Public Officials Accountability Act

Mr. President, I have come to the Senate floor today to introduce, on behalf of 34 Senators, the Job Protection Act.

The Job Protection Act is occasioned by a decision by the acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board that filed a complaint to stop the Boeing Company from building airplanes at a nonunion plant in South Carolina, suggesting that a unionized American company cannot expand its operations in 1 of 22 States with a right-to- work law.

The right-to-work law protects workers' rights to join or not join a union. For example, in Tennessee we are a right-to-work State. In the case of a Saturn employee, where United Auto Workers is the bargaining agent, a worker doesn't have to join the union or pay dues, but he has to accept the UAW as his bargaining agent.

At the Nissan plant a few miles away from the General Motors plant, workers have three times elected not to have a union as their bargaining agent. That is what a right-to-work State is. There are 22 of them. The State of New Hampshire is in the process of deciding whether to become the 23rd. Their legislature is of one view, and their Governor is of the other view.

The Job Protection Act, which I introduce today on behalf of 34 Senators, would preserve the Federal law's current protection of State right-to-work laws in the National Labor Relations Act and provide necessary clarity to prevent the NLRB from moving forward in their case against Boeing or attempting a similar strategy against other companies.

Specifically, the Job Protection Act would, first, explicitly clarify that the board cannot order an employer to relocate jobs from one location to another; two, it guarantees an employer the right to decide where to do business within the United States; and, three, it protects an employer's free speech regarding the costs associated with having a unionized workforce without fear of such communication being used as evidence in an anti-union discrimination suit.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the names of the 34 Senators who are original cosponsors of the Job Protection Act.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record at the end of my remarks two articles by the Wall Street Journal, the first written by me on April 29 and the second written by the president of the Boeing Company, Jim McNerney, who is also chairman of President Obama's Export Council.

Mr. President, now to make a few remarks about the actions that have caused this.

I just left a hearing in the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on the middle class. One of the witnesses was the general counsel of the Boeing Company. As might be expected, given the notoriety of this case and the breathtaking scope of it, he got a lot of questions.

Let me first say why there is such a breathtaking scope here. Up until the filing of the complaint, one would assume that a manufacturing company, such as Boeing or a smaller company that wanted to open a new plant to create new jobs could make its own decision about where to do that. Then in doing so, it could take into account such factors as the cost of labor. It could take into account such factors as the labor relations within a State, as well as the geographical location of the State and many other factors.

The reason the decision by the acting general counsel has attracted so much attention is it basically says--or at least it suggests--to any company manufacturing a product in a State which is not a right-to-work State, such as Washington, that you better think twice before you open a new production line in one of the right-to-work States.

Let me talk for a moment about why that has an impact on the middle class in America. Thirty years ago I was Governor of Tennessee. We were the third poorest State. My goal was to raise family incomes and to create an environment in which they could be raised. I was a young Governor, but I knew enough to know the government did not raise the incomes but it might create a good environment for that to happen.

I went to my first White House dinner with the President of the United States. The President was then Jimmy Carter. The President said to us Governors at a very nice dinner--just the Governors and their spouses and the President and Mrs. Carter: Governors, go to Japan. Persuade them to make in the United States what they sell in the United States. I remember I called Dean Rusk, who had been Secretary of State, and asked him to visit with me. I talked to him about how to do this.

Off I went to Japan, which is not something I planned to do when I was walking across Tennessee trying to be the Governor. I met with the Nissan officials in Tokyo in the fall of 1979. At that time, Japanese companies seemed so powerful that there were books coming out saying they might take over the United States economy, but they were not making here what they sold here. They were making Nissan cars and trucks in Japan. They were making a decision about where to locate in our country. I took with me a photograph of the United States at night taken from a satellite. They asked: Where is Tennessee? I said: It is right in the middle of the lights. That reduced the shipping and transportation costs. Then the next decision was: Where in the center did they want to go? Every State north of us did not have a right-to- work law. Tennessee and the States around us did. Nissan chose Tennessee, and they and the General Motors plant that later came and the Volkswagen plant and thousands of suppliers have helped our middle class raise incomes over the last 30 years. A third of our jobs are auto manufacturing jobs because we provided an environment in which automakers can compete in the world marketplace.

Nissan said today that soon they will be making in the United States 85 percent of what they sell in the United States, which makes them a very American company. That is what we want. But this decision says we throw a big wet blanket over all the auto suppliers and manufacturers who might be thinking about moving into Tennessee or opening new plants in Tennessee or suppliers who might be wishing to follow Boeing to South Carolina because it says you cannot make that decision.

We have never had that kind of law in the United States. We have had a right-to-work law on the books since 1947. States have a right to adopt it or not to adopt it. The legislation I am offering today on behalf of 34 Senators does not change that, but it does preserve the right of States to adopt a right-to-work law, the right of employees to join or not to join a union, and the right of employers to make decisions about where to locate their plants and their ability to speak in public about what they are doing.

This is a most consequential decision. It is one that deserves the attention of every Senator because as the Boeing chairman, who is the head of President Obama's Export Council,

wrote in the Wall Street Journal this week, a union State would not be able to attract a manufacturer because a manufacturer might be afraid that any expansion could never be done in a right-to-work State. By simple mathematics, if Boeing, which is our largest exporter--155,000 employees in the United States, another 15,000 around the world--has a disincentive or if it cannot expand a new production line in a right- to-work State and if it might think twice about expanding in any other State, then where is it going to go? It is going to go to some other country.

This decision by the acting general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board is the single most important action I have seen in years that would rush American jobs overseas in pursuit of an environment in which they can build and manufacture competitively. It is just the reverse of what President Carter said to the Governors 30 years ago when he said: Governors, go to Japan. Persuade them to make here what they sell here.

We did that. They came here. They are making 85 percent of what they sell here. We want Volkswagen to do that. We want General Motors to do that. We want Ford to do that. We want Boeing to do that. And if we say to them, But we are going to tell you, the Federal Government is going to tell you where you have to locate your plants, you are going to override section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act which was passed in 1947 and which has created an environment which has permitted American manufacturing to succeed.

All one has to do is read David Halberstam's book ``The Reckoning'' in the late 1980s to see that if our entire auto industry were still locked in Detroit, it would not be as competitive as it is today--cars made in America. I know that firsthand because I saw it happen when Nissan came to Tennessee. They did not hire a bunch of people from Japan to run the plant. They went to Detroit. They got Ford executives who knew how to run a plant but were not allowed to by the environment there, and they put them at a start-from-scratch place and created the most efficient automobile plant in North America.

We welcome also the General Motors plant and the United Auto Workers to their Spring Hill location in Tennessee. That is what a right-to- work State is where you can choose to join a union or not to join a union. Both can operate. Employees make the decision.

But when the Federal Government starts telling any company--a Boeing or a Boeing supplier, an auto company or an auto supplier or any manufacturing company--you cannot locate in a right-to-work State, they probably will not locate in a non-right-to-work State. Where are they likely to go? Mexico, Europe, Japan. Boeing sells airplanes all around the world. It can make airplanes all around the world. If we persist in policies such as this, instead of having a situation where our largest exporter has 170,000 employees, more than 150,000 of which are in the United States, we will turn that right upside down and they will be making 85 percent of their airplanes in the countries where they sell them, and the United States will have a lot fewer jobs.

This is a consequential matter that I hope attracts Democratic as well as Republican support. It preserves the right-to-work law. It preserves the choices of employees. It preserves the decision of corporations to make their own decisions about where to locate. It would stop a Federal Government regulation which is the single most effective action I know about to chase American jobs overseas and lower family incomes.

Exhibit 1

[From the Wall Street Journal, Apr. 29, 2011]

The White House vs. Boeing: A Tennessee Tale

(By Lamar Alexander)

The National Labor Relations Board has moved to stop Boeing

from building airplanes at a nonunion plant in South

Carolina, suggesting that a unionized American company cannot

expand its operations into one of the 22 states with right-

to-work laws, which protect a worker's right to join or not

join a union. (New Hampshire's legislature has just approved

its becoming the 23rd.)

This reminds me of a White House state dinner in February

1979, when I was governor of Tennessee. President Jimmy

Carter said, ``Governors, go to Japan. Persuade them to make

here what they sell here.''

``Make here what they sell here'' was then the union battle

cry, part of an effort to slow the tide of Japanese cars and

trucks entering the U.S. market.

Off I flew to Tokyo to meet with Nissan executives who were

deciding where to put their first U.S. manufacturing plant. I

carried with me a photograph taken at night from a satellite

showing the country at night with all its lights on.

``Where is Tennessee?'' the executives asked. ``Right in

the middle of the lights,'' I answered, pointing out that

locating a plant in the population center reduces the cost of

transporting cars to customers. That center had migrated

south from the Midwest, where most U.S. auto plants were, to

Kentucky and Tennessee.

Then the Japanese examined a second consideration:

Tennessee has a right-to-work law and Kentucky does not. This

meant that in Kentucky workers would have to join the United

Auto Workers union. Workers in Tennessee had a choice.

In 1980 Nissan chose Tennessee, a state with almost no auto

jobs. Today auto assembly plants and suppliers provide one-

third of our state's manufacturing jobs. Tennessee is the

home for production of the Leaf, Nissan's all-electric

vehicle, and the batteries that power it. Recently Nissan

announced that 85% of the cars and trucks it sells in the

U.S. will be made in the U.S.--making it one of the largest

``American'' auto companies and nearly fulfilling Mr.

Carter's request of 30 years ago.

But now unions want to make it illegal for a company that

has experienced repeated strikes to move production to a

state with a right-to-work law. What would this mean for the

future of American auto jobs? Jobs would flee overseas as

manufacturers look for a competitive environment in which to

make and sell cars around the world.

It's happened before. David Halberstam's 1986 book, ``The

Reckoning''--about the decline of the domestic American auto

industry--tells the story. Halberstam quotes American Motors

President George Romney, who criticized the ``shared

monopoly'' consisting of the Big Three Detroit auto

manufacturers and the UAW. ``There is nothing more vulnerable

than entrenched success,'' Romney warned. Detroit ignored

upstarts like Nissan who in the 1960s began selling funny

little cars to American consumers. We all know what happened

to employment in the Big Three companies.

Even when Detroit sought greener pastures in a right-to-

work state, its ``partnership'' with the United Auto Workers

could not compete. In 1985, General Motors located its $5

billion Saturn plant in Spring Hill, Tenn., 40 miles from

Nissan, hoping side-by-side competition would help the

Americans beat the Japanese. After 25 years, nonunion Nissan

operated the most efficient auto plant in North America. The

Saturn/UAW partnership never made a profit. GM closed Saturn

last year.

Nissan's success is one reason why Volkswagen recently

located in Chattanooga, and why Honda, Toyota, BMW, Kia,

Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and thousands of suppliers have chosen

southeastern right-to-work states for their plants. Under

right-to-work laws, employees may join unions, but mostly

they have declined. Three times workers at the Nissan plant

in Smyrna, Tenn., rejected organizing themselves like Saturn

employees a few miles away.

Our goal should be to make it easier and cheaper to create

private-sector jobs in this country. Giving workers the right

to join or not to join a union helps to create a competitive

environment in which more manufacturers like Nissan can make

here 85% of what they sell here.

Mr. President, I rise this afternoon to discuss an important piece of bipartisan legislation that I am introducing today with my friend and fellow New Englander, Senator Snowe, to establish a national endowment for the study, conservation, and restoration of our Nation's oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes.

Let me begin with a particular thank-you to our original cosponsors: the chairman of the Commerce Committee, Senator Rockefeller of West Virginia; the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Inouye of Hawaii; my colleague from the great State of Michigan, Senator Stabenow; and two colleagues from the Gulf of Mexico region, Senator Bill Nelson of Florida and Senator Landrieu from Louisiana.

As any Rhode Islander can tell you, the ocean is central to our State's way of life. I tell colleagues that Rhode Island's coast is one of the most beautiful places on Earth. But we don't call Rhode Island the Ocean State just because it is beautiful. We are the Ocean State because from our earliest days we have relied on the ocean and our beloved Narragansett Bay for trade, for food, for recreation, and for jobs in the shipbuilding, shipping, fishing, and tourism industries.

And we are not alone--across America, our oceans and coasts directly provide over $130 billion to our country's gross domestic product, and support 2.3 million America jobs. But one impact goes far beyond that.

Our coastal zone areas generate nearly 50 percent of our Nation's gross domestic product and support more than 28 million jobs.

In part, it is Americans' love of and reliance on the oceans that drives the need now to protect and restore them. Coastal America is experiencing a huge population boom, leading to more and more construction that puts significant pressure on our natural coastline and our wetlands.

Worldwide demand for seafood grows at a pace that our fish stocks cannot keep pace with, and our demand for energy leads us ever deeper into the ocean in search of fuel.

There is an old adage, that nothing focuses the mind like a crisis. If this is true, it must be time to focus on taking care of our oceans, because I believe that our oceans are facing what can be characterized as nothing less than a crisis. Our oceans are facing an array of threats, from marine debris aggregating in gyres the size of Texas, to whales so full of bio-accumulative toxins that they constitute swimming hazardous waste.

These are just a few of the headlines from just the past year:

This spring, we have watched in horror as Japan, already suffering from a terrible earthquake and tsunami--and our hearts go out to them-- battled to keep the Fukushima Nuclear Plant intact. Leaks from the plant have sent harmful levels of radiation into the ocean.

In July of 2010, the Midwest experienced its largest oil spill ever, after a leaking Michigan pipeline poured oil into the Kalamazoo River and thence into the Great Lakes.

Last June, the journal Science published a literature review by researchers from the University of Queensland

and UNC Chapel Hill, revealing mounting evidence that:

Rapidly rising greenhouse gas concentrations are driving

ocean systems toward conditions not seen for millions of

years, with an associated risk of fundamental and

irreversible ecological transformation.

In my home State of Rhode Island, the Narragansett Bay has witnessed a 4-degree increase in average annual winter water temperature, causing what amounts to a full ecosystem shift.

And of course, in April 2010, we witnessed the horrific explosion of the Deepwater Horizon, the tragic loss of life, and the unfolding of the largest environmental disaster our country has ever seen. The Gulf of Mexico, and the people who depend on this ecosystem for their sustenance and livelihoods, are still struggling to recover.

We are now 13 months beyond the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Lives are still shattered; livelihoods reliant on the gulf ecosystem are still threatened. But we are within the window of action. It is not too late to provide for short-term restoration of the gulf coast to enact legislation that reduces the risk of future oilspills, and as my cosponsors and I seek to provide dedicated funding to study, protect, and restore the marine and coastal ecosystems within the United States' boundaries.

The National Endowment for the Oceans is our proposal to meet this last challenge. The Endowment would make grants available to coastal and Great Lakes States, local government agencies, regional planning bodies, academic institutions, and nonprofit organizations so these entities could embark on projects to learn more about and do a better job of protecting our precious natural resource. Projects that allow researchers to hire technicians, mechanics, computer scientists and students. Projects that put people to work relocating critical public infrastructure jeopardized by sea level rise. Projects that solve resource management problems and restore our natural ecosystems. Projects that protect jobs by restoring commercial fisheries habitat, and creating new fisheries gear for sustainable and profitable fishing.

The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration received $167 million for coastal restoration projects under the Recovery Act. More than 800 proposals for shovel-ready construction and engineering projects came in, totaling $3 billion worth of work. But NOAA could only fund 50 of the 800.

The National Endowment for the Oceans would help us move forward with these projects and others that protect our oceans and drive our economy. As I stand here today, more than a year after the beginning of the oilspill in the gulf, and in the face of mounting evidence that our oceans and coasts are truly facing a crisis, I understand the feelings of concern and frustration. But, again, I believe it is not too late.

In fact, I believe the time is now to pass legislation that will help to restore the gulf ecosystem. The time is now to pass legislation that will reduce the risk of future oilspills. And it is time now to provide dedicated funding for the study, restoration, and protection of our Nation's ocean and coastal resources.

We need to put the stewardship of our natural resources, our ocean resources, at the forefront of our national agenda. The National Endowment for the Oceans, as I said, is bipartisan. I thank Senator Olympia Snowe for her leadership in this effort. This legislation is science based, with much of the money made available through a competitive grant program. This legislation is cost effective, coordinating existing efforts of Federal, local, and private programs, reducing duplication of research efforts, and crossing political borders to ensure that every dollar is spent with the greatest possible effect.

Finally, this legislation is appropriately paid for with revenue generated from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund, a portion of royalties from Outer Continental Shelf energy development, and fines and damages collected for violations of Federal law off our coastline. Put simply, a small portion of the revenue we extract from our oceans and great waters will be reinvested to now protect the long-term viability of those oceans and great waters.

The ocean provides us with great bounty, and we will continue to take advantage of that, as we should. We will fish, we will sail, and we will trade. We will dispose of waste. We will extract fuel and construct wind farms. Navies and cruise ships, sail boats and supertankers will plow the ocean surface. We cannot change how reliant we are on our ocean. What we can change is what we do in return.

We can for the first time give back. We can become stewards of our oceans, not just takers but caretakers. The oceans contain immense potential for new discoveries, immense potential for new jobs, and immense potential for new solutions to the emerging oceans crisis. But to meet the demands of this moment, we must respond to the challenges before us. We must heed the alarm bells that are ringing from the arctic seas to our tropic oceans, from the top of the food chain to the bottom, alarm bells indeed are ringing.

I urge my colleagues to join Senator Snowe and myself in support of the National Endowment for the Oceans. Let ours be the generation that tips the increasingly troubling balance between mankind and our oceans a little bit back toward the benefit of our oceans for the long-term benefit of mankind.

Mr. President, last weekend we observed Mother's Day and celebrated our families. When we reflect on our own mothers, many of us think about the woman who nursed us when we were sick, took us to the doctor for checkups, and cared for our grandparents as they aged, while at the same time working to put food on the table.

These balancing acts are hard enough. But for many moms, and dads, across the country, juggling all these roles means making impossible choices. This is especially true for people who do not have the basic right of paid sick days. For these workers, missing work due to an illness, injury, or doctor's appointment can mean putting their job and their family's financial security in jeopardy. So they are forced to choose between the jobs they need and the families they love. In these difficult economic times, no one should have to make that choice.

But for a huge segment of the American workforce, these difficult choices are a daily reality. Four in ten U.S. workers have no paid sick days, they cannot miss a day of work with the guarantee of their pay or the assurance that their job will be there when they come back. What is more, 2/3 of low-wage workers, those who can least afford to lose a paycheck or a job, have no paid sick days. This means many of these workers report to work sick or send their children to school or day care sick, spreading their illness to others.

This robs workers of their basic dignity, and that shouldn't happen in a country as wealthy and successful as America. In fact, the U.S. is the only developed country that does not guarantee paid sick days to its workers, and our workers are the most productive in the world! America's workers deserve to earn a decent living; a living where they can provide for their families without being punished when they or their children catch the flu. America's workers deserve paid sick days.

Lack of access to paid sick days isn't just a crisis for individual families--it's a public health crisis as well. Health officials urge people with contagious illnesses to stay home from work to avoid spreading disease. But the workers in industries with the most contact with the public, such as food service and hospitality, are the least likely to have paid sick days. A recent survey shows that nearly two- thirds of restaurant workers, 3/4 of whom don't have paid sick days, report cooking or serving food while sick. This puts the health of all of us in jeopardy. And not having paid sick days puts these workers in the terrible position of choosing between the health of their customers and their family's health and economic security.

But this doesn't have to be the case. We can give working people the tools they need to protect their health and their families' health while also safeguarding the public health. Workers want to do the right thing and stay home when they are ill or stay home with their sick children rather than sending them to school. But our current laws simply do not protect them.

This is why Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro and I are introducing the Healthy Families Act, which will allow U.S. workers to earn up to 7 paid sick days per year to recover from short-term illness, care for a sick family member, seek routine medical care, or seek help if they are victims of domestic violence. This important legislation will provide much-needed security for hardworking families struggling to balance the obligations of work and family. It will improve public health and decrease health costs by preventing the spread of disease and giving employees the access they need to obtain preventive care and treatment. It will also help victims of domestic violence to protect their families and their futures.

Providing paid sick days to workers will be good for working people and their families, and good for our businesses and our economy as well. Allowing workers to tend to their health or their families' engenders good will and loyalty, and boosts morale at the workplace. Businesses will save because the greatest cause of lost productivity due to illness is not absenteeism but ``presenteeism,'' the practice of sick workers coming to work, infecting their colleagues, and being less productive themselves. Businesses whose workers have paid sick days will also benefit from reduced turnover, and its high associated costs, when workers can hold on to their jobs. Experience bears this out, in San Francisco, where workers have had guaranteed paid sick days since 2007, surveys show that 6 out of 7 employers found no negative effect on profit. Indeed, 4 years after implementation, two-thirds of surveyed employers were supportive of the city's paid sick days law.

The overall economy will benefit from reduced health costs as well. Ensuring that workers are able to seek preventive care as well as care in a doctor's office, rather than the ER, will minimize health care costs. Reducing the spread of contagious illnesses by allowing workers or children to stay at home where they won't infect their coworkers or classmates will also reduce health costs by keeping more people healthy in the first place.

Most of all, workers will have peace of mind and financial security. They won't be faced with a potentially long search for new work, while collecting unemployment benefits. They won't face reduced income and having to cut back on their spending on food, medicine, and other necessities bought in their local communities. Working people will have the security of knowing that if illness strikes, they will be able to tend to their families without losing their jobs or their paychecks.

The Healthy Families Act has had the strongest of Senate champions who have led the fight for workers' rights, Senator Kennedy and Senator Dodd. I am proud to be the new leader for this vital piece of legislation. I thank my colleagues who are joining me today as original cosponsors, and I encourage all Senators to join us in supporting the Healthy Families Act. This bill will provide health, peace of mind, and security for America's workers and their families. At a time when the American Dream and the middle class seem to be slipping away, these goals could never be more important.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleagues Senators Menendez, Lautenberg and Durbin in introducing the State Ethics Law Protection Act. This legislation would ensure that States are allowed to pass meaningful ethics reform laws without being penalized by the Federal government.

Current law allows the Federal Highway Administration, FHWA, to withhold Federal highway funds from States that ban pay-to-play contracting. At least 9 States and 60 cities have enacted anti pay-to- play laws. These laws vary widely, but they generally limit political contributions from entities doing business with the state. The FHWA claims that these laws could reduce the number of potential bidders, thus violating an unrestricted bidding requirement set forth in Federal law. FHWA has selectively threatened to withhold money to certain States. In my home State of Illinois, the State legislature was forced to change its pay-to-play law just days after our former governor was indicted for allegedly engaging in numerous pay-to-play schemes. Illinois was forced to create a giant loophole in the ethics law so as not to lose out on millions in Federal transportation funds.

States have the right to ensure their contracting processes adhere to the highest ethical standards and offer the best protection to the taxpayers. Selected Federal intervention is an unwarranted and unhelpful power grab by Federal regulators. Pay-to-play laws are designed to enhance, not undermine, competitive bidding. They are designed to ensure that the competitive bidding process is open and fair, not motivated by political considerations.

Our legislation would allow States to pass ethics laws that are in their best interests, without fear of Federal retaliation, by amending FHWA's contracting requirements to explicitly provide that no State or locality shall be considered in violation of the competitive bidding requirements based on political contributions. The legislation does not prescribe any new requirements for states, nor does it advocate for the passage of any single ethics law. The bill simply allows States to enact meaningful anti-corruption laws if they choose to do so. As Federal budgets tighten in these challenging economic times, it is imperative that we not hamstring States even further by denying them Federal funds for trying to limit public corruption.

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

Mr. President, I am pleased to introduce the Public Officials Accountability Act, to ensure that our elected leaders cannot use their office for their own personal benefit. Public corruption has turned the ``Land of Honest Abe'' into the ``Land of Political Corruption.'' Illinois is the 6th most corrupt state in the Union, based on the number of public corruption convictions over the last decade. If just the northern district of Illinois were a state, it would have had the 7th highest number of public corruption convictions in the country in 2009. Illinois taxpayers pay the price for this in the form of a hidden public corruption tax. We need to make sure our laws help Federal prosecutors crack down on public corruption and restore integrity to Illinois. One such tool is the honest services law.

For the past 30 years, the Department of Justice has fought public corruption by convicting scores of public officials who deny citizens the right to ``honest services.'' We are all too familiar with politicians failing to perform their public duties honestly in Illinois.

The most famous Illinois politicians to be convicted of honest services fraud include former Governor Otto Kerner, late Congressman Dan Rostenkowski, former city of Chicago official Robert Sorich, and former Governor George Ryan. William Jefferson and Congressman Bob Ney are a few notable national figures to be convicted of this crime.

Back in Illinois, our former governor Rod Blagojevich is currently on trial after having turned Illinois into a corrupt political circus and a national joke. A number of charges in his original indictment were based on honest services fraud, including those related to his alleged scheme to sell President Obama's U.S. Senate seat for his own personal gain.

Unfortunately, last year the Supreme court drastically narrowed the scope of the honest services law in the famous 2010 Enron decision, Skilling v. U.S. The Court struck down a significant portion of the law because it was unconstitutionally vague. As a result of the Supreme Court review, U.S. prosecutors reindicted Blagojevich, leaving out all honest services charges so as not to complicate the case. Blagojevich later was convicted on just one charge.

The Blagojevich case was not the only one affected by the decision. According to the Wall Street Journal, ``In 2008 and 2009, the government brought honest services fraud charges in more than 100 cases a year,'' but in 2010 ``new prosecutions using the statute slowed to a trickle'' due to the Supreme Court review of the issue.

In order to continue fighting public corruption effectively, the Department of Justice asked Congress to enact a clear and specific honest services law to withstand any constitutional review. Our bill, the Public Officials Accountability Act, would do just that. It would very clearly reinstate the portion of the law the Supreme Court struck down in terms that remove all ambiguity. The Public Officials Accountability Act would restore one of prosecutors' most important tools and decades of congressional intent to ensure elected leaders cannot use their office to further their own careers or pocketbooks.

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

Mr. President, few things are more important to the future of the American economy and job creation than protecting our intellectual property. At a time where our country is beginning to regain its economic footing, businesses face an additional hurdle, the severity of which is increasing by the day--digital theft.

Copyright infringement and the sale of counterfeit goods are reported to cost American businesses billions of dollars, and result in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs. Further, the Institute for Policy Innovation estimates that copyright piracy online alone costs Federal, state and local governments $2.6 billion in tax revenue. In today's business and fiscal climate, the harm that intellectual property infringement causes to the U.S. economy is unacceptable.

While the growth of the digital marketplace has been extraordinary, and benefits businesses by enabling new opportunities to reach consumers, it also brings with it the threat of copyright infringement and counterfeiting. Internet purchases have become so commonplace that consumers are less wary of online shopping and therefore more easily victimized by online counterfeit products that may have health, safety or other quality concerns when they are counterfeit.

Today, I am introducing the bipartisan PROTECT IP Act, which is based on last year's Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act. It will provide the Justice Department

and rights holders with important new tools to crack down on rogue websites dedicated to infringing activities. This legislation will protect the investment American companies make in developing brands and creating content and will protect the jobs associated with those investments. It will also protect American consumers, who should feel confident that the goods they purchase are of the type and quality they expect.

Both law enforcement and rights holders are currently limited in the remedies available to combat websites dedicated to offering infringing content and products. These rogue websites are often foreign-owned and operated, or reside at domain names that are not registered through a U.S.-based registry or registrar. American consumers are too often deceived into thinking the products they are purchasing at these websites are legitimate because they are easily accessed through their home's Internet service provider, found through well known search engines, and are complete with corporate advertising, credit card acceptance, and advertising links that make them appear legitimate.

The PROTECT IP Act authorizes the Justice Department to file a civil action against the registrant or owner of a domain name that accesses a foreign rogue website, or the foreign-registered domain name itself, and to seek a preliminary order from the court that the site is dedicated to infringing activities. The court is authorized to issue a cease and desist order against a rogue website. If the court issues that order, the Attorney General is authorized to serve that order, with permission of the court, on specified U.S. based third-parties, including Internet service providers, payment processors, online advertising network providers, and search engines. These third parties would then be required to take appropriate action to either prevent access to the Internet site, in the case of an Internet service provider or search engine, or cease doing business with the Internet site, in the case of a payment processor or advertising network.

The act authorizes a rights holder who is the victim of the infringement from a rogue website to bring a similar action against the rogue site, whether domestic or foreign. If the court issues a cease and desist order, the rights holder is authorized to serve that order, if authorized by the court, on payment processors and online advertising networks, to cut off the financial viability of the criminal activity.

The legislation will also encourage voluntary action by Internet partners that have credible evidence a rogue website is threatening the public health by trafficking in counterfeit, adulterated, or misbranded prescription medication.

Finally, the PROTECT IP Act will help law enforcement identify and prevent counterfeit products from being imported into the United States by ensuring law enforcement can share samples of packaging or labels of suspected counterfeits with the relevant rights holders to determine whether the shipment should be seized at the border. Similarly, it ensures that law enforcement can share anti-circumvention devices that have been seized with affected parties.

This legislation will provide law enforcement and rights holders with an increased ability to protect American intellectual property. This will benefit American consumers, American businesses, and American jobs. We should not expect that enactment of the legislation will completely solve the problem of online infringement, but it will make it more difficult for foreign entities to profit off American hard work and ingenuity. This bill targets the most egregious actors, and is an important first step to putting a stop to online piracy and sale of counterfeit goods.

Protecting intellectual property is not uniquely a Democratic or Republican priority it is a bipartisan priority. I look forward to working with all Senators to pass this important, bipartisan legislation.

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