Cameras in the Courtroom Act

Mr. President, social media platforms have become a pretty significant part of Americans' lives. We use them to stay up to date on news from friends and family--something that has become especially essential during the pandemic--to communicate with relatives and friends, for entertainment, and as a shopping resource. Social media sites provide ways to network, to connect with like-minded individuals from fellow theater lovers to fellow basketball fans, to advocate for causes that we believe in, to conduct business, even to date, and more and more we rely on social media sites as a primary source of news and information, from Presidential election news to updates on COVID vaccinations.

Social media offers a lot of benefits and opportunities, but the increasing dominance of social media, particularly in the news and information space, has also raised concerns. Consumers have become increasingly troubled about the way their information is used by social media platforms and how these sites decide what news and information we see. And there are increasing numbers of anecdotes to suggest that some social media platforms are moderating content in a biased or political way.

Currently, content moderation on social media platforms is governed by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which was enacted into law 25 years ago. Section 230 provides internet sites that host user-generated content--sites like YouTube or Twitter or Facebook--with immunity for the content that users post on their sites. So, for example, if somebody posts a video on YouTube that contains illegal content, YouTube isn't held legally responsible for that content.

Section 230 has been critical to the development of the internet as we know it today. Without section 230 protections, many of the sites we rely on for social connection or news or entertainment would never have come into being.

But as the internet and social media have grown and developed, it has also become clear that some changes need to be made. In particular, it has become increasingly clear that sites need to provide greater transparency when it comes to their content moderation practices and decisions. Social media sites are no longer just providing a platform for user-generated content as they did in their infancy. They are now making a lot of decisions about that content and carefully shaping our social media experience--what ads we see, what posts we see, what news stories we see.

Currently, Federal law does not require that social media sites be at all accountable to consumers for those content moderation decisions. That is why, today, I am introducing the Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency Act, or the PACT Act, along with my colleague Senator Schatz. Our bill would preserve the benefits of section 230, like the internet growth and widespread dissemination of free speech it has enabled, while increasing accountability and consumer transparency around content moderation.

Now, content moderation is certainly not all bad. For example, most of us are happy to have YouTube or Instagram suggest additional content that matches the music that we like to listen to or the hobbies that we are interested in. The problem is that content moderation has been and largely continues to be a black box, with consumers having little or no idea how the information they see has been shaped by the sites that they are visiting.

The PACT Act would address this problem by increasing transparency around the content moderation process. Sites would be required to provide an easily digestible disclosure of their content moderation practices for users, and, importantly, they would be required to explain their decisions to remove material to consumers.

Until relatively recently, sites like Facebook and Twitter would remove a user's post without explanation and without an appeals process. And even as platforms start to shape up their act with regard to transparency and due process, it is still hard for users to get good information about how content is moderated.

Under the PACT Act, if a site chooses to remove your post, it has to tell you why it decided to remove your post and explain how your post violated the site's terms of use. The PACT Act would also require sites to have an appeals process. So if Facebook, for example, removes one of your posts, it would not only have to tell you why, but it would have to provide a way for you to appeal that decision.

We have seen increased concern lately about news articles being removed from social media sites. Under the PACT Act, a newspaper whose article was posted on Facebook or Twitter and then removed by one of those platforms could challenge Facebook or Twitter, which would have to provide a reason for removing the article and allow the newspaper to appeal the decision.

The PACT Act would also help us develop the data necessary to demonstrate whether social media platforms are removing content in a biased or political fashion. As I said earlier, there has been increasing concern about biased content moderation on social media sites. The PACT Act requires detailed transparency reports every 6 months from large social media platforms, like Twitter and Facebook, which will provide the data it needed to determine whether and where biased moderation exists.

The PACT Act would also bolster efforts by State governments to hold social media platforms accountable. The bill would allow State attorneys general to bring civil lawsuits against social media platforms when these platforms have violated Federal civil laws.

The PACT Act would also require companies to remove material that has been adjudicated as illegal by a court. Internet platforms would be required to remove illegal content within 4 days. Failure to remove illegal material would result in the platform's losing its 230 protections for that content or activity, a provision that matches a recommendation made by the Trump Department of Justice for section 230 reform.

I am grateful to Senator Schatz for partnering with me on this legislation. Our bill is a serious, bipartisan approach to the issue of section 230 reform, and it would go a long way toward making social media platforms more accountable to consumers and increasing transparency around the content moderation process.

I invite our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join us in advancing this legislation.

Mr. President, today I am reintroducing the Cybersecurity Disclosure Act along with three members of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Chairman Warner and Senators Collins and Wyden, in addition to Senators Cortez Masto and Cramer, who serve with me on the Senate Banking Committee. In response to serious data breaches of various companies, our legislation asks each publicly traded company to include--in Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosures to investors--information on whether any member of the Board of Directors is a cybersecurity expert, and if not, why having this expertise on the Board of Directors is not necessary because of other cybersecurity steps taken by the publicly traded company. To be clear, the legislation does not require companies to take any actions other than to provide this disclosure to its investors.

As EY, also known as Ernst & Young, noted in an August 2020 publication, ``Public disclosures can help build trust by providing transparency and assurance around how boards are fulfilling their cybersecurity risk oversight responsibilities.'' Investors and customers deserve a clear understanding of whether publicly traded companies are prioritizing cybersecurity and have the capacity to protect investors and customers from cyber related attacks. Our legislation aims to provide a better understanding of these issues through improved SEC disclosures.

While this legislation is a matter for consideration by the Banking Committee, of which I am a member, this bill is also informed by my service on the Armed Services Committee and the Select Committee on Intelligence. Through this Banking-Armed Services-Intelligence perspective, I see that our economic security is indeed a matter of our national security, and this is particularly the case as the pandemic has forced many of us to be ever more dependent on technology and the Internet.

Indeed, General Darren W. McDew, the former Commander of U.S. Transportation Command, which is charged with moving our military assets to meet our national security objectives in partnership with the private sector, offered several sobering assessments during an April 10, 2018 hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He stated that ``cyber is the number one threat to U.S. Transportation Command, but I believe it is the number one threat to the Nation . . . in our headquarters, cyber is the commander's business, but not everywhere across our Country is cyber a CEO's business . . . in our cyber roundtables, which is one of the things we are doing to raise our level of awareness, some of the CEO's chief security officers cannot even get to see the board, they cannot even . . . see the CEO. So that is a problem.''

With growing cyber threats that have resulted in serious breaches, we all need to be more proactive in ensuring our Nation's cybersecurity. This legislation seeks to take one step towards that goal by encouraging publicly traded companies to be more transparent to their investors and customers on whether and how their Boards of Directors and senior management are prioritizing cybersecurity.

I thank the bill's supporters, including the North American Securities Administrators Association, the Council of Institutional Investors, the National Association of State Treasurers, the California Public Employees' Retirement System, the Bipartisan Policy Center, MIT Professor Simon Johnson, Columbia Law Professor Jack Coffee, the Consumer Federation of America, and Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner, and I urge our colleagues to join in supporting this legislation.

Mr. President, this is the time of year when people are calculating their taxes and filing their returns. There are inequities in our Tax Code, and the bill I am introducing today, the SALT Deduction Fairness Act, would help remedy one of these inequities. This bill would ensure that limits on State and local tax deductions, also known as SALT deductions, do not disproportionately and unfairly penalize married couples.

Currently, the amount in State and local taxes that both single and married filers may deduct from their annual income taxes is capped at $10,000. Single filers and married filers are treated the same, and married people who file their taxes separately are limited to $5,000 each. In other words, people would be better off not getting married when it comes to the SALT deduction. My bill removes this penalty by simply doubling the deduction to $20,000 for married filers.

This is the situation we have now: Two single people can both claim $10,000 worth of State and local income taxes as a deduction on their Federal returns, but if they get married, they can claim only $10,000 together. This is a classic example of a marriage tax penalty.

When the Senate considered the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, I worked to keep the SALT deduction in the Federal Tax Code because of the increased tax burden its elimination would have imposed on many Mainers who pay property taxes on their seasonal cottages as well as their homes, who remit annual excise taxes on their vehicles, and who are subject to State income taxes.

The SALT deduction has been in the Tax Code since 1913, when the Federal income tax was first established. It is intended to protect families from double taxation, from essentially paying a tax on a tax.

The Senate adopted my amendment, which paralleled that of the House, to retain the deduction for State and local taxes up to $10,000. This deduction is especially important to families living in high-tax States, like Maine, which has one of our Nation's highest State taxes and where many residents own second homes, like camps on Maine's beautiful lakes. Last year, an analysis by WalletHub found that Maine had the fourth highest overall tax burden behind only New York, Hawaii, and Vermont. Yet Maine's median household income ranked only 35th in the Nation and was approximately $6,800 below the U.S. median household income. So maintaining this deduction provides important tax relief for those Mainers who continue to itemize their deductions. Yet we can do better. We can make the SALT deduction fairer by eliminating the marriage penalty that limits a married couple to just $10,000; whereas, if they were not married, they could each claim $10,000.

According to the U.S. Census, there are more than 60 million married couples living in our Nation. Our Tax Code should be fair to them. We should not create a situation in which married couples would have been better off financially, in terms of taxes, had they not married. One way to accomplish this goal is to double their access to deductions for the State and local taxes they pay, including from properties they share, such as their homes. This legislation would remedy this double taxation problem and eliminate the marriage tax penalty when it comes to the SALT tax deduction.

It boils down to this: We simply should not be unfairly penalizing American taxpayers for being married.

I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense bill to fix this marriage tax penalty

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

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