“If this turns into a really broad request not tied to individuals, there are Fourth Amendment concerns,” Jonathan Bydlak, the director of the Governance Program at the R Street Institute, told ABC News. “But I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about right now.”

Bydlak noted that McCarthy, as the top House Republican vote counter in 2013, was among the majority of House members to oppose an amendment restricting the National Security Agency’s collection of phone records.

“When you compare what he’s saying now to the opposition he’s expressed in the past to NSA collection of bulk metadata, it’s really hard to not come to the conclusion that these remarks are being driven by partisan concerns, and not ideological and principled concerns about government access to private data,” Bydlak said.

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