside the country. But the program is controversial because it also sweeps up the communications of Americans and allows the FBI to search through data without a warrant, using information such as an email address.

The controversy doesn’t necessarily fall along party lines. A handful of Republicans and Democrats refuse to reauthorize the program without a warrant requirement, while others argue the power is important enough for a quick, “clean” extension of the program as is.

“The sad thing is, this could have been done weeks ago,” said Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee. “If you are catering to your extreme the way the speaker has done for the last week, month and year, you’re not going to get this done.”

The House passed its version of the spy powers reauthorization bill 235-191 on Wednesday with some privacy provisions — but not a warrant requirement— and attached language that also would prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency.

Thune has said the bill with the currency provision, fueled by privacy concerns associated with the technology, would be dead on arrival in the Senate.

The roughly 45-day extension didn’t have such an easy path in the House as it did in the Senate. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., said prior to the vote that he would block any efforts to pass it via unanimous consent or voice vote.

“Rather than even debate it, Leader Thune went to the floor and said, ‘No respect. Not even going to give it the time of day,’” said Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, said of the House version of the FISA bill. “The Senate sent over something to say, ‘Let’s just keep the status quo going for 45 days.’”

Thune said the short-term extension would allow for overhaul conversations to continue without the program going dark, and “pretty substantial dialogue” is happening between Senate Intelligence Committee leaders Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and Mark Warner, D-Va., and their counterparts in the House.

“We want to make sure that the program works, enables them to (have) the tools to acquire the necessary intelligence to keep the country safe,” Thune said. “But we’re also interested in looking at some ways in which it can be reformed along the lines that some of the folks who have ideas about that want.”

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Ryan Tarinelli and Nina Heller contributed to this report.

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