Elissa Slotkin · TranslatePolitics.com

Senate

MERIT Act (Executive Session)

2026-07-16

“I'm proposing a bill with a long name. It says the Director of National Intelligence must have a lot of experience. That should be the law. The Director of National Intelligence is powerful. I helped make the job after 9/11. It gathers secrets from other countries. It can also be used to spy on Americans. The power could be turned against Americans to help a President. We need to be careful who gets that power.”

Official Congressional Record

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the MERIT Act, the Minimum Experience Requirements for Intelligence Transition Act--a lot of words, but the bill is simple. It requires anyone serving as the Director of National Intelligence--even in a temporary capacity--to have extensive national security experience. It is common sense. You don't hand the keys to America's intelligence community to someone who has no experience, regardless of party or political loyalty. The Director of National Intelligence is a powerful job, and I know because I was there at the creation. I was one of the first people at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, when it was stood up. I was seconded there as a CIA officer. I helped stand it up after Congress created it so that we never again miss a terrorist attack, like we did on 9/11. The Office uses powerful tools to gather secrets from our foreign adversaries, like China and Russia, from terrorist networks, and from threats to our homeland. But it is that power in the wrong hands that I want to talk about today. America's national intelligence community can be used to gather information not just from our foreign adversaries but, if turned against us, against the American people, it can be used to monitor Americans, to target political opponents, to dig through records, to punish critics, to help any President relitigate an election. Right now, that is where we are.

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