[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 18805-18806]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            MORNING BUSINESS

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                          FOIA IMPROVEMENT ACT

  Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I am deeply disappointed that last night 
the House failed to pass the FOIA Improvement Act. This bipartisan bill 
was reported unanimously by the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, 
and it was the product of months of hard work by Senator Cornyn and me. 
Our bill is supported by more than 70 public interest groups that 
advocate for government transparency, and it passed out of the Senate 
unanimously. I would think that Members of the House Republican 
leadership, who have spent so much time on oversight of the Obama 
administration, would support the goal of making government more 
accountable and transparent, but instead of supporting this bill, they 
have chosen secrecy over sunlight.
  The FOIA Improvement Act would codify what the President laid out in 
his historic Executive order in 2009 by requiring Federal agencies to 
adopt a ``presumption of openness'' when considering the release of 
government information under FOIA. This bill would require agencies to 
find a foreseeable harm if they want to withhold information from the 
public. Prioritizing the people's interest in what their government is 
doing, our bill will reduce the overuse of exemptions to withhold 
information. Federal agencies have been required to apply this standard 
since 2009. They also used this same standard during President 
Clinton's terms in office. It was only during President George W. 
Bush's term of secrecy that this standard was rolled back. It appears 
the House leadership wants to return to that era. It should not matter 
who is in the White House, information about what their government is 
doing belongs to the people.
  In a political climate as divided as this, I had hoped that we could 
come

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together in favor of something as fundamental to our democracy as the 
public's right to know, that government transparency and openness would 
not just be the standard applied to the Obama administration but what 
is applied to every future administration. The FOIA Improvement Act 
would have done just that.

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