[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16216-16249]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             CYBERSECURITY INFORMATION SHARING ACT OF 2015

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will 
resume consideration of S. 754, which the clerk will report.
  The legislative clerk read as follows:

       A bill (S. 754) to improve cybersecurity in the United 
     States through enhanced sharing of information about 
     cybersecurity threats, and for other purposes.

  Pending:

       Burr/Feinstein amendment No. 2716, in the nature of a 
     substitute.
       Burr (for Cotton) modified amendment No. 2581 (to amendment 
     No. 2716), to exempt from the capability and process within 
     the Department of Homeland Security communication between a 
     private entity and the Federal Bureau of Investigation or the 
     United States Secret Service regarding cybersecurity threats.
       Feinstein (for Coons) modified amendment No. 2552 (to 
     amendment No. 2716), to modify section 5 to require DHS to 
     review all cyber threat indicators and countermeasures in 
     order to remove certain personal information.
       Burr (for Flake/Franken) amendment No. 2582 (to amendment 
     No. 2716), to terminate the provisions of the Act after six 
     years.
       Feinstein (for Franken) modified amendment No. 2612 (to 
     amendment No. 2716), to improve the definitions of 
     cybersecurity threat and cyber threat indicator.
       Burr (for Heller) modified amendment No. 2548 (to amendment 
     No. 2716), to protect information that is reasonably believed 
     to be personal information or information that identifies a 
     specific person.
       Feinstein (for Leahy) modified amendment No. 2587 (to 
     amendment No. 2716), to strike the FOIA exemption.
       Burr (for Paul) modified amendment No. 2564 (to amendment 
     No. 2716), to prohibit liability immunity to applying to 
     private entities that break user or privacy agreements with 
     customers.
       Feinstein (for Mikulski/Cardin) amendment No. 2557 (to 
     amendment No. 2716), to provide amounts necessary for 
     accelerated cybersecurity in response to data breaches.
       Feinstein (for Whitehouse/Graham) modified amendment No. 
     2626 (to amendment No. 2716), to amend title 18, United 
     States Code, to protect Americans from cybercrime.
       Feinstein (for Wyden) modified amendment No. 2621 (to 
     amendment No. 2716), to improve the requirements relating to 
     removal of personal information from cyber threat indicators 
     before sharing.


                 Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act

  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, it is easy for the public and the press to 
focus on the issues that divide us in Washington, DC, and around the 
country. In fact, in Washington, DC, that is a world-class sport--
focusing on division, the things that separate us, the things where we 
clearly can't agree, on occasion--but today I am happy to highlight an 
area marked by broad consensus and true bipartisan spirit.
  In my time in the Senate I have learned that neither political party 
can get what they want done if they try to do it alone. The only way 
things happen are when consensus is achieved, and that takes a lot of 
hard work, a lot of cooperation, and a lot of collaboration. If your 
goal is 100 percent of what you want or nothing, my experience is you 
get nothing here.
  I know ``compromise'' sometimes is a dirty word in today's lexicon. I 
was just rereading a quote from Ronald Reagan, somebody conservatives 
look to as an example of the iconic conservative leader. He was pretty 
clear that if he could get 75 to 80 percent of what he wanted to 
achieve, he would say: I will take it, and I will fight about the rest 
of it another day.
  But the good news is we have found a way, amidst a lot of the 
division and polarization here, to achieve a bipartisan coalition on 
some important criminal justice reforms. Last week I stood with a 
bipartisan group and introduced the Sentencing Reform and Corrections 
Act of 2015. This has literally been years in the making, and it was a 
proud and consequential moment for the Senate.
  This week we have kept that momentum going. Senator Grassley, 
chairman of the Judiciary Committee, held a hearing Monday to discuss 
the new bill with various stakeholders, and tomorrow the Judiciary 
Committee will vote on sending the bill to the full Senate for 
consideration.
  This legislation is long overdue and a major step forward for the 
country. Similar to other successful efforts--and particularly those 
that inform my actions in the Senate--I look to experiences in the 
State and what has been tried, tested, and found to work and how it 
might apply to our job here at the national level.
  Back in 2007, in Austin, legislators were confronting a big problem. 
They had a major budget shortfall, an overcrowded prison system, and 
high rates of recidivism--repeat criminals--or as one former inmate 
referred to himself in Houston the other day at a roundtable I held, he 
called himself a frequent flier in the criminal justice system. I think 
we all know what he meant. But instead of building more prisons and 
hoping that would somehow fix the problem, these leaders in Austin 
decided to try a different approach. They scrapped the blueprints for 
more prisons, and they went to work developing reforms to help low- and 
medium-risk offenders who were willing to take the opportunity to turn 
around their lives and become productive members of society.
  I think we would have to be pretty naive to say that every criminal 
offender who ends up in prison is going to take advantage of these 
opportunities. They will not--not all of them will, but some of them 
will. Some of them will be remorseful. Some of them will see how they 
wasted their life, the damage they have done to their families, 
including their children, and they will actually look for an 
opportunity to turn around their lives after having made a major 
mistake and ending up in our prisons.
  In my State, we have a pretty well-deserved reputation for being 
tough on crime. I don't think anybody questions that, but we also 
realize we need to be smart on crime, and we need to look at how we 
achieve the best outcomes for the taxpayers and for the lives which can 
be salvaged and made productive through their hard work and the 
opportunity we have provided to them. We

[[Page 16217]]

also realized that even though incarceration does work--I don't think 
anybody can dispute the fact that when somebody is in prison, they are 
not committing crimes in our communities and across the country--but 
here is the rub: One day almost all of them will be released from 
prison. The question then is, Will they be prepared to live a 
productive life or will they be that frequent flier who ends up back in 
prison through the turnstile of a criminal life?
  So in Texas we improved and increased programs designed to help men 
and women to take responsibility for their crimes and to prepare them 
for reentry into society. The results were pretty startling. Between 
2007 and 2012, our overall rate of incarceration fell by 9.4 percent--
almost 10 percent--the crime rate dropped by 16 percent, and we saved 
more than $2 billion worth of taxpayer money and we were able to 
shutter three prison facilities in the process.
  I wish to return briefly to the crime rate. Former Attorney General 
Mukasey, a longtime Federal judge in New York, made the point that it 
is not the incarceration rate that measures the success of our 
sentencing practices, it is actually the crime rate.
  I know there are many people who feel we have overincarcerated, but I 
think we need to keep our eye on the ball; that is, on the crime rate. 
As a result of these reforms in Texas, our total crime rate dropped by 
16 percent, something worth paying attention to, but even more 
impressive than these statistics are the stories I have heard from 
former inmates who have actually taken advantage of this opportunity to 
turn around their lives. They paint a powerful picture of how these 
reforms can be used and the potential impact of this legislation across 
the country.
  Again, nobody is naive enough to think everybody is going to have a 
turnaround story and experience like this, but last week I had the 
chance to visit with a number of faith-based and nonprofit groups in 
Houston this time, as well as some of the former inmates they have 
supported--all of whom are helping inmates prepare to reenter society 
set up for success rather than failure.
  I was particularly struck by the story of one young man by the name 
of Emilio Parker. By the time he was 33, Emilio had spent almost half 
of his life in prison, including several years in solitary confinement. 
He started using drugs at a very early age, and after he became 
addicted he found more and more opportunities for crime to feed his 
addiction. Spending so much time in prison leaves little chance to 
acquire skills to succeed once you are outside, but fortunately for 
Emilio he found the support needed in a group called SER-Jobs for 
Progress in Houston. SER stands for Service Employment Redevelopment. A 
strange acronym, SER, but it is a community group whose mission is to 
equip people such as Emilio for the workforce. Their organization has 
helped turn around many lives in astounding ways, and Emilio was no 
exception.
  When he started the job readiness program SER offered, he didn't know 
how to turn on a computer, but with their help he graduated with the 
program, and it helped put him on a new direction in life--one that did 
not include prison.
  His success represents the tremendous opportunity we have before us 
to enact similar reforms on the Federal level in order to offer 
rehabilitation to inmates, reduce crime, and save taxpayers' hard-
earned money.
  Part of this legislation is to focus on the people most likely to 
take advantage of these opportunities, low- and medium-risk inmates. 
Indeed, what we offer them is credit, if they participate in these 
programs, to lesser confinement; for example, a halfway house or the 
like. These are the folks we believe are most likely to have learned 
from their experience in prison and will take advantage of the 
opportunity and turn around their lives. High-risk criminals who have 
made a life of crime I think are the least likely to take advantage of 
these programs and will not be available under this legislation. If it 
is successful, we might want to reconsider that and see whether it can 
be expanded.
  The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act truly represents how the 
Senate was meant to function: in a bipartisan manner that can effect 
long-lasting change for the benefit of the American people.
  I thank Chairman Grassley for his leadership--this would not have 
happened without him--and his commitment to bring us together to 
develop a bill that provides needed reforms to our criminal justice 
system. This is an extraordinary moment, where we have people on 
differing ends of the political spectrum coming together and finding a 
place where we can reach consensus.
  I am particularly pleased, as I have indicated, that the CORRECTIONS 
Act, authored by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and me, is such a key part 
of this package. Pretty much everyone agrees our prisons are 
dangerously overcrowded and that recidivism rates--when offenders land 
back in prison--are too high. The hard part is coming up with a 
solution that addresses these problems and yet breaks the cycle of 
reincarceration without jeopardizing public safety. And nothing we are 
doing will jeopardize public safety. That should be the litmus test of 
anything we do. I do believe this legislation strikes that balance by 
building on our experience in Texas and other States across the country 
and focusing on rehabilitation for low-level offenders and tough 
sentences for hardened criminals.
  I know the Presiding Officer, who was attorney general of his State 
of Alaska, has had a lot of experience in this area. I remember in law 
school one of the things we learned is that one of the goals of our 
criminal justice system is to rehabilitate people--to help them turn 
around their lives--but over the years we have almost forgotten that. I 
think what we have demonstrated by the Texas experience--and other 
experience--is that through faith-based volunteers, through job 
training, through helping people deal with their drug and alcohol 
addiction--which oftentimes exacerbates their problems and puts them 
behind bars, like Emilio--we can literally offer a helping hand for 
those who will take advantage of it. For those who are truly nonviolent 
and low-level offenders, this bill does represent a second chance.
  This bill also reforms and improves law enforcement tools, such as 
mandatory minimum sentences, without eliminating them or reducing them 
across the board. This was a tough negotiation because, in particular, 
some of our Senators were focused on sentence reduction, but I have to 
say I have been very aware that we can't handle this on an across-the-
board basis. Sentences have to be appropriate for the individual 
behavior and misconduct of the defendant themselves, not just some 
across-the-board panacea. By targeting those who are most likely to 
reoffend and teaching them how to succeed in the real world, we can not 
only reduce the crime rate--as our experience has shown in Texas--but 
help people turn around their lives and save billions of dollars.
  So at a time when the news likes to report the divisions and 
polarizations here in Washington--and there are plenty of important 
fights, and I am not opposed to fighting for principles, but there are 
a lot of areas like this where we can continue to work together 
productively. In fact, as I said earlier, the whole system of our 
Constitution was designed to force consensus before big decisions such 
as this are made. That is the way it should be because any time a 
minority or even one political party can force their will on the other 
party--as we have seen happen before--it doesn't end well. When our 
system works the way it should, by people of good faith coming 
together, seeing a problem, trying to come up with a solution, and 
working together on a bipartisan basis, our system works very well. I 
believe this is a good example.
  I look forward to working with all of our colleagues once this bill 
is voted out of the Judiciary Committee--which I believe it will be on 
Thursday--as we anticipate action here on the floor. Perhaps other 
Senators have other

[[Page 16218]]

ideas that will actually improve the legislation we have crafted so 
far, but I do believe the President is amenable to considering a bill 
in this area. He has said so publicly. Again, this is another of those 
rare opportunities we can have to work together with the President to 
try to solve a problem, help save money, and help people turn around 
their lives.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I will vote for the cyber security bill. 
Obviously, this is a whole new era of attack on our country. On 
September 11, 2001, we certainly realized that the two big oceans on 
either side of our country that had protected us for centuries--the 
Atlantic and the Pacific--no longer provided that protection because we 
could see, in the case of 2001, an attack from within. Thus, that 
revised so much of our defense strategy.
  Now we see the other kind of attack from within that is stealthy, 
insidious, and it is constant because the cyber attacks are coming to 
the U.S. Government as well as the U.S. industry, the business 
community, and U.S. citizens. The threat of cyber attack is vast and it 
is varied, from cyber criminals who steal personal information such as 
credit card and Social Security numbers, to foreign governments or 
state-sponsored groups that steal sensitive national security 
information, that steal our intellectual property, and that put at risk 
our economy and critical infrastructure.
  I want to give one example of obtaining Social Security numbers 
through cyber attacks or through other means. What we found in Tampa, 
FL, is that street crime actually subsided because the criminals had 
figured that either by cyber attacks or by other means of getting 
Social Security numbers, they could file false income tax returns and 
request refunds. So with a laptop, they could do what they had done 
previously by breaking into and entering someone's home to steal money, 
and it was so much easier. And that is just one small example, but just 
the theft of security numbers, which they use on false income tax 
returns--we think that is an attack which is costing the U.S. 
Government, in income tax, at least $5 billion a year.
  We have heard all about these attacks. Some of us in the Senate have 
been affected by these attacks. How many times have we heard that 
hackers have stolen our names, our addresses, our credit card numbers? 
Look what the hackers did to 40 million Target customers and 56 million 
Home Depot customers. They accessed checking and savings account 
information of 76 million J.P. Morgan Bank customers. They stole the 
personal information of 80 million customers of the health insurance 
company Anthem. Those are a few examples. Target, Home Depot, J.P. 
Morgan, Anthem--that is just a handful of examples. Also, remember that 
North Korea hacked Sony. Iran hacked the Sands Casino. China hacked the 
U.S. Government Office of Personnel Management. They have your 
information and they have my information because our information is 
with the Office of Personnel Management.
  The attacks keep coming. We are hearing from homeland security, 
defense, intelligence, and private sector leaders that we have to take 
this threat seriously and do something about it.
  I must say that it was one of the most frustrating things for this 
Senator, as a former member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, when 
we were trying to pass this very same bill 3 and 4 years ago and the 
business community, as represented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 
wanted nothing to do with it because they thought it was an invasion of 
their privacy. Times have changed, and the hacking continues.
  We see that finally we are able to get through and put together a 
bill on which I think we can get broad support from many different 
groups that are concerned about privacy and about sharing of 
information in the business community. This bill provides the means for 
the government and the private sector to share cyber threat information 
while taking care to protect the personal information and privacy of 
our people. We all face the same threat, and our adversaries use 
similar malware and techniques. Sharing information is critical to our 
overall cyber security.
  What this does is it directs the Director of National Intelligence, 
working with other agencies and building on the information sharing 
that is already taking place, to put cyber threat information in the 
hands of the private sector to help protect businesses and individuals. 
It authorizes private companies to monitor and defend their networks 
and share with each other and the government at all levels the cyber 
threats and attacks--all levels of government: State, local, tribal, 
and Federal. This is a point of contention because these activities are 
strictly voluntary. That is part of the problem we had 3 and 4 years 
ago in trying to enact this legislation. It is strictly voluntary, 
limited to cyber security purposes, and subject to reasonable 
restrictions and privacy protections.
  The bill also creates the legal certainty and incentives needed to 
promote further sharing of information.
  So what the legislation does is it sets up a hub or a portal inside 
the Department of Homeland Security where cyber threat information 
comes in, it is scrubbed of irrelevant personal information, and then 
it is shared inside and outside the government quickly and efficiently 
because, after all, if you have a cyber attack somewhere in America 
that suddenly has the opportunity to explode in its application, you 
have to have a central point at which you can coordinate that cyber 
attack. That is what this portal, this hub in the Department of 
Homeland Security is set up to do.
  This Senator feels that this bill balances the urgent need to address 
the threat of continued cyber attacks with privacy concerns. As the 
vice chair of the Intelligence Committee said yesterday, this bill is 
just the first step.
  I am delighted that Senator Feinstein just walked onto the floor of 
the Senate. I am quoting what the Senator said yesterday: We can and we 
ought to do more to improve our Nation's cyber security.
  I say through the Chair to the distinguished senior Senator from 
California that I have shared with the Senate my frustration over the 
last 4 years, as a former member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, 
that it was so hard to get people to come together. But now, finally, 
even though it is voluntary, we at least have a point at which, when a 
cyber attack comes somewhere in America, we can centralize that, it can 
be scrubbed of private information, and then it can be shared in our 
multiplicity of levels of government and the private sector to help 
defend against the cyber attacks.
  These cyber attacks are coming every day. They are relentless. If we 
don't watch out, what is going to happen has already happened to 
someone and it is going to be happening to innumerable American 
businesses. I strongly urge the Senate to pass this legislation.
  Since the senior Senator from California is on the floor, I wish to 
take this opportunity to thank her for her perspicacity, her patience, 
and her stick-to-itiveness. Finally, 4 years later, it is here, and we 
are going to pass it this week. I thank the Senator from California.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I would like to respond to what the 
distinguished Senator from Florida said.
  Senator, you know what a pleasure it was to have you on the 
intelligence committee. I think you understand the time that we have 
spent to get this bill done, which is now about 6 years, and to take 
this first step, not because it is a perfect step but because it is a 
first step that is voluntary, with new authorities that people and 
companies

[[Page 16219]]

can use if they want to, and if they don't want to, they don't have to. 
If they want to, it can be effective in enabling companies to share 
cyber security information and therefore protect themselves. I know you 
understand this. I am so grateful for that understanding and for your 
help.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I will.
  Mr. NELSON. Will the Senator share her thoughts with the Senate about 
how the Nation's national security defense depends on us being able--we 
have the guns, the tanks, the airplanes, the missiles, and all of that, 
but there is a new type of threat against the very security of this 
Nation, and this legislation is a first step.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I can try to. I remember that in 2008 there were two 
significant cyber bank robberies: the Royal Bank of Scotland, I think 
for $8 million, and Citibank for $10 million. This was not public right 
away because nobody wanted it known. Then you see the more recent 
attacks of Aramco being taken down, Sony, and it goes on and on. The 
information is not often shared publicly by companies who should be 
asking: This happened to our company; can you share anything that might 
help us handle this? That kind of thing doesn't happen because 
everybody is afraid of liability, and so it is very concerning.
  I remember when Joe Lieberman was chairman of the homeland security 
committee, which had a bill. As the Senator will remember, we had the 
information sharing part of that bill, and we sat down with the U.S. 
Chamber of Commerce, I believe on three occasions, to try to work out 
differences, and we couldn't. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is massive 
and all over the United States. It includes small businesses, medium-
sized businesses, and some big businesses, and there was deep concern 
among its members. That took years to work out.
  Finally, the Senate may be ready to take a first step, and this first 
step is to permit the voluntary sharing of cyber information, which, if 
it is stripped of private data, will be protected with liability 
immunity and protected because it goes through a single DHS portal and 
doesn't go directly to the intelligence community, which was a big 
concern to the private community. All of this has been worked out in 
order to try to come up with a basis for taking this first step.
  I am sorry the Senator is no longer on our committee because my 
friend was really a great asset, and Florida is lucky to have my friend 
and colleague as their Senator.
  This is just the beginning. All of the iterations on this cyber 
legislation have been bipartisan, so that has to say something to 
people. We have learned as we have done the drafting on this, and we 
have very good staff who are technically proficient. So they know what 
can work and what can't work.
  I hope I have answered that question from the Senator from Florida. 
If I can, I will go on and make some remarks on the managers' 
amendment.
  Yesterday Senator Burr and I spoke on this floor to describe the 
Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, which is now the pending 
business. Senator Burr filed a managers' package on behalf of both of 
us, and I will quickly run through that package.
  This amendment is the product of bipartisan negotiations over the 
past several weeks within the Intelligence Committee and with sponsors 
of other amendments to the bill. The managers' amendment makes several 
key changes to the bill to clarify authorization language, improve 
privacy protections, and make technical changes. It also--and I think 
this is of note--includes the text of 14 separate amendments. Those 
amendments were offered by our colleagues and I am pleased that we are 
able to add them to this legislation.
  In sum, this amendment has two main components. It makes important 
changes to the bill that we announced in August to address privacy 
concerns about the legislation. Second, it includes several amendments 
authored by our colleagues that had agreement on both sides of the 
aisle. I will run through these amendments that will be part of the 
managers' package, and I do so hopefully to reassure Members that these 
are positive amendments.
  First, it eliminates a provision on government use of cyber 
information on noncyber crime. The managers' amendment eliminates a 
provision in the committee-passed bill that would have allowed the 
government to use cyber information to investigate and prosecute 
``serious violent felonies.'' Eliminating this provision is a very 
significant privacy change. We made this change because it has been a 
top bipartisan concern and the provision had been used by privacy 
groups to claim that this is a surveillance bill. As the chairman made 
clear on the floor yesterday, it is not. One of the reasons it is not 
is because it prohibits the government from using information for 
crimes unrelated to cyber security.
  Let me be clear. The chairman said it, and I will say it today. This 
is not a surveillance bill. We have eliminated this provision and 
helped, I believe, to eliminate these concerns. So, please, let us not 
speak of this bill as something that it isn't.
  Second, it limits the authorization to share cyber threat information 
to cyber security purposes. The managers' amendment limits the 
authorization for sharing cyber threat information provided in the bill 
to sharing for cyber security purposes only. This is another 
significant privacy change, and it has been another top bipartisan and 
privacy group concern.
  Third, it eliminates a new FOIA exemption. The managers' amendment 
eliminated the creation of a new exemption in the Freedom of 
Information Act specific to cyber information that was in the 
committee-passed bill. Cyber threat indicators and defensive measures 
shared in accordance with the bill's procedures would still be eligible 
for existing FOIA exemptions, but it doesn't add new ones.
  Four, it ensures that defensive measures are properly limited. The 
bill allows a company to take measures to defend itself, as one might 
expect, and the managers' amendment clarifies that the authorization to 
employ defensive measures does not allow an entity to gain unauthorized 
access to a computer network.
  Five, it includes the Secretary of Homeland Security as coauthor of 
the government-sharing guidelines. The managers' amendment directs both 
the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, rather 
than solely just the Attorney General, to develop policies and 
procedures to govern how the government quickly and appropriately 
shares information about cyber threats. That should be a no-brainer.
  Six, it clarifies exceptions to the Department of Homeland Security's 
so-called portal. The managers' amendment clarifies the types of cyber 
information sharing that are permitted to occur outside the DHS portal 
created by the bill. Specifically, the bill narrows communications 
outside of the Department of Homeland Security portal regarding 
previously shared cyber threat information.
  Seven, it requires procedures for notifying U.S. persons whose 
personal information has been shared by a Federal entity in violation 
of the bill. The managers' amendment adds a modified version of Wyden 
amendment No. 2622, which requires the government to write procedures 
for notifying U.S. persons whose personal information is known or 
determined to have been shared by the Federal Government in a manner 
inconsistent with this act.
  Eight, it clarifies the real-time automated process for sharing 
through the DHS portal. Here the managers' amendment adds a modified 
version of the Carper amendment No. 2615, which clarifies that there 
may be situations under which the automated real-time process of the 
DHS portal may result in very limited instances of delay, modification 
or other action due to the controls established for the process. The 
clarification requires that all appropriate Federal entities agree in 
advance to the filters, fields or other aspects of the automated 
sharing system before such delays, modifications or other actions are 
permitted.
  Senator Carper has played a very positive role on this issue. He is 
the

[[Page 16220]]

ranking member on the homeland security committee. He sat down with 
both Senator Burr and me earlier this year. He has proposed some very 
good changes, and this is one of them, which is in the managers' 
package.
  Also, the clarification ensures that such agreed-upon delays will 
apply across the board uniformly to all appropriate Federal entities, 
including the Department of Homeland Security.
  This was an important change for both Senator Carper and Senator 
Coons and for the Department of Homeland Security. I am pleased we were 
able to reach agreement on it. Essentially, it will allow a fast real-
time filter--and I understand this can be done--that will do an 
additional scrub of information going through that portal before the 
cyber information goes to other departments to take out anything that 
might be related to personal information, such as a driver's license 
number, an account, a Social Security number or whatever it may be. DHS 
believes they can put together the technology to be able to do that 
scrub in as close to real time as possible.
  This should be very meaningful to the privacy community, and I really 
hope it is meaningful because I want to believe that their actions are 
not just to try to defeat this bill, but that their actions really are 
to make the bill better. If I am right, this is a very important 
addition.
  Again, I thank Senator Carper and Senator Coons, and I also thank the 
chairman for agreeing to put this in.
  Nine, it clarifies that private entities are not required to share 
information with the Federal Government or another private entity. This 
is clear now. This amendment adds the Flake amendment No. 2580, which 
reinforces this bill's core voluntary nature by clarifying that private 
entities are not required to share information with the Federal 
Government or another private entity.
  In other words, if you don't like the bill, you don't have to do it. 
So it is hard for me to understand why companies are saying they can't 
support the bill at this time. There is no reason not to support it 
because they don't have to do anything. There are companies by the 
hundreds, if not thousands, that want to participate in this, and this 
we know.
  Ten, it adds a Federal cyber security enhancement title. The 
managers' amendment adds a modified version of another Carper 
amendment, which is No. 2627, the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act 
of 2015, as a new title II of the cyber bill. The amendment seeks to 
improve Federal network security and authorize and enhance an existing 
intrusion detection and prevention system for civilian Federal 
networks.
  Eleventh, we add a study on mobile device security. The managers' 
amendment adds a modified version of the Coats amendment No. 2604, 
which requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to carry out a study 
and report to Congress on the cyber security threats to mobile devices 
of the Federal Government.
  I wish to thank Senator Coats, who is a distinguished member of the 
Intelligence Committee and understands this bill well, for this 
amendment.
  Twelfth, it adds a requirement for the Secretary of State to produce 
an international cyber space policy strategy. The managers' amendment 
adds Gardner/Cardin amendment No. 2631, which requires the Secretary of 
State to produce a comprehensive strategy focused on United States 
international policy with regard to cyber space.
  It is about time we do something like this. I am personally grateful 
to both Senators Gardner and Cardin for this amendment.
  Thirteenth, the managers' amendment adds a reporting provision 
concerning the apprehension and prosecution of international cyber 
criminals. The managers' amendment adds a modified version of Kirk-
Gillibrand amendment No. 2603, which requires the Secretary of State to 
engage in consultations with the appropriate government officials of 
any country in which one or more cyber criminals are physically present 
and to submit an annual report to appropriate congressional committees 
on such cyber criminals.
  It is about time that we get to the point where we can begin to make 
public more about cyber attacks from abroad because it is venal, it is 
startling, it is continuing, and in its continuation, it is growing 
into a real monster. Let there be no doubt about that.
  Fourteenth, it improves the contents of the biennial report on 
implementation of the bill. The managers' amendment adds a modified 
version of the Tester amendment No. 2632, which requires detailed 
reporting on, No. 1, the number of cyber threat indicators received 
under the DHS portal process--good, let's know--and, No. 2, the number 
of times information shared under this bill is used to prosecute 
certain cyber criminals. If we can catch them, we should. We should 
know when prosecutions are made. Then, No. 3 is the number of notices 
that were issued, if any, for a failure to remove personal information 
in accordance with the requirements of this bill.
  Mr. President, I am spending a great deal of time on these details 
because there are rumors beginning to circulate that the bill does this 
or does that, which are not correct. This managers' package is a major 
effort to encapsulate what Members on both sides had concerns about. 
And I think the numbers of Republican and Democratic amendments that 
are incorporated are about equal.
  Fifteenth, this managers' amendment improves the periodic sharing of 
cyber security best practices with a focus on small businesses. The 
managers' amendment adds the Shaheen amendment No. 2597, which promotes 
the periodic sharing of cyber security best practices that are 
developed in order to assist small businesses as they improve their 
cyber security.
  I think this is an excellent amendment and Senator Shaheen should be 
commended.
  Sixteenth, the managers' amendment adds a Federal cyber security 
workforce assessment title. The managers' amendment adds Bennet-Portman 
amendment No. 2558, the Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Assessment Act, 
as a new title III to this bill. The title addresses the need to 
recruit a highly qualified cyber workforce across the Federal 
Government.
  There are just a few more, but, again, I do this to show--and the 
chairman is here--that we have listened to the concerns from our 
colleagues and we have tried to address them, so nobody should feel we 
are ramming through a bill and that we haven't considered the views 
from others. The managers' amendment is, in fact, a major change to the 
bill that reflects this collegial--sometimes a little more exercised, 
but collegial--discussion. Does the chairman agree?
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I appreciate the opportunity to say that I 
totally agree. The vice chairman and I have worked aggressively for the 
entirety of the year where we had differences, and we found ways to 
bridge those differences, where we heard from Members, where we heard 
from associations, where we heard from businesses. We worked with them 
to try to accommodate their wishes, as long as it stayed within the 
spirit of what we were trying to accomplish, which is information 
sharing in a voluntary capacity.
  The vice chair and I came to the floor yesterday and said if an 
amendment--if an initiative falls outside of that, then we will stand 
up and oppose it because we understand the role this legislation should 
play in the process.
  The vice chairman said this is the first step. I don't want to scare 
Members, but there are some other steps. We are not sure what they are 
today or we would be on the floor suggesting those, but if we can't 
take the first step, then it is hard to figure out what the next and 
the next and the next are. So I am committed to continuing to work with 
the vice chairman and, more importantly, with all Members to 
incorporate their great suggestions as long as we all stay headed in 
the same direction, and I know the vice chairman and I are doing that.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I thank the chairman very much. If I 
may, through the Chair, I want the

[[Page 16221]]

chairman to know how much I appreciate this tack he has taken to be 
flexible and willing throughout this process, which extends into this 
managers' package. So I believe--I truly believe--what we have come up 
with in this managers' package and what Members have contributed to it 
makes it a better cyber bill. I know the chairman feels the same way. 
We can just march on shoulder to shoulder and hopefully get this done.
  I will finish up the few other items I have to discuss because I want 
people who have concerns to listen to what is being said because these 
changes have a major impact on the bill.
  Next, No. 17 establishes a process by which data on cyber security 
risks or incidents involving emergency response information systems can 
be reported. The managers' amendment adds Heitkamp amendment No. 2555, 
which requires the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish a 
process by which a statewide interoperability coordinator may report 
data on any cyber security risk or incident involving emergency 
response information systems or networks. This is a process for 
reporting, and certainly we need to know more.
  Next, No. 18 requires a report on the preparedness of the health care 
industry to respond to cyber security threats, and the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services to establish a health care industry cyber 
security task force. The managers' amendment adds Alexander-Murray 
amendment No. 2719. This is a reporting requirement to improve the 
cyber security posture of the health care industry.
  I don't think anyone wants to have their health care data hacked 
into. This is deeply personal material and it should be inviolate.
  The provision requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to 
submit a report to Congress on the preparedness of the health care 
industry to respond to cyber security threats. If we really want to 
help protect health care information, we have to know what is going on, 
and that is what this amendment enables. It also requires the Secretary 
to establish a health care industry cyber security task force.
  Next is No. 19, which requires new reports by inspectors general. The 
managers' amendment adds a modified version of the Hatch amendment No. 
2712, which requires relevant agency inspectors general to file reports 
with appropriate committees on the logical access standards and 
controls within their agencies.
  Let's know what standards and what controls they have. I think it is 
a very prudent request of the Senator from Utah, and I am glad we were 
able to include it.
  Next is No. 20, which adds a requirement for the DHS Secretary to 
develop a strategy to protect critical infrastructure at the greatest 
risk of a cybersecurity attack. The managers' amendment adds the 
Collins amendment No. 2623, which requires DHS to identify critical 
infrastructure entities at the greatest risk of a catastrophic cyber 
security incident.
  This is where we have had a number of concerns recently. The 
chairman's staff and my staff are working on this. Remember, this is a 
voluntary bill, and we do not want any language that might be 
interpreted to imply that this is not a voluntary bill. I know Senator 
Collins has a lot of knowledge of this area, and I believe we are going 
to be able to work this out.
  This amendment does not convey any new authorities to the Secretary 
of Homeland Security to require that critical infrastructure owners and 
operators take action, nor does it mandate reporting to the Federal 
Government. Its intent, which I applaud, is for the government to have 
a better understanding of those critical infrastructure companies that, 
if hacked, could cause extremely significant damage to our Nation.
  In conclusion, I would like to thank my colleagues for their 
thoughtful and helpful amendments. I am pleased that we have such a 
fulsome managers' package. I believe this managers' package strengthens 
our bill. It adds important clarifications, including meaningful 
privacy protections, it does not do operational harm, and it further 
improves the strong bill that the Intelligence Committee passed by a 
strong vote of 14 to 1 earlier this year.
  I wanted to do this so that all Members know what is in the managers' 
package, and both the chairman and I believe that these additions are 
in the best interests of making a good bill even better.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). The Senator from Alaska.
  Mr. SULLIVAN. Mr. President, I wish to acknowledge the remarks of the 
distinguished Senator from California and the Senator from North 
Carolina, and I thank them for their important work on the cyber bill. 
I know we are going to be discussing a lot of that, and why it is 
important to our national security.


                   National Defense Authorization Act

  This afternoon I wish to talk about another important bill that is 
moving its way through the process of becoming law, and that is the 
National Defense Authorization Act, the NDAA.
  As did many of my colleagues, I spent last week back home in my great 
State of Alaska. In Alaska, it is hard not to see the strength and 
pride in our military everywhere, every day, everywhere we go. I will 
provide a few examples.
  We have what is called the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention, 
an annual convention that we have with a very important group of 
Alaskans. The theme this year was ``Heroes Among Us'' at the 
convention. It was about heroes among us because Alaskan Natives serve 
in the U.S. military at higher rates than any other ethnic group in the 
country--a real special kind of patriotism. I had the honor, really, to 
meet dozens of these great veterans from all kinds of wars. I met 
veterans from World War II, the Attu campaign. A lot of Americans don't 
realize that Alaska was actually invaded by the Japanese and we had to 
fight to eject them from the Aleutian Islands. I met veterans from the 
Philippines campaign under General MacArthur. I met veterans from the 
Korean war who served at the Chosin Reservoir. I had a great 
opportunity to meet an Honor Flight coming back from Washington, our 
veterans from World War II, Korea. Of course, just walking around 
Anchorage you see and hear military members training all the time. We 
have a great base, JBER, with F-22s ripping through the sky, our 
military members keeping us safe. That sound is what we call in Alaska 
the sound of freedom, when you hear those jets roaring. It is 
everywhere.
  In Alaska, we love our veterans and our military. We honor them. We 
know that providing for the national defense of our great nation, 
taking care of our troops, and taking care of our veterans is certainly 
one of the most important things we do in the Senate. Of course, it is 
not just Alaska. I am sure when the Presiding Officer was home in the 
great State of Nebraska there was the same patriotic feeling of 
supporting our troops and the importance of our national defense.
  For the most part, that feeling exists here in Washington. I have 
been honored to sit on two committees that focus on these issues a lot: 
on the Armed Services Committee and Veterans' Affairs Committee. These 
are very bipartisan committees and where support for our national 
defense, our troops, and our veterans is across the board on both sides 
of the aisle--no doubt about it. But I do say ``for the most part'' 
because, as the Presiding Officer knows, nothing is truly as it seems 
in Washington, DC.
  I have spoken on the floor, as a number of Senators have, about what 
motivated a number of us last year to actually throw our hat in the 
ring and run for the U.S. Senate. Like the Presiding Officer, I know a 
lot of us were concerned about the country going in the wrong 
direction, about a dysfunction in Washington, about a government that 
has run up an $18 trillion debt, no economic growth, our credit rating 
being downgraded, no amendments being brought to the Senate floor, no 
budget for the Federal Government attempted, no appropriations bills 
attempted for years. The most deliberative body in

[[Page 16222]]

the world was certainly a body that had been shut down, and a lot of us 
saw a need to change that.
  So we are starting to change that. We are back to regular order. We 
are talking about debating bills. There have been dozens, if not 
hundreds, of amendments already this year--last year there were only 14 
amendments--and we passed a budget. We passed 12 appropriations bills 
to fund the government--very bipartisan--and we are focusing on the 
issues, whether it is cyber security, defense or taking care of our 
veterans, something the vast majority of the American people want us to 
focus on.
  For example, we brought to the floor two critical appropriations 
bills just a couple of months ago--the Defense appropriations bill and 
the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs bill. These passed out 
of the Appropriations Committee by huge bipartisan majorities, 27 to 3 
on the Defense appropriations bill and 21 to 9 on the Military 
Construction and Veterans Affairs bill. This is what the American 
people want us to do--get back to regular order, fund the government, 
and put together a budget. So far, so good. That is what we are called 
to do.
  Here is where the dysfunction of Washington, DC, began to rear its 
head again: These bills that are critical to our troops, our defense, 
and our veterans--all with strong bipartisan support in committee--were 
brought to the floor of the Senate and they were filibustered. They 
were filibustered. The bill to fund our military, that funds our 
national defense and takes care of our veterans was filibustered--
blocked--stopped by our friends on the other side of the aisle. I am 
not sure why. I still don't know why. As a matter of fact, I haven't 
seen anyone who actually voted to filibuster these important bills come 
down to the Senate floor and say: Here is why we voted against funding 
our troops. Here is why we voted against funding our veterans.
  I think the overwhelming majority of Americans, regardless of what 
State they live in, would say: No, no, no. You need to vote for these 
bills that are funding our military, veterans, and national defense. 
That is one of the most important things we want you to do. The bottom 
line on those votes is that our troops, our veterans, and our national 
defense were shortchanged because they didn't get funded.
  Let me move on to the Defense authorization bill, what I want to talk 
about today. This is an annual undertaking that sets the policies, 
programs, and defense strategy for our military. It also authorizes 
spending on national defense and our military. Again, it is certainly 
one of the most important tasks this body does, and I think most 
Senators on both sides of the aisle would agree with that.
  Once again, as with the appropriations bill, we were working closely 
together on a bipartisan basis. I was on the Armed Services Committee 
and this moved through the committee and it was very bipartisan. It was 
voted out on a strong bipartisan vote to come to the floor. I commend 
Chairman McCain, who did a great job on that as the chairman of the 
Armed Services Committee, and Ranking Member Reed of Rhode Island did a 
fantastic job. I must admit that this Senator feared a little bit of a 
replay in terms of the scenario we saw with the appropriations bill--
meaning strong bipartisan support out of the committee and then coming 
to the Senate floor and being filibustered. I feared this, in part, 
because at one point during the Defense authorization debate the 
minority leader came and stated that the Defense authorization bill was 
``a waste of time.''
  A waste of time? Tell that to the marines, the soldiers, the airmen, 
the sailors, and their families--those members of the military who are 
defending our country right now--that this bill was a waste of time. I 
guarantee they would not agree with that statement. Fortunately, 
neither did the Senate. To the contrary, the Senate has now voted on 
the Defense authorization bill twice, once as an original bill and once 
as part of a conference report with very strong bipartisan and veto-
proof majorities, with 71 Senators the first time around and 73 when we 
voted on it a couple of weeks ago. I mention the phrase ``veto-proof 
majority'' because incredibly the President of the United States, the 
Commander in Chief, has said he is going to veto this bill when it 
comes to his desk. It was just sent to him yesterday.
  I don't know how the Commander in Chief is going to explain that to 
the troops or to their families or to the American people or to the 73 
Senators who voted for that bill. It is important to recognize that 
although we may think this is all inside Washington and no one is 
really following it, something like this impacts morale when the 
Commander in Chief is saying: Hey, troops, I am going to veto this.
  This is a copy of the Marine Corps Times. I subscribe and read the 
Marine Corps Times. A lot of marines and members of the military read 
this all over the world. Guaranteed, our men and women deployed 
overseas read the Marine Corps Times. In this edition there is an 
article about how President Obama has vowed to veto the Defense 
authorization bill. We have marines fighting overseas who are reading 
this, and they are not getting it.
  This week in the Marine Corps Times:

       The MOAA [Military Officers Association of America] and 
     other military advocacy groups have argued against the 
     presidential veto, calling the legislation a critical policy 
     measure that cannot be delayed. The measure has been signed 
     into law in each of the last 53 years, and includes a host of 
     other specialty pay and bonus reauthorizations.

  In a statement from MOAA officials in this article that thousands of 
our Active-Duty troops are reading:

       The fact is that we are still a nation at war, and this 
     legislation is vital to fulfilling wartime requirements. 
     There comes a time when this year's legislative business must 
     be completed, and remaining disagreements left to be 
     addressed next year.

  To govern is to choose. To govern is to prioritize.
  President Obama's administration has spent years negotiating the Iran 
deal and this body spent weeks debating the President's Iran deal. We 
put a lot of time into it, and the President's administration put an 
enormous amount of time into it.
  On the Iran deal, part of the hope from Secretary Kerry, the 
President, and others was that once it got passed by the U.S. 
Congress--by the way, on a partisan minority vote--that Iran would 
somehow start to change its behavior and say: Look, America is someone 
we want to partner with.
  Since the Senate passed the Iran deal, let's see what has happened. 
Iran has sent troops to Syria. Iran has backed Hamas, which is now 
engaging in knife-murdering attacks against Israelis. The Iranian 
leader has stated that Israel shouldn't exist within the next 25 years. 
Iran has violated the U.N. Security Council ballistic missile 
resolutions, and this Senator and many others think Iran has already 
violated the deal by firing ballistic missiles with a range of 1,000 
miles. Iran has sentenced an American reporter for the Washington Post 
for spying. I don't think the behavior that a lot of the supporters for 
this deal anticipated is happening.
  More broadly, I think it is important to put into context what is 
going on with our national security, the NDAA, the moving forward with 
the Iran deal, and the President's threat to veto the NDAA. The 
President's Iran deal, once implemented, will be giving tens of 
billions of dollars to Iran, the world's biggest state sponsor of 
terrorism--but the President threatens to veto the Defense bill that 
actually funds our military. The President's Iran deal will lift 
sanctions on Iranian leaders such as General Soleimani, who literally 
has the blood of American soldiers on his hands--but the President 
threatens to veto U.S. troop pay bonuses and improved military 
retirement benefits. The President's Iran deal gives Iran access to 
conventional weapons, ballistic missile technology, and advanced 
nuclear centrifuges--but the President threatens to veto funding for 
advanced weapons systems for our Armed Forces. Finally, the President's 
Iran deal certainly is going to allow more funding for terrorist groups 
like Hezbollah and Hamas--but the President is threatening to veto a 
bill that provides additional resources for our troops to fight 
terrorists such as ISIS.

[[Page 16223]]

  To govern is to choose. To govern is to prioritize. Has it really 
come to the point where the White House is more focused on freeing up 
funds for Iranian terrorists than funding America's brave men and women 
in uniform? I certainly hope not.
  I ask all of my fellow Senators who voted for this bill in a very 
strong bipartisan way and my fellow Alaskans and Americans to reach out 
to the White House. Let them know that you oppose the President's veto 
of this bill.
  What we need is a strong military, particularly now. We need to 
support our troops and our veterans, and we need President Obama to 
sign--not veto--this bill which is critical to our national defense.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak as in 
morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


   43rd Anniversary of the Clean Water Act and EPA's Clean Water Rule

  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, this past Sunday was the 43rd anniversary 
of the enactment of the Clean Water Act. In 1972, the Clean Water Act 
amended the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, which was the first 
major U.S. law to address water pollution. This law was enacted with 
bipartisan support--I could really say on a nonpartisan issue--because 
the Congress in 1972 and the administration recognized that clean water 
was in our national interest. It was important to our public health, it 
was important to our environment, and it was important to our economy. 
This law established the basic structure for regulating pollutant 
discharges into the waters of the United States, and it has been the 
cornerstone of our efforts to protect our Nation's waterways.
  Several times we have done cost analysis of the cost of regulation 
versus the benefit of clean water. It is overwhelmingly on the side of 
the benefit to our community, better health, better environment, and a 
better economy. On this occasion I would like to speak about the recent 
efforts to protect America's waterways, such as the EPA's final clean 
water rule, and why we should defend these efforts and allow nationwide 
implementation.
  In May, the EPA released their final clean water rule, which 
completed another chapter in the Clean Water Act's history. As the 
Clean Water Act worked to restore the health of our Nation's water 
resources, we saw the U.S. economy grow, demonstrating that America 
does not have to choose between the environment and a robust economy. A 
clean environment helped build a robust economy.
  Two Supreme Court decisions, however, call on the EPA and the Army 
Corps to clarify the definitions of the waters of the United States. 
The EPA's final rule restores some long overdue regulatory certainty to 
the Clean Water Act. I might tell you, in reviewing this rule, it 
basically reestablishes the longstanding understanding of what were the 
waters of the United States and what was subject to regulation.
  This rule allows the Clean Water Act to continue its important 
function of restoring the health of our Nation's waters. The rule 
became effective this August, but immediately following the 
implementation and on this anniversary, there have been unprecedented 
attacks on the final rule. As the rule came out, a Federal district 
court in North Dakota granted a preliminary injunction, blocking its 
implementation.
  The EPA continued to implement the rule in all States but the 13 
States that filed the suit that led to the injunction. However, in 
October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decided to 
stay the implementation of the rule for the entire country. This 
attempt to overturn the clean water rule is dangerous, shortsighted, 
and a step away from good governance, public health, and commonsense 
environmental protection.
  Let me tell you what is at risk. What is at risk are our Nation's 
streams and 200 million acres of wetlands. Over half of our streams and 
over 200 million acres of wetland are now at risk of not being under 
regulation under the Clean Water Act.
  These protections are needed for drinking supplies for one out of 
every three Americans. I am very concerned about the impact on all 
States, but let me just talk for a moment, if I might, about my own 
State of Maryland. Marylanders rely upon our water as part of our life. 
We live on the water. Seventy percent of Marylanders live in coastal 
areas. We depend upon clean water. We are particularly concerned about 
our drinking supply of water as well as the health of the Chesapeake 
Bay.
  We are at risk with the waters of the United States confusion out 
there because of the Supreme Court decisions and now the stay of this 
rule by the court. The Clean Water Act and EPA's final rules are 
essential to the health of the Chesapeake Bay. Wetland protections are 
especially critical to the Chesapeake Bay because the wetlands soak up 
harmful nutrient pollution.
  This past Monday, I was in Howard County at a NOAA announcement of 
the Chesapeake Bay B-WET grant. These are bay, watershed, education, 
and training funds. These are small dollars that go to institutions to 
help educate our children. In this case, the Howard County Conservancy 
received a grant because they bring all of the students from the Howard 
County public schools to an outdoor experience to rate and judge the 
streams in our community.
  The streams, of course, flow into the Chesapeake Bay. They are giving 
us a report card. I must tell you, that report card is not going to be 
as good as it should be. Without the protections in the Clean Water 
Act, it is going to be more difficult to meet the goals we need to in 
order to protect the Chesapeake Bay and all of the watersheds in this 
country for future generations.
  The health of the bay is closely linked to upstream water quality and 
the restoration and protection of headwaters. It should go without 
saying that these waters are located in States beyond Maryland's 
borders. Improvements to upstream water quality are positively 
correlated with the water quality of the bay. We need a national 
program. That is what the Clean Water Act is. It is a national 
commitment because we know that the watersheds go beyond State borders.
  In Maryland, we set up the Chesapeake Bay Partnership. Yes, Virginia 
and Maryland are working together, but we also have the cooperation of 
Pennsylvania, of New York, of West Virginia, of Delaware. Why? Because 
these States contribute to the water supplies going into the Chesapeake 
Bay. We need to protect these waters.
  Protecting of America's waters is critically important to public 
health. So what is at stake here? What is at stake if we derail the 
clean water rule? The public health of the people of Maryland and all 
States around this country. Public health and the environment in my 
State and the States of my colleagues have become seriously at risk 
from this decision that hinders this essential commonsense guidance.
  I hope the court moves swiftly to affirm the rule in its final 
decision and restores the invaluable protections needed for the 
drinking supplies of one out of every three Americans. As we recognize 
the anniversary of the Clean Water Act, I want us to continue to defend 
this Nation's waters from pollution. This act ensures that every 
citizen receives the clean water they need and deserve.
  The EPA's final clean water rule provides further regulatory clarity 
that we need to ensure the health of our water resources. I urge my 
colleagues to continue to defend and fight for clean water as we 
recognize the 43rd anniversary of the Clean Water Act. Every Congress 
should, as its legacy, add to the protections that we provide for clean 
water in this country. That should be the legacy of every Congress, but 
we certainly don't want to hinder that record. Therefore, we need to 
implement the EPA's clean water rule nationwide. I urge my colleagues 
to support such action.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.

[[Page 16224]]




                    Amendment No. 2612, as Modified

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I call for the regular order with 
respect to the Franken amendment No. 2612.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment is now pending.


                Amendment No. 2612, as Further Modified

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask that the amendment be further 
modified to correct the instruction line in the amendment.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment is so further modified.
  The amendment, as further modified, is as follows:

       Beginning on page 4, strike line 9 and all that follows 
     through page 5, line 21, and insert the following:

     system that is reasonably likely to result in an unauthorized 
     effort to adversely impact the security, availability, 
     confidentiality, or integrity of an information system or 
     information that is stored on, processed by, or transiting an 
     information system.
       (B) Exclusion.--The term ``cybersecurity threat'' does not 
     include any action that solely involves a violation of a 
     consumer term of service or a consumer licensing agreement.
       (6) Cyber threat indicator.--The term ``cyber threat 
     indicator'' means information that is necessary to describe 
     or identify--
       (A) malicious reconnaissance, including anomalous patterns 
     of communications that appear to be transmitted for the 
     purpose of gathering technical information related to a 
     cybersecurity threat or security vulnerability;
       (B) a method of defeating a security control or 
     exploitation of a security vulnerability;
       (C) a security vulnerability, including anomalous activity 
     that appears to indicate the existence of a security 
     vulnerability;
       (D) a method of causing a user with legitimate access to an 
     information system or information that is stored on, 
     processed by, or transiting an information system to 
     unwittingly enable the defeat of a security control or 
     exploitation of a security vulnerability;
       (E) malicious cyber command and control;
       (F) the harm caused by an incident, including a description 
     of the information exfiltrated as a result of a particular 
     cybersecurity threat;
       (G) any other attribute of a cybersecurity threat, if 
     disclosure of such information is not otherwise prohibited by 
     law; or

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Thank you.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.


                    Amendment No. 2581, as Modified

  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I call for the regular order with respect to 
the Cotton amendment No. 2581.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The amendment is now pending.
  The Senator from Louisiana.


                        Mental Health Reform Act

  Mr. CASSIDY. Mr. President, for 25 years I have worked in the 
Louisiana public hospital system. You cannot help but notice when you 
work in a public hospital system, but also in private hospitals, how 
often mental health issues are directly a part of a patient who comes 
to see you. It does not just have to be a physician seeing patients in 
the emergency room. Each of our families, mine included, has a family 
member or a friend with serious mental illness. It is nonpartisan. It 
cuts across demographic lines.
  If I go before a group anywhere in my State, indeed anywhere in the 
Nation, and bring up the need to address serious mental illness, all 
heads nod yes. It is true of my family. It is true of yours. It is true 
of almost everybody watching today. I am old enough to remember when 
people would not speak of cancer. There was a stigma associated with 
having cancer. That is long gone, much to our advantage, but for some 
reason, there continues to be a stigma, a shame, associated with mental 
illness. I will argue that stigma and sense of shame has retarded what 
we can do.
  This is something that we have to address, we have to discuss, and we 
have to go forward. The discussion right now, frankly, is being driven 
by tragedy: Lafayette, Louisiana; Newtown; Charleston; Oregon; 
Tennessee. We have heard stories and they are beyond heartbreaking, but 
what is not spoken of are the broken families, the parents that know 
there is something wrong with their child but do not know where to go 
to receive help, ending up in an overcrowded emergency room or with 
their child in a jail or prison when a more appropriate setting would 
be elsewhere.
  It is in the midst of these terrible tragedies that at least we can 
hope they can serve as a catalyst for society and Congress to begin to 
fix America's broken mental health system. Maybe something good can 
happen, even from tragedies as horrific as these.
  The question is, If one of the roles of Congress is to respond to 
societal needs that justify Federal involvement, should we not ask 
ourselves why has there been such a failure to address the issue of 
serious mental illness? I am pleased to say that my colleague, Senator 
Chris Murphy, and I wish to change that. We have introduced the 
bipartisan Mental Health Reform Act, which now has 10 cosponsors, both 
Republican and Democrat.
  Our bill begins to fix our mental health system and attempts to 
address the root cause of mass violence, which is recognized but 
untreated mental illness. How does our bill begin to do so? First, 
patients too often cannot get the care they need and too often have a 
long delay between diagnosis and treatment. Access delayed is access 
denied. Access is hampered by a shortage of mental health providers and 
too few beds for those with serious mental illness who truly need to be 
hospitalized.
  Related to this, right now people with major mental illness tend to 
die from physical illness as much as 20 years younger than someone who 
does not have serious mental illness. As a physician, I know if we 
treat the whole patient, if we integrate care, it is better. Medicaid, 
though, by policy, will not pay for a patient to see two physicians on 
the same day.
  So imagine this: A family practitioner sees a patient who clearly has 
major mental illness and, because the patient is right there, would 
like him to walk down the hallway to see her friend the psychiatrist, 
to have both addressed immediately while the patient is there. Medicaid 
will not pay the psychiatrist. On the other hand, the patient might be 
seeing a psychiatrist and have seriously high blood pressure or 
evidence for diabetes out of control, but the psychiatrist cannot say: 
Wait a second. Let me walk you down the hallway to see my colleague, 
the family practitioner, because Medicaid will not pay for that. By the 
way, private health insurance will. This is a policy change we need for 
public health insurance. Our bill would allow patients to use both 
mental and physical health services the same day.
  Secondly, most people have their first episode of serious mental 
illness between the ages of 15 and 25, starting down a path that ends 
with their life and their family's lives tragically altered. This bill 
attempts to identify those young folks, stopping that path from ever 
opening up, and preventing the first episode of serious mental illness 
or, if it does occur, leading them on a path of wholeness, a path 
towards wellness.
  Another thing our bill does is it establishes a grant program focused 
on intensive early intervention for children who demonstrate those 
first signs that can evolve into serious mental illness that may only 
occur in adolescence or adulthood. A second grant program supports 
pediatricians who are consulting with mental health teams. This program 
has already been successful in States such as Massachusetts and 
Connecticut.
  Third, without appropriate treatment options, prisons, jails, and 
emergency rooms have become the de facto mental health care providers. 
More than three times as many mentally ill are housed in prisons and 
jails than in hospitals, according to the National Sheriffs' 
Association. Overcrowded U.S. emergency rooms have become the treatment 
source of last resort for psychiatric patients. We incentivize States 
to create alternatives where patients may be seen, treated, and 
supervised in outpatient settings, as opposed to being incarcerated.
  Our bill creates an Under Secretary for Mental Health within the U.S. 
Department of Health and Human Services. This Under Secretary's 
responsibility would be to coordinate mental health services across the 
Federal system to help identify and implement effective and promising 
models of care.
  It reauthorizes successful programs, such as the community mental 
health block grant and State-based data collection. The bill also 
increases funding

[[Page 16225]]

for critical biomedical research on mental health. On top of this, it 
strengthens the transparency and enforcement of mental health parity by 
requiring the U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and 
Treasury to audit the implementation of the mental health parity 
movement to determine the parity between mental and physical health 
services.
  Our bill does other things, but the most important thing it does is 
it helps prevent tragedies. It helps families, and it helps those 
broken individuals affected by mental illness become whole.
  In 2006, William Bruce of Maine was a 24-year-old who needed help. He 
suffered with schizophrenia and had been hospitalized. Without 
contacting his parents, our broken health care system allowed William 
to be released--even though his doctors said he was ``very dangerous 
indeed for release to the community.'' Sadly, 2 months later he 
murdered his mother at home with a hatchet. This story is tragic and 
heartbreaking, and even worse, it could possibly have been prevented if 
we had worked then to fix our broken mental health system. We wish to 
fix it now so there is not another such episode in the future.
  The time for mental health reform is now. If not now, when? If not 
us, who? If not now and not us, there will be more Lafayettes, 
Newtowns, Charlestons, Tennessees, Oregons, and more broken families.
  This bill does not wave a magic wand, but it puts us on a path where 
we can say these things that once occurred perhaps no longer will.
  Thank you.
  I yield back the remainder of my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I am on the floor today to join my good 
friend from Louisiana, Senator Cassidy, as we formally introduce to the 
Chamber the Mental Health Reform Act of 2015. I thank him personally 
for all the time he has put into this not only as a Member of the 
Senate but previous to this as a Member of the House of 
Representatives.
  This effort is patterned after a bill Senator Cassidy and my 
namesake, Representative Tim Murphy of Pennsylvania, worked on for 
years in the House of Representatives.
  I wish to begin by sharing a story with you--that is the way Senator 
Cassidy ended. I will talk about a woman from Bloomfield, CT, named 
Betsy. She has a 28-year-old son, John, who suffers from 
schizoaffective disorder. It is a serious mental illness whose signs 
began showing when John was 15 years old. He was hospitalized--think 
about this--15 different times between the ages of 15 years old and 18 
years old, generally only for time-limited stays ranging from about 5 
days to maybe 2 weeks. Despite the severity of the condition, he was 
told upon discharge there was really nowhere for him to go, no 
permanent solution for this young man. He was just an adolescent, but 
his parents were told there was no place for him to be treated. What 
resulted was not only John getting to a breaking point but his parents 
as well.
  As we know, serious mental illness doesn't affect just the individual 
person, it also affects family members who are trying to care for them.
  Without needed supports and services, John became increasingly remote 
and psychotic until he was hospitalized again. Upon discharge this 
time, John went to a shelter--the only place he could go. Since he 
couldn't follow the shelter's rules, John, whom his mother said was 
``young, fragile, vulnerable and mentally unstable,'' was kicked out to 
survive homeless on the streets.
  John finally--finally--was able to get a bed at a place that was able 
to house him for longer than 2 weeks, Connecticut Valley Hospital. That 
ability to get John stabilized for a longer period of time, get him 
into a real treatment plan, allowed him to then transfer into a 
community bed in Middletown, CT. That is where John is today. John has 
been living successfully out in the community for 3 years. But we spent 
millions of dollars on John's care, which led to no better outcome for 
him. We wasted millions of dollars and potentially thousands of hours 
of time because he was shuttled in and out of hospitals without any 
long-term treatment and without any hope for him and his family.
  What Senator Cassidy and I are trying to say is that there is a 
better way. We are already spending billions of dollars on inadequate 
mental health care in this country. We need to do better, but a lot of 
this is just about spending money in a more effective way.
  One of the programs our bill helps fund is an early-intervention 
program for individuals who show their first episode of psychosis. The 
program the National Institutes of Mental Health just evaluated--with 
findings released yesterday--was the RAISE Program. And in Connecticut 
we run a similar program called the STEP Program. What this study 
showed yesterday is that if you provide wraparound services to an 
individual who shows a first episode of psychosis--comprehensive, 
immediate services--you can get a dramatic decrease in the number of 
episodes they show later in life. In Connecticut, we found that the 
STEP Program reduced hospitalizations by nearly 50 percent after 
individuals were given those wraparound services immediately. When they 
did need hospitalizations later on, they were on average 6 days less 
than when you didn't provide those wraparound services.
  These are the types of programs that could have helped Betsy's son 
John early so that he could have started his recovery as a teenager 
rather than in his twenties. They could have saved the U.S. Government 
and the State of Connecticut a lot of money as well.
  The trendlines beyond the anecdotes are very disturbing. Mental 
illness has been on the rise for the past few decades. One out of five 
adults today is coping with mental illness. If you look at the time 
period from 1987 to 2007, the number of people with mental disorders 
who qualify for SSI has risen by 2\1/2\ times. From 1980 to 2000, we 
put up to 72,000 people in our jails who prior to 
deinstitutionalization would have been in psychiatric hospitals--people 
who are in jail primarily or only because of their psychiatric 
disorder.
  Just in the last 2 years alone, the number of people that HRSA 
estimates to be living in a mental health shortage area has gone from 
91 million--that is pretty bad to start with--up to 97 million. That is 
just 2 years of data. Since 2005, we have closed 14 percent of our 
inpatient beds in this country. So what is happening is a dramatic 
increase in the number of people who are suffering from mental illness 
and a rather dramatic decrease in both outpatient and inpatient 
capacity. We have to provide more resources to meet the demand, but we 
also have to spend money better.
  Senator Cassidy covered our piece of legislation accurately, so I 
won't go into detail, but I wish to talk about our process. What we 
decided to do at the beginning of this year was bring together all of 
the groups--the provider groups, the advocacy groups, the hospital 
groups--who have worked on this issue for years and then bring in those 
in the House of Representatives who have been working on this as well: 
Representative Tim Murphy and Eddie Bernice Johnson.
  They have a bipartisan reform bill in the House. We decided not to 
start from scratch but to take their piece of legislation, knowing that 
it has a good chance of passage in the House, and try to build on it 
and improve it.
  We spent 6 months meeting with all of these groups and coming up with 
our own consensus product that today has the support of a cross-section 
of behavioral advocacy groups all across the country, including the 
National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the National Council for 
Behavioral Health, the American Psychological Association, the American 
Psychiatric Association, social workers, the American Foundation for 
Suicide Prevention, and the list goes on. We also went out to our 
colleagues as well, knowing that nothing in the Senate can pass without 
not just bipartisan support but bipartisan support that reflects the 
diversity of both of our caucuses. We think we were able to build a 
good foundation of cosponsors for this bill: Senators

[[Page 16226]]

Franken, Stabenow, Blumenthal, and Schumer on the Democratic side, and 
Senators Murkowski, Collins, Vitter, and Capito on the Republican side. 
We hope that this coalition of groups on the outside, this alliance 
with a reform effort in the House that we believe has legislative legs, 
and a good one-for-one with some cosponsors in the Senate, will allow 
us to move this bill forward, and we have to. We have to.
  So I will end where Senator Cassidy began his remarks, which is why 
the Nation's attention has turned to this question of how we reform our 
mental health system. We lived through a tragic and gut-wrenching 
episode of mass destruction in Newtown, CT. Senator Cassidy has had his 
own experience with mass tragedy. The reality is that the reasons why 
we see these episodes of mass shootings are complicated, but if you 
read the report on Adam Lanza's intersection with Connecticut's mental 
health system, you will see that it failed him. It failed him and it 
failed his family. I don't know that correcting the mental health 
system alone would have changed what happened in Newtown, but I know 
that if we fix our mental health system, we will have a downward 
pressure on the episodes of mass violence that happen in this country.
  But, as Senator Cassidy said, we should fix our mental health system 
because it is broken for everyone, regardless of whether an individual 
has a predisposition towards violence, because, of course, the reality 
is that people with mental illness are much more likely to be the 
victims of violence than they are to be the perpetrators of violence. 
So there is no inherent connection between mental illness and violence. 
But these mass shootings have drawn the Nation's attention to what 
Congress can agree on right now that will try to improve public safety 
across this Nation.
  We are not going to get a background checks bill this year. I hoped 
we could, but we won't. What we can get is a mental health reform bill, 
and that will help everyone--the case in Maine, the individual in 
Bloomfield, and millions of others who have had a miserable experience 
with a mental health system that is broken today, in part because of 
lack of coordination and in part because of lack of funding.
  I am so thankful to Senator Cassidy for being with me on the floor 
today. I am grateful for his friendship and for his cooperation on 
bringing this truly bipartisan Mental Health Reform Act to the floor of 
the Senate. We recommend it to our colleagues. We look forward to the 
upcoming hearings in the HELP Committee that we both sit on, and we 
hope to be back on the floor of the Senate as soon as possible to move 
forward on its passage through this body.
  I say thank you to my colleague in the Senate, Senator Cassidy.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise to express my strong support for 
the bill before the Senate, S. 754, the Cybersecurity Information 
Sharing Act, and I want to thank the bill's managers for their 
leadership in drafting this bill and putting a lot of hard work into 
the bill.
  Cyber security challenges that threaten us are very real challenges. 
We receive almost daily reminders of the importance of effective cyber 
security to protect our private data and the safety and security of the 
entire Nation from cyber attacks. These attacks have compromised the 
personal information of so many Americans as well as sensitive national 
security information. That national security issue might even be the 
biggest of the ones we hope to deal with.
  The legislation before us will encourage the government and the 
private sector to work together to address these cyber security 
challenges. This bill helps create a strong legal framework for 
information sharing that will help us respond to these threats. The 
bill authorizes private companies to voluntarily share cyber threat 
information with each other and with the government. In turn, the bill 
permits the government to share this type of information with private 
entities.
  The bill reduces the uncertainty and, most importantly, the legal 
barriers that either limit or prohibit the sharing of cyber threat 
information today. At the same time, the bill includes very significant 
privacy protections to strike a balance between maintaining security 
and protecting our civil liberties. For example, it restricts the 
government from acquiring or using cyber threat information except for 
limited cyber security purposes.
  So, as I did at the beginning, I want to salute the leadership of the 
chair and vice chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Senator 
Burr and Senator Feinstein, for their efforts on this bill. I know from 
the last couple of Congresses that this type of legislation isn't easy 
to put together. In the 112th Congress, I cosponsored cyber security 
legislation along with several of my colleagues. This involved working 
across several committees of jurisdiction. Last Congress, as then-
ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, I continued to work with the 
Select Committee on Intelligence and others on an earlier version of 
this bill. Unfortunately, Democratic leadership never gave the Senate 
an opportunity to debate and to vote on that bill in the last Congress.
  Senators Burr and Feinstein were undaunted, however, and this 
Congress they diligently worked and continued to seek input from 
relevant committees of jurisdiction, including the Judiciary Committee 
that I chair. They incorporated the views of a broad range of Senators 
and worked to address the concerns of stakeholders outside of the 
Congress. This has produced their managers' amendment.
  This is a bill that enjoys broad bipartisan support. As with most 
pieces of legislation that come before the Senate, it is not a perfect 
piece of legislation from any individual Senator's point of view, but 
in finding common ground, it has turned out to be a good bill that 
addresses a very real problem.
  It is time for us to do our job and to vote. This is how the Senate 
is supposed to work. Now is the time for action because the question 
isn't whether there will be another cyber attack, the question is when 
that attack will happen.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I am here to briefly talk on S. 754, the 
cyber security bill. Yesterday Vice Chairman Dianne Feinstein and I 
came to the floor and encouraged our Members who had amendments or who 
had an interest in debating the bill to come to the floor. It was my 
hope that we could finish in a couple of days with the cooperation of 
Members. We have not gotten that level of cooperation. Therefore, this 
will take several more days to finish. But it doesn't lessen the 
importance for those Members who have amendments in the queue--meaning 
they are pending--to come to the floor and talk about their amendments 
if they would like to. At some point, we will culminate this process, 
and those amendments that have yet to be disposed of will have votes 
with a very limited amount of debate time included.
  It is my hope that we will have a wholesome debate and that people 
will have an opportunity to know what is in this bill if they don't 
today. But more importantly, through that debate we are able to share 
with the American people why a cyber security bill is so important and, 
more importantly, why we have done it in a way that we think it will be 
embraced and endorsed by not just corporate America but by individuals 
throughout the country.

[[Page 16227]]

  Let me announce today that this bill will be done either Monday 
evening or Tuesday morning based upon what the leadership on both sides 
can agree to as it relates to the debate. The Vice Chair and I also 
came to the floor and we made this statement: We have worked 
aggressively in a bipartisan way to incorporate in the managers' 
package, which is currently pending, 14 amendments, and 8 of those 
amendments were included in the unanimous consent agreement made 
earlier this year when we delayed consideration of the bill until the 
day when we moved forward. There were several amendments on which we 
weren't able to reach an agreement or that we believed changed the 
policy significantly enough that this was not just an information 
sharing bill that was voluntary for corporations throughout this 
country. In the absence of being able to keep this bill intact in a way 
that we thought we needed to, the Vice Chairman and I have agreed to 
lock arms and to be opposed to those additional amendments.
  Having said that, the debate to date has focused on the fact that 
there are technology companies across this country that are opposed to 
this bill. Yesterday the Vice Chairman and I repeatedly reminded our 
colleagues and the American people that this is a voluntary bill. There 
is nothing mandatory in it. The reality is that if you don't like what 
is in this, if for some reason you don't want to participate in what I 
would refer to as a community watch program--it is real simple; it is 
voluntary--do not participate. Choose not to inform the Federal 
Government when hackers have penetrated your system and stolen personal 
data out of it. Just choose not to tell us. But do not ruin it for 
everybody else. In a minute I am going to go through again why I think 
the cyber security bill should become law, why I think this is the 
first step of how we protect the personal data of the American people, 
and why hundreds, if not thousands, of businesses support this 
information sharing bill. But I can't stress that enough for those who 
oppose this. Most of them are, in fact, companies that hold the most 
private data in the world. Let me say that again. Those who are 
expressing opposition to this bill hold the largest banks of personal 
data in the world.
  The decision as to whether they are for the bill or against the bill 
is their decision. The decision whether they utilize this voluntary 
program to further protect the personal data that is in their system is 
between them and their customers. But I have to say that it defies 
reason as to why a company that holds that much personal data wouldn't 
at least like to have the option of being able to partner with the 
Federal Government in an effort to minimize data loss, whether it is at 
their company or whether it is in their industry sector or whether it 
is in the global economy as a whole.
  The last time I checked, the health of U.S. businesses was reliant on 
the health of the U.S. economy, and the health of the U.S. economy is 
affected by the health of the global economy. I know the Presiding 
Officer understands that because he was in business like I was for 17 
years.
  It really does concern me that one could be opposed to something that 
insulates the U.S. economy from having an adverse impact by the cyber 
security act and believes that they are OK even though it might tank 
the U.S. economy.
  At the end of the day, I want to try to put this in 101 terms, the 
simplest terms of what the information sharing bill does. I am going to 
break it into three baskets. It is about business to business. This 
bill allows a company that has been hacked--where somebody has 
penetrated their computer system and has access to their data--to 
immediately pick up the phone and call their competitor and ask their 
competitor whether they have had a similar penetration of their system.
  It is only reasonable to expect that the first person you would go to 
is a company that has a business that looks exactly like yours. In that 
particular case, this legislation provides that company with protection 
under the anti-trust laws. Anti-trust forbids companies from 
collaborating together. What we say is that if it has do with 
minimizing the loss of data, we want to allow the collaboration of 
competitors for the specific reason of discussing a cyber attack.
  The Senate recognizes I have designed something in this that doesn't 
require a corporate lawyer to sit in the room when the decision is 
made. I have no personal dislike for lawyers other than the fact that 
they slow things down. To minimize the loss of data means you have to 
have a process that goes in real time from the bottom of the chain all 
the way to the decisionmaking and the communication back down, not only 
to that business, but to the entire economy. Having a lawyer that has 
to think whether we can legally do this defeats the purpose of trying 
to minimize data loss. So we give them a blanket exemption under the 
anti-trust laws so they know up front that they can pick up the phone 
and call their competitor, and there is no Justice Department that will 
come down on them as long as they confine it to the discussion of cyber 
attack.
  At the same time we initiate what I call business to government, 
which means that when the IT department is talking to their competitor, 
the IT department can put out a notification through the Federal portal 
that they have been attacked, and that initiates the exchange of a 
limited amount of information that has been predetermined by everybody 
in the Federal Government who needs to do the forensics of who 
attacked, what tool they used, and what defensive mechanism could be 
put up in the way of software that would eliminate the breach.
  In the statute we have said, one, you can't transmit personal data 
unless it is absolutely crucial to understanding the forensics of the 
attack. We have also said in statutory language to the government 
agencies: If for some reason personal data makes it through your 
filters, you cannot transmit that personal data anywhere else within 
the Federal Government or to the public.
  We have gone to great lengths to make sure that personal data is not 
disclosed through the notification process of a hack. I understand that 
the personal data has already been accessed by the individual who 
committed the act, but we want to make sure that the government doesn't 
contribute to the distribution of that data.
  In order to create an incentive in a voluntary program for a business 
to initiate that notification to the Federal Government, we provide 
liability protection. Anytime a company allows personal data or data on 
their business to get out, there could potentially be a shareholder's 
suit. What we do is provide a blanket liability protection to make sure 
that a company can't be sued for the government notification of a 
security breach where data has been removed and it is in the best 
interest of the government to know it, to react to it, and for the 
general population of businesses in America to understand it.
  So we have business-to-business collaboration with your competitor, 
anti-trust protection, business-to-government liability protection, no 
personal data transmitted, and the last piece is government to 
business.
  It is hard for me to believe that the government didn't have the 
statutory authority to convey to businesses across America when a cyber 
attack is in progress. The Federal Government has to be asked to come 
in and typically will be asked by the company that has been attacked, 
but how about their competitors? How about the industry sector? How 
about the whole U.S. economy? There is no authority to do that. This 
bill creates the authority in the Federal Government to receive that 
information from a company that has been penetrated, to process it, to 
understand who did it, to understand the attack tool they used, to 
determine the defensive mechanism of software that it can be put on, 
and then to notify American businesses that there is an attack 
happening now, and here is the attack tool and software you can buy off 
the shelf and put on your computer system to protect you. That is it. 
That is the entire information sharing bill, and it is voluntary.

[[Page 16228]]

  I will touch on eight items very briefly. Why is there a need for 
cyber legislation? I don't want to state the obvious, but we have 
already seen that individuals and nation states penetrate the private 
sector and steal personal data, and the Federal Government can steal 
personal data. I thought it would hit home with my colleagues when the 
Office of Personnel Management was breached, and now we are up to 22 to 
24 million individuals who were compromised. More importantly, the 
personal data at OPM extended to every individual who had ever applied 
for a security clearance, who had ever been granted security clearance, 
and who had security clearances and are now retired, but for some 
reason that application remained in the database. That application, 
which consists of 18 pages, has the most personal information one can 
find. It lists your parents and their Social Security numbers, your 
brothers, your sisters, where you lived since you graduated from 
college. It even has a page that asks you to share the most obvious way 
that someone might blackmail you. It has probably some of the most 
damaging personal information that one can have breached.
  Cyber attacks have harmed multiple U.S. companies. If this weren't 
serious, would the President of China and the President of the United 
States, when they met several weeks ago, have come to an agreement 
about how they would intercede if one country or the other commits a 
cyber attack against each other? Probably not.
  Our bill is completely voluntary, and I think it is safe to say that 
those who want to share data can, in fact, share data on this.
  I mentioned the words ``real time.'' What we want to do is create a 
real-time system because we want a partnership. We want a partnership 
with other private companies and we want a partnership with the private 
and public sector, and you can't get a partnership by mandating it. All 
you can get is an adversarial relationship. We maintain that voluntary 
status in the hope that the sharing of that information is, in fact, 
real time. We can control--once you transmit to the Federal 
Government--how to define ``real time.'' I have no control over a 
private company's decision once they know they have been breached to 
the point that they actually make a notification to the Federal 
Government, but with the liability protection and anti-trust coverage, 
we are convinced that we are structured from the beginning to create an 
incentive for real time to take place.
  We protect personal privacy. Many have come to the floor and have 
suggested that this is a surveillance bill. Let me say to my colleagues 
and to the American people: There is no capability for this to become a 
surveillance bill. The managers' amendment took those items that people 
were concerned with and eliminated it. We can be accused of a lot of 
things, but to accuse this of being a surveillance bill is either a 
sign of ignorance or a sign that one is being disingenuous. It is not a 
surveillance bill. Be critical of what we are attempting to do, be 
critical of what we do, but don't use the latitude to suggest that this 
is something that it is not.
  We require private companies and the government to eliminate any 
irrelevant personal, identifiable information before sharing the cyber 
threat indicators or putting up defensive mechanisms.
  This bill does not allow the government to monitor private networks 
or computers. It does not let government shut down Web sites or require 
companies to turn over personal information.
  This bill does not permit the government to retain or use cyber 
threat information for anything other than cyber security purposes, 
identifying a cyber security threat, protecting individuals from death 
or serious bodily or economic harm, protecting minors, or investigating 
limited cyber crime offenses.
  This bill provides rigorous oversight and requires a periodic 
interagency inspector general's report to assess whether the government 
has violated any of the requirements in this bill. The report also will 
assess any impact this bill may have on privacy and civil liberties. In 
the report, we require the IG to report to us whether anybody does 
anything outside what the statute allows them to do, but we also ask 
the IG to make a gut call on whether we have protected privacy and 
civil liberties.
  Finally, our managers' amendment has incorporated an additional 
provision to enhance privacy protections first. Our managers' amendment 
omitted the government's ability to use cyber information to 
investigate and prosecute serious and violent felonies. Let me raise my 
hand and say I am guilty. I felt very strongly that that should have 
been in the bill. If we find during an investigation that an individual 
has committed a felony that is not related to a cyber attack, I thought 
we should turn that information over to law enforcement but, no, we 
dropped it. I don't want there to be any question as to whether this is 
an effective cyber information sharing bill.
  Our managers' amendment limited cyber threat information sharing 
authorities to those items that are shared for cyber security purposes. 
Both of these changes ensure that nothing in our bill reaches beyond 
the focus of cyber security threats that are intended to prevent and 
deter an attack, and nothing in this bill creates any potential for 
surveillance authorities.
  Now, as I said, despite rumors to the contrary, this bill is 
voluntary. It is a voluntary threat indicator to share with authorities 
and does not provide in any way for the government to spy on or use 
library and book records, gun sales, tax records, educational records, 
or medical records. There is something in that for every member of 
every State.
  I can honestly look at my librarians and say we haven't breached the 
public libraries' protection of personal data. I will say librarians 
are not fans of this legislation. I don't think they have read the 
managers' amendment that spells out the concerns we heard and then 
said: This can't go there. I am not sure we can statutorily state it 
any clearer than what we have done.
  Given that cyber attackers have hacked into, stolen, and publicly 
disclosed so much private, personal information, it is astounding to me 
that privacy groups would oppose this bill. It has nothing to do with 
surveillance, and it seeks to protect private information from being 
stolen.
  There are no offensive measures. This bill ensures that the 
government cannot install, employ or otherwise use cyber security 
systems on private sector networks. In other words, no one can hack 
back into another computer, even if the purpose is to protect against 
or squash a cyber attack. It can't be done. It is illegal.
  The government cannot retain or use cyber threat information for 
anything other than cyber security purposes, including preventing, 
investigating, disrupting, and prosecuting limited cyber crimes, 
protecting minors, and protecting individuals from death or serious 
bodily harm, or economic harm.
  The government cannot use cyber threat information in regulatory 
proceedings. Let me state that again. The government cannot use cyber 
threat information in regulatory proceedings. If somebody believes this 
is not voluntary and that there is some attempt to try to get a 
mandatory hook in here where regulators can turn around and bypass the 
legislative responsibility of the Congress of the United States, let me 
just say, we are explicit. It cannot be done. But we are also explicit 
that the government cannot retain this information for anything other 
than the list of items I discussed. This provides focused liability 
protection to private companies that monitor their own systems and 
share cyber threat indicators and defensive mechanisms in accordance 
with the act, but the liability protection is not open-ended. This 
doesn't provide liability protection for a company that engages in 
gross negligence or willful misconduct. I am not a lawyer, but I have 
been told that ties it up pretty tightly; that it makes a very small, 
narrow lane that companies can achieve liability protection, and that 
lane means they are transferring that information to the Federal 
Government.

[[Page 16229]]

  Last, independent oversight. This bill provides rigorous oversight. 
It requires a periodic interagency inspector general's report to assess 
whether the government has violated any of the requirements of this 
act. The report also will assess any impact that this bill may have on 
privacy and civil liberties as well as an assessment of what the 
government has done to reduce any impact.
  This bill further requires an independent privacy and civil liberties 
oversight board to assess any impact this bill may have on privacy and 
civil liberties and is, in fact, reviewed internally by an inspector 
general. The inspector general checks to make sure they live by the 
letter of the law. The inspector general makes an assessment on the 
privacy and civil liberties, and we set up an independent board to look 
at whether, in fact, privacy and civil liberties have been protected.
  I say to my colleagues, if there is more that they need in here, tell 
us what it is. The amendment process is open.
  Here is where we are. Privacy folks don't want a bill, period. Some 
Members don't want a bill, period. I get it. I am willing to adapt to 
that. I only need 60 votes for this to pass, and then I have to 
conference it with the House that has two different versions. Then I 
have to go to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, and I have to 
convince the President and his whole administration to support this 
bill. Let me quote the Secretary of the Department of Homeland 
Security. They support this bill. The National Security Council 
tomorrow is going to come out in support of this bill. Why? Because 
most people recognize the fact that we need this, that this is the 
responsible thing to do. This is why Congress was created.
  If, in fact, there are those who object, don't participate. I say to 
those businesses around the country, I am not going to get into your 
decisionmaking, although I think it is flawed. You hold most of the 
personal data of any companies out there. Yet you don't want to see any 
coordinated effort to minimize data loss in the U.S. economy. I think 
that is extremely shortsighted. I think your customers would disagree 
with you, but the legislation was written in a way that allows you to 
opt out and to say: I don't want to play in this sandbox.
  I say to my colleagues and to the American people: Is that a reason 
for us not to allow the thousands of companies that want to do it, 
representing hundreds of thousands and millions of customers who want 
to protect their credit card number, their health records, all the 
personal data that is out there on them--if they want to see that 
protected, should they not have that done because some companies say 
they don't want to play? No. We make it voluntary, and we allow them to 
opt out. They can explain to their customers why. If I am with another 
tech company and they are participating in this, they must be more 
interested in protecting my data. I think it is a tough sell myself as 
a guy in business for 17 years.
  I know what is up here. Some are looking at this as a marketing tool. 
They are going to go out and say: We don't participate in transferring 
data to the Federal Government. Oh, really. Wait until the day you get 
penetrated. Wait until the day they download all of that personal 
information on all of your customers. You are going to be begging for a 
partnership with the Federal Government. Then we are going to extend it 
to you, whether you liked it or not, whether you voted for the bill or 
supported the bill or spoke in favor of the bill or ever participated 
in it. If we pass this bill, which I think we will, they will have an 
opportunity to partner with the Federal Government and to do it in an 
effective way. In the meantime, I think there will be just as many 
businesses using a marketing tool that says: We like the cyber 
information sharing bill, and if we ever need to use it, we are looking 
forward to partnering with the Department of Homeland Security, the 
FBI, and the National Security Agency because we want to minimize the 
exposure of the loss of data our customers could have.
  Mark my words. There is a real battle getting ready to brew here. 
Again, putting on my business hat, I like the idea of being able to go 
out and sell the fact that I am going to partner if something happens 
much better than selling the pitch that I am going to do this alone. 
Think about it. A high school student last week hacked the personal 
email account of the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security 
and the Director of the CIA. This is almost ``Star Trek.'' ``Beam me 
up, Scotty.''
  There are people who believe that this is just going to go away. It 
is not going away. Every day there is an attempt to try to penetrate a 
U.S. company, an agency of the Federal Government for one reason: to 
access personal data. The intent is there from individuals and from 
nation states. For companies that think this is going to go away or 
think they are smart enough that it is not going to happen to them, I 
have seen some of the best and they are one click away from somebody 
downloading and entering their system and that click may not be 
protected by technology. It may be the lack of ability of an employee 
to make the right decision on whether they open an email, and, boom, 
they have just exposed everybody in their system.
  So I will wrap up because I see my good friend and colleague Senator 
Wyden is here. We will have several days, based upon the process we 
have in front of us, to talk about the good, and some will talk about 
the bad, which I don't think exists, but let me assure my colleagues 
that the ugly part of this--the ugly part of this--is that cyber theft 
is real. It doesn't discriminate. It goes to where the richest pool of 
data is. In the case of the few companies that are not supportive of 
this bill, they are the richest depositories of personal data in the 
world. I hope they wake up and smell the roses.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Scott). The Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I would like to inform my colleague, the 
distinguished chairman of our Intelligence Committee, I am always 
thinking about the history of the committee. I believe Chairman Burr, 
the ranking minority member Senator Feinstein, and I have been on the 
Intelligence Committee almost as long as anybody in history.
  I always like to work with my colleague. This is an area where we 
have a difference of opinion. I am going to try to outline what that is 
and still try to describe how we might be able to work it out.
  Mr. BURR. May I thank my colleague?
  Mr. WYDEN. Of course.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, I thank my colleague. I think he 
diplomatically referred to me as old, but I know that wasn't the case. 
He is exactly right. We have served together for a long time. We agree 
on most issues. This is one that we disagree on, but we do it in a 
genuine and diplomatic way. Contrary to maybe the image that some 
portray to the American people, we fight during the day and we can have 
a drink or go to dinner at night, and we are just as likely to work on 
a piece of legislation together next week. So that is what this 
institution is and it is why it is so great.
  Mr. WYDEN. Well said. There is nothing better than having Carolina 
barbecue unless it is Oregon salmon. Yes, we old jocks, former football 
players and basketball players, we have tough debates and then we go 
out and enjoy a meal.
  Here is how I would like to start this afternoon. The distinguished 
chairman of the committee is absolutely correct in saying that cyber 
security is a very substantial problem. My constituents know a lot 
about that because one of our prominent employers, SolarWorld, a major 
manufacturer in renewable energy, was hacked by the Chinese simply 
because this employer was trying to protect its rights under trade law. 
In fact, our government indicted the People's Liberation Army for their 
hacking into this major Oregon employer. So no question that cyber 
security is a major problem.
  Second, there is no question in my mind that information sharing can 
be very valuable in a number of instances.

[[Page 16230]]

If we know, for example, someone is associated with hackers, malware, 
this sort of thing, of course it is important to promote that kind of 
sharing. The difference of opinion is that I believe this bill is badly 
flawed because it doesn't pass the test of showing that when we share 
information, we have to have robust privacy standards or else millions 
of Americans are going to look up and they are going to say that is 
really not cyber security. They are going to say it is a surveillance 
bill. So that is what the difference of opinion is.


                    Amendment No. 2621, as Modified

  Let me turn to how I have been trying to improve the legislation. I 
am going to speak for a few minutes on my amendment No. 2621 to the 
bill that we have been discussing and that is now pending in the 
Senate. Obviously, anybody who has been watching the debate on this 
cyber security bill has seen what we would have to call a spirited 
exchange of views. Senators are debating the substance of the 
legislation and, as I just indicated to Chairman Burr and I have 
indicated to ranking minority member Senator Feinstein, there is 
agreement on a wide variety of points and issues.
  Both supporters and opponents of the bill agree that sharing 
information about cyber security threats, samples of malware, 
information about malicious hackers, and all of this makes sense and 
one ought to try to promote more of it. Both supporters and opponents 
now agree that giving corporations immunity from customer lawsuits 
isn't going to stop sophisticated attacks such as the OPM personnel 
records breach.
  I am very glad that there has been agreement on that point recently, 
because proponents of the bill sometimes said that their legislation 
would stop hacks such as the one that took place at OPM. When 
technologists reviewed it, that was clearly not the case, and the claim 
has been withdrawn that somehow this bill would prevent hacks like we 
saw at OPM.
  The differences of opinion between supporters and opponents of the 
bill--who do agree on a variety of these issues--surround the likely 
privacy impact of the bill. Supporters have essentially argued that the 
benefits of this bill, perhaps, are limited--particularly now that they 
have withdrawn the claim that this would help against an OPM attack--
but that every little bit helps. But there is no downside to them to 
just pass the bill. It makes sense. Pass the bill. There is no 
downside.
  Opponents of the bill, who grow in number virtually every day, have 
been arguing that the bill is likely to have a significant negative 
impact on the personal privacy of a large number of Americans and that 
this greatly outweighs the limited security benefits. If an information 
sharing bill doesn't include adequate privacy protections, I am telling 
you, colleagues, I think those proponents are going to have people wake 
up and say: I really don't see this as a cyber security bill, but it 
really looks to me like a surveillance bill by another name.
  (Mr. TOOMEY assumed the Chair.)
  Colleagues who are following this and looking at the bill may be 
trying to sort through this discussion between proponents and 
opponents. To help clarify the debate, I would like to get into the 
text of the bill for just a minute.
  If colleagues look at page 17 of the Burr-Feinstein substitute 
amendment, which is the latest version with respect to this bill, 
Senators are going to see a key section of the bill. This is the 
section that discusses the removal of personal information when data is 
shared with the government. The section says very clearly that in order 
to get immunity from a lawsuit a private company has to review the data 
they would provide and remove any information the company knows is 
personal information unrelated to a cyber security threat. This 
language, in my view, clearly creates an incentive for companies to 
dump large quantities of data over to the government with only a 
cursory review. As long as that company isn't certain that they are 
providing unrelated personal information, that company gets immunity 
from lawsuits. Some companies may choose to be more careful than that, 
but this legislation and the latest version--the Burr-Feinstein 
substitute amendment--would not require it. This bill says with respect 
to personal data: When in doubt, you can hand it over.
  My amendment No. 2621 is an alternative. It is very simple. It is 
less than a page long. It would amend this section that I have just 
described to say that when companies review the data they provide, they 
ought to ``remove, to the extent feasible, any personal information of 
or identifying a specific individual that is not necessary to describe 
or identify a cybersecurity threat.'' The alternative that I am 
offering gives companies a real responsibility to filter out unrelated 
personal information before that company hands over large volumes of 
personal data about customers or people to the government.
  The sponsors of the bill have said that they believe that companies 
should only give the government information that is necessary for cyber 
security and should remove unrelated personal information. I agree with 
them, but for reasons that I have just described, I would say 
respectfully that the current version of this legislation does not 
accomplish that goal, and that is why I believe the amendment I have 
offered is so important.
  For an example of how this might work in practice, imagine that a 
health insurance company finds out that millions of its customers' 
records have been stolen. If that company has any evidence about who 
the hackers were or how they stole this information, of course it makes 
sense to share that information with the government. But that company 
shouldn't simply say here you go, and hand millions of its customers' 
medical records over for distribution to a broad array of government 
agencies.
  The records of the victims of a hack should not be treated the same 
way that information about the hacker is treated. Companies should be 
required to make a reasonable effort to remove personal information 
that is not needed for cyber security before they hand information over 
to the government. That is what my amendment seeks to achieve. That is 
not what is in the substitute amendment.
  Furthermore, if colleagues hear the sponsors of the substitute saying 
this bill's privacy protections are strong and you have heard me making 
the case that they really don't have any meaningful teeth and they are 
too weak, don't just take my word for it. Listen to all of the leading 
technology companies that have come out against the current version of 
this legislation.
  These companies know about the importance of protecting both cyber 
security and individual privacy. The reason they know--and this is the 
case in Pennsylvania, Oregon, and everywhere else--is that these 
companies have to manage the challenge every single day. Companies in 
Pennsylvania and Oregon have to ensure they are protecting both cyber 
security and individual privacy. Those companies know that customer 
confidence is their lifeblood and that the only way to ensure customer 
confidence is to convince customers that if their product is going to 
be used, their information will be protected, both from malicious 
hackers and from unnecessary collections by their government.
  I would note that there is another reason why it is important to get 
the privacy protections I am offering in my amendment at this time. The 
companies that I just described are competing on a global playing 
field. These companies have to deal with the impression that U.S. laws 
do not adequately protect their customers' information. Right now these 
companies--companies that are located in Pennsylvania and Oregon--are 
dealing with the fallout of a decision by a European court to strike 
down the safe harbor data agreement between the United States and the 
European Union. The court's ruling was based on the argument that U.S. 
laws in their present form do not adequately protect customer data. 
Now, I strongly disagree with this ruling. At the same time, I would 
say to my colleagues and to the Presiding Officer--he and I have

[[Page 16231]]

worked closely on international trade as members of the Finance 
Committee--and I would say to colleagues who are following this 
international trade question and the question of the European Union 
striking down the safe harbor for our privacy laws, in my view this 
bill is likely to make things even more difficult for American 
companies that are trying to get access to those customers in Europe.
  To give just a sampling of the leading companies that have come out 
against the CISA legislation, let me briefly call the roll. There is 
the Apple company. They have millions of customers. They know a great 
deal about what we have to do to deal with malicious hackers and to 
protect privacy. There is also Dropbox, Twitter, Salesforce, Yelp, 
Reddit, and the Wikimedia Foundation. I point to the strong statement 
by the Computer & Communications Industry Association. Their members 
include Google, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Netflix, eBay, and 
PayPal. Those individual companies I have mentioned have millions of 
customers. The organization that speaks for them says: ``CISA's 
prescribed mechanism for sharing of Cyber threat information does not 
sufficiently protect users' privacy.''
  On top of this, there has been widespread opposition from a larger 
spectrum of privacy advocacy organizations. Here the groups range from 
the Open Technology Institute to the American Library Association.
  I was particularly struck by the American Library Association's 
comments in opposition to this bill. I think the leadership said--
paraphrasing--something to the effect of when the American Library 
Association opposes legislation that authors say will promote 
information sharing, they indicate there was a little something more to 
it than what the sponsors are claiming.
  Wrapping up, I want to make clear, as I said yesterday, that I 
appreciate that the bipartisan leadership of our committee has tried to 
respond to these concerns. They know that these large companies with 
expertise in collecting data and promoting cyber security have all come 
out against the bill. I heard talk about privacy protections. I don't 
know of a single organization that is looked to by either side of the 
aisle, Democrats and Republicans, for expertise and privacy that has 
come out in favor of the bill.
  So the sponsors of this legislation and the authors of the substitute 
amendment, which I have tried to describe at length here this 
afternoon, are correct in saying that they have made some changes, but 
those changes do not go to the core of the bill.
  For example, the amendment I have described would really, in my view, 
fix this bill by ensuring that there was a significant effort to filter 
out unrelated personal and private information that was sent to the 
government under the bill.
  So I hope Senators will listen to what groups and the companies that 
have expertise in this field have said. I hope Senators on both sides 
of the aisle will support the amendments I and others have offered. The 
Senate needs to do better than to produce a bill with minimal effects 
on the security of Americans and significant downside for their privacy 
and their liberty.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.


                    Amendment No. 2626, as Modified

  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I would like to speak for 5 or 6 
minutes on the cyber bill.
  Unfortunately, I am here to express my distaste for the manner in 
which this bill has proceeded. I have an amendment that is not going to 
be voted on. Let me describe some of the characteristics of that 
amendment.
  First of all, it is bipartisan. It is Senator Graham's and my 
amendment.
  Second, it has had a hearing. We have had a hearing on it in the 
Judiciary Committee. Considerable work has gone into it.
  Third, it has the support of the Department of Justice. It repairs 
holes in our criminal law for protecting cyber security that we worked 
on very carefully with the Department of Justice and which we have had 
testimony in support of from our Department of Justice prosecutors.
  Last, it was in the queue. It was in the list of amendments that were 
agreed to when we agreed to go to the floor with this bill.
  So I don't know how I am going to vote on this bill now. But if you 
have a bipartisan amendment that has had a hearing, that was in the 
queue, and that has the support of the Department of Justice and you 
cannot even get a vote on it, then something has gone wrong in the 
process.
  I remember Senator Sessions coming to the floor and wondering how it 
is that certain Senators appoint themselves masters of the universe and 
go off in a quiet room someplace and decide that certain amendments 
will and will not be heard. I am very sympathetic to Senator Sessions' 
concerns right now.
  Let me tell you what the substance of our amendment would do.
  First, there are people out there around the world in this cyber 
universe of fraud and crime who are trafficking in Americans' financial 
information for purposes of fraud and theft. If they don't travel to 
America or if they don't have a technical connection to America, we 
cannot go after them. There is an American victim, but we cannot go 
after them. That is a loophole that harms Americans that this bill 
would close.
  I cannot believe there is one Member of this institution who would 
oppose closing a loophole that allows foreign criminals access to 
Americans' financial information for fraudulent purposes but puts them 
beyond the reach of our criminal law. That is one part of what our bill 
does.
  Second, it raises penalties for people who intrude on critical 
infrastructure. You can go all around this country, you can go to 
military installations that have way less security concerns than our 
critical infrastructure, like our electric grid, and you will see 
chain-link fences that say department of whatever, U.S. Government, 
stay out. You cannot go in there to picnic, you cannot go in there 
because you are curious, you cannot go in there for a hike, and the 
reason is because there is a national security component to what is 
going on in there.
  Well, there is a huge national security component to our critical 
infrastructure, like our electric grid. All this would do is raise the 
penalties. You could still go in, but if you get caught doing something 
illegal there, then it is a little different if you are attacking 
America's critical infrastructure than if you are just prowling around 
in some other portion of the Web that does not have that.
  Again, I think if that came to a vote, we would probably get 90 
percent of this body in favor. Who is in support of allowing people to 
mess around in our critical infrastructure?
  The third is botnet brokers. Botnets are out there all over the 
Internet. They are a plague on the Internet. There is no such thing as 
a good botnet. Everyone would be better off if they were removed. They 
are like weeds on the Internet. There are people who are brokers who 
allow access to botnets, and because our laws are so out of date, if 
you are just brokering access to a botnet for criminal purposes, there 
is no offense. Why would we not want to empower our Department of 
Justice to be able to go after people who are criminal brokers allowing 
access for criminals to botnets to use for criminal purposes against 
Americans? I don't understand that.
  Lastly, botnet takedowns. A botnet is a weed. We wait until somebody 
actually encounters that weed and is harmed by it before we allow our 
Department of Justice to act. We should be out there taking down 
botnets on a hygiene basis all the time. We are limited because of this 
artificiality. That is the fourth piece of the bill. It empowers botnet 
takedowns like the Bugat takedown we just did. We should be doing a lot 
more of that. Again, unless somebody here is in the botnet caucus and 
is in favor of more botnets out there, this is something which would 
probably pass unanimously. Yet I cannot get a vote.

[[Page 16232]]

  It is bipartisan, has had a hearing, is in the queue, is supported by 
the Department of Justice, and those are the four sub-elements of it. 
For some reason, the masters of the universe have gone off and had a 
meeting in which they decided this is not going to be in the queue. I 
object to that procedure.
  I am sorry we are at this stage at this point because I think that on 
the merits this would win. This is a bipartisan, good, Department of 
Justice-supported, law enforcement exercise to protect people against 
cyber criminals. I don't know what the sense is that there is some 
hidden pro-botnet, pro-foreign cyber criminal caucus here that won't 
let an amendment like mine get a vote.
  I will yield the floor. I see Senator Carper here, and he has done 
great work to try to be more productive than my amendment reflects. I 
hope we can sort this out to a point where an amendment like mine, 
which was in the queue in the original deal that got us to this bill, 
can now get back in some kind of a queue so that we can get this done.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. CARPER. I appreciate the yielding by Senator Whitehouse. Let me 
just say that if your provision, Senator Whitehouse, does not end up in 
this bill and we actually do pass it, I am sure we will conference with 
the House. There will be an opportunity to revisit this issue. So I 
hope you will stay in touch with those of us who might be fortunate 
enough to be a conferee.
  Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I appreciate that very much, more than the Senator 
can know.
  Mr. CARPER. Mr. President, I rise today in support of the cyber 
security information bill introduced by my colleagues, Senators Burr 
and Feinstein. I want to commend my colleagues and their staff for 
their leadership and for their tireless efforts on this extremely 
important piece of legislation.
  As ranking member and former chairman of the Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs Committee, I have been following cyber security 
and this information sharing proposal in particular literally for 
years. In fact, when Senator Feinstein first introduced an information 
sharing bill in 2012--that was like two or three Congress's ago--it was 
referred to Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, on which I 
served. That bill was ultimately folded into a comprehensive cyber 
security bill that I had the honor of cosponsoring with Senators Joe 
Lieberman, Susan Collins, Jay Rockefeller, and Senator Feinstein. We 
were not able to pass that bill, but I think it has paved the way for 
other cyber legislation, including the bill that is before us today and 
a number of the amendments that are going to be offered to that bill in 
the managers' amendment, especially.
  Last Congress, I worked with our ranking member on homeland security, 
Dr. Tom Coburn, and our House counterparts to get not one, not two, not 
three, but four cyber security bills enacted into law, signed by the 
President. I believe these four bills laid a very strong foundation for 
some significant improvements on how the Department of Homeland 
Security carries out its cyber security mission and really for this 
bill before us too.
  What the legislation Dr. Coburn and I worked on during the last 
Congress did, in essence, was to better equip the Department of 
Homeland Security to operate at the center of the kind of robust 
information sharing program that the Burr-Feinstein bill would set up. 
How do they do that? One, make sure the Department of Homeland Security 
would have the ability to attract and retain top-flight talent, much 
like the National Security Agency already has.
  The legislation actually takes something called the cyber ops center, 
NCCIC, within the Department of Homeland Security and makes it real and 
functional and an entity that people would use and listen to.
  Finally, we took an old law called FISMA, the Federal Information 
Sharing Management Act--we took something that was just a paperwork 
operation, this FISMA legislation--like a once-in-a-year check to see 
how good a cyber security agency might be--and turned it into not a 
paperwork operation, not a once-every-365-days operation, but a 24/7 
surveillance operation on the lookout for intrusions within and across 
the Federal Government broadly.
  That legislation, affectionally known as FISMA, was also designed to 
make clear what the division of labor was between the Office of 
Management and Budget, OMB, and the Department of Homeland Security on 
protecting the dot.gov domain. We made it clear that the job of OMB is 
to, if you will, steer the ship. The job of the Department of Homeland 
Security is to row the ship, to row the boat. That is a good division 
of labor given that OMB only has six employees who work on this stuff 
and the Department of Homeland Security has hundreds. So I think we 
figured out the sharing of labor, the division of labor, and also made 
sure the Department of Homeland Security has the resources--the horses, 
the resources--and the technology they need.
  Sharing more cyber security threat information among and between the 
private sector and the Federal Government players who are on the 
frontline in cyber security is critical for national security. Over the 
last couple of years, we have witnessed many troubling cyber attacks 
against our banks, but not just our banks, against retailers, health 
providers, government agencies, and God knows how many others.
  Some of those launching these attacks were just criminals. Some of 
them were just criminals. They want to steal information. They want to 
make money off of our personal information, off our intellectual 
property, like our intellectual seed corn, if you will, for companies 
large and small and for universities as well. Others just want to be 
disruptive or they want to make political points. Some actors, however, 
are capable or would like to develop the capability to use a cyber 
attack to harm people and cause physical damage.
  It is long past time for this body to take action to more effectively 
combat these threats we now face in cyber space. That is why earlier 
this year I introduced a similar information sharing bill. This bill 
largely mirrored the administration's original proposal.
  The administration asked me to introduce their information sharing 
bill. Before I did that, we actually had a hearing in the committee on 
homeland security. Part of the centerpiece of the hearing was the 
administration's proposal. We got some good ideas on how to make it 
better. We made it better and introduced that bill to use, if you will, 
as a point-counter point in a constructive, positive way with the 
legislation that worked its way through the Intelligence Committee. But 
we did not stop there. We took information from a lot of experts and 
stakeholders.
  The measure we are discussing today shares the same goals as my 
original bill--largely the administration's original bill--to increase 
the sharing of cyber threat information between the Federal Government 
and the private sector and between different entities within the 
private sector. I am pleased that we are finally discussing these 
critical issues on the Senate floor.
  The substitute amendment we are debating today makes a number of 
improvements to the bill that was first made public after the 
Intelligence Committee reported it out. It also includes several 
changes that I, as well as several of my colleagues, have been calling 
for--including the chairman of our committee.
  I would like to thank Senators Burr and Feinstein. I thank their 
staff for working closely with our staff and others to produce what I 
believe is a significantly smarter and stronger bill. Is it perfect? 
No, not yet. But I can say there is always room for improvement. That 
is why we still have a debate on a number of amendments and those like 
the one mentioned by Senator Whitehouse that may be germane in a 
different kind of way in conference.
  While there may not be agreement on everything in this bill, I 
believe most of our colleagues would come to the conclusion that it 
really will help to improve our Nation's cyber security

[[Page 16233]]

and, by extension, our national security and, by extension, our 
economic security.
  First, the bill would ensure that the government--our government--is 
providing actionable intelligence to private sector entities that are 
seeking to better protect themselves in cyber space. Businesses around 
our country are hungry for information they can use to fend off attacks 
and better protect their systems and their customers. This bill would 
make the Federal Government a much stronger partner for them.
  Many companies that I have talked to of late also want to share more 
information with the Federal Government about what they are seeing 
online every day, but they are unsure of the rules of the road. In 
other words, companies want more predictability and they want more 
certainty when it comes to working with our government. This bill would 
give them that by clarifying that they won't be putting themselves in 
legal jeopardy if they choose to share cyber threat information with 
our Federal Government.
  If companies do want to avail themselves of the legal protections the 
bill offers, they would have to, with two narrow exceptions, use the 
information sharing portal at the Department of Homeland Security. This 
puts the Department of Homeland Security, a civilian entity, at the 
center of the information sharing process. I think this is smart and 
the right thing to do. In fact, many experts and companies that I have 
talked to across the country as recently as last week out in Silicone 
Valley and out on the west coast--they agree with what I have just 
said.
  I know many Americans are uneasy with companies they do business with 
directly handing over data to an intelligence or law enforcement 
agency. The Department of Homeland Security will carry out its 
responsibilities under this bill through the cyber ops center I 
mentioned earlier called the National Cyber Security and Communications 
Integration Center--that is a mouthful. We affectionately call it N-
Kick. It is the cyber ops center. It includes folks from DHS and other 
Federal agencies. It includes a number of representatives of financial 
services, the utility industry, our retail industry, and so forth, all 
together under one roof, talking together and working together to help 
us support one another and make it strong and more secure.
  One of the bills I worked on with Dr. Coburn last Congress formally, 
as I said earlier, authorized this center. We are pleased to see that 
this bill would make the most out of the resources we have already 
invested in this cyber ops center, NCCIC.
  Earlier this month, Secretary Jeh Johnson of the Department of 
Homeland Security told our Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 
Committee that beginning in November, the cyber ops center, NCCIC, will 
have the capability to automate the distribution and receipt of cyber 
threat indicators. I will say that again--to automate the distribution 
and the receipt of cyber threat indicators that they receive from 
others, including those in the private sector. In other words, the 
Department of Homeland Security will have the ability to share 
information with other agencies in real time--not next month, not next 
week, not tomorrow, not in an hour, but in real time, which is really 
what this little bill before us today requires.
  I know that the real-time sharing is incredibly important to the 
bill's sponsors, and it is important to me and probably to many of our 
colleagues and stakeholders. Equally important, however, is the ability 
of the Department of Homeland Security to apply what I call a privacy 
scrub to the information it receives from industry, the threat 
indicators that come from industry--see something, say something--stuff 
that they send to the Department of Homeland Security.
  In the bill that I authored with others in my committee, including 
our chairman, we allow the Department of Homeland Security to, if you 
will, receive information through its portal from various entities that 
witness threat indicators, to see it and to put it through the portal, 
to bring it through the portal to do a privacy scrub. That is one of 
the things the Department of Homeland Security has expertise in doing.
  I used an example at lunch earlier today. I talked about baseball. I 
know the Presiding Officer has some interest in baseball. There are 
teams called the Phillies in Philadelphia and the Pirates in 
Pittsburgh. I would just say to him, thinking about baseball for a 
minute, let's say you are in the playoffs. Let's say you have a team in 
the playoffs. You are in the ninth inning, and you need to get somebody 
out of the bullpen to close. You have a one-run lead. You look to the 
bullpen. He is now retired, but Mariano Rivera was the best closer in 
baseball history. You have Mariano Rivera in the bullpen to come in and 
close the game, and you have three other guys you just called up from 
the Minor League, so maybe from AAA.
  You say: Well, whom do I put in to close the game? Do I put in the 
best closer we have ever had in baseball history or do I bring in three 
rookies, three Minor League guys?
  Well, you bring in Mariano Rivera.
  When it comes to being able to do privacy scrubs, the Department of 
Homeland Security--that is what they do. That is what they do. Now they 
have the horses, the ability, and the technology to do it even better.
  I know some of my colleagues are concerned that a privacy scrub will 
slow down the information sharing process. I share those concerns, but 
I have been assured by the Department--the bright, smart people at the 
Department of Homeland Security--that less than 1 percent of the 
information it receives would actually ever need to be reviewed by a 
human, by a person. The rest--roughly 95 percent to 99 percent--would 
be shared with other agencies at machine speed. Bingo.
  I am very pleased that DHS has come to an agreement on this process 
with its agency partners. We will be up and running with a portal in 
the way I have described in the next couple weeks.
  One of the amendments I filed speaks to this privacy scrub process. 
It would make clear that the Department of Homeland Security could 
carry out an automated privacy scrub in real time and without delay. In 
fact, my amendment would add just one word to the bill so that DHS 
could continue to automatically remove irrelevant or erroneous data 
from cyber threat information.
  I am very pleased that Senators Burr and Feinstein have taken this 
amendment into consideration and have now modified their substitute 
amendment to make sure the Department of Homeland Security can do what 
it does best, and that is to apply a privacy scrub--pulling out 
personally identifiable information that actually shouldn't be passed 
on to other Federal agencies. The substitute amendment now calls on DHS 
to work with its agency partners to agree on a process to share 
information while protecting privacy. This is a process DHS is already 
undertaking.
  I thank Senators Burr and Feinstein, as well as our friends at the 
Department of Homeland Security and other agencies, for working so hard 
to find agreement on this language and for working with my staff and me 
on this important matter.
  Another amendment I put forward with our committee chairman, Senator 
Johnson, aims to improve what we call cyber hygiene across the Federal 
Government and to prevent attacks against Federal agencies. This 
language is based on a bill that Senator Johnson and I introduced and 
had reported out of our homeland security committee by a unanimous 
vote. The amendment does three main things.
  First, it would require all Federal agencies to implement specific 
best practices and state-of-the-art technologies to defend against 
cyber attacks. For example, we had experts testify about the importance 
of strong authentication and data encryption. This amendment would make 
sure that agencies are taking these commonsense steps to bolster their 
cyber security defenses.
  Second, the amendment would accelerate the deployment and adoption of 
the Department of Homeland Security's cyber intrusion and detection

[[Page 16234]]

program, known as EINSTEIN, as in Albert Einstein, but you don't have 
the ``Albert'' in the name of this technology; it is called EINSTEIN.
  For my colleagues who may not be familiar with EINSTEIN, with respect 
to homeland security and cyber security, let me take a couple of 
minutes to describe its main features.
  We had EINSTEIN 1 present at the beginning, EINSTEIN 2 was follow-on 
technology, and then there is EINSTEIN 3. EINSTEIN basically analyzes 
Internet traffic entering and leaving Federal civilian agencies to 
identify cyber threats and to try to stop attacks.
  This system has been rolled out in phases over the last several 
years. EINSTEIN 1 is the first step. It sees and actually records 
Internet traffic, much like a guard at a checkpoint watches cars go by 
and maybe writes down and records the license plates. EINSTEIN 2 
detects anything out of the ordinary and sets off alarms if a piece of 
malware is trying to enter a Federal network. For example, a car comes 
through and it is not supposed to come through. That would set off an 
alarm and enable EINSTEIN 2 to actually detect a cyber intrusion. It 
doesn't do anything about blocking. It doesn't block the car, in this 
example. It doesn't block anything. EINSTEIN 3A, the latest version, 
uses unclassified and classified information to actually block the 
cyber attack.
  So initially EINSTEIN 1 records basically what is being detected, 
EINSTEIN 2 actually detects bad stuff coming through in terms of an 
intrusion, and EINSTEIN 3A blocks it. The problem is that less than 
half of our Federal civilian agencies actually have EINSTEIN 3A in 
place. They have the ability to record an intrusion, the ability to 
detect an intrusion, but not the ability to block an intrusion. They 
need the ability to block. What our legislation would do would be to 
make sure that agencies have EINSTEIN in place, including the ability 
to block intrusions, within 1 year.
  Finally, our amendment incorporates the language originally drafted 
by Senator Susan Collins, the former chair of the homeland security 
committee and a great colleague of ours for many years, Senator Mark 
Warner, Senator Kelly Ayotte, Senator Claire McCaskill, Senator Dan 
Coats, and Senator Barbara Mikulski. They are all cosponsors of the 
amendment Senator Collins offered. These provisions would strengthen 
the ability of the Department of Homeland Security to shore up cyber 
defenses at civilian agencies and to address cyber emergencies across 
the Federal Government.
  Again, I am incredibly grateful that Senator Feinstein and Senator 
Burr agreed to include our language in the substitute amendment 
language that worked its way through our committee. We had hearings and 
had the opportunity to mark up the legislation. It worked the way it is 
supposed to work. And I think that without exception it had bipartisan 
support coming through our committee. It is the perfect complement to 
the information sharing bill we are discussing this week. I think it 
makes a good bill that much better.
  I thank the Senators for working with me and Senator Johnson on it.
  Just one more thing before I close. I know the Presiding Officer 
thinks a lot about root causes, and rather than just address the 
symptoms of a problem, let's think about what is the root cause of the 
problem. The Senator who is waiting to follow me on the floor, the 
former Governor of Maine, thinks similarly. I do too. It is not enough 
to just address the symptoms of these problems. A part of what we need 
to be thinking about is, How do we get to the root cause?
  Until fairly recently, a lot of our financial services institutions 
in this country were under constant attack by somebody who was trying 
to overload their Web sites and essentially trying to shut them down. 
It is sort of like when we were first standing up the Affordable Care 
Act, they had so much traffic on their Web site that it would kind of 
break down.
  There are so many cyber threats from around the world. We think Iran 
is behind it. They are trying to do that, to bring down our financial 
services business--and sometimes with some success.
  About a year ago, when we got very serious about negotiating with the 
Iranians and our partners--the French, the Brits, the Germans, the 
Russians, and the Chinese--some kind of an agreement where the Iranians 
would give up any hope they had of having a nuclear weapon and the 
terms for our lifting our economic sanctions--when it became clear that 
those were serious negotiations, that something might actually happen 
from those negotiations, guess what happened to those attacks. We call 
them DDoS. What do you suppose happened? Well, guess what, they started 
letting up little by little until the time we actually voted here to 
let that agreement be enacted and hopefully be administered and 
implemented. That was a root cause being addressed.
  Another root cause we had over in China--for years the Chinese have 
sought to use cyber attacks to get into our most successful businesses, 
some of our research and development operations in those businesses, 
and work being done within Federal agencies on research and 
development--actually, the intellectual seed corn for creating jobs and 
opportunity in this country. The cyber attacks were--we believe it was 
China trying to steal information from our universities. They were 
doing a lot of research that could lead to economic activity and job 
creation. We didn't like it. We don't do that. We don't do that to 
them, and we don't want them to do that to us. We complained about it 
and complained about it and called out some of the folks whom we 
thought were behind this in China.
  President Xi visited us in this city about 3 week ago. He and our 
President had some tough, direct, and probably not entirely comfortable 
conversations. One of them dealt with this issue, what we believe is 
the intrusion by Chinese actors in order to steal our intellectual seed 
corn, in order to maybe have a short step, a shortcut to economic 
development, economic activity. They would not have to spend the money, 
the time, and the energy to do all the research that would lead to this 
innovation and job-creation activity. The agreement that came out of 
that was the Chinese and our country have agreed that neither side will 
knowingly steal this kind of information from the other. ``Knowingly'' 
is a very broad term, and so we have to make sure that ``knowingly'' 
actually means something. Secretary Jeh Johnson, the head of the 
Homeland Security Department, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch have 
been assigned to build on this initial agreement and see what we can 
make of it.
  I will close with this. A lot of people in our country don't 
understand what all this cyber security stuff is--intrusion, EINSTEIN, 
and all the items we are talking about that are in the legislation 
which is before us this week. They do know this: It is not good when 
people can steal the kind of information that needs to be protected. 
Whether it is part of the government domain, military or intelligence 
secrets; whether it is economic secrets or developments that lead to 
economic gain; whether it is personally identifiable information that 
can be used for blackmail purposes or to monetize and to somehow make 
money off of that information, we know it is not good. There is no one 
silver bullet to actually stop this kind of activity, but there are a 
lot of silver BBs, and some of them are pretty big.
  The legislation that is before us today, bolstered by similar 
legislation that has come out of the Committee on Homeland Security and 
Governmental Affairs, is a pretty good-sized BB. They are not going to 
enable us to win this war by themselves, but they will enable us to 
make real progress. It will make us feel a good bit more secure than we 
have, knowing that this is an enemy across the globe and that a number 
of enemies wish us harm. They are not going to give up. There is a lot 
of money involved. They will be back at us, and we have to bring our 
``A'' game to work every day in the Department of Homeland Security and 
other

[[Page 16235]]

Federal agencies working in tandem with the private sector.
  Hopefully, with this information, the folks in the private sector--if 
they want to get the liability protection and share information with 
the Federal Government, we want them to use the portal through the 
Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Homeland Security, 
to the extent that privacy scrub is needed--it does not happen often. 
It happens less than 1 percent of the time with the information that 
comes through the portal. The legislation before us, with the 
amendments that are offered, will enable us to have that kind of 
security about our private information and at the same time to do a 
very good job--a much better job--in protecting what is valuable to us.
  Mr. President, I think that is about it for me. I appreciate very 
much the opportunity to speak. I appreciate the patience of Senator 
King, and I will yield the floor to him.
  I will just say in closing--no, Senator Blunt, I will yield to you 
next. It is good to be with both of you. I look forward to working with 
you on these and, with respect to the Senator gentleman from Missouri, 
very closely on related matters.
  Thank you so very much.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.
  Mr. BLUNT. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Delaware. He and I 
have worked on legislation together to protect data security, to have 
one standard for notifying people whose information has been accessed 
by people who shouldn't have it, and we are going to continue to work 
on that and look for opportunities, whether it is this bill or some 
other bill, to add that important element to what we are doing here.
  I come to the floor today, as I am sure many others have, to express 
support for this bill--for the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act--a 
bill that gives us tools we don't currently have, and to break down 
barriers that we do currently have. This is a bill that would allow 
individuals who see the information they are responsible for being 
attacked to call others in their same business and say: Here is what is 
happening to us right now. If you are not seeing it already, you should 
be looking for it. When they do that, it doesn't violate any 
competitive sharing of information. What it does is bring everybody 
into the loop of defense as quickly as possible and allow them to look 
for help from the government as well.
  So I express support for this bill. We know that day after day 
Americans who read, watch, or listen to the news learn of another cyber 
attack. Some involve attacks of government systems, while others 
involve the private sector.
  In 2012 and 2013, hacker groups linked to Iran targeted American bank 
Web sites and sustained an attack on those Web sites in a way that was 
designed to disrupt people trying to do business--trying to pay their 
own personal bills, trying to do things people should expect to be able 
to easily do.
  Early in 2014, we learned that cyber criminals had stolen 40 million 
credit card numbers from a major retailer and had probably compromised 
an additional 70 million accounts. We also have learned that a lot of 
times when we hear about these, they seem bad enough at first, but they 
seem a whole lot worse later when we find out what really happened, 
when we see how deep these criminals were able to go, how deep these 
terrorists were able to go, how deep these government-sponsored 
entities were able to go to get at information they shouldn't have.
  In September of that same year, September 2014, we learned another 
major retailer had suffered a data breach. In that case there were 56 
million credit card holders.
  In February of this year, we learned a health insurance provider's 
system had been hacked, and 80 million customers were affected. This 
was a data breach that particularly impacted my State--particularly 
impacted Missourians--and we saw a huge change in the IRS fraud that 
occurred this year because, we believe at least, because criminals 
suddenly had all this sensitive personally identifiable information 
they had stolen. Suddenly somebody besides you was filing your tax 
return. Only later did the people who really had the income tax return 
to file find out that somebody had filed it for them.
  In June of this year--maybe the most surprising to all of us who have 
heard over and over again that the private sector is struggling, we 
suddenly found out the U.S. Office of Personnel Management increased a 
previous estimate of how many people were affected by its own data 
breach. The files of Federal employees and people related to those 
files was revised upward to 21.5 million people. Then we found out that 
also included roughly 5.5 million sets of fingerprints.
  I am not exactly sure what you could do with somebody's fingerprints 
on the Internet today. I can only imagine what you might be able to 
figure out to do with those fingerprints. Remember, your fingerprints 
don't change, and probably the government entity responsible for that 
hacking that has those fingerprints is always going to have those 
fingerprints as they think of new and malicious ways to use them. So we 
are talking about well over 100 million Americans who already have 
their personal information in the hands of people it shouldn't be in.
  The challenge before us is as clear as it is urgent. Virtually every 
aspect of our society and our economy rely on information technology. 
It has enabled tremendous economic growth, it has enabled tremendous 
efficiencies in every sector, but it has put all kinds of information 
out there in ways that, looking back, we are going to wonder why we 
made that information so available in so many places and left so 
unprotected.
  Federal, State, and local governments rely on that information 
technology as well. As the technology advances, its widespread adoption 
has also opened us to new dangers. Modern cyber security threats are 
sophisticated, they are massive, and they are persistent. This doesn't 
just happen every day, it happens all the time every day.
  The culprits of these attacks and intrusions range in terms of their 
motives and their abilities. We just heard of a teenager who figured 
out how to get into the personal account of the CIA director--at least 
that is the public media report--and the homeland security director. 
This is not a particularly sophisticated individual, but obviously a 
pretty capable person who gets to two individuals that one would think 
would be the most cautious.
  Some of these people are bent on sheer vandalism--just the thrill of 
cyber vandalism--while others are determined to steal intellectual 
properties from American companies. The motive there is clear. It is 
easier to steal intellectual property than it is to go through the hard 
work of creating it. Suddenly that information is out there, and the 
people who created it have been robbed.
  I hear this all the time when I visit companies in my State. We have 
seen cyber intrusions used for espionage. We have seen one major 
company attacked for no reason other than to embarrass the company 
because a foreign government didn't like something the company had 
done. It is quite a way to have a movie review, that we are just going 
to destroy as much of your technology as we can by a cyber invasion.
  A great many more of these people are motivated by greed--pilfering 
other people's identities, getting access to other people's account 
information, and selling that information on the black-market. This 
becomes a real opportunity for them. The more you remove it from the 
person who initially got it, the harder it is to find out who initially 
got it and what they did with it.
  Underneath all this is the implication of more serious attacks that 
can cause physical harm and can cause mass disruption of critical 
infrastructure of the country that is very dependent on cyber security. 
This really begs the question: What are we doing to protect our country 
and our citizens from these cyber adversaries? I have been in Senate 
for 5 years. I have had the great opportunity to represent the people 
of Missouri here for 5 years. And

[[Page 16236]]

during every one of those 5 years, we have been talking about how 
important it is that we do something about cyber security. This is the 
only approach I have seen in those 5 years that has bipartisan support. 
It has a bicameral consensus. This is something that can happen.
  This is a problem that it is time to stop talking about. Do we want 
some other government to have everybody's fingerprints before we do 
something about it? This is the time to do something about it. As a 
member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I am certainly 
here to support the chairman of that committee and the vice chairman of 
that committee to finally pass this bill, a bill to enhance the public-
private partnerships that can provide the kind of cyber defense we 
need.
  We need to do that and we need to encourage lots of sharing. We need 
to encourage sharing of attacks. We need to encourage early on, as I 
said, the ability to call somebody else in your same business and to 
contact them and say: This is happening right now. That is the best 
time to say it. The other option is to say: This happened to us late 
last night or happened yesterday, but this is happening to us. Is it 
happening to you?
  There is lots of misunderstanding about this concept. Without getting 
too technical, cyber threats are the malicious codes and algorithms 
used to infect computer systems and attack networks. They are 
techniques that use bits and bytes. They are the ones and zeros of the 
digital age that allow hackers to intrude upon private systems, steal 
information, perpetrate fraud, or disrupt activities over the Internet.
  In very dangerous circumstances, these techniques can be used to 
remotely control critical infrastructure management systems, such as 
supervisory control and data acquisition systems. I saw something on 
the news the other day where some hackers, for no intent other than 
maybe just to see if they could do it, had figured out how to take over 
one of the cars that was driving itself. Suddenly the car wasn't 
driving itself; the hacker was driving the car.
  When a particular company finds itself subjected to some novel new 
approach, the quicker they can share that, the better. When the 
government discovers a new method being used to infiltrate information 
technology systems abroad or here, they need to be able to share that 
with American companies quickly so they can protect themselves. There 
are things the private sector sees that the government does not, and 
there are things the government sees that the private sector does not. 
This legislation gives the obligation and opportunity to both of them 
to join together in this important fight. Modern communications 
networks move at an incredibly rapid pace. We need to be fighting back 
at that same kind of rapid pace.
  This bill establishes a strictly voluntary program. Unlike some of 
the other programs we have talked about to secure ourselves in a post-
9/11 world, this is a strictly voluntary program that leverages 
American ingenuity to unleash the arsenal of democracy against cyber 
adversaries.
  When it comes to the cyber threat, we have to act for a common 
purpose. Throughout this debate there has been a great deal of 
discussion about the need to protect liberty in the information age. I 
truly think liberty and security are not at odds with one another in 
this legislation. When it comes to this bill, it comes the closest to 
having the balance we all would like to see. It takes into 
consideration the importance of liberty, but it also takes into 
consideration what happens as we protect our security.
  I would close by saying of all the attacks we have had, and as bad as 
they have been, none of them have been the sort of catastrophic 
infrastructure attack that we may see that would impact the grid, that 
impacts our ability to communicate, impacts our ability to make the 
water system work, or impacts our ability to make the electrical system 
work. If that happens, the Congress will not only act, the Congress 
will overreact.
  This is the right time to have this debate. Let's put this 
legislation on the books right now. Let's give the people a law that 
makes sense at a time when we have the time to debate it, instead of 
waiting to see the direction we will turn to when we should have 
debated this and moved in this direction right now. I encourage my 
colleagues to vote for this bipartisan bill that I think will wind up 
on the President's desk and become law.
  Mr. President, I yield to my patient friend from Maine, who has been 
waiting. He and I serve on the Select Committee on Intelligence 
together, and I look forward to his comments.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Scott). The Senator from Maine.
  Mr. KING. Mr. President, the United States is under attack. We are 
under attack--not a week ago, a month ago, September 11 or yesterday, 
but right at this moment. We are under attack from state actors, from 
terrorist nonstate actors, and from garden-variety criminals. This 
cyber issue is one of the most serious that we face.
  When I first got here, I was appointed to the Armed Services and 
Intelligence Committees. On those two committees over the past 3 years, 
at least half of our hearings have touched upon this issue and the 
threat that it presents to this country. The leaders of our 
intelligence community and our military community, in open session and 
in closed session, have sounded the alarm over and over and over. The 
most dramatic--I don't remember what the hearing was--was when one of 
our witnesses said: ``The next Pearl Harbor will be cyber.''
  As the Senator from Missouri just pointed out, we are fortunate that 
we have had a number of warning shots but none have been devastating. 
But we have had warning shots--at Sony, at Target, at Anthem, at the 
Office of Personnel Management of the U.S. Government, and at the home 
email of the Director of the CIA. We have had large and small 
intrusions and cyber attacks that have been more than annoying, but, so 
far, they haven't been catastrophic. That is just a matter of time. 
That is why we have to move this bill.
  This bill isn't a comprehensive answer to this question, but it is at 
least a piece of it. It is a beginning. We are going to have to talk 
about other aspects of our cyber strategy, but at least we can pass 
this bill, which came out of the committee 14 to 1. It is bipartisan, 
and it has support in the House. Let's do something.
  I do not want to go home to Maine and try to explain to my 
constituents, when the natural gas system or the electric system is 
brought down, that we couldn't quite get around to it because of the 
difference of committee jurisdictions or because we had other 
priorities or because we were tied up on the budget. This is a 
priority. It is something we should be doing immediately, and I am 
delighted that we have moved to it.
  Now, as I have sat in the Intelligence Committee every Tuesday and 
Thursday afternoon for the past 3 years, it occurred to me several 
months into those debates and the discussions of this and other issues 
that really we in the Intelligence Committee and also we in this body 
really are working with and weighing and balancing two constitutional 
provisions.
  The first is the preamble of the Constitution. The most basic 
responsibility of any government, anywhere, anytime, is to provide for 
the common defense. That is why governments are formed, to provide the 
security, and also to insure domestic tranquility. Those two together 
are the basic functions of why we are here--to protect our people from 
harm. And that is clearly what this bill is talking about.
  But the other constitutional provision in the picture that we also 
have to weigh is the Fourth Amendment: ``The right of the people to be 
secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against 
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated. . . .'' That 
is a fundamental premise of who we are as a people.
  These two provisions of the Constitution are intentioned--neither one 
dominates, neither one controls the

[[Page 16237]]

other--and it is our job in this body to continuously weigh and 
calibrate these two provisions and their balance in light of threats 
and evolving technologies.
  When the Fourth Amendment was written, nobody had ever heard of 
telephones. They certainly had never heard of the Internet. They never 
thought about any of these things. But they said: The rights ``shall 
not be violated.'' It is interesting--``unreasonable searches and 
seizures.'' They didn't know the threats we would be facing when they 
said it was a fundamental premise of the U.S. Constitution that we 
should protect against both foreign and domestic enemies. That is what 
we have to do, and that is what this bill does.
  This bill is very carefully worked up, with a lot of discussion and 
negotiation, to be effective in protecting the public, while, at the 
same time, to be effective in protecting the public's privacy rights in 
respecting these two principles. We have had warning after warning 
after warning, and now it is time for us to act.
  The good news about the United States is that we are the most wired 
nation in the world. Technology has been a huge boon to our economy and 
to our people, and we are way ahead of a lot of the rest of the world 
in our interrelationship with technology and how we have used it to 
enhance our lives. That is the good news. The bad news is that we are 
the most wired country in the world, because that means we are the most 
vulnerable--asymmetric vulnerability. We are more vulnerable because we 
are more connected. That means we have to take great care in this 
country to be sure that we don't allow that vulnerability to result in 
a catastrophic loss for our people.
  Not only are we talking about national security issues, but we are 
talking about individual people's lives. If the electric grid went 
down, people's lives would and could be lost--in hospitals, at traffic 
intersections, across the country. If the natural gas system--the vast 
pipeline system that links our country in terms of energy--somehow went 
awry because of a cyber intrusion into the operating system, that would 
have devastating consequences for human lives and also, of course, for 
the economy of our country. Somebody could get into the routing system 
of a railroad, and a train carrying hazardous material would be caused 
to derail. These are the kinds of things that can happen and will 
likely happen unless we take steps to protect ourselves.
  Some of these attacks and intrusions are sponsored by nation-states. 
We know that. Some of them are sponsored by just garden-variety 
criminals who are trying to steal our money. Or some of them are large 
international criminal organizations that are trying to steal our 
commercial intelligence and how we build our products and how we 
compete. Some of them are terrorist organizations that see this as a 
cheap way to attack America. Why go to all the trouble to build a bomb 
and smuggle it into the country and all the risk that entails, when you 
can disrupt the country in just as great a way with a few strokes on a 
laptop?
  It is economic security, national security, economics. It has been 
estimated worldwide that cyber crime costs our country $445 billion a 
year. That is to the global economy--a half trillion dollars a year. 
Some 200,000 jobs in the United States could be and are being affected, 
and 800 million personnel records were stolen, and 40 million were 
Americans.
  The cost of cyber crime is estimated to be between 15 and 20 percent 
of the value created by the Internet. We always talk that we don't want 
any taxes on the Internet. This is a tax. This is a tax we are all 
paying. The users of the Internet are paying to ward off this epidemic 
of cyber crime.
  It is not only the government. Of course, it is companies, such as 
Sony, Target, Anthem, the industrial base, JP Morgan, Home Depot. The 
list goes on and on. Most importantly, it is not just the big guys. 
Sometimes we feel that OK, this is the large banks, the large insurance 
companies that have to worry about this. In the State of Maine, we have 
to worry about it.
  My staff and I in Maine have reached out to businesses large and 
small across the State. Every single one, with one exception, listed 
cyber intrusion as one of their greatest issues.
  The Maine Credit Union League, with $2.5 million a year, and local 
credit unions are having to deal with cyber intrusion.
  One of our Maine health care providers has experienced thousands of 
attempts to steal confidential data every year. Keeping the data safe 
is costing them more than $1 million. This is costing us real money.
  At one of our Maine financial institutions, 60 to 70 percent of the 
emails they get in the bank are phishing emails trying to compromise 
their secured data.
  One of our utilities spent over $1 million a year just on 
preventative costs to defend against cyber crime. This is in a State of 
1.3 million people. This is real. This is real in our State.
  I had a forum over the August break with businesses throughout 
Maine--mostly small businesses and homeland security. We had 100 
businesses come just to visit and sit for a day to talk about this 
issue. These were small businesses, and all of them were seeing these 
kinds of problems.
  One was a small business with 35 employees that did a deal overseas, 
and a cyber criminal in effect stole their payment. They sent a fake 
invoice to the customer overseas, the customer paid it, and the money 
went to the crook, not to my company in Maine. That is the kind of 
thing that is happening, and that is one of the reasons we have to take 
action today.
  No business is immune. No individual is immune. And, of course, this 
country is not immune.
  The price of inaction is just too high. This is something we must 
attend to. As I mentioned, this bill is not the whole answer, but it is 
a part of the answer.
  Some people say: Well, it is not broad enough. My answer is this: OK, 
I understand that, but let's do what we can do and then take it one 
step at a time.
  Some people say it compromises privacy. I don't believe that it does. 
Extraordinary measures were imported into this bill in order to protect 
the privacy of individuals. This is not about individual data. This is 
about a company voluntarily telling the government and perhaps some 
other companies: Here is what I am seeing as an attack. How can we 
collectively defend ourselves against it?
  That is what this bill is really all about. We have to take action, 
and now is the time.
  I thank the chair and the vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, 
the members of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs 
Committee, the members of the Judiciary Committee, and all of those who 
have contributed to the finalization of this important piece of 
legislation.
  There is an attitude out there that we can't get anything done around 
here. I think this gives us an opportunity to prove that idea wrong. We 
can get things done. We should get things done. This is a chance for us 
to protect our people, to provide for the common defense--which is our 
most solemn constitutional responsibility--in a way that also protects 
the interests of the Fourth Amendment and individual privacy rights.
  I hope we can move swiftly, complete the consideration of this bill 
this week, work out our differences with the House, and get this matter 
to the President. We have no place to hide if we don't get this done. 
This is what we are here for.
  Again, I thank my colleagues who worked so hard to bring us to this 
point.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, before the Senator leaves the floor, I 
wish to thank him on a well-planned, well-thought-out, and very 
convincing presentation, and an argument that, frankly, I can add very 
little to. So I will make my remarks very brief.
  I thank the Senator from Maine for highlighting the absolute 
importance

[[Page 16238]]

of the passage of this legislation. And, I might add, he is one of the 
most serious and hard-working members of the Senate Armed Services 
Committee as well. I won't go any further.
  Mr. President, I rise in strong support of S. 754. I thank my 
colleagues, Chairman Burr and Vice Chairman Feinstein, for their 
ongoing leadership.
  In the short 2 months since this bill was last on the Senate floor, 
the need for action on information sharing has only increased. It is 
not for a lack of trying. We have continuously failed to make progress 
on this bill. As the Senator from Maine just made clear, that must 
change. Enacting legislation to confront the accumulating dangers of 
cyber threats must be among the highest national security priorities of 
the Congress.
  The need for congressional action, in my view, is also enhanced by 
the administration's inability to develop the policies and framework 
necessary to deter our adversaries in cyberspace.
  Earlier this week we learned just how ineffective the administration 
has been in addressing our cyber challenges. Within days of reaching an 
agreement to curb the stealing of information for economic gain, 
China--China--repeatedly, reportedly, continues its well-coordinated 
efforts to steal designs of our critical weapons systems and to wage 
economic espionage against U.S. companies. It is not a surprise, but it 
serves as yet another sad chapter in this administration's inability to 
address the cyber threats.
  I guess in the last couple of days it has been made known that some 
hacker hacked into the information of both the Director of the CIA and 
the chairman of the homeland security committee. That is interesting. 
As the President's failed China agreement clearly demonstrates, our 
response to cyber attacks has been tepid at best and nonexistent at 
worst. Unless and until the President uses the authority he has to 
defer, deter, defend, and respond to the growing number in severity of 
cyber threats, we will risk not just more of the same but embolden 
adversaries in terrorist organizations that will continuously pursue 
more severe and destructive attacks.
  Addressing our cyber vulnerabilities must be a national security 
priority. Just this week, Admiral Rogers, the head of Cyber Command, 
reiterated, ``It's only a matter of time before someone uses cyber as a 
tool to do damage to critical infrastructure.''
  My colleagues don't have to agree with the Senator from Maine or me 
or anybody else, but shouldn't we listen to Admiral Rogers, the head of 
Cyber Command, probably the most knowledgeable person or one of the 
most knowledgeable who said, ``It is only a matter of time before 
someone uses cyber as a tool to do damage to critical infrastructure.''
  According to the recently retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 
Staff, General Martin Dempsey, our military enjoys ``a significant 
military advantage'' in every domain except for one--cyber space. As 
General Dempsey said, cyber ``is a level playing field. And that makes 
this chairman very uncomfortable.''
  I will tell you, it makes this chairman very uncomfortable as well.
  Efforts are under way to begin addressing some of our strategic 
shortfalls in cyber space, including the training of a 6,200-person 
cyber force. However, these efforts will be meaningless unless we make 
the tough policy decisions to establish meaningful cyber deterrence. 
The President must take steps now to demonstrate to our adversaries 
that the United States takes cyber attacks seriously and is prepared to 
respond.
  This legislation is one piece of that overall deterrence strategy, 
and it is long past time that Congress move forward on information 
sharing legislation. We have been debating similar cyber legislation 
since at least 2012. I am glad this body has come a long way since that 
time in recognizing that government mandates on the private sector, 
which operates the majority of our country's critical infrastructure, 
will do more harm than good in cyber space. The voluntary framework in 
this legislation properly defines the role of the private sector and 
the role of the government in sharing threat information, defending 
networks, and deterring cyber attacks.
  At the same time, it is unfortunate that it has taken over 3 years to 
advance this commonsense legislation. The threats we face in cyber 
space are real and imminent, as well as quickly evolving. All aspects 
of the Federal Government, including this body, must commit to more 
quickly identifying, enacting, and executing solutions to counter cyber 
threats. If we do not, we will lose in cyber space.
  As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, I consider cyber 
security one of the committee's top priorities. That is why the 
National Defense Authorization Act provides a number of critical 
authorities to ensure that the Department of Defense can develop the 
capabilities it needs to deter aggression, defend our national security 
interests, and when called upon, defeat our adversaries in cyber space. 
I find it unacceptable that the President has signaled his intent to 
veto this legislation that, among other key Department of Defense 
priorities, authorizes military cyber operations and dramatically 
reforms the broken acquisition system that has inhibited the 
development and delivery of key cyber capabilities.
  More specifically, the National Defense Authorization Act extends 
liability protections to Department of Defense contractors who report 
on cyber incidents or penetrations, and it authorizes the Secretary of 
Defense to develop, prepare, coordinate and, when authorized by the 
President, conduct a military cyber operation in response to malicious 
cyber activity carried out against the United States or a U.S. person 
by a foreign power. The NDAA authorizes $200 million for the Secretary 
of Defense to assess the cyber vulnerabilities of every major DOD 
weapons system. Finally, Congress required the President to submit an 
integrated policy to deter adversaries in cyber space in the fiscal 
year 2014 National Defense Authorization Act. I tell my colleagues that 
we are still waiting on that policy. This year's NDAA includes funding 
restrictions that will remain in place until it is delivered.
  As we dither, our Nation grows more vulnerable, our privacy and 
security are at greater risk, and our adversaries are further 
emboldened. The stakes are high, and it is essential that we pass the 
Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act without further delay.
  Let me also mention in closing that probably the most disturbing 
comment I have heard in a long time on this issue in this challenge is 
when Admiral Rogers said that our biggest challenge is we don't know 
what we don't know. We don't know what the penetrations have been, what 
the attacks have been, whether they have succeeded or not, where they 
are in this whole realm of cyber and information at all levels. When 
the person we placed in charge of cyber security says we don't know 
what we don't know, my friends, that is a very serious situation.
  I want to congratulate again both the managers of the bill in their 
coordination and their cooperation in this bipartisan effort.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. KING. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. McCAIN. I will be pleased to yield.
  Mr. KING. I ask the Senator, would you agree that this bill 
represents an important part of our cyber defense but that in order to 
deter attacks in the long term, we must have a cyber policy that goes 
beyond simple defensive measures?
  Mr. McCAIN. I would certainly agree, I would say to my friend from 
Maine, because if the adversaries that want to commit cyber attacks 
against the United States of America and our allies believe that there 
is no price to pay for those attacks, then where is the demotivating 
factor in all of this which would, if they failed, then keep them from 
doing what they are doing? It seems to me that this is an act of war, 
and I don't use that term lightly but I am trying to use it carefully. 
If you damage intentionally another nation's military or its economy or 
its ability to function as a government--I would

[[Page 16239]]

ask my friend from Maine--wouldn't that fit into at least a narrow 
interpretation of an act of war? If so, then should we only have 
defenses? Have we ever been in a conflict where we only have defenses 
and not the capability to go out and deter further aggression?
  Mr. KING. I would suggest to the Senator that if you are in a fight 
and all you can do is defend and never punch, you are going to 
eventually lose that fight. I think this is an important area. The 
theory of deterrence, as distasteful as it might have been, the 
mutually assured destruction during the nuclear era did in fact prevent 
the use of nuclear arms for some 70 years. I think we need to be 
thinking about a deterrence that goes beyond simply defensive measures. 
I commend the chairman for raising this issue and appreciate your 
thoughtful consideration.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, it seems as though every week, the American 
people learn of yet another data breach in which Americans' sensitive, 
private information has been stolen by cyber criminals or foreign 
governments. This is a critical national security problem that deserves 
action by Congress. But our actions must be thoughtful and responsible, 
and we must recognize that strengthening our Nation's cyber security is 
a complex endeavor with no single solution.
  According to security researchers and technologists, the most 
effective action Congress can take to improve our cyber security is to 
require better and more comprehensive data security practices. That is 
why earlier this year, I introduced the Consumer Privacy Protection 
Act. That bill requires companies to utilize strong data security 
measures to protect our personal information and to help prevent 
breaches in the first place. Companies that benefit financially from 
gathering and analyzing our personal information should be obligated to 
take meaningful steps to keep it safe.
  But rather than taking a comprehensive approach that addresses the 
multiple facets of cyber security, the Republican majority appears to 
be focused entirely on passing the Senate Intelligence Committee's 
cyber security information sharing bill. While legislation to promote 
the sharing of cyber threat information could, if done right, be useful 
in improving our cyber security, it is a serious mistake to believe 
that information sharing alone is the solution. Information sharing 
alone would not, for example, have prevented the breach at the Office 
of Personnel Management, nor would it have prevented other major 
breaches, such as those at Target, Home Depot, Anthem, or Sony.
  Instead of ensuring that companies better safeguard Americans' data, 
this bill goes in the opposite direction, giving large corporations 
more liability protection and even more leeway on how to use and share 
our personal information with the government--without adequate privacy 
protections.
  Also troubling is the fact that the Republican majority has been 
intent on jamming this bill through the Senate without any regard for 
regular process or opportunity for meaningful public debate. Only last 
year, the Republican leader declared his commitment to ``a more robust 
committee process'' and plainly stated that ``bills should go through 
committee.'' But the bill was drafted behind closed doors by the Senate 
Intelligence Committee, and it has not been the subject of any open 
hearings or any meaningful public debate. The text of the bill was only 
made public after it was reported to the Senate floor, and no other 
committee of jurisdiction--including the Judiciary Committee--was 
allowed to consider and improve the bill.
  The Judiciary Committee was prevented from considering this bill even 
though it contains numerous provisions that affect matters squarely 
within our jurisdiction. First and foremost, the bill creates a 
framework of information sharing that could severely undermine 
Americans' privacy. The bill also overrides all existing law to provide 
broad liability protections for any company that shares information 
with the government. It also overrides important privacy laws such as 
the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, ECPA, and the Foreign 
Intelligence Surveillance Act, FISA, over which the Judiciary Committee 
has long exercised jurisdiction. CISA even amends the Freedom of 
Information Act, FOIA, and creates new exemptions from disclosure.
  This is just the latest attempt by the majority leader to bypass the 
Judiciary Committee and jam a bill through the Senate that contains 
provisions within the jurisdiction of the committee. The bill reported 
by the Senate Intelligence Committee includes a broad and unnecessary 
FOIA exemption. FOIA falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the 
Senate Judiciary Committee and changes affecting this law should not be 
enacted without full and careful consideration by the Judiciary 
Committee. This important transparency law certainly should not be 
amended in closed session by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
  Shortly after the text of the bill was released, I shared with 
Chairman Grassley my concern that the Judiciary Committee should also 
consider this bill. He assured me that there would be a ``robust and 
open amendment process'' if this bill were considered on the Senate 
floor. But only a few weeks later, the Republican leadership--with 
Chairman Grassley's support--attempted to jam the Intelligence 
Committee's bill through the Senate as an amendment to the National 
Defense Authorization Act, NDAA, without any opportunity for meaningful 
debate. Republicans and Democrats joined together to reject the 
majority leader's effort to force the cyber security bill onto the 
NDAA. Despite this rebuke from both sides of the aisle, just a few 
weeks later, the majority leader again attempted to jam the bill 
through the Senate in the final days before August recess, without any 
serious opportunity to debate and offer amendments.
  The majority leader's actions have been part of a consistent 
disregard for regular order. He has talked about providing an 
opportunity for fair debate, but at the same time, he has used all 
procedural mechanisms to stifle process on this bill. Yesterday 
afternoon, the Senate moved to consideration of this bill--but then not 
even 2 hours later, the majority leader moved to end debate. That 
speaks volumes about whether the majority leader is really interested 
in a full and open debate, and it is not how the U.S. Senate should 
operate--particularly when it comes to a bill with such sweeping 
ramifications for Americans' privacy.
  Senator Feinstein, the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, 
has consistently said that the Senate ``should have an opportunity to 
fully consider the bill and to receive the input of other committees 
with jurisdiction in this area.'' She has worked hard to improve the 
underlying bill with a managers' amendment that addresses a number of 
my concerns, particularly in regard to FOIA, limiting the sharing of 
information for cyber security purposes only, and ensuring that the 
bill would not allow the government to use information to investigate 
crimes completely unrelated to cyber security. I appreciate these 
improvements, and Senator Feinstein's efforts to include them in the 
bill. But again, this bill still has some serious problems and requires 
a full, public debate. The bill still includes, for example, a FOIA 
exemption that I believe is overly broad and unnecessary.
  In July, the Department of Homeland Security wrote a letter to 
Senator Franken stating that in their view the bill raises significant 
operational concerns and certain provisions threaten to severely 
undermine Americans' privacy. Last week, the Computer & Communications 
Industry Association--an organization that includes Google, Facebook, 
and Yahoo!--voiced serious concerns that the bill fails to protect 
users' privacy and could ``cause collateral harm'' to ``innocent third 
parties.'' And this week, major tech companies such as Apple, Dropbox, 
Twitter, and Yelp have vocally opposed the bill citing concerns for 
their users' privacy.
  The latest version of the bill contains a number of improvements that 
I and other Senators have been fighting for, and I am glad to see that 
we are making progress. But we still have work to

[[Page 16240]]

do on this bill, and the Senate must have an open and honest debate 
about the Senate Intelligence Committee's bill and its implications for 
Americans' privacy. I agree that we must do more to protect our cyber 
security, but we must be responsible in our actions. Legislation of 
this importance should not be hastily pushed through the Senate, 
without a full and fair opportunity for Senators to consider the 
ramifications of this bill. Unfortunately, by moving so quickly to end 
debate, it appears that the majority leader is trying to do just that.
  Ms. MIKULSKI. Mr. President, I wish to support the Cybersecurity 
Information Sharing Act of 2015.
  Cyber security is the most pressing economic and national security 
threat facing our country today. As a member of the Senate Select 
Committee on Intelligence, I am keenly aware of the damage cyber 
attacks cause on our Nation. As vice chairwoman of the Senate 
Appropriations Committee, I believe we must have a clear and 
comprehensive approach to funding cyber security.
  In boardrooms and around kitchen tables, concern over cyber security 
is heightening. It is gaining new traction following the cyber attack 
on the Office of Personnel Management, which compromised the personal 
information of more than 22 million Federal employees, contractors, and 
their families.
  The American people expect serious action by Congress. This can and 
must be done, while respecting privacy and avoiding data misuse by the 
government or businesses. Congress must act with a sense of urgency to 
pass the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. If we wait for another 
major cyber attack, we risk overreacting, overregulating, overspending, 
and overlegislating. The time to act is now.
  Our Nation is under attack. Every day, cyber attacks are happening. 
Cyber terrorists are working to damage critical infrastructure by 
taking over the power grid or disrupting air traffic control. Cyber 
spies are moving at breakneck speeds to steal state secrets, 
intellectual property, and personal information. Cyber criminals are 
hacking our networks, stealing financial information, and disrupting 
business operations. These cyber attacks can disrupt critical 
infrastructure, wipe out a family's entire life savings, take down 
entire companies, and put human lives at risk. In the past year alone, 
we've seen cyber attacks against Sony, Home Depot, UPS, JP Morgan 
Chase, Experian, T-Mobile, Scottrade, and the list goes on. The 
economic losses of cyber crime are stunning. In 2014, the Center for 
Strategic and International Studies and McAfee estimated the annual 
cost from cyber crime to be over $400 billion.
  I have been working on cyber issues since I was elected to the 
Senate. Our cyber warriors at the National Security Agency are in 
Maryland, and I have been working with the NSA to ensure signals 
intelligence was a national security focus even before cyber was a 
method of warfare.
  In my role on the Intelligence Committee, I served on the Cyber 
Working Group, which developed findings to guide Congress on getting 
cyber governance right, protecting civil liberties, and improving the 
cyber workforce.
  As vice chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee and the Commerce, 
Justice, and Science Subcommittee, I put funds in the Federal checkbook 
for critical cyber security agencies. These include the Federal Bureau 
of Investigation, which investigates cyber crime; the National 
Institute of Standards and Technology, which works with the private 
sector to develop standards for cyber security technology; and the 
National Science Foundation, which researches ways to secure our 
Nation. As a member of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, I 
fight for critical funding for the intelligence and cyber agencies, 
including the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, 
and Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, who are coming up 
with the new ideas to create jobs and keep our country safe. These 
funds are critical to building the workforce and providing the 
technology and resources to make our cyber security smarter, safer, and 
more secure.
  This bill does three things from a national security perspective. 
First, it allows businesses and government to voluntarily share 
information about cyber threats. Second, it requires the Director of 
National Intelligence to share more cyber threat information with the 
private sector, both classified and unclassified. Third, it establishes 
a Department of Homeland Security ``portal'' for cyber info-sharing 
with the government to help dot-gov and dot-com in a constitutional 
manner. These three provisions are an innovation. Despite all the 
amazing talent companies have, many are being attacked and don't even 
realize it. This legislation allows unprecedented dot-com and dot-gov 
cooperation. There are also key provisions on privacy protections and 
liability protection for companies that monitor their own networks or 
share information.
  Why do we need a bill to make these vital partnerships happen? 
America is under attack every second of every day. The threat is here, 
and it is now. If we do not act or if we let the perfect be the enemy 
of the good, this country will be more vulnerable than ever before, and 
Congress will have done nothing.
  This bill is not perfect. The Department of Homeland Security's role 
has been criticized by many, including myself. I have been skeptical 
about their ability to perform some duties assigned in this bill. I am 
still skeptical, although less so than before. But this bill takes 
important steps to diversify government and private sector actors, so 
we are not just focusing on DHS, but also keeping civilian agencies in 
charge. We cannot have intelligence agencies leading this effort with 
the private sector. Some would like to see that go further, but that is 
what the amendment process is for.
  People in the civil liberties community worry that this bill could 
allow government intrusions into people's privacy. This was of 
tantamount concern for me. If we don't protect civil liberties, the 
added security is for naught because we lose what we value most: our 
freedom. The authors of this bill, especially Senator Feinstein, have 
made key improvements on issues of law enforcement powers and 
protecting core privacy concerns. While not everyone is entirely 
pleased, this bill has made important strides to balance information 
sharing and privacy.
  The business community is concerned because it fears strangulation 
and overregulation. They worry that they will open themselves up to 
lawsuits if they participate in the program with the government. I have 
heard from Maryland businesses and these are valid concerns. 
Importantly, this bill has made strides in accommodating business and 
builds a voluntary framework to allow businesses to choose that 
protection. Protection does not come without responsibility for 
participants, but this bill links the need for cyber security, 
appropriate liability protection, and the expertise of our business 
community in a way that answers a lot of companies' concerns. We cannot 
eliminate all government involvement in this issue because it simply 
won't work, and we will lose key government expertise in the Department 
of Defense, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and elsewhere. However, we 
can work to try to minimize it while maintaining the government's role 
in protecting national security.
  I am so proud that the Senate came together in a bipartisan way to 
draft and pass this legislation. The Senate must pass this legislation 
now. Working together, we can make our Nation safer and stronger and 
show the American people we can cooperate to get an important job done.


                           Amendment No. 2557

  Mr. President, today I wish to speak about my amendment to the cyber 
security bill. This amendment would provide an additional $37 million 
for the Office of Personnel Management, OPM, to accelerate completion 
of its information technology, IT, modernization and thwart future 
cyber attacks.
  This additional funding would allow OPM to make needed upgrades to 
cyber security and network systems 1 year

[[Page 16241]]

ahead of schedule. This means OPM will not have to wait another year to 
protect sensitive personnel data by implementing hardware and software 
upgrades recommended by security experts.
  The $37 million is designated as an emergency under the Budget 
Control Act of 2011.
  For over a year, the Office of Personnel Management's systems were 
compromised. This hack exposed the financial and personal information 
of 22 million Federal employees and their families, contractors, job 
candidates and retirees. This is unacceptable.
  OPM's retirement services and background investigation databases 
contain the most sensitive data OPM holds, including Social Security 
numbers, health information and fingerprints.
  I have heard from employees across the government. Data breaches 
undermine morale and complicate their ability to serve the American 
people.
  OPM has moved to provide protections, but that is not enough. 
Securing these systems must be done now. We can't wait for the next 
budget cycle.
  I urge support for my amendment. This is a crisis, so we ought to 
treat it like one. Twenty-two million Americans who entrusted their 
data and fingerprints to the government deserve the highest standard of 
protection.
  There is a reason OPM was exploited. Federal cyber security has been 
weak. The Appropriations Committee has consistently given agencies the 
resources they asked for to protect their dot-gov systems. But under 
sequester-level budgeting it hasn't been enough. Constrained agencies 
don't ask for what is truly needed to do the cyber security job.
  Tight budgets mean immediate problems get requested and funded before 
other much needed IT protection and maintenance. We aren't even doing 
the simple things.
  After the OPM breach, the Office of Management and Budget, OMB, 
conducted a cyber sprint. OMB asked agencies to take four minimal 
steps: No. 1, deploy Department of Homeland Security malicious activity 
detectors; No. 2, patch critical vulnerabilities; No. 3, tighten 
privileged user policies; and No. 4, accelerate deployment of 
multifactor authentication.
  While there was improvement, only 14 of the 24 agencies met the 
fourth goal. Some of it is a lack of will, but some is a lack of 
resources.
  OPM knows it needs to harden its information technology.
  That is why I am offering this amendment, providing $37 million in 
emergency spending to harden OPM systems now--not a year from now. 
These funds meet the criteria for being designated as emergency 
spending as set out in the Budget Control Act of 2011. OPM's needs are 
urgent, temporary, and, regrettably, unforeseen.
  What does it mean to designate funds as emergency spending? It means 
no offsets, so we don't pay for this amendment by drawing from existing 
funding used to defend the Nation or help America's families.
  The need is urgent--our adversaries are still trying to attack us. 
The need is temporary--these are one-time costs to accelerate IT 
reform. And the need is unforeseen which is sadly the reason they were 
not requested in the President's fiscal year 2016 budget in February.
  Some say this funding is premature, and OPM is not ready to deploy it 
effectively. However, those reports were written before Beth Cobert 
became OPM Acting Director. She is turning OPM around, but she needs 
the resources to secure OPM's IT systems, and cyber security is a 
critical issue.
  Government can't be reckless with the sensitive data it has. We must 
do better with dot-gov and get our own house in order. We know what OPM 
needs to do--they have the will, they have a business plan, and now 
they need the wallet.
  Vote for my amendment No. 2557 to get OPM the resources it needs.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.


                  Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 3594

  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, last week when I was back in my home 
State of Wisconsin, I had the privilege of hosting a roundtable with 
college students from all across the southeastern area of the State. 
The focus of the conversation was how we in Congress could help keep 
college affordable and accessible. During the course of that 
conversation, it was abundantly clear that most of the students were 
very frustrated that Congress could not take some of the most 
commonsense steps to make that happen. I told them that I shared their 
frustration and ensured them that I would be going back to Washington, 
DC, this week to fight on their behalf.
  This morning I hosted a Google Hangout and spoke with campus 
newspapers from across the State of Wisconsin to reiterate my 
commitment on this issue. So here I am, almost 1 month from the day 
that I last stood here on the Senate floor, 1 month since a single 
United States Senator stood up and blocked a commonsense and bipartisan 
measure that would have continued to provide critical financial support 
for America's low-income college students.
  In the short month since our efforts to reauthorize the Federal 
Perkins Loan Program were obstructed, the immediate impacts are already 
becoming quite clear. Last week, the Coalition of Higher Education 
Assistance Organizations began surveying colleges and universities that 
participate in the Perkins loan program to learn more about how this 
obstruction is impacting their students. After a few days, they heard 
from over 100 students outlining how allowing Perkins to expire is 
harming students and institutions alike. There are real impacts being 
felt by real students right now across America. If we don't act, this 
damaging impact will ripple across our community. Therefore, we cannot 
sit idly by.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the 
immediate consideration of H.R. 3594, which is at the desk, that the 
bill be read a third time and passed, and the motion to reconsider be 
considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or 
debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, on behalf of the leadership, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Ms. BALDWIN. Mr. President, this is incredibly frustrating. I am 
going to spend a few minutes talking about how this objection, this 
obstruction is impacting the students of America and the higher 
education institutions of America. There are real impacts that are 
being felt right now. Students who have previously received Perkins 
loans will lose their future eligibility if they change institutions or 
academic programs. Students seeking Perkins loans for the upcoming 
winter and spring semesters will not be eligible at all if we don't act 
soon to reauthorize this program. Finally, all future students will be 
ineligible for this program.
  This afternoon right before I came down to the Senate floor, I 
received a letter from the president of the University of Wisconsin's 
system, Ray Cross--a letter that was co-signed by all 14 of the UW 
system university chancellors. In their message, they shared compelling 
insight into how the sudden end to the Federal Perkins Loan Program is 
already affecting Wisconsin students. They then closed their letter 
with this:

       [W]e need to keep this program in place. After all, our job 
     is to help students who would not otherwise be able to attend 
     higher education and to help them overcome barriers, 
     particularly financial barriers, all of which helps to ensure 
     access, retention, completion, and a skilled workforce. These 
     are goals upon which all of us can agree.

  One month ago our colleagues in the House of Representatives--a body 
rarely called a place of agreement--took up and passed a measure that 
would extend this student loan program for 1 year. I previously called 
up that bill here in the Senate and asked unanimous consent that we 
extend the Federal Perkins Loan Program. While I look forward to a 
broader conversation about improving Federal supports for students as 
we look to reauthorize the Higher Education Act, I don't believe--and I 
still don't--that we can sit idly by while America's students are left 
with such uncertainty.

[[Page 16242]]

  As everyone heard, I asked unanimous consent to proceed to the 
consideration of the bill, and one Senator stood up on behalf of 
Republican leadership and blocked our ability at this point in time to 
extend the Federal Perkins Loan Program by 1 year.
  Again, I understand a desire, and frankly, share a desire to have a 
broader conversation about Federal student aid as part of the Higher 
Education Act reauthorization effort. I still do not think it is right 
or fair to let this program expire to the detriment of thousands of 
students in need. Frankly, this is a perfect example of why the 
American people are so upset with Washington.
  Since 1958, the Federal Perkins Loan Program has been successfully 
helping Americans access affordable higher education with low-interest 
loans for students who cannot borrow or afford more expensive private 
student loans.
  In Wisconsin, the program provides more than 20,000 low-income 
university and college students with more than $41 million in aid, but 
the impact of this program isn't just isolated to the Badger State. In 
fact, the Federal Perkins Loan Program aids over half a million 
students with financial need each year across 1,500 institutions of 
higher learning.
  The schools themselves originate, service, and collect the fixed 
interest loan rates, and what is more, institutions maintain loans 
available for future students because these are revolving funds.
  Since the program's creation, institutions have invested millions of 
dollars of their own funds into the program. In addition to making 
higher education accessible for low-income students, the program serves 
as an incentive for people who wish to go into public service by 
offering targeted loan cancellations for specific professions in areas 
of high need, such as teaching, nursing, and law enforcement.
  As a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions 
Committee, and as a Senator representing a State with such a rich 
history of higher education, it is among my highest priorities to fight 
to ensure that the Federal Perkins Loan Program continues for 
generations to come, but unfortunately, as we saw, one single Senator 
stood up again today and said no to students across America who ask for 
nothing more than an opportunity to pursue their dreams--students such 
as Andrew.
  Andrew is currently a student at the University of Wisconsin in 
Stevens Point. Without the support of his Perkins loan, Andrew said he 
would not have had the means to attend college. He has little to no 
income at his disposal. Today, not only is Andrew making the dean's 
list every semester, but he now has his sights set on attending law 
school, also at the University of Wisconsin. Andrew said: ``Without the 
assistance I get from the Perkins Loan I would be forced to either take 
out other high-interest loans, or delay my graduation date, or drop 
out--which is the last thing I want to do.''
  Today this body also stood up and once again said no to students such 
as Nayeli Spahr. Nayeli was raised by a single mother who was an 
immigrant and worked two full-time jobs. Nayeli attended 10 different 
schools in 3 different States before she finished high school. Without 
the Federal Perkins Loan Program, Nayeli said her opportunity to get a 
college education would have been ``an illusionary dream.''
  Today Nayeli is the first in her family to finish college and is now 
in her last year of medical school. She is planning to work with those 
who are underserved in our urban communities. She finished by saying:

       The Perkins loan program helped me reach this point. And 
     its existence is essential to provide that opportunity for 
     other young adults wanting to believe in themselves and to 
     empower their communities to be better. Please save it!

  You don't have to look very far to find the dramatic impact that this 
investment has on America's students. There are thousands of stories 
like the ones I just shared, representing thousands of students who are 
still benefitting from the opportunities provided to them by this 
hugely successful program.
  I am disappointed and frustrated that our bipartisan effort in the 
Senate has again been obstructed. I will continue to fight to extend 
support for America's students in the form of extending the Federal 
Perkins Loan Program so that we can find a way to show the half-million 
American students who rely on this loan program that we are standing 
with them and that we are committed to helping them build a stronger 
future for themselves and our country.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and yield back the remainder of my 
time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from Ohio.
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I join my colleague from Wisconsin and 
other Members who are here on the floor to talk about the Perkins Loan 
Program. It is a really important program. It serves the needs of many 
of the students in our States, and it serves a unique need. It provides 
flexibility that other programs don't provide, and it also allows the 
colleges and universities to actually contribute to it.
  I hope we can get this 1-year extension done, and I hope that the 
objection will be overridden by the common sense of doing something 
that the House has already done. By the way, the House of 
Representatives did it for 1 year also at no cost to the Federal 
Government because there is no reason to pay for a 1-year extension of 
a program that is a loan program where the colleges and universities 
take the payments that are made--the repayments--and put them back into 
the program. So this program is at no cost, and it is certainly an 
important program that we ought to continue.
  I know there is discussion about broader education reform, and I 
support that. I know this program is not perfect. There are other ways 
that we could possibly improve it. I am perfectly willing to enter into 
that discussion and debate it. We should have that debate. We should 
debate how to make sure college is more affordable for all students, 
but let's not at this point stop this program that is working and is 
providing for young people in my State and around the country what they 
need to be able to afford a quality education.
  I was out here a few weeks ago talking about this program, and at 
that time I talked about some specific schools and the people in my 
State who depend on this program. It is the oldest Federal program out 
there that allows students to be able to take advantage of some kind of 
help in order to get through school, and boy, it is needed now more 
than ever with tuition costs going up and more and more families 
feeling the squeeze.
  When I go back home, I hear from parents and the students themselves. 
It is tough. Wages are flat, and in many cases declining. Yet expenses 
are up, and this is one of them, along with health care and electricity 
bills. This is not the time to stop the program but to continue this 
really important program. At the same time, we need to engage in the 
important debate of how we can reform higher education more generally 
in order to ensure that everybody has access to an affordable 
education.
  Since 1958, this program has provided more than $28 billion in loans. 
It is a program that supports 60 different schools in my State. In the 
Buckeye State of Ohio, we have 60 schools that have loans under this 
program. Last year, more than 25,000 Ohio students received financial 
aid through this program--3,000 young people at Kent State and over 
1,700 at the Ohio State University in Columbus.
  One of those students is an outstanding young woman. Her name is 
Keri. She is a junior at Kent State. She interned for me last summer. 
When I talked to Keri about this program, she said that this is 
something she absolutely needs to be able to stay in school.
  Keri is a young woman for whom I have a lot of respect because she 
fought the odds. She was in foster care. She went from one foster home 
to another while she was growing up. Yet she not only fought the odds. 
She is now excelling in college and doing a great job, but she doesn't 
have the resources to

[[Page 16243]]

stay in college without this program. She is a Pell grant recipient, 
but she also needs the Perkins Loan Program to be able to stay in 
school.
  This is not just about numbers, folks. This is about people. This is 
about Keri. This is about young people whom we want to be able to have 
the opportunity and to be able to get the education they need to get 
ahead, because it does provide help for those who are most in need.
  Well beyond Ohio, of course, 1,700 postsecondary institutions now 
participate in this program. It shouldn't be controversial. Again, the 
House passed it for 1 year. It is something that does not require a new 
appropriation. It is a flexible program. So many of our student loan 
programs, including the Pell Grant Program and so on, are programs 
where the schools cannot provide any kind of flexibility. With many of 
our families and many of our students, Keri being an example, that 
flexibility is really important. Circumstances change. They may find 
themselves in a situation where they need a little help to stay in 
school so they can finish their academic major. They may find they need 
a little bit of help because of an unfortunate event that they could 
not anticipate happening in their families, and this program provides 
that flexibility. Again, the colleges and universities actually 
contribute to it. It is a matching program where they have to step up 
and be counted.
  Let's not allow these students to fall through the cracks, and let's 
consider what happens if we do allow that to happen. Students who are 
applying for the winter semester, which starts in January, or the 
spring semester may well find that they are not able to receive the aid 
they need.
  I am told that students can lose their eligibility if they change 
institutions or if they change their majors. These kids could fall 
between the cracks even if they have a Perkins loan now.
  Finally, of course, if we don't act pretty soon, then next fall when 
there will be up to 150,000 freshman looking for a Perkins loan, they 
may find they are not eligible for it. This is not acceptable. Let's be 
sure we do everything we can here to make sure that college is not 
road-blocked for low-income students who are trying to get a college 
degree and pursue their dreams. Let's help them get ahead.
  Let's pass this. It creates certainty for the students who benefit 
from the loans, it creates certainty for these colleges and 
universities, and it ensures that students who need this funding are 
not stopped and blocked by these high tuitions.
  I wish to thank my colleagues Senator Collins and Senator Casey, whom 
I see is on the floor. I also wish to thank Senator Baldwin, Senator 
Ayotte, Senator Murphy, and I see Senator Coons and others who are 
here.
  This is bipartisan, and it is something we can do here in the Senate, 
just as the House has already acted. Let's not block this program 
because this could block the students from attaining the educational 
background they need to be able to succeed in life. Let's move forward 
with this while at the same time continuing our discussion on the need 
to ensure that higher education is more broadly reformed to allow 
everybody to have that opportunity to pursue their dreams.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield my time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, let me associate myself with the remarks 
of Senator Baldwin and Senator Portman. I thank them for making this 
bipartisan clarion call to bring this body together on behalf of 
students. There are over 6,000 students in my State of Connecticut.
  I believe Senator Blumenthal is going to give some remarks as well to 
add Connecticut's list of schools and to debate this issue on the 
floor.
  We have over 1,000 students at the University of Connecticut, over 
700 at Yale University, 600 at the University of Bridgeport, 500 at 
Central Connecticut, and 400 in Eastern Connecticut. All across 
Connecticut, students are able to attend college because of the Perkins 
Loan Program. As one of the few Members of the Senate who is still 
paying back my student loans, who is also saving as fast as I can for 
my two boys who will hopefully go to college, this debate we are having 
today strikes me as crazy. We should be having a debate about how we 
expand access to college. Instead, we are simply trying to protect the 
existing access we have.
  In 10 years the United States has gone from the No. 1 country in the 
world with respect to the number of 25- to 35-year-olds with college 
degrees to number 12 in the world. In 10 years we have gone from first 
to twelfth. The answer for that is the cost of college. The cost of 
college is making it unaffordable for people to start and unaffordable 
for many others to complete it.
  The Perkins Loan Program is one that doesn't require any additional 
expenditure of taxpayer dollars. Those 6,000 kids in Connecticut will 
get to continue to attend college with Perkins loans, with no 
additional obligation on behalf of taxpayers. That is as good a deal as 
we can get--no additional expenditure from the Federal Government and 
hundreds of thousands of kids all across the country--6,000 of them in 
Connecticut--get to continue in college.
  I simply wanted to come to the floor to express my bewilderment that 
the Republican leadership is standing in the way of simply preserving 
the student loan programs that are on the books today. If we go back 
home to our districts, we are not going to hear from a lot of people 
who are sympathetic to this argument. They want Congress to be talking 
about how to make college more affordable. They would be as bewildered 
as many of us are that Republicans in the Senate are trying to make 
college less affordable, when there is absolutely no additional 
expenditure required in order for us simply to preserve the Perkins 
Loan Program as it currently exists.
  Let me just add one story to the mix--the story of Amanda, who is a 
senior at the University of Hartford. Her family makes about $67,000 a 
year. People are going to be familiar with her story because that is 
just a little bit too much for her to be able to qualify for a Pell 
grant. So she has to work two different jobs to put money on top of her 
Stafford loans, to put money on top of the contribution her parents 
make, just to get into the neighborhood of being able to afford 
college, but what makes that final difference for Amanda is the Perkins 
loan.
  The only reason she is able to go to the University of Hartford is 
because of the Perkins loan. She is doing everything we ask. Her 
parents are putting in some money, she is taking out loans, and she is 
working two jobs. She says:

       I can't imagine how difficult it would have been if federal 
     funding sources such as the Perkins loan had been eliminated 
     as options for me. I've utilized the Perkins loan offered to 
     me, in the full amount, every single year to resolve my 
     account balance. Even now, in my senior year, I have no 
     choice but to work two jobs and I'm barely getting by. 
     Without the Perkins and other financial aid, I truly believe 
     that I would have had to transfer to a community college 
     where I would not have been able to accomplish nearly as much 
     as I have here at the University of Hartford.

  On behalf of her and the six other students in Connecticut who will 
lose their Perkins loan eligibility as long as this Republican 
objection lasts, I hope it will come together.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.
  Mr. COONS. Mr. President, I stand to join in with the voices we have 
already heard from, including Senator Murphy of Connecticut and Senator 
Portman of Ohio--bipartisan, of course--who have stood in support of 
the unanimous consent request of Senator Baldwin, blocked by the 
opposing party, that we move forward with reauthorizing the Perkins 
Loan Program.
  The voice that I think is so often missing from the deliberations in 
the Senate is the voice we just heard brought forward by Senator Murphy 
of Connecticut, the voice of our constituents--the constituents who 
connect with us when we are home in our

[[Page 16244]]

States; the constituents who reach out to us by letter and by email. I 
just wanted to add the voices of my constituents from the State of 
Delaware.
  Apparently, our colleagues have failed to hear from thousands--even 
hundreds of thousands--of our home State constituents who rely on 
Federal Perkins loans. This program is a critical lifeline for students 
across the country who would be well on their way to a college degree 
if it weren't for the skyrocketing, unsustainable costs of higher 
education. I think Congress's failure to reauthorize the Perkins Loan 
Program is already having a negative impact on students and on 
households across our country. We can see the real-world impact in our 
home States if we will but listen to our constituents.
  Let me give two examples of Delawareans who have recently reached out 
to me.
  Frank, an incoming University of Delaware student, was counting on 
the Perkins Loan Program to help cover a gap in affording the cost of 
his higher education. Now that those funds are no longer available, now 
that the Perkins loans have expired, his family is struggling to figure 
out how they will pay for his education.
  There is also Taylor, a Delawarean, already a college student, who 
had signed up for a promising new course of study because of a Perkins 
loan that would make the additional cost possible. Without this funding 
moving forward, future students like Taylor will also have to turn to 
private loans--sometimes less accessible, sometimes less affordable--to 
fill that gap. Frank and Taylor's stories are just a few examples of 
many that I have received in my office from constituents or 
conversations I have had at home in Delaware.
  When I am with working Delawareans, there is no topic raised more 
frequently amongst those in my age bracket of how they can afford to 
send their kids to college. Just the other night, standing around on 
the sideline of a soccer game, I heard a whole group talking about how 
can we possibly afford the skyrocketing expenses of higher education.
  So the question we are here today to address isn't the great big 
question of how can we make college affordable, it is just a simple 
question of how can we extend the Perkins Loan Program. I am proud to 
join with my colleagues in calling for a permanent extension of this 
program. In my State of Delaware, nearly 2,000 Delawareans last year 
received Perkins loans from 2013 to 2014. Those are 2,000 of my 
constituents who had the chance to go to college, invest in their 
education, improve their lives for the better, and that is in just 1 
year of the program.
  In the 50 years since Perkins was created, the program has awarded 
nearly $30 billion through 26 million loans across this entire country. 
Those are big, abstract numbers, but for my colleagues who remain 
undecided on whether to support the extension, I urge them to think 
about the Franks, the Taylors, their constituents, and folks from towns 
and cities, big and small, all across this country. They are not asking 
for a free education. The average Perkins loan is just $2,000. It is 
not even a rounding error in the scope of the total Federal budget that 
we fight over here week in and week out, but that is an amount that one 
student, one family can singlehandedly determine--for an aspiring 
teacher or a business owner or an inventor or someone who just wants to 
advance themselves through education--whether they can continue their 
steady forward progress.
  This extension alone is not the Higher Education Act reauthorization 
many of us have been calling for; it is not the substantial education 
investment many of us know would be a huge boost to our country, its 
competitiveness, and our constituents' well-being; it is not a perfect 
solution to the Delawareans I talk to every day who wonder how they can 
afford college; it is an important start. So let's come together and 
act. Even the House of Representatives, of all places, has acted on a 
bipartisan basis to extend the Perkins Loan Program. We can and should 
do the same.
  I thank my colleagues for their work on this critical issue, and I 
urge this Chamber to come together to approve an extension of the 
Federal Perkins Loan Program without delay.
  Thank you. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.
  Mr. CASEY. Mr. President, I rise to speak about the same subject that 
my colleague from Delaware just raised and so many others before him. 
It is bipartisan. This loan program, which we have had the luxury, I 
guess, all these years of relying upon, has allowed us to say that as a 
country we value higher education. We value that for no matter what 
family a person is from or what level of income. As I have often said, 
we believe not only in the context of early learning, when someone is 
at the beginning of their learning years, but much later when they are 
in the years of higher education, that they can learn more now and earn 
more later. That linkage, that direct nexus between learning and 
earning, is a substantial factor in whether someone can have a good job 
and a career and success in their life.
  However, for a lot of folks, the cost of college, as so many have 
outlined today, becomes an impossible barrier over which they cannot 
climb, especially if they are low income. All they are asking for is a 
fair shot--a fair shot at learning, a fair shot at going to an 
institution of higher education.
  We know this program has meant so much not only to folks across the 
country, but when we look State by State and examine the number of 
students, the number of families who are affected now, it is 
extraordinary, whether we are talking about the Presiding Officer's 
home State of Colorado or Senator Coons and his constituents in 
Delaware or Connecticut or Wisconsin or Ohio. Wherever we are, we can 
see the numbers.
  In Pennsylvania, 40,000 students today are beneficiaries of the 
Perkins Loan Program. We are told as well that this isn't just a 
program that affects all different income levels; this is a program 
which is designed and has benefited those who most need it. We are told 
that one-quarter of recipients are from families with incomes of less 
than $30,000. The maximum loan amount per student is $5,500. If someone 
is going to a school where it costs $45,000 or $50,000, that may not 
seem like a lot, but for a lot of students who are at institutions that 
are not so high in cost, that is a big number--or a fraction of that 
number is a big number. If you are going to graduate school, you can 
get up to $8,000 from the Perkins Loan Program. It is a 10-year 
repayment period. As the Senator from Ohio pointed out, it is a 
revolving fund. So as one student is paying their Perkins loan back 
over 10 years, another student is benefiting from that revolving fund.
  We have all had individuals in our States--I have talked a couple of 
times about Nikki Ezzolo. Nikki is a recent graduate of Edinboro 
University. She had a long and difficult pathway through her higher 
education years. She is a single mom. She was in school and then out of 
school. When she finally got through school and had the benefit of a 
Perkins loan, among other things, she said the following in talking 
about her own circumstances as a single mom:

       I am proud to be a college grad and my daughter is proud of 
     me too. I am so grateful for getting a Perkins loan to help 
     me. I know that I wouldn't be where I am right now--

  Meaning with a job after graduating from Edinboro--

     without it, and that is a really scary thought.

  So she is thinking about where she would have been without a Perkins 
loan. Where she would have been is highly likely out of school and 
therefore not working. And the job she got is with a major company in 
our State.
  So that is Nikki.
  I also mentioned on the floor a couple of weeks ago--and I will not 
repeat it, but I just want to remind folks of her name. Kayla McBride. 
She is a recent graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia. She is 
in one corner of the State in Philadelphia, the opposite corner of the 
State where Nikki went to school in Edinboro. She indicated she 
received a Perkins loan to help

[[Page 16245]]

with tuition after her mother was laid off.
  Then we have another example, someone I met during the break, right 
near my hometown. We were meeting with students all across the State 
about this issue. One of them was in Wilkes-Barre. His name is Anthony 
Fanucci, the student body President, and a senior at Wilkes University 
in Wilkes-Barre. Anthony's father works overtime to pay for his 
tuition, and Anthony works every weekend and two jobs over the summer. 
His Perkins loan helped him stay in school. I met Anthony and he spoke 
that day in public. Among the things he said was the following:

       My strengths got me to Wilkes University, but without 
     financial funding, your strengths and your resume and what 
     you've done before that mean nothing. I never ever seek pity 
     for my financial situation because my financial situation is 
     far from rare.

  He is talking about so many students out there who face a fork in the 
road at some point. If they have Perkins, they can likely stay in 
school. If they don't have Perkins, many of them--far too many--will 
not be able to continue their higher education.
  We know the program expired on September 30. Here is what it means 
for--here is the practical implications for students. No new students 
can receive loans, and while the current recipients are 
``grandfathered'' for 5 years, there is uncertainty because we have 
never been in this circumstance where the program has expired and we 
don't know exactly what will happen with regard to the implementation 
of any kind of new changes or new policy by the administration. It is 
important to note that some will not be benefiting from the 
grandfathering provision. A student would not be grandfathered if they 
do one of the following: if they change their major, if they alter 
their course of study, or if they transfer. I should also mention the 
cutoff for the grandfathering was June 30, 2015.
  Let's consider one of those circumstances--if they change their 
major. We are told by a recent study in our State that 75 percent of 
students will change their major at some point in their years in 
college. Let's just say that it is 50 percent or 33 percent. Whatever 
the number is, that is a lot of students changing their major and 
thereby maybe taking themselves out of the protection of that 
grandfathering provision for Perkins loans now that we are in the 
period after it has expired.
  Financial aid officials who have written to us talk about other 
circumstances. I won't read a full letter, but in one letter we got 
from a financial aid official they talked about ``significant changes 
in a family's financial circumstances'' and ``unexpected financial 
difficulties.'' That is the real world of real students and real 
families without Perkins or at least with the uncertainty with regard 
to Perkins. Neither situation in my judgment is acceptable. Not having 
a 1-year extension to a Perkins loan program makes no sense to me and 
to a lot of students. If we had an extension, we could debate if 
someone wanted to make changes or debate the elements of a program, but 
having it expire makes no sense. Even if the expiration doesn't 
definitively impact you, the uncertainty about that should not be part 
of a college student's experience. While they are studying, while they 
are getting through their coursework, especially as freshmen, they 
should have the certainty or at least the expectation that it will 
continue to help them.
  In summary we should, No. 1, continue to work together in a 
bipartisan fashion to solve this problem. The good news is, despite the 
partisan rancor and divisions in Washington and in the Senate and the 
House, on this we have broad bipartisan support--something on the order 
of 28 co-sponsors, and at last count 6 are Republicans. So we have got 
folks in both parties working on this.
  We all believe that we have an obligation to do everything we can to 
support higher education. No student should have to drop out of college 
because Congress has not done its job.
  We have more work to do on this, and I would urge those who have 
concerns about it or want to have another point of view be debated, 
that I hope we could work together to get through this impasse and get 
the Perkins loan at least extended for 1 more year as was done in the 
House most recently by voice vote.
  With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, this discussion by very good Senators--
and I congratulate the Senator from Pennsylvania and the other Senators 
who have spoken. The Senators from Pennsylvania and Wisconsin are both 
on the education committee and we have worked well together and we will 
continue to discuss this. This shows how difficult it is to do what 
most Americans have said they would like to see us do, which is to 
simplify, deregulate, and make it easier and simpler for students to go 
to college. That is what we are trying to do in the Senate.
  Almost every witness who came before us said this: It is too 
complicated to fill out a form for the current form of student aid, so 
simplify it. The witnesses have said: Have one undergraduate student 
loan, have one loan for graduate students, and have one loan for 
parents. Right now undergraduate students might have three different 
loans with different interest rates and different terms.
  The application process is so complicated that it turns away 
millions, we have been told, of students who are frustrated by that. 
The repayment program, which is very generous--not for the Perkins 
loan, which I will get to in a minute, but for all other direct loans--
is so complicated that students don't take advantage of it.
  We are toward the end of our work in the Senate education committee 
to take our giant student loan program, which loans more than $100 
billion taxpayer dollars a year and has more than $1 trillion dollars 
of outstanding loans, and simplify it to make it easier and cheaper for 
students to go to college.
  One way to do that is to replace the Perkins loan with a direct loan 
that has a lower interest rate and a more generous repayment plan. What 
we are proposing to do is to replace the Perkins loan with a direct 
loan that is available to every single student who is enrolled in an 
eligible accredited college. You show up, you enroll, you get the loan. 
That is available to you. The interest is 4.29 percent today. That is 
lower than your Perkins loan, and when you pay back the direct loan, 
you may pay it back like a mortgage over 10 years or you may pay it 
back over 20 or 25 years, not paying more than 10 or 15 percent of your 
disposable income. And if you haven't paid it back after those years, 
it is forgiven. That is what the taxpayers have said to the students. 
So that lower interest rate and generous repayment program are not a 
part of the Perkins loan program. What we, a bipartisan group of 
Senators, are saying is that we need to replace the Perkins loan with 
that better opportunity.
  Let's be clear about who is affected by this. Perkins loans are about 
1 percent of all student loans. So, about 99 percent of those students 
who have student loans are not affected by this discussion. Of those 
who have Perkins loans, you can keep your Perkins loan. The Department 
of Education notified all the institutions early in this calendar year 
and said the Perkins loan expires in the fall. If you grant a new 
Perkins loan this fall, it will be a 1-year loan. For everybody else 
who has already got a Perkins loan, you can keep receiving Perkins 
loans through the end of your program. So, in almost every case, you 
either got a 1-year loan if you got a new loan for the first time, or 
if you are already in a program, you keep it through to the end of your 
program. That is the situation.
  It is important for students to know that the bipartisan effort here 
is to simplify the student loan program and give them a lower interest 
rate and a better repayment program. Why would you not want that 
instead of this? One might say we may want to have both. Sure, you 
would like to have both, but the Congressional Budget Office says it 
will cost $5 billion over 10 years to continue the Perkins loan 
program. The

[[Page 16246]]

testimony we heard and our recommendation by this bipartisan group of 
Senators is we have a better use for that $5 billion.
  We might have a higher amount of money that you could borrow. We know 
there are going to be more Pell grants granted if we simplify the 
application process and the repayment process. We would like to give 
students the opportunity to use their Pell grants year-round. Some way 
we have got to pay for that, and one way to pay for that is to simplify 
the system. If we take $5 billion to continue the Perkins loan program 
so we can give students a higher interest loan and a worse repayment 
program, we are also taking money away from the new Pell grants, from 
the possibility of a year-round Pell grant, and from the other reforms 
that we would like to make. Why should we be trying to change this now, 
when the Department has notified all the institutions that this is how 
things are going to be?
  We are toward the end of our work in our committee. We work in a very 
good bipartisan way. We don't agree on everything; we don't expect to. 
But Senator Murray and I have the Elementary and Secondary Education 
Act. We expect to be able to do that with the Higher Education Act. The 
Senators will have a chance to offer amendments in the committee and on 
the floor. If the full Senate decides that it wants to keep the Perkins 
loan program and take $5 billion out of the funds available to give 
year-round Pell grants to students or the extra Pell grants that we 
would be able to grant by simplifying the application and instead 
continue a program with a higher interest rate and a worse repayment 
program, then the full Senate can do that. I won't recommend it and I 
won't vote for it, but that is the purpose here.
  It is important for everyone considering this to know that President 
Bush recommended that the program end. President Obama recommended that 
the program be changed and folded in, in effect, with the regular 
direct loan program.
  The Federal Government hasn't contributed any new money to the 
Perkins loan program since 2004 because most people know that it is not 
as good a loan opportunity for almost all students. It is not as fair a 
use of the money as is the direct loan program.
  I prefer private loan programs, but the Congress has decided it is a 
Federal loan program. To reemphasize, if you are enrolled in any 
accredited institution, and we have 6,000 of them, all you have to do 
is show up and you are eligible for the loan. We think you are better 
off. You will be less likely to over borrow and you will be more likely 
to go to college if it is a simpler program and if you have a single 
undergraduate loan, a single graduate loan, and a single loan for 
parents. That is the purpose behind my point of view on this.
  This Senator would like for our committee to finish our work. 
Hopefully we can do that and give it to Senator McConnell and let him 
put it on the floor early in the year, and the Senate can decide which 
loan programs it wants. If we want to continue the mumbo jumbo of 
student loan programs we have today, which discourage students from 
going to college and taking advantage of repayment programs and 
discourage the kinds of education that most of us want, then the Senate 
can do that, but I will be arguing against that.
  That is why I asked the Senator from Arizona to object today to 
bringing immediately to the floor this continuation of a program that 
every institution in the country knew was supposed to end when it 
ended, and that one President has tried to end and another President 
has tried to change. Almost every witness that came before our 
committee said that students will be better off. Students are the ones 
we care about. As long as we are fair to taxpayers, students will be 
better off if we simplify the system and have a single undergraduate 
loan, a single graduate loan, and a single loan for parents.
  In addition to that, there is a Federal grant system. If you are in 
Colorado or Tennessee or Connecticut or Pennsylvania and you want 2 
years of college, for those who are eligible for the Pell grant, which 
you do not have to pay back, the 2 years of college is basically free. 
The average tuition for a 2-year community college is about $3,300 a 
year, and the average Pell grant is about $3,300 a year. So we are 
offering the students of this country--it is never easy to pay for 
college, but the taxpayers have been pretty generous. Basically, we are 
saying that everywhere in the country if you want 2 years of college 
and you are in the 40 percent of community college students that are 
lower income, your 2 years are basically free. If you need more money, 
you are entitled to a loan that you can pay back at an interest rate 
this year of 4.29 percent. That is a low interest rate for somebody 
with no credit rating and no collateral. You can't get that anywhere 
else, but you can get it from the Federal Government so you can go to 
college. We are saying in addition to that, you can pay it back over 20 
years with your disposable income. If that isn't enough, if you are a 
teacher or fireman or someone who has not made as much to pay it back, 
it is forgiven by the taxpayers. We would like the Perkins loan 
students to have the lower interest rate and the more generous 
repayment program, and that is why I object to circumventing the 
committee's decisions.
  Let us finish our work. Let us make a decision that we should be able 
to make as a whole Senate by early next year, and let the students who 
already have Perkins loans continue all the way through to the end of 
their program. Let the students who got it for the first time since 
July know that they will have that program for this 1 year. This is 
what every single university in the country was told about earlier this 
year and reminded of by the Department of Education in September.
  Let's do this in an orderly way and let's put the students first. All 
of us are interested in helping students make it easier and simpler to 
attend college. I think our bipartisan proposal will replace the 
Perkins loan with a direct loan opportunity with a lower interest rate 
and a more generous repayment program. It is a better deal for students 
and avoids spending that $5 billion that I would like to use for the 
year-round Pell grant and for the additional Pell grants that are going 
to be created by a simpler student aid program.
  I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, I do respect the expertise and 
experience and dedication of my colleague and friend from Tennessee. I 
especially understand and am grateful for his leadership as the 
chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which 
has jurisdiction over this legislation. I understand that he is moving 
toward reform and overhaul of the current system of financial aid and 
loans that will make it better for students. That is the goal, that it 
will be ready perhaps sometime early next year.
  As we know from our experience in this body, timelines frequently 
shift and give way. So early next year may turn into later next year or 
the spring of next year or at some point in time. In the meantime, 
futures are in the balance--the futures of students in Connecticut and 
around the country who are trying to plan in their senior year. Their 
faces and voices are with me and with all of us every day. Their 
futures are the future of this country.
  The House has extended the Perkins Loan Program for 1 year. Why won't 
the Senate do it? My colleague from Tennessee urges that we simplify 
the program. Well, let's simplify decisions that are being made right 
now at the kitchen tables and the living rooms of families across the 
country and make available this option even as we simplify and reform 
the program because the failure to do so vastly complicates and 
confuses the lives of students who are making real-life decisions while 
we debate. We are, in fact, debating right now a cyber security 
information sharing act which pertains to the cloud and computing that 
takes place in the

[[Page 16247]]

cloud. We are talking here in the clouds compared to real-life 
decisions being made by students and their families every day. I am 
hearing from them. I am hearing from financial aid administrators, for 
example at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT, who tell me that there 
is a level of anxiety and angst they have not seen in recent years 
because of this body's inaction, its failure to continue a program that 
has worked and worked well for countless students. In fact, in the 
2014-2015 school year, institutions in Connecticut disbursed over $20 
million through the Perkins Loan Program, using that funding to provide 
targeted financial aid to support their very neediest students. Low-
income students who face a gap in funding and who have to make hard 
decisions about real dollars and cents need this program not early next 
year but right now.
  The Senate's failure to act, as the House has done, to extend it for 
1 year, abrogates its responsibility. In previous years, Quinnipiac, 
for example, would have been able to offer these students Perkins loans 
to close the gaps between what financial aid they are receiving and 
what they need to continue their education. This year, they are telling 
students: Sorry, no help available.
  These students are the future of our country. They are the ones who 
are going to be doing the computer science that is necessary for our 
cyber security. They are the intellectual infrastructure of this 
country. Our failure to invest in them--and this expiration is only one 
reflection of that failure to invest--is a failure for the entire 
country.
  I received a note from Nicole Deck--a sophomore at the University of 
New Haven--telling me how she benefitted from the Perkins program. She 
is pursuing a double major in marine biology and environmental science. 
She wrote to me saying: ``I appreciate every day that I spend at the 
University of New Haven thanks to the aid of the Federal Perkins 
loans.''
  She said: ``Receiving money from the Federal Perkins Loan has allowed 
me to achieve many of my goals and has opened many doors of 
opportunity.''
  The doors of opportunity for Nicole in marine biology and 
environmental science on the shores of Long Island Sound, where she can 
put that science to work to help to save Long Island Sound and to help 
us nationally to preserve our environment, are not only doors of 
opportunity for her, they are doors of opportunity for our whole 
country. The failure to extend the Perkins loan program closes those 
doors.
  I met recently with seniors at the New Britain High School. At New 
Britain High School, these seniors are thinking about where they will 
be going to school. They are making life-changing and transformative 
decisions about their futures based on their financial alternatives. 
When I asked them ``How many of you have, in effect, abandoned the 
school of your first choice because you couldn't afford it and Federal 
aid was not available and no scholarships were accessible?'' about half 
of them raised their hands.
  I thought to myself, well, things often work out for the better but 
sometimes not. Sometimes futures are constrained and warped and 
distorted because a young person with great potential is unable to 
develop it because of an avenue of education blocked by financial 
unaffordability.
  My colleagues have stated very powerfully and eloquently and it has 
been a bipartisan debate about what the Perkins Loan Program means to 
so many students.
  I will close by saying that this program involves an example of real 
institutional skin in the game. It requires institutional capital 
contributions as a requirement for a school's participation. It fills 
the gap of affordability that affects our very neediest and often most 
deserving students.
  Our constituents will rightly ask us: Did you reject the student loan 
program?
  No, we did not reject it.
  Did you renew it?
  No. We simply allowed it to die.
  This program has gone into the cloud. We have allowed this to expire 
when we could extend it for 1 year without really damaging the reform 
effort underway.
  I want to repeat that I respect the HELP Committee chairman's 
intention and goal to reform all student loan programs, but in the 
meantime, futures of American students are affected unfairly and 
unwisely by the inaction by this body.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senator from Connecticut for his eloquent 
remarks. Let me offer this different perspective. You don't need a 
Perkins loan to go to a 2-year college. The average tuition at a 
community college--and they are a terrific opportunity in my State and 
most States--is about $3,300. About 40 percent of the students who 
attend them qualify for a grant of about, on average, $3,300. So those 
2 years are free for most students who need the money. Those students 
are also entitled to a direct loan if they enroll at the community 
college. Usually it is $4,000, $5,000, to $6,000. They just walk up and 
they are entitled to it if they think they need it.
  You probably don't need a Perkins loan to go to most of the State 
universities. At the University of Tennessee, the tuition and fees is 
about $12,000. Many of the best colleges and universities are State 
institutions.
  You are entitled to your Pell grant. You are entitled to your direct 
loan. Then many States and universities have their own programs. For 
example, in Tennessee there is the HOPE Scholarship, and almost all of 
the students at the University of Tennessee Knoxville have one.
  Where the Perkins loan has been useful--and I will grant that--has 
been at the expensive private colleges. If it is $50,000 a year to go 
to a private college, you can get your Pell Grant, you can get two 
direct loans, and then you can get a Perkins loan. Then you can end up 
being in the newspaper for having borrowed so much that people write 
articles in the Wall Street Journal about how we have created a 
circumstance where students are overborrowing and cannot pay back their 
student loans.
  So I think the question really is, Should taxpayers spend $5 billion 
more over the next 10 years to make it possible for a the student to go 
to a $50,000-a-year tuition school or should taxpayers spend that money 
to create a year-round Pell Grant and hundreds of thousands of 
additional Pell Grants for low-income students who want another 2 years 
or 4 years of education? I think that is the question.
  Government is about setting priorities. If we had an unlimited amount 
of money, we could do everything. Except, we do have a problem with 
overborrowing and complexity. When you add a third loan on top of two 
other loans so that can you go to a $50,000-a-year tuition college, 
that is a choice an American has to make. I am proud of the fact that 
we have those choices. But we have lots of 18-, 19-, 20-year-olds, and 
many graduate students, too, who 5 or 10 years later will find they 
cannot pay it back.
  I think we are better off with a single undergraduate loan, a single 
graduate loan, and a single parent loan that is available to every 
single student. I think we are better off using whatever savings we 
have to expand the number of Pell Grants and to offer a year-round Pell 
Grant.
  As I said before, every single institution--all 6,000 of our 
institutions were told by the Department of Education earlier in 2015: 
If you grant a Perkins loan this fall to someone who never received one 
before, it will be for 1 year because the program is ending.
  Also, they were told: If someone already has a Perkins loan, you will 
be able to keep it all the way through the end of their program.
  So this is an honest difference of opinion. There are a lot of 
university presidents--I know a bunch of them. They like the program 
because it gives them one more tool to use. The question is not just 
whether they like the program; the question is, What is best for the 
students? I think taking the available amount of money we have and 
expanding it for simplifying the

[[Page 16248]]

student aid system and making the year-round Pell and the other 
programs available to students who need it the most--I think that is 
what we should be doing.
  We will finish our work in the Senate education committee hopefully 
within a few weeks. We will have it ready to come to the floor. We can 
debate it, and the Senator from Connecticut and I can continue our 
discussion.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.


                           Amendment No. 2582

  Mr. FLAKE. Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the Flake 
amendment No. 2582 that is currently pending before the body. This 
amendment is very simple. It simply adds a 6-year sunset to the bill. 
This amendment also keeps in place the liability protections 
established by the Cyber Security and Information Sharing Act for 
information that is shared pursuant to the requirements of the bill. 
Furthermore, the amendment ensures that the requirements on how the 
information is shared under the act is to be handled remain in effect 
after the sunset date.
  That is all this amendment does. It simply sunsets the bill in 6 
years, and it does so in a reasonable and responsible way. I believe in 
the sunset provision. It is good for us to consider our past decisions 
6 years from now, to determine whether what we enacted is operating 
well, and to debate the overall success of the legislation that we 
passed 6 years prior. We ought to do that, frankly, on a lot of other 
legislation we pass.
  I do believe the bill we are currently considering, as it is written, 
strikes the right balance. It puts in place the proper privacy 
protections, and I plan to support the legislation. However, it is 
important to make sure that we are forced to go back and evaluate it in 
the years to come to make sure we actually got it right. Given the 
nature of the bill being debated before us, it is all the more 
important to do so in this instance.
  I would also note that this 6-year sunset is similar to sunset 
provisions that were included in both House-passed cyber security 
bills. So if it is in the House, we ought to have it in the Senate as 
well.
  Both the Protecting Cyber Networks Act, which passed the House by a 
vote of 307 to 116, and the National Cybersecurity Protection 
Advancement Act, which passed the House by a vote of 355 to 63, include 
a 7-year sunset.
  I ask my colleagues to support this amendment. I think it does 
strengthen the bill. It ensures that we evaluate, as we should, any 
legislation that we pass to ensure that it is having its intended 
effect.
  I yield back the remainder of my time.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Louisiana.
  Mr. VITTER. I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum 
call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                   Unanimous Consent Request--S. 697

  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I rise in strong support of the Frank R. 
Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act. Over 2 years ago, 
I sat down with now the late Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey in 
an attempt to find compromise and to work together on updating the 
drastically outdated Toxic Substances Control Act. Updating this law 
was a long-time goal and passion of Frank's. It was a real goal of 
mine, although we came at it from very different directions, at least 
initially. I am saddened Frank isn't here with us to see it finally 
being brought up for consideration on the floor of the Senate. We 
worked closely together and forged a significant, productive, positive 
bipartisan compromise--the sort of work we don't see often enough in 
the Senate or the Congress itself, but we got it done here, and it is a 
strong, positive compromise in substance as well.
  After Frank's passing, Senator Tom Udall stepped in to help preserve 
Frank's legacy and continued working with me to move this reform 
forward. We have done that consistently over months and months, working 
on issue after issue, detail after detail, to produce a strong result. 
I am very proud of the substance of this result because it achieves two 
very important goals: On the one hand, we certainly protect health and 
safety and give the EPA the proper authorities to do that with regard 
to chemicals in commerce. On the other hand, we make sure we don't 
overburden industry and put them at a disadvantage in terms of 
remaining America's world leaders in innovation and chemistry. We are 
world leaders now. We innovate, we produce new chemicals and new uses 
and new products on a spectacular basis, and we certainly don't want to 
threaten that. Our Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st 
Century Act doesn't threaten it. It enhances it, it protects health and 
safety, and that is why I am so proud of this bipartisan work.
  We have done that work so completely we are now in a position to pass 
this bill through the Senate in very short order. In fact, we only need 
2 hours of floor time, and we need no amendment votes related to the 
bill in any way. That is virtually unheard of in the Senate, but it 
goes to the work that so many folks have done on both sides of the 
aisle. So with 2 hours of floor time, no amendment votes, we can pass 
this bill and move it on to the House. We have been in contact with the 
House for months, so we are very hopeful we can follow up our action 
with House action and a final result in relatively short order.
  Mr. President, that is why we are coming to the floor today, to ask 
unanimous consent to establish that process in the near future--a very 
simple, very short process so we can get this done and achieve this 
result. Again, no amendment votes are necessary--whether they are 
germane, related or unrelated, no amendment votes are necessary--and 
then pass it on to the House. I certainly hope we can have that 
agreement to move forward in a productive fashion.
  With that, let me yield to my Democratic colleague Senator Udall, who 
has been such a great partner in this effort following Frank 
Lautenberg's unfortunate passing.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.
  Mr. UDALL. Mr. President, I thank my colleague Senator Vitter. It has 
been a real pleasure working with him on the Toxic Substances Control 
Act. I think we have brought this a long way.
  First, let me speak on the pending cyber security legislation, and 
then I will be seeking unanimous consent to process another bill.
  Protecting our national security and economic interests from cyber 
attack is a very important priority. I commend Senator Burr and Senator 
Feinstein for their hard work on their legislation. I know they have 
also gone through a lot to get floor time on their bill and are working 
to process amendments. It is clear they have made a serious effort. I 
respect the chairman, vice chairman, and their staffs for their work.
  My understanding is this will pass with a large bipartisan majority 
in the Senate. As Chairman Burr stated yesterday, the House has already 
acted on cyber security legislation. He is eager to start reconciling 
differences and get a bill to the President's desk. That is what good 
legislators do.
  As the chairman knows, I have also been working for a number of years 
on a complicated legislative project, working with Senator Vitter, 
Senator Inhofe, and many other Senators of both parties. We are very 
close to the reform of the totally outdated Toxic Substances Control 
Act. We all know TSCA is broken. It fails to protect families and it 
fails to provide confidence in consumer products. We have a chance 
today to change that and to show that Congress can actually get things 
done.
  I am pleased Chairman Burr is a cosponsor of our legislation, along 
with over half of the Senate. After years of work, we are now also in a 
position to seek unanimous passage of TSCA reform so we can go to 
conference with

[[Page 16249]]

the House of Representatives. It has been a long road with lots of 
productive debate and discussion and cooperation and compromise. This 
is a balanced bill, one that Republicans, Democrats, industry, and 
public health groups can all support moving forward.
  Not everyone loves our Senate product, but its staunchest opponents 
are now ready to allow for Senate passage. We can then reconcile our 
bill with the House, just as Senator Burr seeks to do on cyber security 
legislation. We have cleared this legislation on the Democratic side of 
the aisle with a short time agreement. My understanding is that there 
is nearly unanimous consent--unanimous signoff--on the Republican side 
as well.
  With that, I join with Senators Vitter and Inhofe in asking for 
unanimous consent. I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be 
determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Democratic 
leader, the Senate proceed to the consideration of Calendar No. 121, S. 
697; further, that the only amendment in order be a substitute 
amendment to be offered by Senator Inhofe; that there be up to 2 hours 
of debate equally divided between the leaders or their designees; and 
that following the use or yielding back of that time the Senate vote on 
adoption of the amendment, the bill be read a third time, and the 
Senate vote on passage of the bill, as amended, if amended, with no 
intervening action or debate.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Vitter). Is there objection?
  Mr. BURR. Reserving the right to object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.
  Mr. BURR. Mr. President, let me say to the authors, I have deep 
respect for both of you, and you have done an incredible job with this 
bill. It is one of the reasons I am a cosponsor, because it is good 
legislation.
  It is no surprise to the Senate that I have had a deep desire to add 
the Land and Water Conservation Fund reauthorization, which has 
expired, as an amendment to this bill. I seek no time. I only seek the 
vehicle for an up-or-down vote and a ride--a ride that I can't seem to 
get by itself. As a matter of fact, I think the authors of this bill 
know that I have said if somebody can offer me a stand-alone 
opportunity to debate and vote on the Land and Water Conservation Fund, 
we can unanimous consent TSCA. We can't achieve that. I certainly don't 
want to take anything away from what I think is a great bill, and I 
wouldn't even require time, I would only require a vote.
  So I would ask the authors to modify their unanimous consent request 
to include a vote on the Burr-Ayotte-Bennet amendment in relation to 
the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator so modify his request?
  Mr. BURR. I ask unanimous consent that the consent be modified to 
include a vote on the Burr-Ayotte-Bennet amendment in relation to the 
Land and Water Conservation Fund.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator so modify his request?
  Is there objection to the modification?
  The Senator from Utah.
  Mr. LEE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, we have an 
opportunity to update and reform the Land and Water Conservation Fund, 
and to do so in a way that would ensure it works more efficiently and 
helps solve the problems facing our Federal Government and States. To 
do so, we need to pursue a few goals.
  First, more money from the LWCF should be sent to the States to 
implement the worthwhile projects. When the LWCF was conceived, 60 
percent of its funding was required to go to the States. That statutory 
requirement was removed years ago, and now just 12 percent of LWCF 
money is given to the States, with minimal Federal strings attached.
  Next, the LWCF should be used to solve, not to exacerbate, the 
current Federal lands maintenance backlog. The Federal Government has 
undertaken an impossible task in trying to manage more than 600 million 
acres of variant terrain dispersed across thousands of miles. Evidence 
of the Federal Government's failure to manage its holdings is found in 
the $13 billion through $20 billion maintenance backlog, a number that 
has grown nearly every single year since President Obama has been in 
office.
  Since LWCF was created some 50 years ago, Congress has appropriated 
nearly $17 billion to the fund, and 62 percent of this money has been 
spent on land acquisition, resulting in 5 million acres being added to 
the Federal estate.
  We should work together to improve the LWCF. Let's work together to 
make sure that North Carolina, New Hampshire, New Mexico, and every 
other State in this country gets more money. Let's work together to 
make sure that the Federal Government only acquires such land as it can 
adequately manage.
  On that basis, I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  Is there objection to the original request?
  Mr. BURR. I object.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
  The Senator from New Mexico is recognized.
  Mr. UDALL. Mr. President, again, I respect Senator Burr, but I am 
very disappointed in that objection. I take a back seat to no one in 
supporting the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It is extremely 
popular in New Mexico and critical to enabling our outdoors economy. 
Senator Burr has been a strong leader on the LWCF. He has brought much 
needed attention and passion to the issue of reauthorization, and I 
want to work with him on that. But the current strategy of holding TSCA 
hostage for LWCF is not the proper one. This is the sort of thing that 
gives the Senate a bad reputation for dysfunction, and I do not see how 
it will lead to any progress on LWCF. I have not objected to Senator 
Burr's efforts to pass reauthorization in the Senate. In fact, I have 
appraised his efforts. I share his frustration that a small minority of 
Republicans have blocked his efforts. But now, instead of one bill 
being blocked, we have two. Without this objection, TSCA would pass 
today almost unanimously after years of hard work.
  So instead of holding TSCA hostage, why not consider LWCF on Senator 
Burr's legislation?
  With that, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). Without objection, it is so ordered.

                          ____________________