"The Enabling Act" curtailed the constitutional freedoms of Germans, based on peril to the homeland, with a promise that they would be fully restored in four years. The German parliament, which was similar to our House and Senate, was promised that the new powers used would be only those "essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures" for the protection of the state and people, and the "recourse to such a law [would be] in itself a limited one." 

          In 1937, the German parliament extended the Enabling Act to 1945.

          A very small portion of the USA Patriot Act of 2001 will expire in 4 years unless renewed by Congress.  Most of its provisions are permanent.