[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.
____________________