[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Page 10378]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                             CYBER SECURITY

  Mr. REID. Mr. President, the senior Senator from Kentucky is 
certainly right that we need to move on cyber security. I have known 
that for many years, and we have tried. Why have we not done something 
on it? Because of filibusters by the Republicans. We had a bill that 
had been worked on for years that we brought before the Senate. But 
instructions were given from the Chamber of Commerce, and the 
Republicans dutifully walked down here and voted no, stopping us from 
moving forward on the bill. The Chamber said--and obviously Republicans 
agreed--this is not something for the government. It should be done in-
house.
  Well, my friend the Republican leader rails against the government, 
but he should also understand that this is a situation which involves 
the private sector also. We could name 25 companies, 50 companies, 100 
companies that have been hacked and hacked very badly, not the least of 
which are Sony and Target.
  It is hard for me to comprehend that my friend, my counterpart, is 
here talking about the need to do something about cyber security when 
he is the leader of the Republicans who have stopped us from doing 
this.
  There is a bill--it is not a perfect bill; it is far from it--a 
bipartisan bill. It has the support of the chairman and ranking member 
of the Intelligence Committee. We could get to work on that right now. 
We should do that. I repeat, it is not perfect legislation, but it is 
certainly a step forward.
  My friend said he wants heads to roll. If that were the case, then 
there are a lot of heads to roll in the public sector and the private 
sector because they do not have the tools to do much about this 
hacking. We need to help them with appropriate legislation. I hope we 
can do that and do it very soon. I remain committed to turning to cyber 
security as quickly as we can. We need to get that done. I hope we can 
get that done. On that issue, we could go to that legislation right 
now. Do you know why we are not going to go to it right now? Because 
the Republicans have holds on the bill. So the Republican leader will 
file a motion to invoke cloture on moving forward on this legislation. 
We are ready to move on it now. Again, the problem is on the Republican 
side, not our side.

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