Crime Gun Tracing Modernization Act

Mr. President, today, I am introducing the Strengthening American Communities (SAC) Act of 2018. My bill seeks to expand access to debt-free public service career pathways for Americans who want to serve their communities, States, or Nation. No one should be denied the opportunity to serve their community as a law enforcement officer, public health practitioner, social worker, or educator based on his or her ability to afford the rising cost of an undergraduate education. My bill is a first step toward correcting public sector workforce disparities by enabling people to serve their communities without being hobbled by massive student loan debt, and by providing current public servants with the financial freedom to continue to heed their calling to service.

Every city, town, and rural community in the United States relies on individuals who choose to utilize their talents for the betterment of others while accepting the lower pay of public service careers. The very foundation of our civil society is based on these public servants making such sacrifices. Far too many individuals who feel drawn to public service do not pursue such careers--or they are forced to abandon such careers prematurely--due to the high cost of obtaining their college educations. When I had the opportunity to hear directly from a student at an Historically Black College and University (HBCU) in my home State of Maryland, I was saddened to hear from an academically successful sophomore who was planning to drop out of school because she feared further indebting herself and her family. She said that while she appreciated the financial assistance she did receive, it simply wasn't sufficient to cover her cost of attendance. While this student had aspirations to serve in her own community, she could not bear to burden her family with the cost of her education. As a result, my home City of Baltimore lost out on a young, engaged aspiring public servant.

Our current system of indebting individuals at the onset of their careers has led to minority underrepresentation in the public sector workforce. First generation college students and students from low- income families cannot afford to take on student loan debt and enter into lower-paying public service careers. As a result, our Nation is deprived of the talents and perspectives of individuals who want to serve their communities but simply cannot afford to do so. As a result, our workforce is less representative of the people it serves. We must find new ways for people to earn the degrees they need to serve our communities. I believe that students who make a commitment to public service should be afforded a debt-free pathway to the baccalaureate degree they need to start their public service career. And those individuals who have already made the decision to choose service over salary should not have to wait for ten years in a lower-paying public career before seeing any reward in the form of Federal student loan forgiveness.

The Strengthen American Communities Act I am introducing today offers a new path for future public servants to earn their baccalaureate degree. Through a new partnership between the Federal Government, States, and public and private, non-profit institutions of higher education, students will have the ability to receive the first two years of their education at a community college, Minority Serving Institution, or Historically Black College or University tuition- and fee-free. Colleges would be required to commit to ensuring student success, and students would have to meet certain academic standards and complete their education within two years. Once students transfer into a four-year institution for their junior and senior years, those who commit themselves to at least three years of public service and meet academic standards will receive a National Public Service Education Grant to pay a significant portion of their college's tuition, fees, and room and board costs. Universities must provide students with opportunities to engage in public service commitments, academic counseling and student support services, and the opportunity to earn to finish their degree in fewer than two years. Depending on a student's financial need, under the Strengthening American Communities Act, she or he may be able to graduate with a baccalaureate degree debt-free before embarking on the path to becoming a public servant.

For those individuals who have already answered their calling to public service, my legislation would assist more public servants continue serving their communities by accelerating the existing Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. Under current law, these dedicated workers must work for 10 years in a public service career and make 120 payments on their Federal student loans before they see a dime of

Federal student loan forgiveness. Economic, family, and other reasons can cause individuals to leave the public sector workforce and despite their years of service, the service these workers provided are not taken into consideration. I propose to accelerate the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program to provide more immediate student loan relief. For every two years of employment and corresponding monthly Federal student loan payments, hard-working public sector employees will receive a percentage of their student loans forgiven, with 100 percent of the Federal student loan balance being forgiven at the end of 10 years of service. By accelerating Public Service Loan Forgiveness, we can encourage additional individuals to stay in the public sector workforce despite the lower-paying salaries, reduce their cost of borrowing for home and auto loans, and set aside additional money for their own retirement.

As Congress moves forward with an overdue reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, I urge my colleagues to join in this effort to help individuals who are wholly committed to public service by supporting the Strengthening American Communities Act. No individual willing to serve his or her community in a public service career should be held back from that calling due to the high cost of obtaining a college education. No individual willing to serve his or her community should be forced to leave public service because of financial hardship.

Mr. President, right now, in a small town in West Virginia 90 miles outside of our Nation's capital, dedicated employees of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) are diligently searching through millions of firearms sales records at the National Tracing Center. They are busily responding to urgent requests from detectives and agents to trace firearms found at crime scenes throughout the country. By the end of the day, they will likely have completed more than 1,000 requests, providing law enforcement with information that can lead to arrests, prosecutions, and ultimately justice for victims of violent crime.

The tracing center plays a critical and unique role in keeping our communities safe. It is the only crime gun tracing facility in the country. Its sole purpose is to help track down and hold criminals accountable.

One would expect Congress to fully and unequivocally support this mission. Yet, inexplicably, Congress has done the opposite. Relenting to pressure from the gun lobby, Congress placed archaic hurdles on crime gun traces, prohibiting the ATF from digitizing or electronically searching through firearms records.

These restrictions were born out of an unfounded fear that can only be described as a conspiracy theory: that allowing records to be electronically searched would lead to firearms--presumably to include my own--being seized by the government en masse, in clear violation of both the Second and Fourth Amendments.

This unworldly fear is having a very real-world impact. In an era when an electronic trace could be completed in an instant, the ATF is instead forced to locate individual records by visiting Federal firearms licensees or searching by hand through the records housed at the National Tracing Center; these National Tracing Center records currently number 800 million, and are

growing by an additional 2 million each month.

Some of these records have been damaged by flooding and mold. Countless more have been relegated to rented shipping containers in the parking lot, as the floor of the tracing center is structurally unable to support the weight of so many thousands of boxes. Other records are stored as images on microfilm, forcing ATF employees to reel through up to 10,000 records on a single roll to find the one desired firearm.

Tracing requests are processed every single day, 24 hours a day, so that when a homicide detective finds a firearm believed to have been used in a murder, the detective can determine the chain of custody for that firearm, which may lead to a suspect.

I asked the ATF about the impact of these restrictions on crime gun traces at a recent hearing of the Judiciary Committee Acting Director Thomas Brandon stated that in these criminal investigations, ``time matters, [and] getting accurate information can develop the critical lead.'' He testified that if the ATF were able to electroncially search through records it would be ``beneficial for public safety.''

I agree. That is why today I am introducing the Crime Gun Tracing Modernization Act, which will bring our nation's tracing capabilities into the 21st century. This legislation would empower the ATF to digitize and electronically search through its firearms records, so that it can quickly and accurately connect crime guns with purchasers. Yet this legislation is also narrowly tailored; it only permits the ATF to search through firearms sale and disposition records that it already has access to, and only for the purposes of criminal and national security investigations, and it strictly prohibits searches using an individual's name or other personally identifiable information.

This legislation represents only a modest step, but an important step. There are few signs more revealing of Congress's inability to responsibly legislate gun policy than its insistence that law enforcement not be allowed to effectively search through records already in its possession. The gun lobby cannot be permitted to tie the hands of agents and detectives investigating violent gun crime. We cannot let a baseless conspiracy theory drive our public safety policies.

It is time for Congress to fix our mistakes. It is time to bring one of our Nation's premier law enforcement agencies, which in turn serves every Federal, State, and local agency in the country, out of the Stone Age. It is no surprise that this legisation is supported by important voices within the law enforcement community, including the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, Major Cities Chiefs Association, and Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.

I am also proud that March For Our Lives, led by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, strongly supports this legislation. We in Congress owe it to those who have been victimized by gun violence to do something. There are many commonsense steps we can and should take right now. That includes removing indefensible restrictions on law enforcement that waste public safety resources and delay critical investigations of violent gun crime. I urge my fellow senators to join me and Senator Nelson in supporting this important legislation.

Mr. President, right now, in a small town in West Virginia 90 miles outside of our Nation's capital, dedicated employees of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) are diligently searching through millions of firearms sales records at the National Tracing Center. They are busily responding to urgent requests from detectives and agents to trace firearms found at crime scenes throughout the country. By the end of the day, they will likely have completed more than 1,000 requests, providing law enforcement with information that can lead to arrests, prosecutions, and ultimately justice for victims of violent crime.

The tracing center plays a critical and unique role in keeping our communities safe. It is the only crime gun tracing facility in the country. Its sole purpose is to help track down and hold criminals accountable.

One would expect Congress to fully and unequivocally support this mission. Yet, inexplicably, Congress has done the opposite. Relenting to pressure from the gun lobby, Congress placed archaic hurdles on crime gun traces, prohibiting the ATF from digitizing or electronically searching through firearms records.

These restrictions were born out of an unfounded fear that can only be described as a conspiracy theory: that allowing records to be electronically searched would lead to firearms--presumably to include my own--being seized by the government en masse, in clear violation of both the Second and Fourth Amendments.

This unworldly fear is having a very real-world impact. In an era when an electronic trace could be completed in an instant, the ATF is instead forced to locate individual records by visiting Federal firearms licensees or searching by hand through the records housed at the National Tracing Center; these National Tracing Center records currently number 800 million, and are

growing by an additional 2 million each month.

Some of these records have been damaged by flooding and mold. Countless more have been relegated to rented shipping containers in the parking lot, as the floor of the tracing center is structurally unable to support the weight of so many thousands of boxes. Other records are stored as images on microfilm, forcing ATF employees to reel through up to 10,000 records on a single roll to find the one desired firearm.

Tracing requests are processed every single day, 24 hours a day, so that when a homicide detective finds a firearm believed to have been used in a murder, the detective can determine the chain of custody for that firearm, which may lead to a suspect.

I asked the ATF about the impact of these restrictions on crime gun traces at a recent hearing of the Judiciary Committee Acting Director Thomas Brandon stated that in these criminal investigations, ``time matters, [and] getting accurate information can develop the critical lead.'' He testified that if the ATF were able to electroncially search through records it would be ``beneficial for public safety.''

I agree. That is why today I am introducing the Crime Gun Tracing Modernization Act, which will bring our nation's tracing capabilities into the 21st century. This legislation would empower the ATF to digitize and electronically search through its firearms records, so that it can quickly and accurately connect crime guns with purchasers. Yet this legislation is also narrowly tailored; it only permits the ATF to search through firearms sale and disposition records that it already has access to, and only for the purposes of criminal and national security investigations, and it strictly prohibits searches using an individual's name or other personally identifiable information.

This legislation represents only a modest step, but an important step. There are few signs more revealing of Congress's inability to responsibly legislate gun policy than its insistence that law enforcement not be allowed to effectively search through records already in its possession. The gun lobby cannot be permitted to tie the hands of agents and detectives investigating violent gun crime. We cannot let a baseless conspiracy theory drive our public safety policies.

It is time for Congress to fix our mistakes. It is time to bring one of our Nation's premier law enforcement agencies, which in turn serves every Federal, State, and local agency in the country, out of the Stone Age. It is no surprise that this legisation is supported by important voices within the law enforcement community, including the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, Major Cities Chiefs Association, and Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.

I am also proud that March For Our Lives, led by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, strongly supports this legislation. We in Congress owe it to those who have been victimized by gun violence to do something. There are many commonsense steps we can and should take right now. That includes removing indefensible restrictions on law enforcement that waste public safety resources and delay critical investigations of violent gun crime. I urge my fellow senators to join me and Senator Nelson in supporting this important legislation.

Mr. President, I rise this morning to encourage my colleagues to support and cosponsor the Mobile Accuracy and Precision Broadband Act, also known as the MAP Broadband Act.

If we want to get broadband deployment right in this country, if we want to close the digital divide, particularly in rural America--in that great heartland of America--we need for the FCC to be working with an accurate map, and right now they are not working with an accurate map. The agency needs to know which areas are in the most desperate need for consistent wireless service, and the FCC's current map does not even come close to doing this.

I certainly was not alone in my surprise when I saw the coverage shown on the map released by the FCC in late February. It portrayed my home State of Mississippi as basically a wireless hot spot, with only 2 percent of my State not covered with a reliable 4G LTE connection.

This was an absurd conclusion based on what is actually taking place on the ground. That would mean that 98 percent of my State should have one of the fastest mobile broadband connections on the market. That is ridiculous.

I doubted that the map was accurate based on my own experiences, but I wanted to know what others had to say. So I did a survey in April. I sent out a survey asking Mississippians to tell me about their issues with connectivity. Their responses, which totaled more than 1,800, supported my conclusion that the FCC map is just wrong, and something needs to be done about it. The responses also reaffirmed what is at stake if the FCC does not correct the situation and get these maps right.

Mississippians and Americans across this great country need better service so their children can do their homework. They need it so they can FaceTime with loved ones who are away from home in military service. They need it for jobs. They need it for healthcare. A bad connection is inconvenient, to be sure, but it means so much more to public safety and jobs.

Americans in rural areas should not be at a disadvantage because of where we live. Strong, dependable broadband paves the way for economic growth for us all, and it allows for life-giving telehealth and cutting-edge agricultural technologies.

No one thinks my State is an exception to the FCC map. I have yet to hear from any colleague in the Senate who thinks this national map accurately reflects the coverage back in our State. So I propose that we continue to work together with legislation to direct the FCC to get this right. Let's harness the best data for closing the digital divide. Let's make sure decisions are informed by the most accurate maps possible.

Now, what is at stake here? There is $4.53 billion that is at stake here. The way we are headed now with this program and with this inaccurate map, the Mobility Fund Phase II program is about to go forward with funds being distributed based on a map that is absolutely wrong.

So my bill would do four things that I think would help. My bill would give challengers more time to voice their concerns and submit better data.

It would require the FCC to extend the challenge process by 90 days.

My bill would also require the FCC to disclose which phones should be getting 4G LTE service so consumers can know whether their service meets these expectations. In addition, it would require the FCC to provide monthly updates on the percentage of areas on the map that are being challenged and the number of challengers.

Fourth, we would monitor the effectiveness of the Mobility Fund Phase II program by the agency offering annual updates on how mobile wireless service is being expanded.

If anyone in the Senate, if anyone in the House, if anyone who can hear me today has a better idea, I am open to adding that to the bill. But at the end of the day, rushing through this challenge process is not in the best interests of Americans who are waiting for fast wireless coverage. It is not in the best interests, frankly, of the Commission, which needs to take the time to get it right, and we are out to help them to do that.

There will be original cosponsors from both sides of the aisle today when I drop the bill. Those who want to be a part of the challenge process need time and resources to put forward sound information-- information to help the FCC develop a map that truly portrays broadband limitations in this country. An accurate map would also help ensure the proper use of billions of taxpayer dollars--public dollars--to lead to real results to get us where we need to go.

We cannot go forward and we should not go forward with the data we have. My legislation today would take a big step in ensuring that before we distribute these billions of dollars, we need to make sure that we know what we are talking about, that we have the right information, and that we get it right.

Thank you.

Mr. President, the Federal Communications Commission Schools and Libraries program, commonly known as E-Rate, has helped connect our schools and libraries to highspeed broadband. Recent changes allowed for schools to pay for Wi-Fi on campuses, recognizing that students are using laptops and other devices for learning. This bill, cosponsored by my friend Senator Gardner, would allow schools to receive reimbursement for Wi-Fi on school buses--an idea inspired by a New Mexico high school student. A few years ago, a football player from Hatch Valley High School in Hatch, New Mexico told me how, after being on a bus for hours after a game, he would sit in the dark parking lot of his school doing his homework--because he didn't have high-speed broadband at home. Making Wi-Fi available on school buses is one piece to solving the homework gap--especially in rural areas. Adequate internet is an absolute necessity in this day and age. And I will continue to work with my colleagues to make sure every home in the Nation has adequate internet access.

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