Cybersecurity and Internet Safety Standards Act

Mr. President, Americans are resilient. Throughout our Nation's history, we have stood up to every challenge and we have stood together. At this moment in history, we face the challenge of recovering from the worst economic recession since the Great Depression. Through no fault of their own, too many Americans have lost their jobs and continue to struggle to find work in this tough economy. Putting Americans back to work is the key to economic recovery and must be the No. 1 goal for this Congress.

Today, I offer my own seven-point plan to help us reach that goal. This jobs plan recognizes that small businesses are America's job creators and, thus, our efforts must be targeted toward helping small businesses start up, grow, and prosper.

In Maine alone, we have 141,000 small businesses. During the past decade, America's small firms have created about 70 percent of all new jobs. But far too often Congress directs Federal policies and attention toward those businesses deemed too big to fail. Instead, we must redirect our efforts toward those small businesses that are too entrepreneurial to ignore.

The plan I am introducing today is based on extensive conversations I have had with small business owners and workers throughout the State of Maine. It also represents a great deal of hard work by my staff.

While each State has its own particular opportunities and challenges, the fundamentals of a jobs-oriented economic recovery are similar everywhere. As I illustrate my seven-point plan with examples from my home State of Maine, I believe the Presiding Officer and my colleagues will recognize similarities in their own home States.

First, my plan to build a 21st century economy begins with building a 21st century workforce. America's greatest asset is its people. Ensuring that American workers get the education and job training they need to compete in an increasingly global economy must be a top priority.

My plan amends the Workforce Investment Act to place special emphasis on job training programs that assist our manufacturing industry. I am tired of seeing so many manufacturing jobs leave my State and our Nation to go overseas. It is important we have a strategy to work with manufacturers, to work with local community colleges and universities to develop the manufacturing base curriculum, job training

programs, and research opportunities to ensure this generation and the next have the education and skills for the jobs of today and tomorrow. Some of those manufacturing jobs are gone forever. But others are coming online, and America must lead and Congress must support targeted funding to help provide the resources for this education and training.

In addition, we must provide workforce development assistance to those communities harmed as a direct consequence of the closure or realignment of military installations.

For example, the State of Maine is expected to lose more than 6,500 military and civilian jobs following the decisions made by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission in 2005. We are losing the Brunswick Naval Air Station in our State. There are many other States, including Illinois, Missouri, and New Jersey that are facing similar losses. In Virginia, nearly 40,000 jobs will be lost. In such cases where decisions made at the Federal level directly affect local employment, we have a special obligation to make sure displaced workers have the training and education they need to find new employment in their communities. After all, these communities have structured their economies to support military operations for decades, in many cases. Now that that lynchpin of the local economy is being pulled out, surely we have an obligation to help with the adjustment. My plan would redirect Economic Development Administration funds--EDA resources--to those communities most harmed by these decisions.

Targeted Federal funds can also be a catalyst for new economic opportunities. For example, I worked to secure one-time funding for a radiologic technician training program at a Maine community college. This program had broad support from local hospitals and from the college, but they simply couldn't afford the expensive equipment to get the program under way. With that one-time Federal investment, the program is now completely self-sustaining, and it produces between 18 and 20 graduates a year. Job placement has been 100 percent, with graduates earning starting salaries of about $40,000 a year. I am sure similar targeted job training success stories can be found in every State, and we ought to build on them.

We must also fix what has not worked as well as it should. Government agencies must provide more efficient and productive services to the American people. The Department of Labor, for example, should reduce paperwork and redtape associated with Federal job training programs. The Department should identify ways it could cut costs by working more closely with other government entities, such as the Department of Education, and with the private sector. The best programs I have seen at community colleges, for example, combine some job training funds with commitments from private employers to hire the graduates and to help shape those job training programs so we are training people for the jobs that exist or that are going to exist.

The second part of my plan would encourage innovation in Maine's natural resource-based economy. Nowhere is there greater potential than in energy. I want the United States to lead the world in developing renewable energy technologies, and that is going to require significant private and public investments to develop this technology and to make its deployment affordable. For example, deepwater offshore wind has enormous potential to help us meet our Nation's electricity needs, and it presents an exciting opportunity to create thousands of much needed, good-paying, and sustainable green jobs. Estimates show that the development of just 5 gigawatts of offshore wind off the coast of Maine--and that is just a fraction of the overall potential--could power more than 1 million homes, attract $20 billion of investment, and create more than 15,000 green energy jobs that would be sustained over 30 years.

Deepwater offshore wind is the key transformative technology that America needs in order to compete globally. Europe, China, Japan--our technology competitors--continue to make far larger investments in offshore wind R&D than we do. I am proud of the work of the University of Maine and the DeepCwind Consortium private sector investment to deploy loading wind turbines, which would be the first of its kind in the world, placing the United States in a position to lead in deepwater offshore wind technology.

Federal investments in programs to spur the advancement of deepwater offshore wind is an investment in America's future. Federal and State seed funding is expected to yield up to $4 billion in private sector investment over the next 10 years in Maine alone. With these investments, Maine is well positioned to be a global leader in this promising source of alternative energy. We must not lose these jobs to China, as has increasingly occurred with solar technology. Let's not let it happen with deepwater offshore wind technology.

We must also do more to promote agricultural exports. I know this is an issue of great interest to the Presiding Officer. In Maine, blueberries, potatoes, and lobster help create and sustain jobs in our State. Every $1 billion in agricultural exports supports 12,000 jobs. Therefore, increasing exports of our agricultural products could play an important role in reviving our economy. Boosting support for the Department of Agriculture's Foreign Agricultural Services will help promote our homegrown natural products abroad. This effort to increase agricultural exports could be paid for by strengthening our effort to curtail wasteful agricultural subsidies, such as payments to very wealthy corporate farmers who, frankly, do not need Federal assistance.

The corn-based ethanol tax break is another example of an extraordinarily expensive subsidy, costing taxpayers some $6 billion annually, and which has produced a host of problems from higher grain prices to impaired engine performance. We must reevaluate all programs that have not performed as promised and then reallocate their funding to job-creation initiatives and to deficit reduction.

Third, we simply must do more to encourage job creation and investment by small business. My plan includes a series of tax reform proposals targeted at these engines of job growth. The tax package agreed to by Congress and the President in December included a 2- percent cut in the employee portion of the payroll tax, but no cut was provided for the employer portion of the payroll tax.

With unemployment stuck above 9 percent for 21 consecutive months, we must do more to encourage businesses to hire. When I talk to small businesses, they tell me this is something we can do that would directly reduce the cost of hiring and encourage them to bring on more workers. My proposal includes a 2-percent reduction of the employer portion of the payroll tax on the first $50,000 of payroll for 1 year. This reduction in the employer portion of the payroll tax is estimated to lead to the creation of 1.4 million jobs. This will work.

As with the employee-side payroll tax relief we passed in December, my proposal would require the Treasury to reimburse the Social Security trust fund using general revenues. Again, the cost of this payroll tax relief can be offset by eliminating the ethanol and other wasteful subsidies and by implementing budget cuts for discretionary spending.

There are other provisions in my bill that are targeted toward small businesses. For example, section 179 is a provision of the Tax Code that small businesses have found to be very helpful. It allows them to immediately expense equipment purchases rather than depreciate those purchases over many years.

I also propose making permanent the tax provision allowing restaurants to depreciate equipment over 15 years rather than 39\1/2\ years. Think about it. If a restaurant is only renovating once every 40 years, that is not going to be very feasible or attractive to its patrons.

The plan would also reduce the depreciation periods on commercial and residential buildings to 15 years to encourage investment and jump- start the economy. We did that back in 1981, and it worked.

My fourth point is one that some small business owners, I know, would put at the very top of the list of what we should do; that is, we need to reduce the redtape that ties them in knots. Let me provide an illustration.

We need to make sure Federal regulations do not impose an unnecessary

burden on job creation. The EPA has proposed a new regulation known as the boiler MACT. This rule, as originally proposed, could cost Maine businesses $640 million to comply with, despite the fact there are less costly approaches to deal with boiler emissions. It also has Federal agencies working at cross-purposes. Here we have the Department of Energy trying to encourage the conversion to biomass boilers at the same time the EPA is putting burdensome new regulations on them.

The result in Maine was the Department of Energy awarded one Maine high school a $300,000 grant to help buy a new wood pellet boiler to reduce the school's use of fossil fuels. But because EPA's proposed regulations would have greatly increased the cost of that boiler, the school board ended up turning down the grant. This is an example of where the right hand did not know what the left was doing.

My point is that Federal agencies should take into account the impact on small businesses and job growth before imposing new rules. Thus, my plan contains several provisions to help reduce onerous regulations and cut redtape.

First, it requires Federal agencies to analyze the indirect costs of regulations, such as the impact on job creation, the cost of energy, and consumer prices.

Second, it obligates Federal agencies to comply with public notice and comment requirements and prohibits them from circumventing these requirements by issuing unofficial rules as ``guidance documents.''

Third, it creates a mechanism to protect small businesses from onerous penalties the very first time they fail to comply with a paperwork requirement as long as no harm comes from that failure. If it is an honest, first-time mistake that causes no harm, why do we want to slap that small business with a heavy fine? That does not make sense.

The fifth point in my plan is aimed at our transportation policies. Getting raw materials to the factory or farm and finished products to market quickly, efficiently, and safely must be a priority. But the inconsistent and inequitable Federal policy on truck weight limits on interstate highways provides a telling example of where we are doing the opposite. The consequences are particularly acute in Maine.

I have spoken on this issue many times, so I am going to briefly describe it. Maine's businesses and trucking firms are currently at a competitive disadvantage because Federal law prohibits the heaviest trucks from using Federal interstates and instead diverts them to downtown streets and secondary roads. This means, for example, that nearly 260 miles of nonturnpike interstates that are the major economic corridors in my State are off-limits. Yet these same trucks are permitted on many Federal interstates in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, parts of New York State, and neighboring provinces in Canada. That makes Maine and Vermont an island of noncompetitiveness. It just does not make sense. The heaviest trucks belong on the roads built for them.

In 2009, I authored a law to establish a 1-year pilot project to allow trucks weighing up to 100,000 pounds to travel on Maine's Federal interstates. This project was an enormous success. It helped to preserve and create jobs because it allowed our businesses to be more efficient. It lowered fuel costs. It resulted in fewer carbon emissions, and it made our roads safer. Working with Senator Leahy, I am trying to make this permanent.

Point No. 6: We must invest in America's future. Research and development investment is critical to the breakthroughs we need to keep our economy competitive and to create good-paying jobs. The R&D tax credit provides an important incentive, but it needs to be updated so more companies can benefit from it. And there needs to be more certainty. Just having that tax credit from year to year discourages the kind of long-range planning and investment companies need. My plan includes a 5-year extension of the R&D tax credit. That is likely to happen, but by doing it year by year we create all these disincentives for investment.

Finally, the seventh point in my plan would help expand opportunities for small businesses and farmers to do business with the Federal Government. We need to help our small businesses, our farmers tap into markets they have not previously explored. As the former head of the New England Small Business Administration, I know how essential this drive for new markets is for job creation and for our economy.

One approach we are going to take is my Washington and State offices are going to redouble their efforts to help small businesses reach the Federal Government because the Federal Government is the largest consumer of goods and services in our country. I know that disturbs a lot of Americans right now, and it shows the size of the Federal Government. The fact is, the Federal Government purchased more than $535 billion worth of goods and services in this past fiscal year. Some 23 percent of that spending is directed to small businesses, and last year the value of Federal contracts to small businesses in my State alone was more than $250 million. If we can expand the opportunity for small businesses to do business with the Federal Government, that is a brandnew market for their products and services.

Last year, along with my colleague, Senator Snowe, and in conjunction with the Department of Defense Northeast Regional Council and the Maine Procurement Technical Assistance Center, I sponsored a small business matchmaker conference that brought together government agencies and prime contractors with our small business community to match up the purchasing needs with goods and services. It was a 3-day conference in south Portland. It was a tremendous success. We had about 385 small business owners and representatives from 135 government agencies and prime contractors looking to subcontract work meet face to face, sit down, exchange ideas.

Let me give an example of a successful connection that was made. A representative of a $2 billion aerospace company sat across the table from the owner of a 40-employee Maine machine shop with experience in very high quality, high-end custom work. That first meeting led to a significant business relationship that continues to grow.

I note that at our conference in south Portland, our total number of registrants was 597 people, and that just shows how eager our small businesses are to expand their customer base.

One great benefit of the matchmaker approach is instead of a small business working for weeks or even months to try to find the right person in the vast government bureaucracy or the right prime contractor, our entrepreneurs merely need to sit down across the table with them. It is direct, effective, and efficient.

But, obviously, it is not easy to do business with Uncle Sam. The rules and regulations are often strict, cumbersome, and unfamiliar. That is where our offices can help.

My plan also calls for Congress to work harder to open the Federal marketplace beyond the Washington beltway to entrepreneurs in every State. That will benefit our job creators and the American taxpayer because there will be more competition.

The struggling economy has challenged our Nation's entrepreneurial spirit, but that spirit remains strong in Maine, in your State of New York, Madam President, and across the Nation. We will recover from this deep recession, but the recovery depends on the right policies in Washington to encourage the innovative and bold job creators of America. That means helping our small businesses start up, grow, prosper, sustain, and create good jobs.

My seven-point jobs plan offers a straightforward path forward for Congress to lead rather than impede job creation at this critical juncture in our history and in our recovery.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that letters of support be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, three years ago, a mentally disturbed gunman walked into a campus lecture hall at Northern Illinois University and shot 22 students, killing 5 of them. Northern Illinois University is not the first college to experience this kind of tragedy. We all remember the horrific events at Virginia Tech in 2007 where 32 lives were taken by a gunman.

In the aftermath of these shootings, we asked what could have been done to prevent it. And years later, we are still trying to make sense of it. Some believe nothing can be done to stop a disturbed person from committing acts of violence. But I believe we can and should do more.

For a long time, we have overlooked the mental health needs of students on college campuses. We know now that many mental illnesses start to manifest in this period when young people leave the security of home and regular medical care. The responsibility for the students' well-being often shifts from parents to students, and the students aren't always completely prepared. It is easier for a young person's problems to go unnoticed when he or she is away at college than when they are at home, in the company of parents, old friends, and high school teachers. College also provides a new opportunity for young people to experiment with drugs or alcohol.

The consequences of not detecting or addressing mental health needs among students are real. Suicide remains the third leading cause of death for adolescents and young adults between ages 10-24. Suicide takes the lives of more young adults than AIDS, cancer, heart disease, pneumonia, birth defects, and influenza combined. Forty-five percent of college students report having felt so depressed that it was difficult to function. Ten percent have contemplated suicide. There are over 1,000 suicides on college campus each year. These heartbreaking and traumatic incidents demonstrate the tragic consequences of mental instability and help us recognize we need to do more to support students during what can be very tough years.

Fortunately, many students can succeed in college if they have appropriate counseling services and access to needed medications. These services make a real impact. Students who seek help are six times less likely to kill themselves. Colleges are welcoming students today who 10 or 20 years ago would not have been able to attend school due to mental illness, but who can today because of advances in treatment.

But while the needs for mental health services on campus are rising, colleges are facing financial pressures and having trouble meeting this demand. As I have travelled around my State, I have learned just how thin colleges and universities are stretched when it comes to providing counseling and other support services to students.

Take Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. SIUC has 8 full-time counselors for 20,000 students. That is 1 counselor for every 2,500 students. The recommended ratio is 1 counselor for every 1,500 students. And there is another problem. Like many rural communities, Carbondale only has one community mental health agency. That agency is overwhelmed by the mental health needs of the community and refuses to serve students from SIUC. The campus counseling center is the only mental health option for students. The eight hard-working counselors at SIUC do their best under impossible conditions. They triage students who come in seeking help so that the ones who might be a threat to themselves or others are seen first. The waitlist of students seeking services has reached 45 students.

The story is the same across the country. Colleges are trying to fill in the gaps, but because of the shortage of counselors, students' needs are overlooked. A recent survey of college counseling centers indicates that the average ratio of professional-staff-to-students is 1 to 1,900. Although interest in mental health services is high, the recession has put pressure on administrators to cut budgets wherever they can. At times, counseling centers are in the crosshairs. Ten percent of survey respondents said their budgets were cut during the 2007-8 academic year, half said their budgets stayed the same, and nearly a quarter reported that their funds increased by 3 percent or less.

With so many students looking for help and so few counselors to see them, counseling centers have to cut back on outreach. Without outreach, the chances of finding students who need help but don't ask for it goes down. This is a serious problem. We know that some students exhibit warning signs of a tortured mental state and four out of five young adults show warning signs before attempting suicide. But faculty and students don't always know how or where to express their concerns. Outreach efforts by

campus counseling centers can help educate the community about warning signs to look for as well as how to intervene. Of the students who committed suicide across the country in 2007, only 22 percent had received counseling on campus. That means that of the 1,000 college students who took their own lives, 800 may never have looked for help. How many of those young lives could have been saved if our college counseling centers had the resources they needed to identify those students and help them? Our students deserve better.

We need to help schools meet the needs of their students, and that is why I am an original cosponsor of the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act Reauthorization. This bill includes an important provision of the Mental Health on Campus Improvement Act, which I introduced last Congress that would increase funding for colleges and universities to improve their mental health services. Colleges could use the funding to hire personnel, increase outreach, and educate the campus community about mental health. The Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act Reauthorization would provide States, tribes/tribal organizations, and universities with much needed resources to prevent suicide.

Reflecting on the loss of his own son, the well-known minister Rev. William Sloan Coffin once said, ``When parents die, they take with them a portion of the past. But when children die, they take away the future as well.'' I hope the Garrett Lee Smith Memorial Act will help prevent the unnecessary loss of more young lives and bright futures.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill by printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I rise to call for a new effort to combat an often deadly form of cancer--by re-introducing the Lung Cancer Mortality Reduction Act. I am pleased to be joined by my cosponsors, Senator Isakson and Senator Kerry on this very important bill.

This bill will renew and improve Federal government's efforts to combat lung cancer. It will: set a goal to reduce lung cancer mortality by 50 percent by 2020; establish a Lung Cancer Mortality Reduction Program, with comprehensive interagency coordination, to develop and implement a plan to meet this goal; improve disparity programs to ensure that the burdens of lung cancer on minority populations are addressed; create a computed tomography screening demonstration project based on recent science; and establish a Lung Cancer Advisory Board, which will provide an annual report to Congress on the progress of the Mortality Reduction Program.

We have made great strides against many types of cancer in the last several decades. However, these gains are uneven.

When the National Cancer Act was passed in 1971, lung cancer had a 5- year survival rate of only 12 percent. After decades of research efforts and scientific advances, this survival rate remains only 15 percent.

In contrast, the 5 year survival rates of breast, prostate, and colon cancer have risen to 89, 99 and 65 percent respectively.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death for both men and women, accounting for 28 percent of all cancer deaths.

Lung cancer causes more deaths annually than: colon cancer, breast cancer, prostate cancer, and pancreatic cancer combined.

A National Cancer Institute study in 2009 indicated that the value of life lost to lung cancer will exceed $433 billion annually by 2020.

A four percent annual decline in mortality would reduce this amount by more than half.

A lung cancer diagnosis can be devastating. The average life expectancy following a lung cancer diagnosis is only 9 months.

This is because far too many patients are not diagnosed with lung cancer until it has progressed to the later stages. Lung cancer can be hard to diagnose, and symptoms may at first appear to be other illnesses, such as bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or asthma.

As a result, only 16 percent of lung cancer patients are diagnosed when their cancer is still localized, and is the most treatable.

When I introduced this legislation in 2009, lung cancer lacked early detection technology, to find the cancer when it was most treatable. Now, however, preliminary results show a screening method with a demonstrated reduction in mortality for lung cancer.

In 2010, the National Cancer Institute released initial results from the National Lung Screening Trial, a large-scale study of screening methods to detect lung cancers at earlier stages.

The National Lung Screening Trial found a 20 percent reduction in lung cancer mortality among participants screened with the computed tomography screening versus a traditional X-ray.

This is the first time that researchers have seen evidence of a significant reduction in lung cancer mortality with a screening test.

This is why this legislation also includes the creation of a computed tomography screening demonstration project, to assess public health needs of screening for lung cancer, and develop the most effective, safe, equitable, and efficient process to maximize the benefit of screening.

Efforts to fight lung cancer lag behind other cancers, in part, due to stigma from smoking. Make no mistake, tobacco use causes the majority of lung cancer cases.

Tobacco cessation is a critical component of reducing lung cancer mortality. Less smoking means less lung cancer. Period.

But tobacco use does not fully explain lung cancer. Approximately 20 percent of lung cancer patients never smoked.

Two-thirds of individuals diagnosed with lung cancer who have never smoked are women.

60 percent of lung cancer patients are former smokers who quit, often decades ago.

These patients may have been exposed to second hand smoke, or they may have been exposed to radon, asbestos, chromium, or other chemicals. There could be other causes and associations that have not yet been discovered, genetic predispositions or other environmental exposures.

The President's National Cancer Advisory Board Report of 2010 identified radon as the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking and listed 15 other environmental contaminants strongly associated with lung cancer.

I believe that we have the expertise and technology to make serious progress against this deadly cancer, and to reach the goal of halving lung cancer mortality by 2020.

We need this legislation to ensure that our government's resources are focused on this mission in the most efficient way possible.

Agency efforts must be coordinated, and all sectors of the federal government that may have some ideas to lend should be participating. That is what the Lung Cancer Mortality Reduction Program will accomplish.

In this bill the Secretary of Health and Human Services is tasked to work

in consultation with Secretaries and Directors from the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, and the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

This means that each agency with an expertise on lungs, imaging, and cancer will be included in this long overdue process.

We can do better for Americans diagnosed with lung cancer. I ask my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, today I rise to reintroduce the whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act. I am pleased that Senators Collins, Grassley, Lieberman, Levin, Carper, Leahy, Harkin, Pryor, Landrieu, McCaskill, Tester, Begich, and Cardin have joined as cosponsors of this bill.

The need for stronger whistleblower protections is clear. As we slowly recover from the deepest recession since the Great Depression, and grapple with unsustainable budget deficits, we cannot wait to act on measures to make sure the government uses taxpayer money efficiently and effectively.

This legislation will help us hold those who manage the public's dollars accountable by strengthening protections for Federal employees who shed light on government waste, fraud, and abuse. Studies have shown that employee whistleblowers are responsible for uncovering more fraud than auditors, internal compliance officers, and law enforcement officials combined. As an example of the type of disclosures we need to encourage, in one of the few cases in which a whistleblower prevailed, an Internal Revenue Service manager disclosed alleged fraud and preferential treatment of certain wealthy and influential taxpayers. The Merit Systems Protection Board denied his claim, but five years after the whistleblower retaliation occurred, the Court of Appeals reversed. Ensuring that dedicated civil servants can come forward and report wrongdoing without facing retaliation is an important step for saving taxpayer dollars, reducing the deficit, and improving our country's long-term economic health.

Our bill also will contribute to public health and safety, civil rights and civil liberties, national security, and other critical interests. Federal employees may be the only people in the position to observe a problem with a drug safety trial, a cover up of violations during a food inspection, overreach in Federal law enforcement, or safety concerns at a nuclear plant. But few employees will have the courage to disclose Federal Government wrongdoing, which can affect every aspect of government operations, without meaningful whistleblower protections.

The Whistleblower Protection Act, WPA, was intended to shield Federal whistleblowers from retaliation, but the Court of Appeals or the Federal Circuit and the Merit Systems Protection Board repeatedly have issued decisions that misconstrue the WPA and scale back its protections. Federal whistleblowers have prevailed on the merits of their claims before the Federal Circuit which has sole jurisdiction over Federal employee whistleblower appeals, only three times in hundreds of cases since 1994. correction is urgently needed.

Our bill would eliminate a number of restrictions that the Federal Circuit has read into the law regarding when disclosures are covered by the WPA. Because of the Federal Circuit's restrictive reading of the WPA, it would establish a pilot program to allow multi-circuit review for 5 years, and would require a Government Accountability Office review of that change 40 months after enactment. This bill would also bar agencies from revoking an employee's security clearance in retaliation for whistleblowing.

Additionally, this bill expands coverage to new groups of whistleblowers. This bill would expand the coverage of the Whistleblower Protection Act to include employees of the Transportation Security Administration. Intelligence Community employees for the first time would be protected as well, with an administrative process modeled on the protections for Federal Bureau of Investigations employees. Moreover, it would make clear that whistleblowers who disclose censorship of scientific information that could lead to gross government waste or mismanagement, danger to public health or safety, or a violation of law are protected.

I have been a long-time proponent of strengthening oversight by protecting Federal whistleblowers. Last Congress, my Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act, S. 372, passed both the Senate and the House of Representatives by unanimous consent in December 2010. In the 110th Congress, my bill, the Federal Employee Protection of Disclosures Act, S. 274, passed the Senate by unanimous consent in December 2007, and a similar bill, H.R. 985, also passed in the House of Representatives in March 2008. Unfortunately, both times, we were not able to reconcile the two bills and enact whistleblower protections before the Congress adjourned. I intend to finish the job this Congress. Whistleblowers simply cannot wait any longer.

Congress has a duty to provide strong protections for Federal whistleblowers. Only when Federal employees are confident that they will not face retaliation will they feel comfortable coming forward to disclose information that can be used to improve government operations, our national security, and the health of our citizens. I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, this weekend I know that Marylanders will be taking advantage of Passport Day this Saturday, April 9. During these weekend hours at our passport acceptance facilities in Maryland, my constituents will have the ability to renew their passports or apply for a new passport, as we get ready for the summer travel season.

When Marylanders apply for and ultimately receive their passports, I want them to continue to have confidence that the U.S. passport is the gold standard for identification. It certifies

an individual's identity and U.S. citizenship, and allows the passport holder to travel in and out of the United States and to foreign countries. It allows the passport holder to obtain further identification documents, and to set up bank accounts.

The U.S. Government simply cannot allow U.S. passports to be issued in this country on the basis of fraudulent documents. There is too much at stake. Unfortunately, hearings that I have chaired in the last Congress have convinced me that we have serious vulnerabilities in our passport issuance process that need to be closed quickly.

Nearly two years ago, on May 5, 2009, I chaired a Judiciary Terrorism Subcommittee hearing entitled ``The Passport Issuance Process: Closing the Door to Fraud.'' During the hearing last year, we learned about a Government Accountability Office, GAO, undercover investigation that had been requested by Senators Kyl and Feinstein to test the effectiveness of the passport issuance process, and to determine whether malicious individuals such as terrorists, spies, or other criminals could use counterfeit documents to obtain a genuine U.S. passport. What we learned from GAO was that ``terrorists or criminals could steal an American citizen's identity, use basic counterfeiting skills to create fraudulent documents for that identity, and obtain a genuine U.S. passport.'' But that 2009 GAO report was not the first time that problems with the passport issuance process were identified. In 2005 and 2007, GAO also brought these issues to light.

Vulnerabilities in the passport issuance process are very serious because it can have a profound impact on the national security of the United States.

A new GAO undercover investigation that I requested, along with Senators Kyl, Feinstein, Lieberman and Collins, also revealed that while some improvements have been made by the State Department, the passport issuance process is still susceptible to fraud. A Judiciary Terrorism Subcommittee hearing that I chaired in July of 2010 revealed that the State Department issued five additional passports on the basis of fraudulent identity documents that had been submitted by undercover GAO agents.

As a result, today I am reintroducing the Passport Identity Verification Act, or PIVA. This legislation is co-sponsored by Senators Feinstein, Lieberman, and Kerry. It is a common-sense solution that will give the State Department the legal authorities that it needs to access relevant information contained in federal, state, and other databases that can be used to verify the identity of every passport applicant, and to detect passport fraud, without extending the time that the State Department takes to approve passports. The legislation also requires the State Department to promulgate regulations to limit access to this information, and to ensure that personnel involved in the passport issuance process only access this information for authorized purposes. These are very important privacy and security protections in this legislation.

The legislation also requires the Secretary of State to conduct a formal study examining whether biometric information and technology can be used to enhance the ability to verify the identity of a passport applicant and to detect passport fraud.

I understand that the American people can become concerned when their travel plans, whether for leisure or business, are linked to their ability to obtain a passport in a timely fashion. My legislation would not lengthen the average amount of time it takes U.S. citizens to obtain passports. We have got to get this right, and it is not simply a question of process, techniques, and training. We need to make sure that the agencies that are responsible for processing passport application documents are concerned about national security as well as customer service, and we need to make sure they have the legal authorities, the resources, and the technology they need to verify the identity of a passport applicant and to detect passport fraud.

We already have much of the technology and the information to prevent such issuance of genuine U.S. passports based on fraudulent documents or information. The Passport Identity Verification Act will dramatically improve the State Department's ability to detect passport fraud, and strengthen the integrity of every American's passport.