[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 166 (Monday, November 17, 2003)]
[Senate]
[Pages S14965-S14967]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS
By Mr. DASCHLE (for Mr. Kerry):
S. 1873. A bill to require employees at a call center who either
initiate or receive telephone calls to disclose the physical location
of such employees, and for other purposes; to the Committee on
Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
(At the request of Mr. Daschle, the following statement was ordered
to be printed in the Record.)
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce today the
``Call Center Consumer's Right to Know Act.'' This legislation is in
response to the mounting evidence showing that U.S. corporations are
rapidly shifting hundreds of thousands high-tech and service sector
jobs abroad. Labor officials, business leaders, economists, elected
officials and ordinary Americans are concerned that this bleeding
[[Page S14966]]
of American jobs will further slow our economy. In addition to the more
than 2 million manufacturing jobs that have been lost since 2000, some
have indicated that we may also be witnessing the largest out-sourcing
of non-manufacturing jobs in the history of the U.S. economy. The
statistics are staggering. In the month of July 2003 alone, between
25,000 and 30,000 jobs were outsourced to India. According to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly one in ten jobs held by Americans
in 2001 are now at risk to be outsourced abroad.
These jobs are not specific to one sector or a select few companies,
but span a broad array of services, including customer call service
centers, payroll and other back-office related activities, stock market
research for financial firms, medical transcription services, legal
online database research and data analysis for consulting firms. In
addition, firms involved with software services and business process
outsourcing are rapidly expanding to a host of different countries,
including India, the Philippines, Malaysia, China, Russia, Israel, and
Ireland.
In addition to rapid service sector job losses, consumers are
concerned with the growing threat of identity theft. So far, efforts to
stem this tide and keep up with the technological advancements that
enable these crimes have done little to allay concerns. This trend
becomes all the more alarming when millions of calls involving personal
financial transactions are routed beyond our borders, where they are
not protected by our laws and law enforcement. Aside from the very
serious concerns related to identify theft, there is also a consumer
awareness element of this problem, as very few Americans are aware that
the person on the other end of the telephone line is in another
country. Americans should have full information about the outsourcing
of call center jobs when they decide who they will purchase their
products and services from.
The ``Call Center Consumer's Right to Know Act'' is a simple and
straightforward answer to the challenges posed by these unprecedented
service sector job losses and growing risks of identity theft. The bill
simply requires call center representatives to disclose their physical
location at the beginning of each phone call. Consumers will therefore
have important information about who is providing the services in
question and the level of risk involved in proceeding with their
transaction by phone. This legislation will help American consumers
make informed choices about who is providing the services they
purchase, and at the same time, addresses the growing problem of U.S.
corporations moving hundreds of thousands of service sector jobs
abroad. Furthermore, my bill will go a long way to restoring consumer
confidence in the booming call center market and help provide a measure
of security for telephone and Internet consumer transactions.
There can be no doubt that the outsourcing of these important
American service sector jobs abroad has played a part in the jobless,
or what some call the ``job-loss'' economic recovery of 2003. It is
predicted that future outsourcing of service sector jobs may provide
more costly to the US. economy than the loss of American manufacturing
jobs we are witnessing today. Unfortunately, the economics that
produced this trend are unlikely to change without a concerted effort
to both provide companies with an incentive to keep their jobs in
American and promote consumer awareness of the services they
unknowingly purchase from other countries. This is precisely what the
Call Center Consumer's Right to Know Act seeks to accomplish.
I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
S. 1873
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Call Center Consumer's Right
to Know Act of 2003''.
SEC. 2. CALL CENTER REQUIREMENTS.
(a) In General.--A United States corporation or its
subsidiaries that utilizes a call center to initiate
telephone calls to, or receive telephone calls from,
individuals located in the United States, shall require each
employee in the call center to disclose the physical location
of such employee at the beginning of each telephone call so
initiated or received.
(b) Certification Requirement.--A corporation or subsidiary
described in subsection (a) shall annually certify to the
Federal Trade Commission whether or not the corporation or
subsidiary, and the employees of the corporation or
subsidiary at its call centers, have complied with that
subsection.
(c) Noncompliance.--A corporation or subsidiary that
violates subsection (a) shall be subject to such civil
penalties as the Federal Trade Commission prescribes under
section 3.
(d) Call Center Defined.--In this section, the term ``call
center'' means a location that provides customer-based
service and sales assistance or technical assistance and
expertise to individuals located in the United States via
telephone, the Internet, or other telecommunications and
information technology.
SEC. 3. FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION RULES.
Not later than 9 months after the date of enactment of this
Act, the Federal Trade Commission shall prescribe rules to
provide for effective monitoring and compliance with this
Act. The Federal Trade Commission's rulemaking shall include
appropriate civil penalties for noncompliance with this Act.
______
By Mr. FEINGOLD (for himself and Mr. McCain):
S. 1874. A bill to require Senate candidates to file designations,
statements, and reports in electronic form; to the Committee on Rules
and Administration.
Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, today I will introduce with the Senator
from Arizona, Mr. McCain, a bill to bring Senate campaigns into the
21st century by requiring that Senate candidates file their campaign
finance disclosure reports electronically and that those reports be
promptly made available to the public. This step is long overdue, and I
hope the Senate will act quickly on this legislation.
A recent report by the Campaign Finance Institute highlighted the
anomaly in the election laws that makes it nearly impossible for the
public to get access to Senate campaign finance reports while most
other reports are available on the Internet within 24 hours of their
filing with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). The Campaign Finance
Institute report opened with a rhetorical question: ``What makes the
Senate so special that it exempts itself from a key requirement of
campaign finance disclosure that applies to everyone else, including
candidates for the House of Representatives and Political Action
Committees?''
The answer, of course, is nothing. The United States Senate is
special in many ways. I am proud to serve here. But there is no
justification for not making our campaign finance information as
readily accessible to the public as the information filed by House
candidates or others.
My bill amends the section of the election laws dealing with
electronic filing to require reports filed with the Secretary of the
Senate to be filed electronically and forwarded to the FEC within 24
hours. The FEC is required to make available on the Internet within 24
hours any filing it receives electronically. So if this bill is
enacted, electronic versions of Senate reports should be available to
the public within 48 hours of their filing. That will be a vast
improvement over the current situation, which, according to CFI,
requires journalists and interested members of the public to review
computer images of paper-filed copies of reports, and involves a
completely wasteful expenditure of hundreds of thousands of dollars to
re-enter information into databases that almost every campaign has
available in electronic format.
The current filing system also means that the detailed coding that
the FEC does, which allows for more sophisticated searches and
analysis, is completed over a week later for Senate reports than for
House reports. This means that the final disclosure reports covering
the first 2 weeks of October are not susceptible to detailed scrutiny
before the election.
It is time for the Senate to relinquish its Luddite attitude toward
campaign finance disclosure. I urge the enactment of this simple bill
that will make our reports subject to the same prompt, public scrutiny
as those filed by PACs and candidates for the other body.
I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the
Record.
[[Page S14967]]
There being no objection, the bill was ordered to be printed in the
Record, as follows:
S. 1874
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the ``Senate Campaign Disclosure
Parity Act''.
SEC. 2. SENATE CANDIDATES REQUIRED TO FILE ELECTION REPORTS
IN ELECTRONIC FORM.
(a) In General.--Section 304(a)(11)(D) of the Federal
Election Campaign Act of 1971 (2 U.S.C. 434(a)(11)(D)) is
amended to read as follows:
``(D) As used in this paragraph, the terms `designation',
`statement', or `report' mean a designation, statement or
report, respectively, which--
``(i) is required by this Act to be filed with the
Commission, or
``(ii) is required under section 302(g) to be filed with
the Secretary of the Senate and forwarded by the Secretary to
the Commission.''
(b) Conforming Amendments.--
(1) Section 302(g)(2) of such Act (2 U.S.C. 432(g)(2)) is
amended by inserting ``or 1 working day in the case of a
designation, statement, or report filed electronically''
after ``2 working days''.
(2) Section 304(a)(11)(B) of such Act (2 U.S.C.
434(a)(11)(B)) is amended by inserting ``or filed with the
Secretary of the Senate under section 302(g)(1) and forwarded
to the Commission'' after ``Act''.
(c) Effective Date.--The amendments made by this section
shall apply to any designation, statement, or report required
to be filed after the date of enactment of this Act.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I am proud to join Senator Russ Feingold
as a co-sponsor of legislation that will require Senate candidates to
file campaign finance reports in electronic form. This bill will
finally remove the exemption the Senate has given itself from an
important requirement of campaign finance disclosure laws that apply to
everyone else, including candidates for the U.S. House of
Representatives and Political Action Committees, PACs.
Political committees active in federal elections must submit their
quarterly financial reports for disclosure by the Federal Election
Commission, FEC. Anyone interested can nearly instantaneously download
the reports from the FEC website and conduct computer searches to learn
about the contributions and expenditures of individual candidates for
the House, non-Senate national party committees and PACs. The current
problem is that they cannot do the same for Senate candidates and
parties because of the Senate's insistence on paper rather than
electronic filing. The FEC must do more processing of Senate paper
reports than of House electronic ones. This involves printing or
copying the Senate reports, up to 10,000 pages a day at times, hand-
coding transactions that cannot be automatically processed, and
keypunching the data into the electronic database. House electronic
reports do not need the same treatment. The end result is that in
contrast to the House, information from the Senate paper reports are
often available well after the election has occurred.
Due to this problem, voters are not well-informed about the campaign
finance information of their Senators and Senate candidates. For voters
who want to consider the nature of the campaign finance support
received by a Senate candidate and its relationship to Senate
legislative votes as a factor in deciding for whom they will cast a
vote, they clearly cannot.
To address this problem, our legislation requires Senate candidates
to file their campaign finance reports electronically with the
Secretary of the Senate. Within 24 hours of receipt of those reports,
the Secretary is required to forward those reports to the FEC. The FEC,
in turn is required to make those reports available on the Internet
within 24 hours as they do other reports. Therefore, electronic
versions of Senate reports will be available to the public within 48
hours of their filing.
Electronic reports are not only transmitted instantly but are more
accurate than paper submissions because software can easily correct
mistakes. On the other hand, hand entering of data is always prone to
error. Furthermore, the data in electronic reports can be rapidly
searched via the Internet for answers to specific questions. Voters
will no longer have to go through the time consuming process of reading
pages and pages filed by Senate candidates or Senate party committees
to figure out the major donors and their employers, and the major
recipients of campaign spending. Instead, they can download a filed
report from the FEC website onto their personal computers and quickly
locate the information they need. This creates effective public
disclosure.
The Senate's current failure to provide its constituents with
electronically disclosed, timely information is unconscionable. Senate
filings should follow the same criteria as other campaign finance
reports. There must not be a separate standard for the Senate.
Ironically, while they do not currently file electronically, Senators
and Senate candidates already use electronic software in compiling
their paper reports. If Senators and Senate candidates can use
technology to run their offices and websites, why can't they use it to
better inform their own constituents about how their campaigns are
funded? Their constituents have earned a right to that information. The
public interest will be better served and voters' faith in their
elected leaders will be restored.
____________________