[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 121 (Thursday, July 25, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5504-S5505]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            ELIMINATE USELESS REPORTS ACT OF 2024--Continued

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.


                                S. 2073

  Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, I know we are waiting for our 
colleague from Indiana to come to the floor, so as we do, today, we are 
moving to a cloture vote on the Kids Online Safety Act. This is 
something Senator Blumenthal and I have worked on over the last 3 
years, and we are grateful that we are now to this day. We introduced 
this bill about 3 years ago, after a series of hearings where it became 
evident that platforms like Instagram knew they were causing rising 
rates of eating disorders, mental health issues among teenage girls, 
and yet they were downplaying these harms.
  Since then, we have seen more and more evidence that Big Tech is 
focused on putting profit over children's safety. Children are the 
product when they are online. We have seen internal documents from 
these companies that show they know what they are doing to our kids.
  We have worked tirelessly over the last 3 years to get this bill in 
shape. It will create new tools for parents to identify harmful 
behavior and to report abuse directly to those social media sites.
  It will provide new controls for families to support their children, 
including to opt out of algorithmic recommendations.
  It will require mandatory audits of the social media platforms to 
ensure that the platforms are mitigating harms to children.
  Perhaps most importantly, it will create a duty of care for online 
platforms to prevent and mitigate specific dangers to minors, including 
the promotion of suicide, eating disorders, substance abuse, and sexual 
exploitation.
  Without real and enforceable reforms, social media companies will 
only continue to pay lipservice to the issue of protecting children 
while putting profits over their safety.
  I am grateful to my colleague Senator Blumenthal and to Senator 
Schumer for his leadership in allowing the vote today.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Madam President, while we are waiting, I understand, 
for one of our colleagues to come and do a live UC, I just want to echo 
my colleague Senator Blackburn's thanks to all of our friends and 
colleagues in this body for their support.
  We have reached 70 cosponsors, and I anticipate with gratitude an 
overwhelming bipartisan majority in favor of this bill. I want to thank 
in particular Senator Schumer, who has provided leadership on this bill 
that I think is going to be long remembered. Certainly, it will be 
remembered by the parents and children who have driven advocacy for 
this measure. They may be in the gallery now. I don't know for sure. 
But I think on behalf of all of us, we owe them a great debt of thanks.
  And, again, this bill addresses a long-standing problem for this 
Nation. We can no longer rely on the promises of Big Tech. We can no 
longer take at face value the promises of ``trust me.'' ``We will take 
care of it.'' We are giving choices, and we are empowering young people 
and their parents, providing

[[Page S5505]]

safeguards, tools to disconnect from the blackbox algorithms, more 
transparency for those algorithms, and a duty of care and 
accountability for social media--for the first time, a real duty of 
care and accountability for them so they have to prevent harms that are 
destroying lives, literally destroying lives. And I think we are on the 
road, and we are going to keep pursuing this measure as long and hard 
as it takes to impose that accountability on Big Tech.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Madam President, today, the Senate takes a 
groundbreaking step towards ensuring our kids' online safety in the age 
of social media. As we all know, social media has many benefits; but 
with the benefits also comes risk. Many kids experience relentless 
online bullying. Kids' private personal data can be collected and used 
nefariously. Predators can exploit or target kids.
  And for kids who struggle with mental health, social media can 
magnify their anguish. I have met with the parents over and over again 
who have lost children in the flower of their lives because they were 
manipulated--nefariously, maliciously--by social media. We must stop 
that. And today, KOSA and COPPA represent something very urgent. These 
bills will provide the appropriate guardrails necessary to protect kids 
against online threats.
  It is not an exaggeration to say these bills would be the most 
important updates in decades to Federal laws that protect kids on the 
internet, and it is a very good first step. And we did it with both 
sides working together, bipartisan, as this body ought to work--and I 
try to get it to work that way all the time. I want to thank my 
colleagues who championed these bills: Senators Blumenthal and 
Blackburn, Markey and Cassidy, Chair Cantwell, Chair Durbin, Senator 
Klobuchar, and so many others who really led the charge.
  Once the Senate clears today's procedural vote, KOSA and COPPA will 
be on a glidepath to final passage early next week. We should not delay 
a moment more. We should get the job done. Getting to this point wasn't 
easy. It has been a long and winding and difficult road. But we all 
kept going because we knew the results would be worth it.
  Most importantly, I want to thank the true heroes of this effort: the 
parents whose kids tragically took their own lives because of what 
happened to them on social media. Some of the parents are here today. 
We salute you. It has been an honor to get to know these wonderful 
Americans over the past few months. We have met together; we felt pain 
together; we have cried together. What they have endured is 
incomprehensible. But amazingly and beautifully, instead of curing in 
darkness, as the scriptures say, these parents lit a candle. They 
turned their grief into grace.
  Today the Senate tells these parents: We hear you. We are taking 
action.
  I ask for the yeas and nays.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to 
     concur in the House amendment to S. 2073, a bill to amend 
     title 31, United States Code, to require agencies to include 
     a list of outdated or duplicative reporting requirements in 
     annual budget justifications, and for other purposes, with 
     amendment No. 3021.
         Charles E. Schumer, Maria Cantwell, Sheldon Whitehouse, 
           Jack Reed, Tammy Duckworth, Jeanne Shaheen, Tim Kaine, 
           Mark R. Warner, Edward J. Markey, Gary C. Peters, John 
           W. Hickenlooper, Angus S. King, Jr., Tammy Baldwin, 
           Raphael G. Warnock, Cory A. Booker, Catherine Cortez 
           Masto, Richard Blumenthal.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
motion to concur in the House amendment to S. 2073, a bill to amend 
title 31, United States Code, to require agencies to include a list of 
outdated or duplicative reporting requirements in annual budget 
justifications, and for other purposes, with Amendment No. 3021, shall 
be brought to a close?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. 
Menendez), the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla), and the Senator 
from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) are necessarily absent.
  Mr. THUNE. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator 
from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer), the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. 
Hoeven), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Kennedy), the Senator from 
Utah (Mr. Lee), the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis), the Senator from 
Kansas (Mr. Marshall), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran), the Senator 
from South Dakota (Mr. Rounds), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. 
Tillis), and the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Vance).
   Futher, if present and voting, the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. 
Tillis) would have voted ``yea,'' the Senator from Kansas (Mr. 
Marshall) would have voted ``yea,'' and the Senator from North Dakota 
(Mr. Hoeven) would have voted ``yea.''
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 86, nays 1, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 219 Leg.]

                                YEAS--86

     Baldwin
     Barrasso
     Bennet
     Blackburn
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boozman
     Braun
     Britt
     Brown
     Budd
     Butler
     Cantwell
     Capito
     Cardin
     Carper
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Collins
     Coons
     Cornyn
     Cortez Masto
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Duckworth
     Durbin
     Ernst
     Fetterman
     Fischer
     Gillibrand
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hagerty
     Hassan
     Hawley
     Heinrich
     Hickenlooper
     Hirono
     Hyde-Smith
     Johnson
     Kaine
     Kelly
     King
     Klobuchar
     Lankford
     Lujan
     Manchin
     Markey
     McConnell
     Merkley
     Mullin
     Murkowski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Ossoff
     Peters
     Reed
     Ricketts
     Risch
     Romney
     Rosen
     Rubio
     Schatz
     Schmitt
     Schumer
     Scott (FL)
     Scott (SC)
     Shaheen
     Sinema
     Smith
     Stabenow
     Sullivan
     Tester
     Thune
     Tuberville
     Van Hollen
     Warner
     Warnock
     Warren
     Welch
     Whitehouse
     Wicker
     Wyden
     Young

                                NAYS--1

       
     Paul
       

                             NOT VOTING--13

     Cramer
     Hoeven
     Kennedy
     Lee
     Lummis
     Marshall
     Menendez
     Moran
     Padilla
     Rounds
     Sanders
     Tillis
     Vance
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Booker). On this vote, the yeas are 86, 
the nays are 1.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in 
the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.
  Cloture having been invoked, the motion to refer and the amendments 
pending thereto fall.
  The senior Senator from Connecticut.


                           Order of Procedure

  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that all 
postcloture time be deemed expired; further, if cloture is invoked on 
the Neumann nomination on Tuesday, July 30, that upon disposition of 
the nomination, the Senate vote on the motion to concur in the House 
amendment to S. 2073 with amendment No. 3021; further, that if cloture 
is not invoked on the Neumann nomination, the vote on the motion to 
concur in the House amendment to S. 2073 with amendment No. 3021 occur 
at 2:15 p.m. on Tuesday, July 30.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________