Small BREW Act

Mr. President, I rise today to introduce an important piece of regulatory reform legislation.

A study released this past fall by the National Association of Manufacturers estimates that U.S. Federal Government regulations imposed over $2 trillion in compliance costs on American businesses in 2012. This is an amount equal to 12 percent of our Nation's GDP.

The study also demonstrated--and this should come as no surprise-- that the cost of complying with all those regulations falls disproportionately on small businesses. Small manufacturing firms, in particular, grapple with regulatory compliance costs that are more than three times those felt by the average company in the United States.

It is no wonder why many American businesses are shuttering or moving their entire operation overseas. And how many folks dreamed of starting a small business but ultimately decided against taking the risk because of the overwhelming burden and uncertainty of our regulatory state?

We have to do better.

Small businesses are fed up with excessive Federal regulation, and they are making sure we know about it. A November 2014 survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business asked small business owners across the country to rank the ten most pressing problems they face. Overwhelmingly, the top two answers from small business owners were taxes and complying with government red tape. I am happy to say that this Congress intends to confront these issues head-on.

The Federal Government needs to do everything possible to promote an environment that will allow private sector employers to create jobs. To accomplish that, common sense would tell us that the government needs to remove barriers to job creation rather than put up new ones.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has proven time and again that it would rather push forward with its interest-driven regulatory agenda than ease the heavy burden upon our economy and our entrepreneurs.

To make matters worse, this administration is pursuing new regulations through litigation tactics that take an end-run around the laws enacted by Congress to ensure transparency and accountability in the regulatory process. This strategy has come to be known as sue-and- settle, and regulators have been using it to speed up rulemaking and to keep the public, industries, and even the States away from the table when regulatory decisions are negotiated behind closed doors.

Sue-and-settle cases typically follow a similar pattern. First, an interest group files a lawsuit against a Federal agency, claiming that the agency has failed to take a certain regulatory action by a statutory deadline. Through the complaint, the interest group seeks to compel the agency to take action by a new, often-rushed deadline. The plaintiff-interest group frequently will be one that shares a common regulatory and policy agenda with the agency that it sues, such as when an environmental group sues the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA.

Next, the agency and interest group enter into friendly negotiations to produce either a settlement agreement or consent decree behind closed doors that commits the agency to satisfying the interest group's demands. The agreement is then entered by a court, binding executive discretion to undertake a regulatory action. And noticeably absent from these negotiations are the very parties who will likely be most impacted by the new regulation.

Sue-and-settle tactics by advocacy groups and complicit government agencies have severe consequences on transparency, public accountability, and ultimately on the quality of the resulting public policy.

Such tactics undermine congressional intent by shutting out affected parties, such as industries and even the States that are charged with implementing new regulations.

The Administrative Procedure Act, APA, which has been characterized as the citizens' ``regulatory bill of rights,'' was enacted to ensure transparency and public accountability in our Federal rulemaking process. A central aspect of the APA is the notice-and-comment process, which requires agencies to notify the public of proposed regulations and to respond to comments submitted by interested parties.

Rulemaking driven by sue-and-settle tactics, however, frequently results in reprioritized agency agendas and truncated deadlines for regulatory action. This renders the notice-and-comment requirements of the APA a mere formality, depriving regulated entities, the States and the public of sufficient time to have any meaningful input on the final rules. The resulting regulatory action is driven not by the public interest, but by special interest priorities, and often comes as a complete surprise to those most affected by it.

Sue-and-settle litigation also helps agencies avoid accountability. Instead of having to answer to the public for controversial regulations and policy decisions, agency officials are able to simply point to a court order entering the agreement and maintain that they were required to take action under its terms.

Further, the abuse of consent decrees as a method for taking regulatory action can have lasting negative impact on the ability of future administrations to adapt the Federal regulatory scheme to changing circumstances. Not only does this raise serious concerns about bad public policy; it also puts into question the constitutional impact of one administration's actions binding the hands of its successors.

Sue-and-settle, and the consequences that come with such tactics, is not a new phenomenon. Evidence of sue-and-settle tactics and closed- door rulemaking can be found in nearly every administration over the previous few decades.

But there has been an alarming increase in sue-and-settle tactics under the Obama administration. A study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce shows that just during President Obama's first term, 60 Clean Air Act lawsuits against the EPA were resolved through consent decrees or settlement agreements, an increase from 28 during President George W. Bush's second term.

Since 2009, sue-and-settle cases against the EPA have imposed at least $13 billion in annual regulatory costs.

In November 2010, environmental advocacy groups filed a complaint against the EPA under the Clean Water Act to compel the agency to revise wastewater regulations. Interestingly, the same day that the complaint was filed, the plaintiff-advocacy groups filed a proposed consent decree already signed by the EPA and requiring prompt regulatory action. As is characteristic of sue-and-settle cases, potentially affected parties were kept out of the lawsuit and negotiations. Such a scenario should raise serious concerns over how truly adversarial these lawsuits really are.

In another case, environmental advocacy groups filed suit against the EPA to compel the agency to issue new air quality standards for pollutants from coal and oil-fired power plants. The plaintiff-advocacy groups alleged that the EPA had violated its statutory duty to issue new standards.

An industry group intervened in the case to represent utility companies but was ultimately left out of subsequent negotiations between the plaintiffs and the EPA, which resulted in a consent decree. The industry group challenged the consent decree on numerous grounds, including the rulemaking timeframe established under the decree

which was arguably too short to allow the public to participate fully in the rulemaking process.

Nevertheless, the court approved and entered the consent decree, with the judge concluding that ``[s]hould haste make waste, the resulting regulations will be subject to successful challenge. . . If EPA needs more time to get it right, it can seek more time.''

The resulting rule, despite its opaque promulgation, was estimated by the EPA to cost $9.6 billion annually by 2015. And according to estimates by the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, the rule promulgated under the consent decree would contribute to a loss of 1.44 million jobs in the U.S. between 2013 and 2020.

The EPA could have done things right the first time by crafting a sensible, workable rule that protects the environment without causing unnecessary job losses or higher electricity prices for hard-working American families. But as a result of backroom, sue-and-settle tactics, we were left with a controversial regulation that fails to properly take into account the impact on affected parties and that remains the subject of litigation to this day.

The EPA, it seems, has turned a blind eye to the calls for more transparency and public accountability in our Federal rulemaking process. In February 2014, EPA's General Counsel issued a statement declaring:

The sue and settle rhetoric, strategically mislabeled by

its proponents, is an often-repeated but a wholly invented

accusation that gets no more true with frequent retelling.

I think many would take issue with that assessment. In fact, the Environmental Council of the States, or ECOS--a national non-profit, non-partisan association made up of State and territorial environmental agency leaders--adopted a resolution entitled ``The Need for Reform and State Participation in EPA's Consent Decrees which Settle Citizen Suits,'' stating, among other things:

[S]tate environmental agencies are not always notified of

citizen suits that allege U.S. EPA's failure to perform its

nondiscretionary duties, are often not parties to these

citizen suits, and are usually not provided with an

opportunity to participate in the negotiation of agreements

to settle citizen suits[.]

ECOS further resolved that:

[G]reater transparency of citizen suit settlement

agreements is needed for the public to understand the impact

of these agreements on the administration of environmental

programs[.]

I agree.

Clearly, the EPA has no intention of acknowledging the use or consequences of sue-and-settle tactics. And unfortunately, I think this sentiment is shared by other executive branch agencies today.

That is why today I am introducing the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act of 2015. Senators Blunt, Hatch, Cruz, Paul, Cornyn, Rubio, Inhofe, Fischer, Flake, Lee, Capito and Gardner are cosponsors of this important bill, and I thank them for their support.

In the House, Representative Doug Collins of Georgia is introducing a companion bill.

By enacting reasonable, pro-accountability measures, the Sunshine bill aims to address many of the problems I have outlined so far.

This bill provides for greater transparency by shedding light on sue- and-settle tactics. It requires agencies to publish sue-and-settle complaints and notices of intent-to-sue in a readily accessible manner.

The bill requires agencies to publish proposed consent decrees and settlement agreements at least 60 days before they can be filed with a court. This provides a valuable opportunity for affected parties to weigh-in, which will increase public accountability in the rulemaking process. It will also prevent those scenarios where lawsuits are filed on the same day as previously negotiated agreements, a practice that effectively blocks any meaningful participation by affected parties.

The bill also makes it easier for affected parties such as States and business owners to take part in both the lawsuit and settlement negotiations to ensure that their interests are properly represented. It requires the Attorney General or, if appropriate, the head of the defendant-agency, to certify to the court that he or she has personally approved certain proposed consent decrees or settlement agreements that, for example, convert a discretionary authority of an agency into a non-discretionary duty to act. It requires that courts consider whether the terms of a proposed agreement are contrary to the public interest.

The bill promotes greater transparency by requiring agencies to publicly post and report to Congress information on sue-and-settle complaints, consent decrees and settlement agreements.

Finally, the bill resolves key constitutional concerns by making it easier for succeeding administrations to modify the effect of a prior administration's consent decrees. It does so by providing for de novo review of motions to modify existing consent decrees due to changed circumstances.

The Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act will shed light on the problem. It will help rein in backroom rulemaking, encourage the appropriate use of consent decrees and settlements, and reinforce the procedures laid out decades ago to ensure a transparent and accountable regulatory process.

I urge my colleagues to work with me and support this important legislation.

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

Mr. President, today I am introducing a resolution proposing a constitutional amendment to require that Congress and the President handle the American people's money more responsibly and balance the Nation's debt and budget. Like the last two Congresses, the entire Republican Conference has cosponsored this proposal.

I know the Constitution sets a high threshold for Congress to propose an amendment, but it is critical we do so for three reasons:

First, piling up more debt year after year is imposing greater and greater harm to our economy and to our society. Last week, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf testified before the House Budget Committee, noting that the national debt is expected to swell by another $7.6 trillion--trillion with a T--over the next 10 years. He said:

Such large and growing national debt would have serious

negative consequences, including increasing Federal spending

for interest payments; restraining economic growth in the

long term; giving policymakers less flexibility to respond to

unexpected challenges; and eventually heightening the risk of

a fiscal crisis.

He is the Director of the Federal budget office and he said that on January 21, 2015. Just think about that. And he is a Democrat. He has been a very good budget director, as far as I am concerned, and I have enjoyed looking at his analyses over the years.

Our Nation is on an unsustainable path and we simply cannot wait any longer to make responsible decisions for our future.

Second, Washington will not keep our fiscal house in order unless required to do so by the Constitution. Congress has pretended that good intentions alone would keep our checkbook balanced. Congress has tried putting limits in place by legislation or other rules. Congress has stuck its head in the sand or at other times cried that the sky would fall if we really did get our fiscal act together. Over many decades we have demonstrated that nothing short of a constitutional requirement will work.

Third, the American people have the right to set rules for how Washington handles their money. The Constitution is a rulebook for government and it belongs to the American people. Proposing an amendment does not add it to the Constitution but only sends it to the States for debate and consideration. And while it takes two-thirds of Congress to propose an amendment to the Constitution, it takes three- fourths of the States to ratify it. That high level of national consensus may or may not exist, but the American people deserve the opportunity to find out.

On June 7, 1979, nearly 36 years ago, I stood on this floor when I introduced Senate Joint Resolution 86, my first balanced budget amendment. In today's dollars the budget deficit that year was $95 billion and the national debt was $2.6 trillion, which was about 30 percent of our gross domestic product. I said then that only in Washington could this situation be described as anything less than obscene.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. I concede a few things have changed since 1979. For example, the deficit for the current fiscal year is six times higher than it was in 1979, and the national debt is seven times as large. To put that number in perspective, the national debt is now larger than our entire economy.

The situation is not only getting worse, it is getting worse faster than ever. More than 40 percent of the national debt accumulated since our founding has piled up under President Obama, and he has 2 more years in office. While those things have changed, and changed for the worse, the choice before us remains the same.

Some of my colleagues might disagree with the CBO Director and think that piling up trillions and trillions of dollars in debt is no big deal; that these are just numbers in the air with no impact on the real world. Perhaps they think our large and growing national debt won't have any negative consequences, won't impede economic growth, won't restrain policymakers' flexibility to respond to challenges, and won't heighten the risk of the fiscal crisis. Some of my colleagues might believe we have no obligation to handle the American people's money responsibly or perhaps they believe this money belongs to government and not the American people at all.

Some of my colleagues might insist, despite decades of demonstrated failure, that Congress can somehow get its fiscal act together on its own. One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

Some of my colleagues might say the American people should not be able to set fiscal rules for the government they elect. Perhaps they think the Federal Government should control the Constitution, not the other way around.

I say to my colleagues who think those things: I can understand why you would oppose sending this balanced budget amendment to the States for consideration.

But now a word to my other colleagues: If you think this growing mountain of debt is dangerous and must be stopped, if you believe we have exhausted every other means of stopping it, and if you say the American people have the right to decide how their government should operate, then I invite you to support this joint resolution, S.J. Res. 6.

The Senate has on four separate occasions voted on a balanced budget amendment since I introduced that proposal in 1979. You can see it on this chart. We actually passed one in 1982 when the national debt was $2.5 trillion. But the House, controlled by Democrats at the time, did not take it up.

The Senate voted on another balanced budget amendment in 1994 when the national debt was $6.9 trillion. It fell a few votes short.

Three years later, when the national debt was $7.9 trillion, we came within a single vote of passage in 1997.

And in 2011, the fourth from the left there on the chart, we voted on the last balanced budget amendment I introduced. At that time, the national debt had grown to $15.1 trillion, and it is almost $3 trillion higher today.

CBO tells us not only that the national debt will swell by an additional $7.6 trillion in the next 10 years, but that interest on that debt will be a larger and larger portion of the budget. The low interest rates we see today, after all, will not last forever.

CBO warns that, on our current path, interest costs alone will quadruple from $200 billion today to nearly $800 billion in 10 years. In only 6 years, if we do not change course, spending on interest will surpass either defense or nondefense spending. Every dollar spent to service debt cannot be spent protecting our country or helping our citizens. This is the fiscal equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns. The debt keeps growing, the danger keeps building, while Congress keeps pretending and stalling.

What if we had sent a balanced budget amendment to the States in the 1970s, 1980s, or even 1990s? How different would the budget process be today?

When I spoke here in June 1979, I offered two additional reasons for adopting a balanced budget amendment.

First, I said a fixed spending ceiling ``requires that Congress think in order of budget priorities.''

Second, I said:

In my mind, a balanced budget or spending limitation

amendment offers the potential to impose new limits upon the

National Government, replacing those that have largely been

eroded over the years.

That is why the American people have never been able to use their Constitution to set fiscal rules for Washington--because doing so would set limits the national government does not want. But our liberty depends on setting and enforcing such limits.

I will repeat what I said here in 1979:

This is certainly not a trivial objective. Rather, it goes

to the heart of what our system of government is going to be

in the future.

That is the choice before us, and before the American people.

I have to say that if we look at the current budget, it is a fraud the President has submitted. It is pathetic. And even with that current budget, saying they are going to save us money, we are about a half trillion dollars in debt--in further debt, I might add. It is piling up in irreducible ways. It is something we have to do something about. We can no longer sit around and pretend that, somehow, Congress is going to take care of it, when Congress doesn't have the will to take care of it. A balanced budget amendment is an important part of changing that.

I will speak later on the actual amendment and what it says and what it means and how it will work. I believe it is an appropriate way of bringing this country under control and getting us to live within our means. It will take time even if we start today. But we are not starting today.

This administration cannot get anywhere near what it wants in this budget without a huge tax increase. We have had tax increase after tax increase after tax increase, and it never makes a dip in the Federal debt. We have to wake up around here and start doing some things right, or this country--the greatest country in the world--will not be able to remain so. But it has to.

If we look at the rest of the world--we are in terrible shape throughout the rest of the world. There is no other country in this world that can lead like ours can--except for evil. There are countries that can really lead, but they would lead for evil. We have got to stop that. And the only way we can is to have a nation that lives within its means, does what is right, and balances its budget. It is going to take years, if we pass this amendment, to balance the budget. If the amendment gets passed and then is supported by three-quarters of the States--38 States--this amendment will do the job.

Whatever we do, it is going to be tough. But that is better than a profligacy that is continuing to go along under all kinds of phony arguments that, when we look back on them, are really phony. They act as though they are really trying to do something about this, while spending us into bankruptcy, and more and more causing us to not be able to live within our means.

We have got to change this, and I am convinced the only way we will is with a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. It is the only way we can find enough people in this country who respect the Constitution to cause the result that we live--or at least start living--within our means.

Mr. President, I am very pleased that Senator Collins and I have introduced legislation known as the Small Brewer Reinvestment and Expanding Workforce Act, S. 375. The two of us have led the effort to try to help the craft brewing industry. The craft beer industry is composed of small businesses that have used their ingenuity to create beers that are becoming very, very popular.

It is interesting that when we developed the excise tax on beer, I don't think we thought of the craft beer industry at the time. The craft beer industry, as I said, generally consists of small businesses who are struggling to find capital in order to expand. The current law imposes an excise tax on the first 60,000 barrels at $7 per barrel for breweries that produce 2 million or fewer barrels annually. The Small BREW Act would modify that, by increasing the threshold to 6 million barrels. Under the bill, brewers producing 6 million or few barrels each year would pay $3.50 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels, and $16 per barrel on their annual production between 60,001 and 2 million barrels. So the Small BREW Act would reduce the amount they pay in federal excise taxes.

I wish to take a moment and then yield to my colleague to explain the rationale as to why we have introduced this legislation.

As I said a moment ago, when we imposed the excise tax on beer, I believe we thought about the big companies and that we wanted to have taxes on distilled spirits, wine, and beer as an excise tax.

When we take a look at the craft breweries, they are really burdened by this tax. They are creating jobs, they are creating a different product, and they are creating new markets for beer in this country. I wish to share some of these numbers because I think they are pretty impressive.

In 1989 there were 247 breweries in the entire United States. Today there are over 3,200 small and independent breweries and brew pubs in the United States that employ over 110,000 Americans. So this has been a real growth industry. Here are jobs that can't be outsourced, and they have created a better product, a better way of doing business. But the challenge is that they are really strapped for capital. It is not easy for them to invest in the type of equipment necessary to expand their capacity.

Brewers Association CEO Bob Pease said last month in testimony submitted to the House Ways and Means Committee:

America's small brewers are quintessentially small Main

Street manufacturers. They typically employ 10 to 100

workers, and many began as home brewers before devoting

themselves full time to the brewing industry.

I think that the No. 1 problem for craft brewers trying to expand their capacity is access to sufficient capital. An article in yesterday's New York Times entitled ``Betting on the Growth of Microbreweries'' quotes Brewers Association economist Dr. Bart Watson:

Brewery after brewery is looking for ways to grow because

when you talk to these companies, the biggest constraint is

capacity. They're selling beer as fast as they can make it.

I recently visited Heavy Seas Brewery in Baltimore. Now, I know this brewery quite well because I helped Hugh Sisson, the owner and CEO, tap the very first keg he produced in a micropub when he was doing this basically as a hobby. Well, he has expanded

his operations a couple of times now, and it wasn't easy to do this. He has invested a lot of money, and he has hired additional people, creating more jobs in Baltimore. Hugh hired 8 people in 2013, another 10 last year, and he expects to hire at least 6 more people this year. These are good jobs. But he needs the capital, and the relief provided by this act would allow him to be able to do this.

So Senator Collins and I wanted to bring attention to this legislation which provides some very modest relief from the excise taxes I mentioned earlier. It would reduce the $7 per barrel on the first 60,000 barrels to $3.50 and establish a new rate of $16 per barrel after that up to 2 million barrels for breweries producing up to 6 million barrels annually.

It doesn't seem like much, but that would be the difference in making the investment to expand the microbrewery and hire another 6, 8 or 10 people or to start another brewery, to create the excitement in a community that comes with these brew pubs, which I think all of us would agree should not be subject to a special tax which prevents them from expanding.

This is an important business in my community. It is a growing business in Baltimore. It is a growing business around the country. I hope we all would want to help these small businesses.

In this Congress I have assumed a new role as the ranking Democrat on the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee. We are going to be looking for ways in which we can help small businesses in our country because we know that small businesses are the growth engine for innovation and change and good jobs.

So if we can help the microbreweries, if we can pass this legislation, we will help small businesses, and we will help economic growth in our communities.

I am pleased that Senator Collins and I are joined by 23 of our colleagues. Between all of use, 25 percent of the Senate has already cosponsored S. 375. We hope we will be able to find a way to move this legislation early this year so we can help economic growth.

In Maryland we are currently home to 43 craft breweries--up from 34 in 2013--and 24 more are in the planning stages. I have been to many of these craft breweries. I enjoy their product, but, more importantly, I enjoy their entrepreneurial spirit, which they have been able to show in a growth industry in our country and of which we all can be proud.

Mr. President, I yield the floor to Senator Collins.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Collins not only for her leadership but for also pointing out something very important here: This is a jobs bill. The passage of this bill will create more jobs. We know that because we know that craft breweries are strapped for capital. Every dollar they save here will be reinvested and create more jobs because they don't have the capacity to meet the current demand for their beers. If they could produce more beer today, they would sell more beer, but they don't have the capital to make the investments.

Senator Collins is absolutely right when she says this is a jobs bill that will create more jobs.

It also creates a lot of indirect jobs. I was pleased Senator Collins pointed out that many of the ingredients the craft breweries use come from the community. They are helping local farmers and local industries grow, which are also generally small businesses. So as they grow, they help other small businesses grow.

One interesting fact is we are now starting to see an increase in craft beer exports. There is a real desire for our craft brews outside of the United States. It is a relatively new phenomenon, but exports grew by 49 percent in 2013. We exported 283,000 barrels in 2013, and I expect we will see those numbers greatly increase.

This chart shows some of the Maryland craft breweries. They are becoming well known outside of my State of Maryland. I already mentioned Heavy Seas, and Flying Dog is another brewery I had a chance to visit. There are many other breweries, including some with names that are synonymous with my State, such as Raven Beer, Ellicott Mills Brewing Company, Eastern Shore, and Antietam. These are companies and brand names that are now becoming better known because they are producing a great product and people really do like to encourage this type of industry.

I thank Senator Collins and our 23 cosponsors. I see Senator King is on

the floor, and I thank the Senator for his help on this bill. I hope we will have an opportunity to show, in a bipartisan fashion, that we can pass legislation to help job growth here in the United States.

With that, I yield the floor to my colleague from Maine.

Mr. President, I want to talk about privacy because privacy is not a partisan issue. It never has been, and never should be. Remember, 30 years ago I was in the minority. The Republicans were in the majority and controlled the Senate. It was then that I worked with my colleagues and led the effort to write the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, ECPA.

It required a lot of education because back then, electronic mail was an emerging technology. The World Wide Web was unimaginable. Electronic data storage was astronomically expensive. No one could have envisioned the way mobile technologies would transform our lives. Yet fortunately many of us in Congress had the foresight to anticipate that these new electronic communications would also need privacy protections.

That was 30 years ago. Look at what has changed since then. Now three decades later, that law is out of date. So today the Senator from Utah, Mr. Lee, and I are reintroducing the Electronic Communications Privacy Act Amendments Act of 2015. We want to bring this law into the 21st century. Our legislation is very straightforward. It ensures that the private information that we Americans electronically store in the cloud gets the same protections as the private information we Americans physically store at home. As it did in 1986, I hope the Senate will come together on a bipartisan basis to support these commonsense protections.

All of us have an expectation that the things we store in our house are private. If law enforcement wants access to them, they have to get the proper search warrants. Today, there seems to be an idea that if they are stored electronically, these rules should not apply.

I believe they should.

The bill Senator Lee and I introduced today protects Americans' digital privacy--in their emails and all the other files and photographs they store in the cloud. It promotes cloud computing and other new technologies by building consumer trust. And it also provides law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to ensure public safety.

I would remind my colleagues that several years ago the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit found that email was fully protected by the Fourth Amendment. It said that ``the Fourth Amendment must keep pace with the inexorable march of technological progress, or its guarantees will wither and perish.'' This bill takes up that challenge.

Obviously we have technologies today that nobody would have dreamed of just a couple of generations ago. But we have a Constitution that has protected this country for well over 200 years, and we hope it will protect it for hundreds of years into the future. We need to make sure our laws keep up with the protections we Americans expect from our Constitution.

First and most importantly, the bill enshrines in statute the fundamental Fourth Amendment warrant requirement for email, texts, and other electronic data. It requires that the government have a criminal search warrant based on possible cause to obtain the stored content of Americans' email and other electronic communications from third-party providers. This ensures that email communications have the same protections as phone calls and private documents stored in your home.

However, the bill's warrant requirement contains an important exception to address emergency circumstances. It explicitly states that it does not affect current authorities under the Wiretap Act or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And it ensures that law enforcement can continue to investigate corporate wrong-doing by using grand jury subpoenas to obtain emails directly from corporate entities when held on their internal systems.

The second major component of the bill requires law enforcement agencies to promptly notify individuals when the government has obtained their emails through their service providers, but permits a delay of that notice to protect the integrity of ongoing investigations--no different from what we do in other law enforcement matters. The bill would also require service providers to notify the government three days before they inform a customer that the provider disclosed their information to the government.

This is not a Republican or Democratic issue, nor is it liberal or conservative. In fact, Senator Lee and I would note that we have a broad coalition of more than 50 privacy, civil liberties, civil rights, and technology industry groups and leaders from across the political spectrum who have endorsed this reform effort. Support spans from the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Tax Reform, to the Center for Democracy and Technology and the ACLU.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the January 22, 2015, coalition letter in support of the bill.

I am also pleased that Senators Shaheen, Moran, Cornyn, Merkley, Gardner, and Blumenthal have joined this effort with Senator Lee and I. I commend them because we do have an opportunity this year to make progress on bipartisan, commonsense legislation to protect the privacy of Americans' email and update our laws to keep pace with technology. And I also congratulate our House partners, Representatives Yoder and Polis, who are introducing this legislation today in the House of Representatives with 228 cosponsors from both parties.

In the last Congress, the Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously supported this bill, Republicans and Democrats alike. We have continued the hard work of building a broad bipartisan coalition in support of this bill. Now is the time to act swiftly to bring our privacy protections into the digital age.

I will continue to work with Senator Lee, Senator Cornyn, Senator Moran, Senator Shaheen, Senator Merkley, Senator Gardner, and Senator Blumenthal on this issue because while I am proud to have them as cosponsors, I am also proud that we are doing the right thing

Mr. President, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act was first enacted in 1986. I would ask my colleagues, what were you doing in 1986? Mr. President, 1986 was a long time ago. In 1986 I was in the ninth grade. This was an age when not everyone had a personal computer. My family didn't have a computer. Most of the people I knew who had a computer had something like the Commodore VIC-20, which was a very small computer with very little processing power compared to what we have today. But this law, the Electronic Communications Privacy Act--or ECPA, as it is sometimes known--was and still is an important law with an increasingly important objective; that is, to ensure that government agencies respect the Fourth Amendment in accessing an individual's electronic communications.

In the nearly three decades since ECPA became law, technology has advanced rapidly, dramatically, far beyond the capacity of this particular law, ECPA, to keep up. The prevalence of email and the low cost of electronic data storage have made what were once robust protections vastly insufficient to ensure that citizens' rights are protected with respect to their electronic communications, such as email.

There is no reason we should still be operating under a law written in the analog age when we are living in a digital world. This is a little bit like operating with a DOS-based operating system in the age of much more sophisticated software systems that help us interact relatively seamlessly with our computers. That is why Senator Leahy and I have come together to craft this truly bipartisan piece of legislation which would modernize ECPA and bring constitutional protections against worthless searches and seizures into harmony with the technological realities of the 21st century.

The Lee-Leahy ECPA Amendments Act of 2015 would prohibit electronic communications or remote computing service providers--such as Gmail or Facebook or Twitter, for example--from voluntarily disclosing the contents of customer emails or other communications. It eliminates the ambiguous and outdated 180-day rule that some government agencies believe grants them warrantless access to the content of older emails. That is any emails older than the very young age of 180 days old. Instead, all requests for the content of electronic communications would require a search warrant--a search warrant required by the Fourth Amendment, a search warrant based on probable cause--and law enforcement agencies would be required to notify within 10 days any persons whose email accounts were searched, subject to some logical and narrow exceptions, of course.

This legislation is also carefully crafted so that it would not impede the ability of law enforcement agencies to conduct legitimate investigative activities consistent with the Fourth Amendment.

I am pleased to say that our bill enjoys very broad support from the technology industry, from privacy advocates, constitutional scholars, and policy groups on both ends of the ideological spectrum in America.

The Lee-Leahy ECPA Amendments Act of 2015 is truly bipartisan in nature. The Senate bill, in addition to Senators Leahy and myself as the principal sponsors, also has six additional cosponsors. We have Republican Senators Cornyn, Moran, and Gardner and Democratic Senators Shaheen, Merkley, and Blumenthal. I hope and expect that we will have a lot of additional Senators of both political parties who will join us in this effort. The House version of this bill has 228 additional cosponsors--a very critical majority.

By working together as a Democrat from Vermont and a Republican from Utah, we hope all Senators will join with us to pass this meaningful, bipartisan legislation that would benefit all Americans. Congress should pass ECPA reform this year, and President Obama should sign these important privacy reforms into law.

I will end this discussion as I began. What were you doing in 1986? As it relates to your interaction with the digital world with computers, I would imagine that even though your life might be in many respects similar to what it was in 1986, it is very different in the way you interact with computers, with technology, with the online world, which basically no one was even aware of in 1986. Since 1986 the world has changed. We need to change the world to keep up with the times. We need to change the law to hold in place those protections that have been in our Constitution since 1791 to make sure the privacy rights of the American people are respected.

I encourage each of my colleagues to support this bill