[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 50 (Wednesday, March 17, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1615-S1617]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

      By Mr. SCHATZ (for himself and Mr. Thune):
  S. 797. A bill to require transparency, accountability, and 
protections for consumers online; to the Committee on Commerce, 
Science, and Transportation.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, social media platforms have become a pretty 
significant part of Americans' lives. We use them to stay up to date on 
news from friends and family--something that has become especially 
essential during the pandemic--to communicate with relatives and 
friends, for entertainment, and as a shopping resource. Social media 
sites provide ways to network, to connect with like-minded individuals 
from fellow theater lovers to fellow basketball fans, to advocate for 
causes that we believe in, to conduct business, even to date, and more 
and more we rely on social media sites as a primary source of news and 
information, from Presidential election news to updates on COVID 
vaccinations.
  Social media offers a lot of benefits and opportunities, but the 
increasing dominance of social media, particularly in the news and 
information space, has also raised concerns. Consumers have become 
increasingly troubled about the way their information is used by social 
media platforms and how these sites decide what news and information we 
see. And there are increasing numbers of anecdotes to suggest that some 
social media platforms are moderating content in a biased or political 
way.
  Currently, content moderation on social media platforms is governed 
by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which was enacted 
into law 25 years ago. Section 230 provides internet sites that host 
user-generated content--sites like YouTube or Twitter or Facebook--with 
immunity for the content that users post on their sites. So, for 
example, if somebody posts a video on YouTube that contains illegal 
content, YouTube isn't held legally responsible for that content.
  Section 230 has been critical to the development of the internet as 
we know it today. Without section 230 protections, many of the sites we 
rely on for social connection or news or entertainment would never have 
come into being.

[[Page S1616]]

  But as the internet and social media have grown and developed, it has 
also become clear that some changes need to be made. In particular, it 
has become increasingly clear that sites need to provide greater 
transparency when it comes to their content moderation practices and 
decisions. Social media sites are no longer just providing a platform 
for user-generated content as they did in their infancy. They are now 
making a lot of decisions about that content and carefully shaping our 
social media experience--what ads we see, what posts we see, what news 
stories we see.
  Currently, Federal law does not require that social media sites be at 
all accountable to consumers for those content moderation decisions. 
That is why, today, I am introducing the Platform Accountability and 
Consumer Transparency Act, or the PACT Act, along with my colleague 
Senator Schatz. Our bill would preserve the benefits of section 230, 
like the internet growth and widespread dissemination of free speech it 
has enabled, while increasing accountability and consumer transparency 
around content moderation.
  Now, content moderation is certainly not all bad. For example, most 
of us are happy to have YouTube or Instagram suggest additional content 
that matches the music that we like to listen to or the hobbies that we 
are interested in. The problem is that content moderation has been and 
largely continues to be a black box, with consumers having little or no 
idea how the information they see has been shaped by the sites that 
they are visiting.
  The PACT Act would address this problem by increasing transparency 
around the content moderation process. Sites would be required to 
provide an easily digestible disclosure of their content moderation 
practices for users, and, importantly, they would be required to 
explain their decisions to remove material to consumers.
  Until relatively recently, sites like Facebook and Twitter would 
remove a user's post without explanation and without an appeals 
process. And even as platforms start to shape up their act with regard 
to transparency and due process, it is still hard for users to get good 
information about how content is moderated.
  Under the PACT Act, if a site chooses to remove your post, it has to 
tell you why it decided to remove your post and explain how your post 
violated the site's terms of use. The PACT Act would also require sites 
to have an appeals process. So if Facebook, for example, removes one of 
your posts, it would not only have to tell you why, but it would have 
to provide a way for you to appeal that decision.
  We have seen increased concern lately about news articles being 
removed from social media sites. Under the PACT Act, a newspaper whose 
article was posted on Facebook or Twitter and then removed by one of 
those platforms could challenge Facebook or Twitter, which would have 
to provide a reason for removing the article and allow the newspaper to 
appeal the decision.
  The PACT Act would also help us develop the data necessary to 
demonstrate whether social media platforms are removing content in a 
biased or political fashion. As I said earlier, there has been 
increasing concern about biased content moderation on social media 
sites. The PACT Act requires detailed transparency reports every 6 
months from large social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, 
which will provide the data it needed to determine whether and where 
biased moderation exists.
  The PACT Act would also bolster efforts by State governments to hold 
social media platforms accountable. The bill would allow State 
attorneys general to bring civil lawsuits against social media 
platforms when these platforms have violated Federal civil laws.
  The PACT Act would also require companies to remove material that has 
been adjudicated as illegal by a court. Internet platforms would be 
required to remove illegal content within 4 days. Failure to remove 
illegal material would result in the platform's losing its 230 
protections for that content or activity, a provision that matches a 
recommendation made by the Trump Department of Justice for section 230 
reform.
  I am grateful to Senator Schatz for partnering with me on this 
legislation. Our bill is a serious, bipartisan approach to the issue of 
section 230 reform, and it would go a long way toward making social 
media platforms more accountable to consumers and increasing 
transparency around the content moderation process.
  I invite our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join us in 
advancing this legislation.
                                 ______
                                 
      By Ms. COLLINS:
  S. 804. A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to increase 
the limitation on the amount individuals filing jointly can deduct for 
certain State and local taxes; to the Committee on Finance.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, this is the time of year when people are 
calculating their taxes and filing their returns. There are inequities 
in our Tax Code, and the bill I am introducing today, the SALT 
Deduction Fairness Act, would help remedy one of these inequities. This 
bill would ensure that limits on State and local tax deductions, also 
known as SALT deductions, do not disproportionately and unfairly 
penalize married couples.
  Currently, the amount in State and local taxes that both single and 
married filers may deduct from their annual income taxes is capped at 
$10,000. Single filers and married filers are treated the same, and 
married people who file their taxes separately are limited to $5,000 
each. In other words, people would be better off not getting married 
when it comes to the SALT deduction. My bill removes this penalty by 
simply doubling the deduction to $20,000 for married filers.
  This is the situation we have now: Two single people can both claim 
$10,000 worth of State and local income taxes as a deduction on their 
Federal returns, but if they get married, they can claim only $10,000 
together. This is a classic example of a marriage tax penalty.
  When the Senate considered the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, I 
worked to keep the SALT deduction in the Federal Tax Code because of 
the increased tax burden its elimination would have imposed on many 
Mainers who pay property taxes on their seasonal cottages as well as 
their homes, who remit annual excise taxes on their vehicles, and who 
are subject to State income taxes.
  The SALT deduction has been in the Tax Code since 1913, when the 
Federal income tax was first established. It is intended to protect 
families from double taxation, from essentially paying a tax on a tax.
  The Senate adopted my amendment, which paralleled that of the House, 
to retain the deduction for State and local taxes up to $10,000. This 
deduction is especially important to families living in high-tax 
States, like Maine, which has one of our Nation's highest State taxes 
and where many residents own second homes, like camps on Maine's 
beautiful lakes. Last year, an analysis by WalletHub found that Maine 
had the fourth highest overall tax burden behind only New York, Hawaii, 
and Vermont. Yet Maine's median household income ranked only 35th in 
the Nation and was approximately $6,800 below the U.S. median household 
income. So maintaining this deduction provides important tax relief for 
those Mainers who continue to itemize their deductions. Yet we can do 
better. We can make the SALT deduction fairer by eliminating the 
marriage penalty that limits a married couple to just $10,000; whereas, 
if they were not married, they could each claim $10,000.
  According to the U.S. Census, there are more than 60 million married 
couples living in our Nation. Our Tax Code should be fair to them. We 
should not create a situation in which married couples would have been 
better off financially, in terms of taxes, had they not married. One 
way to accomplish this goal is to double their access to deductions for 
the State and local taxes they pay, including from properties they 
share, such as their homes. This legislation would remedy this double 
taxation problem and eliminate the marriage tax penalty when it comes 
to the SALT tax deduction.
  It boils down to this: We simply should not be unfairly penalizing 
American taxpayers for being married.
  I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense bill to fix this 
marriage tax penalty

[[Page S1617]]

  

                                 ______
                                 
      By Mr. DURBIN (for himself, Mr. Grassley, Mr. Blumenthal, and Ms. 
        Klobuchar):
  S. 807. A bill to permit the televising of Supreme Court proceedings; 
to the Committee on the Judiciary.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of 
the bill be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be 
printed in the Record, as follows:

                                 S. 807

       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 ``Cameras in the Courtroom 
     Act''.

     SEC. 2. AMENDMENT TO TITLE 28.

       (a) In General.--Chapter 45 of title 28, United States 
     Code, is amended by inserting at the end the following:

     ``Sec. 678. Televising Supreme Court proceedings

       ``The Supreme Court shall permit television coverage of all 
     open sessions of the Court unless the Court decides, by a 
     vote of the majority of justices, that allowing such coverage 
     in a particular case would constitute a violation of the due 
     process rights of 1 or more of the parties before the 
     Court.''.
       (b) Clerical Amendment.--The chapter analysis for chapter 
     45 of title 28, United States Code, is amended by inserting 
     at the end the following:
``678. Televising Supreme Court proceedings.''.
                                 ______
                                 
      By Mr. REED (for himself, Ms. Collins, Mr. Warner, Mr. Cramer, 
        Ms. Cortez Masto, and Mr. Wyden):
  S. 808. A bill to amend the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 to 
promote transparency in the oversight of cybersecurity risks at 
publicly traded companies; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and 
Urban Affairs.
  Mr. REED. Mr. President, today I am reintroducing the Cybersecurity 
Disclosure Act along with three members of the Select Committee on 
Intelligence, Chairman Warner and Senators Collins and Wyden, in 
addition to Senators Cortez Masto and Cramer, who serve with me on the 
Senate Banking Committee. In response to serious data breaches of 
various companies, our legislation asks each publicly traded company to 
include--in Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosures to 
investors--information on whether any member of the Board of Directors 
is a cybersecurity expert, and if not, why having this expertise on the 
Board of Directors is not necessary because of other cybersecurity 
steps taken by the publicly traded company. To be clear, the 
legislation does not require companies to take any actions other than 
to provide this disclosure to its investors.
  As EY, also known as Ernst & Young, noted in an August 2020 
publication, ``Public disclosures can help build trust by providing 
transparency and assurance around how boards are fulfilling their 
cybersecurity risk oversight responsibilities.'' Investors and 
customers deserve a clear understanding of whether publicly traded 
companies are prioritizing cybersecurity and have the capacity to 
protect investors and customers from cyber related attacks. Our 
legislation aims to provide a better understanding of these issues 
through improved SEC disclosures.
  While this legislation is a matter for consideration by the Banking 
Committee, of which I am a member, this bill is also informed by my 
service on the Armed Services Committee and the Select Committee on 
Intelligence. Through this Banking-Armed Services-Intelligence 
perspective, I see that our economic security is indeed a matter of our 
national security, and this is particularly the case as the pandemic 
has forced many of us to be ever more dependent on technology and the 
Internet.
  Indeed, General Darren W. McDew, the former Commander of U.S. 
Transportation Command, which is charged with moving our military 
assets to meet our national security objectives in partnership with the 
private sector, offered several sobering assessments during an April 
10, 2018 hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He stated 
that ``cyber is the number one threat to U.S. Transportation Command, 
but I believe it is the number one threat to the Nation . . . in our 
headquarters, cyber is the commander's business, but not everywhere 
across our Country is cyber a CEO's business . . . in our cyber 
roundtables, which is one of the things we are doing to raise our level 
of awareness, some of the CEO's chief security officers cannot even get 
to see the board, they cannot even . . . see the CEO. So that is a 
problem.''
  With growing cyber threats that have resulted in serious breaches, we 
all need to be more proactive in ensuring our Nation's cybersecurity. 
This legislation seeks to take one step towards that goal by 
encouraging publicly traded companies to be more transparent to their 
investors and customers on whether and how their Boards of Directors 
and senior management are prioritizing cybersecurity.
  I thank the bill's supporters, including the North American 
Securities Administrators Association, the Council of Institutional 
Investors, the National Association of State Treasurers, the California 
Public Employees' Retirement System, the Bipartisan Policy Center, MIT 
Professor Simon Johnson, Columbia Law Professor Jack Coffee, the 
Consumer Federation of America, and Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth 
Magaziner, and I urge our colleagues to join in supporting this 
legislation.

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