CASES Act

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from North Carolina for working with us on this, as well as many staff and members from the Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

Mr. Speaker, can you imagine for a minute if you had a medical emergency at your house and you had to mail a form to the ambulance service to have them come address the heart attack victim or other type of medical emergency that is occurring at your house? How irrational is that? Obviously, it doesn't make sense to do something like that, to mail for something that may be an emergency.

Mr. Speaker, can you imagine, even in today's time, with the strict demands we have for customer service, if we actually had to truly mail order forms to different online companies to have them deliver something, to retail outlets to have them deliver something, a product to our house? There would be no tolerance for that.

In fact, Mr. Speaker, the government right now, the government today, our own United States Government which is here to serve our own Americans, only has a customer service rating of about 70 percent. In fact, it is less than 70 percent.

Well, that might have been a high watermark for my grades in school-- maybe--Mr. Speaker, but that is absolutely an unacceptable level. This is our government. These are our taxpayers.

Why is it that private industry has been able to use technology to provide better customer service, to provide faster services? It is because they care about their customers and they care about their business and there is an incentive for them to do so. They don't have a monopoly, like the Federal Government does, for many of the services that it offers, but that does not excuse the Federal Government from providing better services.

Mr. Speaker, I had an opportunity to work very closely with Congressman Joe Kennedy to help develop this legislation, and this is a solution to help bring the United States Government into the 21st century, or perhaps the 20th century. It simply does the same thing that private companies have figured out how to do for decades now, where we can access our banks online, we can access our insurance online, where we can go online to buy groceries and virtually any other good or service that we need. We can even file our own taxes with the Federal Government.

Yet the Privacy Act of 1974, as it is implemented today, requires, in order for us to provide services to our constituents, which may be an emergency situation, that they have to print out a form and mail it in, and that we then have to take and mail it to an agency. That is ridiculous in 2018, and it is unacceptable.

This bipartisan legislation addresses that. It allows for people to access their own government, access government services to address important things like, perhaps, accessing their VA benefits; like, perhaps, fixing a wrong the IRS has caused; like, perhaps, dislodging a permit or some other type of service the government is supposed to provide and has been sitting on, in some cases as we have dealt with, for years.

Mr. Speaker, I want to tell you a quick story.

In 2016, in August of that year, in my hometown of Baton Rouge in south Louisiana, we experienced a 1,000-year flood. People were calling us by the hundreds per day, calling and saying: I need help. I need help with FEMA, SBA, and other government services.

We said: Yes, you bet. All you need to do is go to our website, print out this form, and then mail it to us.

Mr. Speaker, I can't say on the House floor some of the responses our office received whenever they were telling us about the 4 feet of water that their computers and printers and other equipment were under. It was a real aha moment.

How ridiculous is it that we sit here and act like we are 80 years ago as a government? We can do better.

This simply brings us to current technology, to allow constituents to reach out to our offices when we are addressing urgent issues, like passport issues for folks stuck in other countries, like Department of Defense issues where our own military men and women may be having problems in other countries, where our own citizens aren't getting the benefits that they paid for or they earned. It gives us the ability to quickly step in and address their issues, to intervene on their behalf and get these issues resolved.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank, especially, my friend Joe Kennedy for working with us so closely on this bipartisan legislation, Congresswoman Mimi Walters, Congressman Gene Green, Congressmen Will Hurd and Kevin McCarthy through the Innovation Initiative, Congressman Mark Meadows, Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, Congresswoman Barbara Comstock, and many others who provided input to us, helped us perfect this legislation and get it here today. I want to thank the bipartisan cosponsors and folks who helped us on this.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 3076) to amend section 552a of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the Privacy Act) to require agencies to accept electronic release forms, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 3076, the CASES for Constituents Act, introduced by the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Graves).

One of the most important services we can provide our constituents is help in navigating the complicated bureaucracy of Federal agencies. Whether it is a senior who needs help with a Social Security office or a veteran whose benefits are delayed, as Members of Congress, we can often help constituents reach a real person and get better results from Federal agencies.

However, in order for us to assist constituents while protecting their privacy rights, the Privacy Act requires constituents to complete and sign a consent form before agencies can provide a Member of Congress information about the case. The constituent prints the form or obtains it in person from a congressional office, signs it, and then mails, faxes, emails, or physically brings it back to the congressional office. The congressional office then must send the consent form to the agency from which the constituent needs help.

This process has unnecessary steps, leading to delays that frustrate our constituents, many of whom need help quickly.

H.R. 3076 helps to speed up the process by allowing constituents to submit Privacy Act consent forms electronically directly to the agency or a central portal. H.R. 3076 instructs the Office of Management and Budget to issue guidance to Federal agencies to accept electronic consent. OMB's guidance will maintain a role for congressional caseworkers to advocate on behalf of constituents for a swift resolution.

A swift resolution is especially important for those constituents in the wake of natural disasters, since victims often need to reach out to multiple Federal entities for relief. At a time when many citizens need help from their government, allowing them to communicate more easily with the government is the very least we can do.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Representatives Garret Graves and Joe Kennedy for introducing this bill to improve constituents' experiences when they are seeking help.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this practical solution, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Graves), the sponsor of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I support this bill, the CASES for Constituents Act, introduced by Representatives Garret Graves and Joe Kennedy.

This bill, as you heard, would modernize the way Federal agencies process Privacy Act waivers and make it easier for Members of Congress to help constituents get assistance from Federal agents. We all know what this means. It helps to speed up the process of assisting your constituents, so it is a very valuable improvement.

A constituent has to provide an agency with written consent before a congressional office can obtain information from the agency on behalf of the constituent. Some agencies, as we have heard and know, have outdated policies and still require these consent forms to be mailed or faxed. Under the bill before us, the Office of Management and Budget would be required to establish standards for Federal agencies to accept electronic consent forms and for agencies to accept such forms.

The bill also would require the OMB to operate a consolidated online portal that would allow individuals to submit electronic consent forms and to track

the status of their form. The bill would also allow congressional offices to provide online links to the portal.

I appreciate very much the bipartisan way in which this bill was developed. I want to thank the majority for their cooperation in making a number of improvements to the bill; for example, the substitute amendment would require OMB to include features to protect the privacy of individuals who use the consolidated online portal required under the bill.

Mr. Speaker, this is a good, bipartisan bill. I urge my colleagues to support it, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, obviously this bill would work a very substantial improvement on our constituent services operations. I have no further speakers.

Mr. Speaker, I urge the passage of H.R. 3076, and I yield back the balance of my time.