Floor Statements

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I yield back all time on this side.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise to speak on a broadly bipartisan amendment that I have filed, and that I hope and believe will be called up at some point. Obviously, I would like it to be adopted by unanimous consent but, if not, it merits a rollcall vote, and I am confident it will be addressed on a rollcall vote.

This amendment is amendment No. 3090 to this National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013. It will reauthorize two very important and very broadly supported programs--the Assistance to Firefighters, AFG, Program--which otherwise used to be known as FIRE, the FIRE Act--and the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Program, known as SAFER. This amendment also reauthorizes the U.S. Fire Administration for 5 years, an agency which is a component of FEMA that is focused on supporting firefighters and EMS personnel.

This amendment reauthorizes AFG and SAFER for 5 years but it also takes much needed steps to ensure that the firefighters not only have the equipment, vehicles, and personnel that we need them to have to do the jobs they do for us in our country every day, the amendment also helps departments in communities struggling with economic difficulties, creating a hardship waiver for both of these fire programs--AFG and SAFER--that allows FEMA to waive requirements in communities that have been hard hit in these tough economic times.

Some people might say: Well, why has the Federal Government established these programs to support firefighting? Aren't those local responsibilities? Well, of course, the Federal Government has partnered with many local and State responsibilities that we deem to have national importance.

There is no question since 9-11-2001, as we witnessed those firefighters putting their lives on the line, running into danger to save people as opposed to running away from it--and we contemplated after 9-11-2001, as we have consistently in the Senate Homeland Security Committee, how we would respond--are we ready to respond to, God forbid, another mass terrorist attack on the United States? The first line of defense will be the local firefighters, the local law enforcers, and the local emergency medical personnel.

So these brave and skillful firefighters around America now become part of the first line of response to the kind of threats in this unconventional age in which we live that our homeland security is threatened by.

As important as it is to help our firefighters, obviously, many of us on both sides of the aisle, who have cosponsored both of these bills, understand we have to demand accountability as we spend taxpayer dollars in a time when we are trying to reduce our deficit and debt.

For this reason, the amendment does a couple of things. It includes provisions to prevent earmarks from being attached to these programs. AFG and SAFER actually have never been earmarked, which is an impressive accomplishment. In other words, these are formula programs in that sense and decided on a merit basis, decided on applications, never earmarked from Congress. We should keep it that way.

But this amendment, recognizing the tough economic times we are in, also reduces the authorizations for these two programs, AFG and SAFER, by more than 30 percent--more than 30 percent. So we are meeting a national need with the authorization of these programs, but we are doing it in a way that is mindful of the tough fiscal times we are in.

Supporting our Nation's firefighters and emergency medical service responders is a national priority. It is, in my opinion, one that is not only broadly supported by Members of both parties and an occasional Independent here in the Senate, but is broadly supported by the American people regardless of where they live all over this country.

So, Mr. President, I will, with the cooperation and support of the two managers of the bill, who are supporters of these two pieces of legislation--Chairman Levin and Senator McCain--look forward to the time when I can ask that this amendment be the pending business and that we can either adopt it by consent or bring it up for a rollcall vote.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise to speak in support of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013. Congress has passed the Defense Authorization every year for the past 5 decades and it remains one of the most bipartisan pieces of legislation we produce in this body. I believe strongly that there is no more important responsibility that we have than providing for our common defense. The NDAA is a crucial part of that responsibility and I am glad to have the opportunity to speak in favor of it today. As Senators, it is one of our most important duties, and one of our greatest privileges, to debate and pass this bill every year.

I would like to thank Chairman Levin and Ranking Member McCain for their leadership of the Armed Services Committee and their determination in getting the NDAA to the floor.

I have had the honor to serve as Chairman of the AirLand Subcommittee, of which I have been a member of since its inception in 1995 and been either Chairman or Ranking Member since 1999. I would like to recognize Ranking Member Scott Brown and thank him. We have worked together very well once again this year. Ours has been a bipartisan effort through our hearings, our markup, and now on the floor. I would also like to thank the Subcommittee staff, Bill Sutey and Creighton Greene of the majority and Church Hutton and Pablo Carrillo of the minority, for their hard work that helped make this bill possible.

This year, the portion of the budget request falling under the Airland Subcommittee's jurisdiction total over $50 billion, including $37.4 billion in procurement, and $12.9 billion in research and development. The portion of the bill under the AirLand Subcommittee's jurisdiction supports the Defense Department's requests for several major weapons programs, including:

$639.9 million for the Army's new Ground Combat Vehicle that will replace some of the M2 Bradley Infantry Fighting Vehicles in the current force;

$2.7 billion for procurement of UH-60 Blackhawk and CH-47 Chinook helicopters so critically important to operations in Afghanistan and around the world;

$6.9 billion in the base request for the Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program;

$60.0 million for F/A-18E/F advance procurement to preserve the Navy's option to produce additional aircraft in fiscal year 2014.

$91.0 million for M1 Abrams tank upgrades and $123.0 million for M88A2 advanced recovery vehicles. These recommended increases will extend armored vehicle production through fiscal year 2013 and allow tank production through 2014, thus preserving important combat vehicle industrial capability.

Perhaps of greatest interest to many of our colleagues, the bill addresses concerns that the Air Force proposed disproportionate cuts to the Air National Guard in its FY13 budget submission by establishing an independent commission to study the appropriate force structure of the Air Force, including the Air National Guard and the Air Force Reserve, and providing $1.4 billion to freeze Air Force force structure pending the commission's review.

The NDAA also provides an opportunity to address policy concerns important to military families, defense, and National security at large. There are a number of worthwhile amendments that have been filed and that I support, including my amendment with Senator Gillibrand providing TRICARE coverage for important autism treatments and my amendment with Senator Collins mandating a prescription drug take-back program to help reduce the scourge of military suicide. I would like to briefly highlight a pair of issues I hope we address through floor amendments.

Finally and most importantly, I hope this bill will include a new package of Iran sanctions that Senator Menendez, Senator Kirk, and I plan to introduce. The fact is, Iran is continuing to make progress towards a nuclear weapons capability, and time is running out to stop them, short of the military option that none of us desire. That is why we need to do everything in our power to ratchet up the pressure on the Iranian government, as quickly as possible. The NDAA provides the last, best chance that we will have in this Congress to impose tougher sanctions on Iran, and we must seize it.

In conclusion, I urge all my colleagues to support the NDAA for FY13. It is a strong bill that provides critical funding and authorities to our military, and it has always been passed on a broad bipartisan basis. As I approach the end of my career in the Senate, I look back gratefully upon the annual floor debates on the NDAA as examples of the way this body should operate.

Mr. President, I wish to commemorate the completion of the series, ``Culture and Civilization of China,'' published jointly by Yale University and China International Publishing Group. Having been published since the early 1990s, the award winning series will be concluded this year with its final volume, ``Chinese Silks.'' The series has brought together leaders from both the United States and China. Former President George H. W. Bush and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger have each head consulting committees.

I congratulate everyone who worked to make this series happen, in particular the Director of Yale University Press John Donatich, the President of China International Publishing Group Zhou Mingwei, and U.N. Under Secretary General Joseph V. Reed.

I ask that Under Secretary General Reed's remarks at a September 19, 2012, event to celebrate the completion of this series be printed in the Record.

The remarks follow.

Remarks by Ambassador Joseph Verner Reed at the Celebratory Luncheon

for the Conclusion of the Chinese Culture & Civilization Publishing

Project With Yale University Press and the Chinese International

Publishing Group, September 19, 2012

We have come a long, long way with the great publishing

project known as CCC . . . started in 1988 and completed with

our final volume (our ninth) on ``Silks'' this autumn.

In President Levin's words--``CCC is the ``Crown Jewel'' of

Yale University''.

I have been very proud to have been associated with the

Press and CIPG on this historic publishing adventure.

Our Honorary Chair President George H.W. Bush has declared:

``I have been privileged to serve as Honorary Chair for the

Culture & Civilization of China project. The CCC project has

had a profound impact on international relations between

China and the United States in a way that no other

undertaking has accomplished. The achievement of

collaboration in the development of this superb series of

beautiful volumes examining the cultural and artistic

heritage of China will serve as a model of cooperation for

the future generations committed to building an enduring bond

between our two great countries''.

The Chair of the Advisory Council Dr. Henry A. Kissinger

has called CCC--a ``seminal work''.

China has recognized the effort with bestowing the highest

Award--``The Special Book Awards of China'' to President

Levin and yours truly in the Great Hall of the People, by

Madame Liu Yangdon, a member of China's Politburo and State

Councilor.

CCC has published nine volumes--several having been awarded

distinguished honors the volume on painting Three Thousand

Years of Chinese Painting (1997) won The Hawkins Prize, the

highest award in the publishing industry. This volume was the

State Gift of the People's Republic to the United States

during President Jiang Zeming's State Visit in 1997.

President Jiang Zeming gave a copy of this work and the

volume on Chinese Architecture to President Bush for the Bush

Presidential Library in 2002.

President Hu Jintao visited Yale University in 2006 and

donated a large number of Chinese books to the University

including the Culture & Civilization series. President Hu

also introduced the newly published Chinese Sculture to Yale

faculty, staff and students.

The publishing effort was arduous and not without many

differences and difficulties. It is a miracle that we

published the volumes in such a cooperative manner. How can

one forget the drama with our very first volume on

``Painting''? The map of China caused great review/

discussion--back and forth for weeks--the borders, the

provinces, the islands. There were other ``to and froes''

but, in the end we have had ``a splendid and co-operative

result''.

There are so many to salute and thank for their efforts

starting with President Levin, Vice President Linda Lorimer,

former Yale University Press Director John G. Ryden (the

godfather of CCC), current YUP Director John Donatich and, of

course, all our colleagues at CIPG led by Vice Minister Cai

Mingzhao, President Zhou and the distinguished and brilliant

Editor Huang Youyi.

To the donors to CCC a special vote of appreciation and

admiration for their generosity.

CCC involved 435 specialists including 56 authors, 39

translators and 340 consultants. 348 Museums and research

institutes from around the globe provided images, line-

drawings, photographs and maps.

I thank Julianne Griffin and Taiping Chang Knecknes and

Mary Pasti and Cynthia Forbes for their signal contributions.

A special salute to Charles Hill who first introduced me to

the Press for work on the CCC project and to James Watt of

the Metropolitan Museum for superb counsel.

All in all, CCC was a splendid effort. It has truly

contributed to the mutual understanding of the People's

Republic and the United States as well as having provided a

platform for education for citizens from around the world.

CCC is an historic publishing project. It is a gift for

future generations.

Once again, a salute and vote of thanks to one and

all.

Madam President, I want to begin by thanking the majority leader, Senator Reid, for being as steadfast as he has been in pursuit of a law that will protect America from what I think most security experts would say today, surprisingly, is the most serious threat to our security and to our economy, which is from cyber attack and cyber theft.

The majority leader, with the authority he has over our schedule, has now pulled up the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, S. 3414, for reconsideration; that is

to say, to reconsider the cloture vote that was held in August and failed to get 60 votes, much to my disappointment. I am very grateful that Senator Reid now gives the Senate a second chance to do something to protect the American people from cyber attack and cyber theft.

If you look at what has happened since the cloture vote on the Cybersecurity Act failed back in August, I think you will see how urgently we need to seize this opportunity to at least vote to proceed to the Cybersecurity Act. Senator Reid has made clear that he would allow a finite number of amendments--finite because, after all, we are in a postelection so-called lameduck session. The amendments can't go on forever. But a finite list would allow there to be a discussion and vote on the major concerns people still seem to have with the compromised bipartisan Cybersecurity Act of 2012.

I appeal to my colleagues: Don't be recorded as no. Say yes to at least allowing a discussion of cybersecurity legislation here, offer some amendments, and then, of course, understand that we are not a unicameral legislature, to say the obvious. If--as I hope--we can pass cyber security legislation here, it has to go to conference with the House that I would say has--describing it diplomatically--a different position than as reflected in the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 that emerged in part from the Homeland Security Committee; which is why I have the honor of managing this debate, brought out with the strong support from my ranking member and dear friend Senator Collins of Maine, and then working together with Senator Feinstein, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Rockefeller, the chair of the Commerce Committee, and Senator Carper, who has had a real interest in cyber security and is a leader on the Homeland Security Committee. We bring this legislation forward.

We are being given a second chance to raise our defenses against rival nations, enemy nations, industrial spies, cyber terrorists, organized anti-American nonstate actors, and international organized criminal gangs who are constantly probing our computer networks for weaknesses that they can exploit to steal industrial secrets, to take some of the best results of American innovation and entrepreneurship overseas and, with it, the jobs that come with those secrets. And, of course, to sabotage critical infrastructure--powerplants, financial systems, telecommunications systems, water systems, and so on and so on--which are the systems that we depend on in our society for our quality of life, for our freedom of expression, so many of them owned by the private sector and managed and controlled now, operated, by cyber systems over the Internet and, therefore, subject to cyber attacks.

That is what this bill is about, creating standards for public- private cooperation to raise our defenses against cyber attack and cyber theft. Everybody you talk to in the public or private sector says today that we are vulnerable to attack. This bill only relates to the most critical cyber infrastructure whose compromise, whose attack, whose disabling would result in mass casualties, catastrophic economic loss, and assaults on our national security.

So let me come back to what I said. The best arguments for this bill and for voting on the motion to proceed and going to the bill are not the arguments, frankly, that I will make on behalf of the bill but the facts that have occurred and the limited amount of time since August when this initial vote to proceed to the Cybersecurity Act occurred.

On August 15, just 2 weeks after the last cloture vote, a computer virus called Shamoon erased the hard drives of 30,000 computers owned and operated by Saudi Aramco, one of the world's largest energy companies. What happened as a result of the erasing of those hard drives, the data files were replaced with images of burning American flags. It is pretty clear who carried out this attack. The computers were rendered useless and had to be replaced and restored. Some cyber experts that I trust say this was the most destructive cyber attack against a private company in history. A similar attack was carried out on the Qatari natural gas company called RasGas. Remember the burning American flags? Iran is suspected as the attacker in both instances.

Thanks to quick work, really extraordinary work by Aramco and many of the world's leading cyber security technologists and experts, the damage to Saudi Aramco was contained. But this attack could have thrown global oil markets into chaos and a lot of economies--including ours-- into greater stress than we are already in if orders couldn't be filled or shipments made.

That was August, 2 weeks after the last cloture vote on the cyber security bill. Then in September, the consumer Web banking sites of some great American financial institutions--Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, PNC Bank, and some others--came under the largest sustained denial of service attack in history. As I am sure most of my colleagues know, this is when the Web sites are essentially overloaded, they are flooded, to make it impossible for them to stay up and provide the service they normally do. These attacks went on in different waves for weeks, knocking many of these sites that are very important to commercial life in our country offline or slowing them to a crawl. Just take a look at how much commerce is now conducted over the Internet and I think you can see the potential catastrophe here. These kinds of attacks really could bring our banking system and the economy to its knees. Again, some intelligence officials that I respect suspect that Iran or its agents launched these attacks against the American banks.

Defense Secretary Panetta warned in a recent speech that these and other cyber attacks show that we are approaching a cyber Pearl Harbor where:

An aggressor nation or extremist group could use these

kinds of cybertools to gain control of critical switches . .

. [and] derail passenger trains, or even more dangerous,

trains loaded with lethal chemicals.

They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or

shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.

That is not science fiction. That is not an alarmist. That is the Secretary of Defense of the United States, Leon Panetta, issuing a warning based on what anybody who works in this field knows is reality.

In recent weeks, we have watched one section of our country--in this case the Northeast, including my own State of Connecticut--hit by Hurricane Sandy and then a follow-on northeaster storm, losing power. Some parts of New York and certainly New Jersey were hit harder than Connecticut, but we were hit pretty hard ourselves. Some still are without power, and this is the third week since the hurricane. This is exactly the kind of dislocation and suffering that would occur if an enemy cyber attacked America's electric power system. It is why we need to at least vote to take this bill up now with a sense of urgency in this session. Time is not on our side.

The elections are over. The American people through their votes have told us in a clear and certain voice that they want us to work together to solve the many challenges our Nation confronts. I know we are focused on avoiding going over the fiscal cliff and the challenge to Congress is, Can we solve our fiscal problems? Can we come to a bipartisan compromise before we go over the cliff?

In this case of cyber security and cyber vulnerability, the challenge before us is, Can we come to a bipartisan agreement compromise--and we think we have in the bill before us--and create and improve our defenses before a catastrophic cyber attack occurs, as it surely will, and then we come rushing back to raise our defenses, as we did after 9/ 11, after we have suffered an attack?

I will.

I thank my friend from Rhode Island. I thank my friend for his interest in the area of cyber security and for his leadership. I have not talked about that yet--and I will right now--which is to say, following the advice of most of the experts of both political administrations and experts outside, one of the centerpieces of our original bill was to create a public-private process--government and people who live in these sectors of our economy--to draft best practices, not to have them imposed by the Government, and then to make it mandatory within a set period of time, and that these practices, these standards, would be general principles, not all do's and don'ts, to leave room for the private sector to come up with the best way they thought they could meet those standards.

Opponents, particularly the business community, and some of our friends on the other side, have said to us that they fear that would be more regulation of business. Senator Collins, my ranking member and dear friend, is a leading advocate of regulation reform and lighter regulation on business. But she said over and over with such credibility and force: This is not regulation of business; this is protection of our homeland security, of our economy. You reform regulation when the regulations seem to be too much and get in the way of economic growth. We have a threat that is today stealing billions of dollars of American innovation, taking jobs elsewhere in the world.

OK, we had it mandatory, but it was clear we were not going to get to 60 votes. I have said over and over, one of the problems we have in Congress now is people seem to say if they do not get 100 percent of what they want, they are not going to vote for a bill. So I had to listen to my own words because if they wait for 100 percent of what they want on a bill, everybody is going to end up with zero percent. We might as well try to get done what we agree on. So we took a big step, which was to make those mandatory standards voluntary.

Then we threw in an incentive, which is a lot--partial liability, immunity from liability in the case of a cyber attack--as an encouragement for those companies that voluntarily opt into the standards that the voluntary process would set up that gets some immunity from liability for prosecution.

Incidentally, President Obama has made very clear, first, that he totally gets the seriousness of this challenge to our security, this cyber challenge to our security and our prosperity. He has supported this legislation, but he has gone one step further now and said if we fail to pass legislation, he will issue an Executive order that does as much as an Executive order can do to protect America better from cyber attack and cyber theft.

The President does have the authority to issue an Executive order that will establish standards for cyber security for all 18 critical infrastructure sectors under existing law and require those sectors to be implemented in certain areas where the regulators have the power to mandate such observance of the standards. A draft of such Presidential order is now being circulated, but the President does not have the power under existing law to offer a lot of the benefits that our bill would give private sector owners of critical infrastructure.

For one thing the President does not have the ability to offer the private sector owners the liability protection I have just described. In addition, needed changes to law that permit private companies to share cyber security threat information among themselves and with the government will go unmade. So both sides in this debate have acknowledged that this is a critical piece in any bill. But it cannot be implemented by executive action. We are the lawmakers. We have the ability to protect our country better than the President does by Executive order. I have appealed to the President that if we are not able to act here that he should issue this Executive order. I am very encouraged by the work done on it, and I am confident that if we fail to act the President will act. I think he has a responsibility to act because if we fail to act we are leaving the American people extremely vulnerable to a major cyber attack. Therefore, although the legislation is preferable, an Executive order will certainly give the American people protection.

I have more to say, but I note the presence on the floor of my colleague and partner in this pursuit, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Feinstein. If she would like to speak, I will yield the floor to her.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 1 minute and not have the time taken out of the Republican side.

Mr. President, I want to respond to the concern of my friend from Texas that if cloture is granted on this motion, there will not be an opportunity to amend the bill. I understand why she is saying that, but I do want to say that Senator Reid has made it clear--I think twice today--that if cloture is granted, he is open

to--he will allow amendments. He said he cannot allow endless amendments because we are in a lameduck session with limited time but that he will allow a finite number of amendments, if you will, on both sides.

So I want to assure my colleagues and appeal to my colleagues to vote to at least consider this measure. I mean, our cyber enemies are at the gates. In fact, they have already broken through the gates. The least we can do is debate and vote on amendments to determine how we can strengthen our cyber defense.

I thank my colleagues and yield the floor.

Mr. President, in the remaining time, I appreciate what my friend from Arizona said. I not only join him in that request, but I am confident because I have talked to Senator Reid about this--he said that if we invoke cloture tonight, he will allow a finite number of amendments. I do not want to encourage anyone. He said not 15. I took that to be some number less than 15.

I think five amendments is well within the term ``finite.'' So I would ask my colleagues, give it a chance, and let's vote for cloture. I am sure Senator Reid will allow five amendments.

Cloture Motion

Mr. President, I rise today to honor the people and leaders of the Republic of China on Taiwan as they prepare to celebrate the hundred-and-first anniversary of the founding of their country on October 10.

I would like to highlight Taiwan's economic successes over the last century--a success that has rightly been called a miracle. In just several decades, the people of Taiwan have transformed their economy from a recipient of American aid into one of our most important trade partners. The world economy relies upon Taiwan's computer chip foundries, and the whole world benefits from the entrepreneurial spirit and inventiveness of Taiwan's people.

Looking forward to the future of our relationship with Taiwan, I believe it will be essential to take bold new steps to strengthen the ties between us. In particular, it is past time for Washington to negotiate a free trade agreement with Taiwan. That would be the first and most important step we could take to demonstrate our continued dedication to this relationship.

I also wish to take this opportunity to congratulate Ambassador Jason Yuan, who has ably represented Taiwan in the United States for the past 4 years, on his new appointment to serve as Secretary-General of the National Security Council of Taiwan. I am deeply grateful for his hard work to further strengthen the ties between our two countries, and I wish Ambassador and Madame Yuan the very best of luck in their future endeavors.

In closing, I urge my colleagues to join me in congratulating the people of Taiwan on their many successes, and to recommit ourselves to strengthening this essential relationship. As we look forward to Taiwan's national celebration, the people of both the United States and the Republic of China on Taiwan have much to celebrate.

Mr. President, I thank my friend from Arizona for his very eloquent statement. I associate myself with it.

It strikes me, as I listen, that it was no accident that these violent extremists launched this attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on 9/11, on September 11--a day of infamy in our history, a day when people across our country and around the world were commemorating the worst terrorist attack in our history, which was September 11, 2001.

Those who perpetrated the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, which resulted in the death of our Ambassador Chris Stevens carried out an act of terrorism and barbarism that they hope will sow fear and hatred between Americans and Muslims, just as Osama bin Laden and his followers hoped that attack of 9/11, 2001, would do 11 years ago. But we did not let bin Laden succeed then, and we will not let these violent extremists who killed Chris Stevens yesterday in Benghazi succeed in dividing America and the West from Muslims and the Arab world. Good, well-intentioned people in both great communities will rise and join together to renounce these extremists and killers.

I want to speak for a moment about Ambassador Stevens.

Simply put, Chris Stevens was one of the finest, bravest, most spirited, most talented diplomats in our Nation's service.

As a volunteer in the Peace Corps, he served in Morocco, where he was inspired to pursue a lifetime of service in the Middle East. When the uprising against Muammar Qadhafi began in February of last year, Chris was the deputy chief of mission at our Embassy in Tripoli, Libya.

He was evacuated, along with other American personnel, from the country, but returned to Libya within weeks as the Special Envoy of the United States

of America to the opposition there--courageously slipping into rebel- held Benghazi onboard a cargo freighter. It was an act of bravery that typified Chris Stevens' service to our country and his devotion to our Nation's ideals and his commitment to build bridges between Americans and Arabs, Americans and Muslims.

Chris remained in Benghazi throughout the war, standing with the people of Libya during some of the darkest and most difficult hours in their struggle for freedom.

He became, in fact, the bright symbol of America, a heroic and inspiring figure to many Libyans, as Senator McCain and Senator Graham and I heard during our visits, and was thus the natural choice of President Obama to become our Ambassador to Tripoli after the Qadhafi regime fell. This is also why his death at the hands of violent extremists in Benghazi, which was the seat of the revolution against Qadhafi, is so tragic and infuriating. Of course, we still do not know what happened at our consulate in Benghazi yesterday, but what is clear is that these attackers have to be apprehended and must be punished.

I am encouraged but not surprised by the statements of Libya's leaders condemning this attack. I say I am not surprised because these statements of condemnation of those who killed Chris Stevens are consistent with what I know the leaders of the new Libya to be, what I know to be their profound admiration and love for Chris Stevens and their respect and gratitude for the United States of America. We look now to the Libyan Government to act swiftly and decisively and to our own government to provide the Libyans whatever support they need to find the attackers and killers.

While a specific group of individuals was responsible for this evil act and their target immediately was the Americans in that consulate-- but really their target was the new order in Libya, and they were animated in this by an ideology that is now all too familiar to us that we cannot ignore or excuse. This hateful and violent ideology is a threat not just to the lives of Americans like Chris Stevens and the three others who died yesterday in Benghazi but to the future of Libya and the future of the Muslim world. It is the exact opposite of the ideals that inspired millions of Libyans to rise up last year against Qadhafi to realize their dreams of a life of dignity, democracy, and human rights. For that reason, it is imperative now for those Libyan people themselves to echo their leaders and condemn this violence and take on the extremists who have taken shelter in their midst and who threaten to hijack their revolution and imperil the future of their country, returning them to days as dark as under Qadhafi.

I know the overwhelming majority of Libyans reject this violent extremist agenda. They want a good education for their children. They want foreign investment that will create jobs and raise their standard of living. After 42 years of despair and oppression under Qadhafi, they badly want again to be part of the world, part of the modern world. The United States should stand ready and willing to help them on that path.

The fact is that the people who killed Chris Stevens yesterday in Benghazi do not represent the people of Libya or their elected leadership. But these killings require confronting the extremist minority that imperils this future, the fanatics who want a clash of civilizations between the Muslims and the West and who will try to justify their violence in the name of Islam. They are wrong. They are mistaken. They are on the wrong side of history.

Finally, let me come back home and say--to echo what Senator McCain just said--that I know there will be some here in our country who in the wake of this attack will be tempted to argue that it shows that America's support for the Libyan revolution was naive or mistaken, that the Arab spring will ultimately be defined not by a desire for democracy and freedom among the people of the Middle East and Arab world but by the dark fanaticism of al-Qaida and its associates and that the United States should give up trying to support people in this part of the world and instead retrench back here at home. That would be terribly wrong. That would misunderstand the motivations of the people who have risen in the Arab world to overthrow the totalitarian governments that dominated their lives. They do not want the fanaticism of al-Qaida. They want the bright light of a democratic future.

We cannot allow what happened yesterday to be a victory for the extremists and the terrorists because to do so would be a betrayal of everything Ambassador Chris Stevens stood for, which is to say a betrayal of America's best ideals.

I note the presence on the floor of the Senator from South Carolina. I would yield to him at this time.

Mr. President, I could not agree more with my friend from Arizona. It would really dishonor the service of Chris Stevens and the other three Americans who served us in Libya if their murders by these extremists led us to retrench and pull out of Libya and stop supporting the new Libyan Government, democratically elected, pull out of other parts of the Arab world. That would be exactly the opposite of what Ambassador Stevens devoted his life to. As I mentioned, inspired by his experience as a Peace Corps volunteer in Morocco, he devoted the rest of his life to service on America's behalf in the Middle East. The last thing he would want this murder to do is to lead us to pull out, leave the area.

It would also be the fondest hope of the attackers, the extremists. Why do they attack? They attack to kill individual people, but they really attack to, as I said before, push America out and create a war between the Western world, America, and Islam. It is not natural. It is not the direction in which history is going. History is going much more toward integration. In fact, the revolution in Libya, which has gone so successfully when you consider the 40 years of dictatorship under which they lived--they held a free election. They elected what I would describe as a moderate rule-of-law slate to run the country. But those uprisings in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and now in Syria are the most profound rejection and defeat for the extremism of al-Qaida and its allies and presumably this group who attacked the American consulate in Benghazi yesterday. I understand that the results of some of the first elections are unclear, in some sense unsettled to some people here, but the fact is they have chosen democracy. People are self-governing, and they are looking for a better life. That is exactly the opposite of what bin Laden, al-Qaida, and I would guess the people who killed Chris Stevens yesterday desire.

Senator McCain is absolutely right. I can almost hear Chris Stevens saying: Come on. Get up. Stay in the fight. Do not surrender to the crazies, to the fanatics, to the violent extremists. Stand with the overwhelming majority, with the people of Libya, who want what we want--a better future for themselves and their families.

Mr. President, I would suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Robert Morus, an intern in the office of the Senator from Oregon, be granted the privilege of the floor for the balance of the day.

Mr. President, I understand the time is divided between the two leaders. But I think there is 15 minutes for the proponents and for those opposed. I would ask unanimous consent that that be the case.

Nor do I.

Mr. President, I think that is the situation we are in, because the vote is set to go off in a little more than 15 minutes. I have not spoken yet.

Mr. President, I rise to speak on the vote we will have in about 10 minutes. I am going to be real personal in my statement.

This is one of those days when I fear for our country, and I am not proud of the Senate. We have a crisis, one we all acknowledge. It is not just that there is a theoretical or speculative threat of cyber attack against our country--it is real and happening now. Most people don't know it because a lot of people who are attacked don't want to announce it because they are embarrassed.

A lot of companies are attacked that control critical cyber infrastructure and have, in fact, what I called yesterday secret cyber attack cells planted in their system to control the kind of systems we depend on for the quality of our life and, in some ways, for our lives.

GEN Keith Alexander, Director of Cyber Command at the Pentagon, said the other day that when it comes to cyber war, we are today where we were in 1993 in our war with Islamist terrorism after they blew up the truck bomb in the parking garage at the World Trade Center. We were attacked. It shook us up for a while, but then people forgot about it. At least in that case we knew we had been attacked. Now we are attacked every day and most people don't know it. Maybe there is a story in the paper one day and they read it and it is on TV and then they forget about it.

Are we going to act before we get to the cyber 9/11, as we obviously did in the attacks in a war we were in without acknowledging it with Islamist terrorism? We pretty much all agree on that. Yet we have descended once again to gridlock, to partisan attack and counterattack. The end result of that is a lot of sound and fury that will accomplish nothing, and we will leave our country vulnerable.

The fact is that as the majority leader announced earlier in the week, we have been on this for a long time. Senator Collins and I have tried to be flexible. We have been open to compromise, not of principle and how much we thought we could get passed through the Senate, but because the threat is so urgent, we cannot afford to insist on everything we thought was in our best interest. We made a mandatory system voluntary, but that has not been enough. Senator Reid said if there was an agreement on a finite list of amendments, and they are germane and relevant to the bill--not taking your favorite political shot through the bill or a political message opportunity--then he would take it up in September. As soon as we come back, we would have limited time on it and go to final passage and the Senate would work its will.

Unfortunately, we haven't been able to agree on such a list. There are still nongermane, irrelevant amendments on the list. Our friends in the Republican caucus have whittled the list down to 58. Frankly, I don't worry about the number as much as the majority leader was right that this bill and the threat of cyber attack and cyber theft is too important to use as a vehicle for political shots at one another.

We are approaching a cloture vote, and now it looks like it is going to lose. I hope not. Hope springs eternal for at least 25 minutes more. I say to my friends, if they believe we are in a cyber war and we are inadequately defended--particularly the part of our cyber infrastructure controlled by the private sector--then vote for cloture. It is the only way we are going to get to this bill. Vote for cloture.

Remember something. We are just one of two Chambers of the Congress of the United States. Whatever passes the Senate still has to go to a conference with the House. The House's approach on this is very different, and we are going to have to do even more negotiating and give-and-take. I appeal to my colleagues, make a principles vote and vote in a way that says to the country and to your constituents two things: One, you recognize we are in a cyber war now and we are inadequately defended. Second, by voting for cloture,

which means we will take up the bill, you are saying we are willing to work together across party lines to try to get something done.

In my opinion, it is the only way we are going to get to this bill. If cloture is not granted, as disappointed and angry as I am going to be, I will not be petulant. I will be open today, tomorrow, and as long as we have an opportunity in this session, to work with my colleagues to try to reach an agreement that will help us improve our cyber defenses.

Sometimes in moments of disappointment, I go back to the great Winston Churchill. I will just read a few comments from him. These were all in the 1930s when he was in the House of Commons and was concerned that England and the world faced a threat which they were not acknowledging, the rise of Nazi Germany. First, he said this--and I hate to say it, but it relates to where we are today. He said this about those who refused to act decisively to counter the clear and growing threat of a resurgent and rearmed Nazi Germany during the 1930s: ``They go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity.''

I am afraid that is the message we are going to send to the country and to our enemies if we don't get together and pass a cyber security bill in this session. Churchill said he was staggered, after his long parliamentary experience with the debates he had gone through on this question during the 1930s, by two things: ``The first has been the dangers that have so swiftly come upon us in a few years, and have been transforming our position and the whole outlook of the world.''

That is where we are with regard to cyber war, although most people don't understand that. We do. He said:

Secondly, I have been staggered by the failure of the House

of Commons to react effectively against those dangers. That,

I am bound to say, I never expected. I say that unless the

House [finds its resolve] we will have committed an act of

abdication of duty.

I end with those words. I think it is that serious. If we don't find a way either by voting for cloture today to get on the bill so we can negotiate or continuing to negotiate if cloture fails, it will be quite simply a colossal abdication of duty to the people of the United States and their security.

Yes; I yield to my friend from Indiana.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I rise to speak about the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which is numbered S. 3414.

Last night, the majority leader, Senator Reid, filed a cloture motion which would ripen for a vote on tomorrow. Senator Reid said he was saddened to have to file that motion. He also used a word we don't hear much when he said he was ``flummoxed'' by the need to file a cloture motion on bipartisan legislation that responds to what all of the experts in security in our country from the last administration and this one say is a critical threat to our security, which is the lack of defenses in the cyber infrastructure that is owned by the private sector.

Senator Reid was saddened, as I was, that he had to file for cloture because, of course, there can be disagreements about how to respond to this threat to our security and our prosperity. Hundreds of billions of dollars of American ingenuity and money have already been stolen by cyber thieves operating not only from within our country but, more often, from outside. So you can have differences of opinion about how to deal with the problem. But the fact that people started to introduce totally irrelevant amendments, such as the one to repeal ObamaCare-- well, that is a debatable issue. We have debated it many times, as the House has, but not on this bill, which we urgently need to pass and send to the House and then go into conference and then, hopefully, pass something and send it to the President.

I was at a briefing with more than a dozen Members of the Senate, representing a wide bipartisan group and ideological group, with leaders of our security agencies--cyber security agencies, including the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, NSA, and they could not have been clearer about the fact that this cyber threat is not a speculative threat. The fact is we are under attack over cyber space right now. In terms of economics, we have already lost an enormous amount of money. GEN Keith Alexander, Chief of U.S. Cyber Command, described the loss of industrial information and intellectual property, and just plain money, through cyber theft as ``the greatest transfer of wealth in history.'' That is going on.

We are also under cyber attack by enemies who are probing the control systems, the cyber control systems that control not the mom-and-pop businesses at home, not the Internet systems over which so many of us shop these days, but the cyber systems that control the electric supply, that control all of our financial transactions, large and small, that control our transportation system, our telecommunication system--all the things we depend on to sustain our society and our individual lives. That is who we are talking about here.

It is the greatest transfer of wealth in history. But our enemies are already probing those private companies' cyber systems that control that kind of critical infrastructure I have described. There is some reason to believe that because of the vulnerability of those systems and lack of adequate defenses, they have already placed in them malware, bugs--whatever we want to call it. In the old days, we used to call it a sleeper cell of spies and, more recently, in terms of terrorism, a sleeper cell of terrorists.

Let me put it personally, without stating it definitively on the floor. I worry that enemies of the United States have already placed what I call

cyber sleeper cells in critical cyber control systems that control critical infrastructure in our country. Everybody will say that some companies that own critical infrastructure are doing a pretty good job of defending it and us, but some are not. That is one of the reasons this bill has occurred--to try to create a collaborative process where the private sector and the public sector can act together in the national interest.

The businesses themselves that control cyber infrastructure--God forbid there is a major cyber attack on the United States--are going to be enormous losers. They are going to be subject, under the current state of the law, to the kind of liability in court that may bring some of them down. It may end their corporate existence.

I would be glad to yield to my friend from Delaware for a question. He is the cosponsor of our main bill, S. 3414.

I thank the Senator from Delaware very much. I think he crystallized the moment we are in.

I mentioned that Senator Reid filed a cloture motion that will ripen tomorrow. Again, he did it in sadness, and I was sad he had to do it. This is an issue on which I had hoped we would overcome gridlock-- special interest driven, ideologically driven, politically driven--but we couldn't do it, so the majority leader did exactly what he had to do, in my opinion, in the national security interest.

This does two things. One, as my colleagues know and I repeat just to remind them, we have a 1 p.m. deadline when any Member of the Senate can file a first-degree amendment to this bill. That is important to do. And I want to say that the managers of the bill--Senator Collins' staff, the Republican cloakroom, my staff, the Democratic cloakroom-- are going to be working on these amendments to see if we can begin to move toward a finite list so we can give some sense of certainty.

Senator Reid has been very clear. He has not wanted to, to use an idiom of the Senate, fill the tree, which is to say limit amendments. He has wanted to have an open amendment process, which really ought to happen on a bill of this kind, but open for germane and relevant amendments, not amendments on repealing ObamaCare or, I say respectfully, on enacting more gun control. Those are both significant and substantial issues, but they are going to block this bill from passing if people insist on bringing them up here.

So the first and positive consequence of Senator Reid's cloture motion--one we all signed--is to require that amendments people have been talking about filing have to come forward by 1 p.m., and bipartisan staffs will be working to winnow that down to a finite list.

Second, if we don't have an agreement on a finite list and we cannot vitiate the cloture vote for tomorrow, then Members of the Senate-- every one, in their own heart and head--will have to make the decision as to whether to vote against taking up this bill while all the nonpolitical experts on our security--GEN Keith Alexander, Director of Cyber Command within the Pentagon, head of the National Security Agency, and one of the jewels and treasures of our government protecting our security, appealed to Senators Reid and McConnell in a letter yesterday stating that this legislation is critically necessary now.

This legislation will give our government and the private sector operators of critical cyber infrastructure powers they do not have now, authorities they do not have now to collaborate, to take action, to share information, to adopt what General Alexander in a wonderful phrase said is the best computer hygiene, the best cyber hygiene to protect our country.

So that is the question facing Members of the Senate in the face of that kind of statement of the urgency of some form of cyber security legislation in this session from the Director of Cyber Command, an honored, distinguished veteran of our uniformed military--U.S. Army in this case.

Are we going to find it hard to get 60 Members of the Senate to vote to take up this bill and debate it? I hope not. For me, it would be hard to explain--I will put it that way--why I would vote against it no matter what the controversy is.

I would say to my friend from Delaware, who has been involved, that I will yield to him if he wants to make a statement, but we have been working really hard with three groups: the group who sponsored S. 3414, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012; the group who sponsored SECURE IT, Senators Hutchison, Chambliss, McCain, et al.; and the third group, the bipartisan group that sprung up because of the urgency of this clear- and-present danger to America, led by Senator Kyl and Senator Whitehouse, who is also on the floor and really has played an important role in bringing the two sides--if I can put it that way--closer together. Frankly, there was a chasm that separated us at the outset. We have changed our bill. We have made it much more voluntary--carrots instead of sticks, as the Senator and I have said. But still there are differences, and I would just say shame on us if we can't bridge those differences on national security, of all topics.

So this is an important day to see if we can come together. Senator Collins and I are ready and willing to meet with the sponsors of the other bills--Senator Kyl, Senator Whitehouse--to see if we can come to some kind of agreement on critical parts of this legislation and to come up with a finite list we can support.

Just a final word. I wish to thank the majority leader, Senator Reid. Senator Reid has a tough job, and it is obviously battered by the political moment we are in, whenever we are in it. And of course this is a particularly political moment--partisan--because of the election season and the campaign we are in. But I have known Harry Reid for quite a while, and I have the greatest confidence and trust in him and an awful lot of affection. He is a personal friend. He got briefed about the cyber security threat more than a year ago, and he called me in and we talked about it. He said he was really worried, that we had to do something in this session of Congress to protect our security, and he has been steadfast in that belief and has refused to give up.

Senator Reid filed the cloture motion to bring this to a head and hopefully to get to that finite list of amendments. And I think he is going to stretch, within the process and time, the great authority and power the majority leader has--some people say it may be the only power these days, but I think he has more because of his skills--in controlling the schedule. I think if there is a hope that we can bring a bill together and pass a cyber security bill, Senator Reid is going to give us every opportunity to do that. So I wanted to put on the record my thanks to him for his own commitment to improving the cyber security of our country because he has listened to the experts and they have convinced him. This is rising to be a greater threat to America than any other threat we face today, and that is saying a lot, but I believe it.

I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor for my friend from Delaware.

Again, I thank our friend from Rhode Island for the extraordinarily constructive role he has played--unusual here, unfortunately--in bringing the group of eight Members, four Democrats and four Republicans, together. Senator Whitehouse, along with Senator Kyl of Arizona, created a bridge that really invited Senators Collins, Feinstein, Rockefeller, Carper, and me to come halfway across to change our bill from mandatory to voluntary.

So my answers to the Senator's two questions are yes and yes. We are a lot closer than we were really just a month ago--a matter of weeks ago. There is a remaining difference, and it is real. But considering where we have come from, if we show a willingness to compromise--and again, as I have said over and over, not a compromise of principle-- that acknowledges that if everybody in the Senate insists on getting 100 percent of what they want on

a bill, nobody is going to get anything because nothing is going to pass. So we have come back from our 100 percent quite a lot, and we are still open to ideas that will enable us to achieve what we need to achieve here in improving our cyber security, which means changing where we are now.

That is why, as my friend from Rhode Island knows, we are going to keep meeting today with the other leading sponsors of the bill and with the peacemakers in between to see if we can find common ground and avoid what I think could be a very disappointing cloture vote--a very divisive, very destructive cloture vote--tomorrow.

The second point is a very important one; that is, the House has acted, but it has only acted with regard to information sharing. This is important, but it is only half the job. The information sharing, in brief, says that private companies that operate critical infrastructure can share with other private companies if they are attacked or as they begin to defend themselves so they mutually can strengthen each other. They can also share with the government, and the government, particularly through the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency, can help the private sector strengthen itself. Those kinds of communications, which are critical and would seem natural, don't happen now in too many cases because the private sector is anxious about liability that it might incur. Even the public sector is limited in how much it can reach out or help. So it is important that the House has addressed that part of it.

I will say--and not just parenthetically--that there has been very significant concern of a lot of Americans and a quite remarkable coalition of groups--remarkable in the sense that it is right to left, along the ideological spectrum--about the personal privacy rights of the American people, that they not be compromised as a result of this information sharing.

Those privacy advocacy groups are not happy with the House information-sharing bill. I am pleased they have praised what we have tried to do as a result of negotiations with colleagues in this Chamber who are concerned about privacy. The point Senator Whitehouse makes is so true, but that is only half the job. Everybody who cares about cyber security has said it.

There was, I must say, an encouraging, inspiring, for us, editorial in the New York Times today, supporting essentially S. 3414, the underlying bill, and crying out to us to take action and not get dragged down into gridlock by special interest thinking. But here is a statistic that jumped out at me. I saw it once before, but we have not heard it in this debate. In a Times editorial today entitled ``Cybersecurity at Risk,'' this sentence: ``Last year, a survey of more than 9,000 executives in more than 130 countries by the PricewaterhouseCoopers consulting firm found that only 13 percent of those polled had taken adequate defensive action against cyberthreats.''

That is worldwide. But I can tell you from what I know, the number in our country is not much better. That is why we need this set of standards, best practices, computer hygiene--no longer mandatory but we create an incentive. It is as if a company chooses to go into what my friend from Rhode Island has quite vividly described as Fort Cyber Security. We are going to build Fort Cyber Security of the best practices to defend cyber security, and we are going to leave it to the companies that operate critical infrastructure totally on their own whether they want to go into Fort Cyber Security. If they do, they will have some significant immunity from liability in the case of a major attack.

My answer to the Senator's questions are yes and yes. I just want to come back to something the Senator said at the outset of his remarks. I never know how much this argument weighs on Senators' minds, but once again it is being made here, which is this bill has received no hearings; it is not ready for action.

Good God. I went back and looked at the Record. I attended my first hearing on cyber security held in what was then the Governmental Affairs Committee--it is now the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee--chaired then by Senator Fred Thompson in 1998, 14 years ago. I can tell my colleague that in recent years, Senator Collins and I have held 10 hearings on the subject of cyber security. That is only in our committee. That is not counting judiciary, intelligence, commerce--I think foreign relations may have held some hearings on it too. In fact, we held a hearing just earlier this year, I believe it was March, on cyber security and the legislation that we knew we were going to bring forward. This has been heard.

I wish to say this too. I mentioned Senator Reid's commitment to doing something about cyber security. Last year--I am trying to think, but I cannot remember a time on another bill where I saw this happen-- Senator Reid asked the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, to join him in calling in the Democratic chairs and the ranking Republican members of all the relevant committees, relevant to cyber security that we just talked about, and made an appeal that we work together to bring one bill which he would then, as he has done before when a subject covers more than one committee, blend into a single bill and bring to the floor under majority leader's authority pursuant to rule XIV of the Senate rules, which he has done today.

So there has not been a specific hearing on this bill, but Lord knows there have been a lot of hearings and this bill has been vetted and negotiated not only with many Members of the Senate but by our committee and all the other committees--by stakeholders, private stakeholders, by some of the very businesses and business organizations that now seem to be the main block to moving forward on the bill.

I probably responded to my friend at greater length than I might have or perhaps more than he expected, but his questions were right on target, and I thank him for giving me the opportunity.

Yes.

Basically, I would say I agree. There is not much I could add to that. This is not legislation that is a solution in search of a problem. This is a real problem. Again, we are hearing it from all the cyber security experts.

If the private sector owners of critical cyber infrastructure-- electric power grids, telecommunications, finance, water dams, et cetera--if they were taking enough defensive action, we wouldn't want to act, but they are not. And we understand why. We have talked about this. A lot of the CIOs--chief information officers--in companies get frustrated that their CEOs don't want to devote enough time and resources to beefing up their cyber defenses.

The Senator said something very important, which is cyber theft and cyber attack is so insidious that a lot of people and companies who are victims of cyber attack don't even know it. My great fear is that there is a lot of malware or bugs--I called it cyber cells earlier--planted in some of our critical cyber control systems in our country waiting for the moment when an enemy wants to attack us.

Senator Reid yesterday pointed to the terrible tragedy in India where the power system has gone out. There is no evidence there was a cyber attack, but I saw today that 600 million people are without electricity. It has had a terrible effect on quality of life, on the economy, et cetera. Unfortunately, this is what an enemy who is capable today could do to us, and they are out there.

I thank my friend. And, of course, I agree. That is why we are legislating--but we are trying to legislate as minimally as we possibly can--to begin to solve this problem.

I yield the floor. The Senator from Maryland is here. The Senator from North Dakota is here.

In the order of fairness, we yield to my friend from North Dakota.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2012, at 9 a.m. in room SR 328A of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2012, at 2:30 p.m. in room 253 of the Russell Senate Office Building.

The Committee will hold a hearing entitled, ``Marketplace Fairness: Leveling the Playing Field for Small Business.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Environment and Public Works be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2012, at 10 a.m. in Dirksen 406 to conduct a hearing entitled, ``Update on the Latest Climate Change Science and Local Adaptation Measures.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2012, at 10:30 a.m. in room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Tax Reform: Examining the Taxation of Business Entities.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2012, at 10 a.m. to hold a hearing entitled ``Next Steps in Syria.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on August 1, 2012, at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Rising Prison Costs: Restricting Budgets and Crime Prevention Options.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2012, at 2:30 p.m., to hold a European Affairs subcommittee hearing entitled, ``The Future of the Eurozone: Outlook and Lessons.''

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation, and Community Development be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on August 1, 2012, at 10 a.m., to conduct a

hearing entitled, ``Streamlining and Strengthening HUD's Rental Housing Assistance Programs.''

Mr. President, as the Senate now turns its attention to the pending legislation that aims to enhance our Nation's cyber defenses, I would like to take a few moments to review where we are because I think the bill we now have on the floor brings us closer than ever to an agreement on a way to better defend our country, our prosperity, and our security against what is emerging as the most significant threat we face today, bigger than a conventional attack by a foreign enemy, bigger even than Islamist terrorism, a threat that is very different from anything we have faced before and so probably hard for most Americans to conceptualize but, trust me, it is here. That is why it is so important. We have come closer than ever to an agreement, but we are not there yet.

I have come to the floor to say to my colleagues that those of us who sponsor the pending legislation--Senators Feinstein, Rockefeller, Collins, and I--are eager to continue to work with our colleagues toward a broad bipartisan solution to this urgent national security threat--crisis. Obviously, to do that we have to begin processing amendments, and they have to be what the majority leader has said: germane or relevant. The majority leader has said we will have an open amendment process, and I thank him for that. No filling of the tree here. But the amendments have to be germane or relevant. We are dealing with a national security crisis unlike any we have faced before.

A broad bipartisan group of us met with the leaders of our cyber defense agencies yesterday--not political people, not partisan people-- and they urgently appealed to us to pass this legislation in this session of Congress. It gives them authority to protect us that they don't have now. Frankly, they worry that without that authority to share information with the private sector, for the private sector to share cyber threat information with each other without fear of liability, for the government to have the ability to create some standards for the private owners of cyber space and then give them the voluntary option to abide by those standards--that all of those add- ons, all of those realities that will be created by passage of this bill are desperately needed now. The fact is they were needed yesterday. They were needed last year.

That is why I am so disheartened to hear this morning that our friends in the Republican caucus are talking about introducing an amendment to this bill that will repeal ObamaCare, as they call it. There is a day for that, but it is not this week on this bill. Frankly, I feel the same way about some of the gun control amendments that have been submitted by members of the Democratic caucus. Those amendments deserve debate at some point but not this week on this bill.

We can get this bill done and protect our security. Nobody believes that we are going to repeal ObamaCare this week or that we are going to adopt gun control legislation. Those are making a statement. They are sending a political message. And they will get in the way of us protecting our national security.

So I appeal to my colleagues on both sides, pull back these irrelevant amendments. Let's have a full and open debate on cyber security, and let's get it done this week. There are already more than 70 amendments filed that are germane or relevant.

I ask my friend from Kansas if I could have 2 more minutes.

I thank the Senator from Kansas.

There are already 70 amendments filed, so we don't have time to sit here staring at each other while we could be working through them. The truth is that we have a number of amendments on which we are ready to take votes, but of course we need cooperation from both sides in order to nail down that agreement with the consent that is required.

Before I yield the floor, I wish to underscore that while there are important issues we still need to work through this week, the reality is that because Senators on all sides have been willing to compromise, we have a golden opportunity to prove we can work together when it counts the most, which is in defense of our security and prosperity. Leading sponsors of the pending bill, leading sponsors of the leading opposition bill, SECURE IT, and leaders of the peacemakers in between led by Senators Kyl and Whitehouse have been meeting for the last week and making progress. And I would say that what was once a wide chasm separating us is now a narrow ridge, which we can bridge--and I firmly believe we will--with good faith on all sides, in a willingness to compromise. You can rarely get 100 percent

of what you want in a democratic--small ``d''--legislature such as ours, but if each side can get 75 or 80 percent and we can begin to fix a problem and close the vulnerabilities that exist in our cyber infrastructure this week, we will have done exactly what the American people want us to do. That is my appeal to my colleagues.

Mr. President, I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I know under the order this hour is reserved for Members of the Republican caucus, and although I am an Independent, I don't qualify exactly under the terms of the agreement to speak now. But seeing no Member of the Republican caucus on the floor, I thought I would take the opportunity to continue to speak about the pending item, S. 3414, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, and if any of my colleagues arrive, I will yield to them immediately.

Before I yielded to Senator Roberts a short while ago, I made a statement that the two sides, if I can put it that way; that is, the sponsors of the pending legislation, Senators Collins, Feinstein, Rockefeller, and myself, and the sponsors of essentially the alternate approach, SECURE IT, sponsored by Senators McCain, Chambliss, Hutchison, and others--have been meeting. We have particularly been assisted by the bridge builders here--blessed are the peacemakers-- Senators Kyl, Whitehouse, and others, and we have been making progress. I said what was once a chasm separating us is now a narrow ridge that we are close to bridging. Let me explain what I mean by that.

The sponsors of S. 3414, the pending legislation, strongly believe that owners of critical cyber infrastructure--and this is a unique aspect of our free society, thank God; 80 to 85 percent of the critical infrastructure in our country is privately owned, including cyber infrastructure. That is the way it ought to be. But it means when critical cyber infrastructure in a new world becomes a target of cyber attack and cyber theft, that we--the rest of us Americans--represented by the government, have to enter into a partnership with the private sector owners of critical cyber infrastructure so they will take steps to protect the cyber space that they own and operate because, if they don't, the whole country is in jeopardy. If an electric grid is knocked out, the kind of awful experiences we have all had at different times when the power grid has been out in our area of the country will be felt perhaps for weeks and weeks.

Think about it. What if the financial cyber system, Wall Street, the hub of the systems that handle millions--trillions, really--of transactions over and over again, were knocked out? It would have a devastating effect on our economy, let alone the most nightmarish, which is that some enemy breaks into the cyber-control system of a dam holding back water and opens the dam and floods surrounding communities with a terrible loss of life. We could go on and on with the nightmare scenarios, but they are out there, and we are vulnerable to them.

So the sponsors of S. 3414 have felt that private sector owners of critical infrastructure should be mandated--that is only the owners of the most critical infrastructure--to adopt the standards that would be set under our legislation to protect their systems and our country. Sponsors of the SECURE IT Act started this debate firmly convinced that the only thing we need to do is to enhance our cyber security information-sharing between private sector operators and between the government and the private sector. We have a section in our bill that does exactly that, but we feel that is not

enough. We feel there also needs to be these standards set for the private operators of the electric grid, of the transportation system, of the financial system, et cetera. If both sides had just stuck to their guns, no legislation would be possible. But when it comes to cyber security, no legislation, which is to say the status quo, is not only unacceptable, it is dangerous. Some of our real--really most of our national security leaders in this country from the last two administrations, the George W. Bush administration and the Barack Obama administration--have warned, as if in a single voice, that we are already facing the equivalent of a digital Pearl Harbor or a 9/11 if we don't shore up and defend our exposed cyber flanks. The same is true of the impact of our vulnerability in cyber space to cyber theft.

GEN Keith Alexander, the head of the Defense Department Cyber Command and the National Security Agency, made a speech a week or two ago in which he estimated that more than $1 trillion has been stolen over cyber space from America. He called it the largest transfer of wealth in history. That results from moving money out of bank accounts that a lot of us never hear about because the banks believe it would be embarrassing if we knew, the theft of industrial secrets to other countries that then builds from those industrial secrets and creates the jobs in their countries that our companies wanted to create here. So there is a unified position among national security leaders, apart from which administration they served under, that we need this legislation, and we need it urgently.

Several of us met with the leaders of the cyber security agencies of this administration yesterday. These are not political people; these are professionals from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the FBI, and others. They warned us again that the cyber systems that are privately owned and that are critical to our Nation's security remain terribly vulnerable to attack. They said to us, and I am paraphrasing, that we need this legislation to respond urgently and effectively to an attack on infrastructure as critical as the electric grid or Wall Street itself.

One of the leaders in our government, uniformed leaders, said to him today is a little bit like 1993 when it comes to cyber security; when, as we will remember, al-Qaida launched a precursor attack on the Twin Towers in New York with a truck bomb that blew up in the parking garage. We all know there was a loss of life then, but the damage was relatively small. But al-Qaida persisted and, of course, on 9/11 succeeded in bringing down the two towers of the World Trade Center. This leader of cyber security efforts in our government said our adversaries in cyber space are just about where al-Qaida was in 1993 when they blew up that truck bomb in the parking garage of the World Trade Center.

What I was impressed with yesterday, I will say parenthetically, is though there is some controversy out here about who is capable of what in our Federal Government--and let me speak frankly. Some people don't have much respect for the Department of Homeland Security. I don't understand why because they do a great job, in my opinion, in so many different areas, including the one that is relevant here, cyber security. But it was clear that the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and the FBI are working as a team--really, like a seamless team--24/7, 365 days a year to leverage each other's capabilities to provide for the common defense. They all agreed yesterday we need to pass this legislation to give them the tools they urgently need, that they don't have without this legislation, to work with one another and the private sector.

I wish to again give thanks to Senators Kyl and Whitehouse, joined by Senators Mikulski, Blunt, Coons, Graham, Coats, and Blumenthal, who have come together with a compromise proposal after a series of good- faith negotiations and, as a result, Senators Collins, Rockefeller, Feinstein, and I have made major and difficult compromises in our original bill in order to move the legislation forward, to get something started, to protect our cyber security.

I think we now have a broad agreement on a bill containing those same cyber security standards that were in our original bill that resulted from a collaborative public-private sector process and negotiation. But now, instead of mandating them, we are going to create incentives for the private sector to opt into them. We are going to use carrots instead of sticks. We have added some compromises also from the original legislation to guarantee Members of the Senate and millions of people out in the country that when we act to share information from the private sector to the government, we are going to have due regard for the privacy of people's data in cyber space--personal information-- without compromising our national security at all.

There are advocates on both sides of both the information-sharing provision and the critical cyber-standards provision that think we have gone too far, and some think we haven't gone far enough. But while advocates on the outside of the Senate can hold fast to their particular positions, legislators on the inside of the Senate need to take all of these deeply held views into account. Ultimately, our responsibility is to get something done to protect our security--it is our responsibility to pass a law--and we have done that here.

I wish to first review some of the broad areas of agreement and then outline the differences that remain because I want my colleagues to understand how much progress has already been made. Sometimes the news stresses the differences between us.

Let me start with title I of the bill, which is the one on critical infrastructure. I think there is a growing, broad agreement now that the private sector owners of critical infrastructure should work with the government to develop what somebody yesterday called the best cyber hygiene or standards of defense that are needed to safeguard their facilities and the rest of us.

In the original bill we had the Department of Homeland Security playing the singular role for the government. We broaden that now in response to, particularly, recommendations from the Kyl-Whitehouse group, and we have created a new interagency council we call the national cyber security council, which will consist of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the FBI, and the Director of National Intelligence, as well as relevant primary regulators when that sector of cyber structure is put forth in the council.

What do I mean by that? If they are dealing with the cyber security of the financial sector of our government, then on those standards we would expect the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Treasury Department, for instance, among others, to be seated at the table to come up with an agreement on those standards.

We have also agreed that adoption of these practices will be voluntary and that there will be no duplication of existing regulations or any new regulatory authorities that will be added to law.

We have also agreed that incentives need to be created--the carrots I spoke about, such as liability protection--to entice private sector owners to adopt these practices once they have been developed--totally voluntary. But I think if we build this right, they will come. Although it is not mandatory, we will set a standard, and private sector operators of critical infrastructure will want to meet that standard because they will want to act in the national interests to protect their customers, but also because when they do they will receive very valuable immunity from liability in the event of an attack or a theft.

Look, I decided that we needed to make the system voluntary in order to get something passed this year. I think it has a good chance of working as a voluntary system. But if it doesn't, and the cyber threat grows as much as I think it will, then some future Congress is going to come along and make it mandatory.

So there will be an incentive on both the public and private sector-- particularly the private sector--to make this voluntary system work. God forbid between now and then there is a major cyber attack against our country; Congress will come flying back and adopt mandatory regulations. That is not what we want to happen. This is the time for rational, thoughtful discussion and legislation that will begin a

process that will go on for years because the cyber threat is not going away.

So that is title I. That is the compromise we offered on title I, which deals with cyber infrastructure. I go now to title VII. In between there are some very good titles, titles II through VI, but the good news is--maybe I should stress this--there seems to be broad bipartisan agreement on those titles.

Title VII is the one on information sharing, and there is some disagreement on that. But we have come to agree that private sector companies must be able to share cyber-threat information with the government and each other, with protections against liability that will incentivize--really allow--that sharing; that this sharing must be instantaneous.

In other words, to protect--to respond to concerns about private data being shared when a private sector operator of cyber security shares information with the government, we are requiring in this bill, the pending legislation, that the first point of contact for cyber sharing and reporting cyber attack is with a civilian agency--not a military or law enforcement agency or an intelligence agency but a civilian agency, such as the Department of Homeland Security or some other approved civilian exchange.

Some people have worried that if we did that, it would delay the referral of that information to the law enforcement and intelligence and military parts of our government, almost as if when the information of a cyber attack is sent to the Department of Homeland Security, somebody is going to have to go find the Secretary of Homeland Security to make sure she sees it before it goes to the Department of Defense, FBI. The world we are in is very different from that. It has been explained to me and others who met with, particularly, General Alexander, the head of Cyber Command at the Department of Defense that everything travels instantaneously, at cyber speed. That means that according to preset programs, cyber attack, if this bill is passed, will automatically--notification of it--go to the Department of Homeland Security or a civilian exchange, and at the same instant it will go to the Department of Defense, the FBI, and the intelligence community.

But when it first goes to the civilian exchange, there will be software in there to screen out--to prevent the possibility that any personal data--e-mails, private financial information--will not be sent to the law enforcement and defense branches of our government. That is another reason sharing will have to be instantaneous--that existing information-sharing relationships will continue undisturbed; that is, for instance, between the defense contractor and the Defense Department, and that there should be no stovepipes among government agencies. Agencies that need information should have access the instant it is provided to the government.

I know some colleagues want more assurance that while a lead civilian agency will serve as the hub for immediate distribution of cyber-threat information, it will do so without slowing down DOD's and NSA's abilities to access and act on that information. I have just told my colleagues that would be the case. Others want to add further privacy protections. I do want to say in this regard that we have already significantly strengthened the privacy protections, thanks to a lot of good negotiation with a group of Senators--Senators Franken, Durbin, Coons, Wyden, and others--and a broad range of privacy and civil liberties groups ranging, really quite remarkably, from the left to right and in between, who seem generally pleased with what we have done to protect privacy under our legislation.

Here is the good news: The people in charge of cyber security in our government say the privacy protections we have added in the underlying bill to the information-sharing section of this bill will not stop them for a millisecond from receiving the information they need and protecting our national security. So, to me, this is the Senate at its best.

We are not there. My dream--because this is--we are legislating here. We are not in the midst of some traditional sort of government regulation controversy. We are legislating actually in the midst of a war because we are already being attacked every day over cyber space. We have been lucky that it hasn't been a major attack that has actually knocked out part of our cyber infrastructure, but that vulnerability is there.

A few months ago there was a story in the Washington Post about a young man in a country far away that launched an attack against a small utility--I believe it was a water company--in Texas. He got into their system and actually had the ability to totally disrupt the water supply in that area of Texas. What the hacker did instead--and he just had a computer and was smart--what he did instead was post proof that he had broken into the industrial control system in that small utility in Texas just to show the vulnerability. In a sense, he might have been bragging he could do it, but it also was a warning to us. What if the next time that happens it is a larger utility or a group of smaller utilities around the country--maybe water, maybe electricity, maybe gas--and this time they are not just warning us or showing us our vulnerability, but they are actually going to disrupt the flow of electricity or water to people who depend on that? That is the kind of crisis we face and why it is so urgent that we deal with this.

So let me come back to my dream. My goal here is that as we go on this week, we are able to submit a managers' amendment, but it is not just from the managers--Senators Collins, Rockefeller, Feinstein, and me--that we are joined by a much broader group and we form a broad bipartisan consensus to protect our country from a terrible danger that is real, urgent, and growing.

I always like to think back at these moments--and I was thinking about it again in this case, and since I do not see anybody else on the floor, I will indulge myself and go back--to a hot July day in Philadelphia, over 225 years ago, when the U.S. Senate was created as part of the--I am glad to say, proud to say--Connecticut Compromise offered to the Constitutional Convention by two of Connecticut's delegates to that convention, Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth. It passed by just a single vote, but it helped keep the convention together and to enable our new government, including our Congress, to take shape because the Connecticut Compromise guaranteed the small States that their interests would be protected--small-population States--in the Senate because every State, no matter how big or small its population, would have two Senators, and it guaranteed the larger States that they would have a greater say in the House of Representatives, whose membership would be reflected, as it still is today, by population. Not everyone got everything they wanted that day, but they found a common ground that allowed them to go forward and finish writing our Constitution. That is the kind of position we are in today.

Shortly after the Connecticut Compromise was adopted at the Constitutional Convention, James Madison, as you know, Mr. President, often referred to as the father of the Constitution, wrote--and I am paraphrasing a little bit here--``the nature of the senatorial trust'' would allow it to proceed with ``coolness'' and ``wisdom.'' I think these negotiations on the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 show thus far that we have the ability to put ideological rigidity, partisanship, and politics aside when our security is at risk and move beyond gridlock and fulfill our Founders' vision of what this body can do when it comes to debating the great challenges of our time, with ``coolness'' and ``wisdom,'' as Madison said.

So over the next couple of days, let's debate all the relevant and germane amendments. Let's start voting as soon as we can on them. But then, for the good of the country, let's each compromise some, acknowledging that none of us can get everything we want and we cannot afford to insist on everything we want because if we do, nothing will happen and our country will remain vulnerable to cyber attack until the next opportunity Congress has--which I would guess will be sometime as next year goes on--to deal with this challenge. We cannot wait. We simply cannot wait. I know we can do this. I urge my colleagues, therefore, to come to the floor. I urge the leaders of

both parties to agree that the amendments submitted should be germane and relevant and that we can and will finish our work on this legislation this week.

I thank the Presiding Officer.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, if I may have a few moments, the Senate is not in a quorum call, is it?

Very briefly, Mr. President, I have just received a copy of a letter that has been sent this morning to the majority leader, Senator Reid, and the Republican leader, Senator McConnell, from GEN Keith Alexander of the United States Army, Director of the National Security Agency and Chief of Cyber Command at the Department of Defense. He is a distinguished and honored leader of our military, one of the people who has the greatest single responsibility for protecting our security, both in terms of the extraordinary capabilities the National Security Agency has but now increasingly for the defense of our cyber system.

This is a career military officer, not a politician. He is somebody who has a mission, and it is from that sense of responsibility that General Alexander has written to Senator Reid and Senator McConnell. He writes--and I will ask to have it printed in the Record--to express his ``strong support for passage of a comprehensive bipartisan cyber security bill by the Senate this week.'' Why? I continue to quote:

The cyber threat facing the Nation is real and demands

immediate action. The time to act is now; we simply cannot

afford further delay.

He adds:

Moreover, to be most effective in protecting against this

threat to our national security, cyber security legislation

should address both information sharing and core critical

infrastructure hardening.

Then he explains both of those in very compelling language. He also says:

Finally, any legislation needs to recognize that cyber

security is a team sport. No single public or private entity

has all of the required authorities, resources, and

capabilities. Within the federal government, the Department

of Defense and the Intelligence Community are now closely

partnered with the Department of Homeland Security and the

Federal Bureau of Investigation. The benefits of this

partnership are perhaps best evidenced by the Managed

Security Service (MSS) program, which affords protection to

certain government components and defense companies. The

legislation will help enable us to make these same

protections available widely to the private sector.

I cannot thank General Alexander enough. He ends by saying this:

The President and the Congress have rightly made cyber

security a national priority. We need to move forward on

comprehensive legislation now.

He urged Senators Reid and McConnell ``to work together to get it passed.''

I ask unanimous consent that this very compelling letter from GEN Keith Alexander be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I thank my friend from Delaware for the question. This is now a voluntary system and there is a lot to be said about that.

I want to go back to that meeting yesterday. We had a broad bipartisan group of Senators who have been most active, but from different perspectives, on this question of cyber security legislation who met yesterday with the key cyber security officials in our government from the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and the National Security Agency. I am going to explain why we went to the carrots and took out the sticks by saying, in general terms, these experts--not political people, these are pros who deal with cyber defense--were asked by one of the Senators: What will happen if we don't adopt this legislation or something like it this session?

The cyber security professionals said to us: Our Nation will be more vulnerable to cyber attack.

In other words, this legislation contains authority to share information between the government and the private sector, between two private sector companies, that can't be done now. That is critically necessary to improve our defenses. The requirement of standards being promulgated as a result of a--or resulting from a public-private collaborative operation and then offering the carrot of immunity from liability is something that doesn't exist now. All the experts say, though some of the private sector operators of critical cyber security infrastructure--we are talking, again, about the companies that run the electric grid or the telecommunications system or the entire financial system or dams that hold back water; we are not talking about ma-and-pa businesses back home--some of them are doing a pretty good job at defending that cyber infrastructure, but most of them are not doing enough. That is where the government has to come in and push them in that direction.

Why did we change it from mandatory to voluntary, from sticks to carrots? Because we didn't have the votes to adopt the mandatory, which I think is necessary. Because of the urgency of the threat, as I just reflected that we heard yesterday from the professionals in this area, we said--Senator Collins and I, Senator Rockefeller, Senator Feinstein, Senator Carper--OK, we are not going to get 100 percent of what we want around here, and we understand that, so let's settle for 80 percent. Perhaps the other side will feel they got 80 percent. But what is most important is that we will get something done to protect our security.

I must tell my colleagues we are at a point now in this debate, with the kind of never-ending questions about every detail, not withstanding all the compromises Senator Collins, Senator Carper and I have made and the filing of an amendment by Senator McConnell to repeal ObamaCare--we can have a position on ObamaCare, but to put it on this cyber security bill is not fair, not relevant, not constructive.

I think we are coming to a moment where we are going to have to face a tough decision. I have talked to the majority leader about filing for cloture soon so we can draw this to a choice: Do our colleagues want to act to protect our cyber systems in this session or do they not? That is a tough choice, particularly if a Senator votes no, to have to explain, in light of all the evidence of the constant cyber attacks going on now and the cyber thefts of hundreds of billions of dollars from our industries and tens of thousands of jobs lost as a result to foreign countries, if the Senate is going to say, no, we don't want to take that up now. I hope and pray that is not the case.

The way this is moving right now, this last week of the session before we break, I am afraid we are headed in the wrong direction, and we don't see the kind of willingness to compromise that ought to be there. We are tested again in this Chamber: Are we going to fix national problems? It is hard to do on some of the fiscal issues we have turned away from, but on this one, traditionally, when it came to our national security, we have put the special interests aside and together dealt with the national security interests. I fear at this moment, in response to my friend from Delaware, that is not the direction in which we are going. I hope I am wrong. I am, by nature, an optimist, but right now I am a pessimist.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the period for debate only on S. 3414, the Cybersecurity Act, be extended until 6:30 p.m.; further, that the majority leader be recognized at 6:30 p.m.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise to continue the discussion on the cyber security legislation, and particularly S. 3414, the pending business before the Senate, which is the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, the bipartisan piece of legislation to deal with an urgent national crisis.

I want first, again, to speak to our colleagues about the seriousness of the threat. I think sometimes that because most people haven't experienced the consequences of a cyber attack--and most are not aware of the constant cyber theft going on with moving money from bank accounts and stealing industrial secrets--frankly, a lot of the businesses that are victims of the theft don't want to acknowledge them or announce them for fear of exposing their own lack of adequate cyber defenses, but also a kind of general embarrassment. Yet we now know as a public matter--whether it has sunk into the consciousness among most of the American people--that some great companies that are very tech savvy, cyber savvy, have been the victims of cyber attacks.

Sony, RSA, Google, and others have come momentarily to public attention, but I think what this has meant has been unclear to people. It may, in fact, be unclear to many of the leaders of the private corporations that control so much of our critical cyber infrastructure.

In America, 80 to 85 percent of the critical infrastructure is privately owned. That is the American way. That is the way it ought to be. But it means when the private sector owns critical infrastructure which can, and will be, a target of hostile action, enemy attack in this new world of ours, then we have to create a partnership with the private owners of this critical infrastructure to raise our defenses because it is not just their businesses they are defending, it is the security of the United States.

A chief information officer at one of the businesses that owns part of our critical infrastructure said to me at one point that it is hard to get the attention of the CEO on this problem. The CEO is balancing a lot of considerations, looking at annual budgets and quarterly profits. For the average CEO, the threat of cyber attack is distant. For the average chief information officer, it is not so distant.

As the majority leader pointed out earlier, I think it may help to look at something very difficult to look at, which is what is happening in India today where the power system has collapsed for hundreds of millions of people. That is a breakdown, as far as we know--and I believe that is what is the fact--that is a breakdown in parts of the electric grid.

Let me give another example. Last year, in Connecticut, we had a very serious early winter storm where there were still a lot of leaves on the trees; the branches were heavy. A lot of trees fell and took out a lot of power lines in our State. A lot of people were without power for days and days and days. Public buildings were used as shelters for the homeless. Elderly people, particularly, were affected with food spoiling in the refrigerators, the lack of lights in their dwelling, et cetera.

Just imagine for a moment if that was not the result of a weather event but of a cyber attack. Cyber systems are controlling the electric power grid, and I believe they are vulnerable. I think the same of a lot of the other cyber systems that control critical infrastructure in our financial system. The computer systems we depend on for the movement of money from one account to the other, the direct deposits we do, the money in our accounts, the billions of dollars that move between financial institutions every day--what would happen to our country if those systems were knocked out or what would happen if Wall Street and the stock exchanges were knocked out?

Again, as I said earlier today, think about the real nightmare situation, which is that a dam controlled by a cyber system is penetrated by an enemy who opens the dam and unleashes water, and torrents of water knock out communities in the path of that water and kill a lot of people. That is all, unfortunately, the age that we live in and the vulnerability we have.

There was a story in the Washington Post--I believe I talked about it before in this debate, but I will repeat it--about a young man on the other side of the world sitting at his computer at home. He was nothing special, but he was smart and computer savvy. He broke into the computer-controlled system--the cyber system controlling a small water utility in Texas. He had the ability to disrupt the functioning of that entire utility. He didn't do it, thank God. He posted online what he had done--a warning at least, perhaps a bit of bragging that he was able to do it. But think about an enemy who had hostile intent against the United States who would launch similar attacks against several small utilities around the country--or large utilities, for that matter.

Mr. President, last week, the people who are the real experts on cyber space gathered in Las Vegas at the annual--and this is an interesting title--Black Hat Computer Security Conference. They issued yet more warnings.

The conference opened with a very strong warning from Shawn Henry who, until recently, was the Assistant Director of the FBI in charge of the FBI's considerable cyber program. Some people call Shawn Henry the Nation's top cyber cop. He said this at the Black Hat Conference:

The adversary knows that if you want to harm civilized

society--take their water away, do away with their

electricity. There are terrorist groups that are online now

calling for the use of cyber as a weapon.

He went on:

People will not truly get this until they see the real

implications of a cyber attack. For example, people knew

about Osama bin Laden prior to 9/11, but that awareness had

risen by several orders of magnitude after the attacks.

Mr. Henry, former director of cyber programs at the FBI, concluded:

I believe something like that will have to happen in the

cyber world before people truly get it.

Obviously, we all hope and pray not, but at this moment in this debate, in the Senate's consideration of the Cybersecurity Act, there are a lot of inflexible positions that are being taken. People are not willing to come together across ideological and political divides to deal with a problem and a threat that faces us all. I fear that Mr. Henry may well have been right.

Mr. President, I urge my colleagues, don't run the risk that it will take a cyber 9/11 to bring us rushing back here to adopt cyber security legislation. It doesn't take much to imagine what will happen if we are the victims of a major cyber attack. Minor cyber attacks are happening every day. Major cyber thefts occur regularly in America every day. Let's heed the warning and come together over special interests to meet a national security interest and challenge.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I rise to respond to the statement of the majority leader--first, to say that I share his sadness and disappointment that he had to file a cloture motion on this Cybersecurity Act, but I totally agree with the decision he has made. I do not think he had any choice.

I think we are facing on the one hand an urgent, real, and growing threat to our security and our prosperity because we are vulnerable; that is, the privately owned cyber infrastructure of our country is vulnerable to attack from foreign enemies, from nonstate actors such as terrorist groups, from organized criminal gangs who are just out to steal billions of dollars over the Internet, and from hackers.

So we are dealing with a real problem that all the nonpolitical security experts from the last administration, the Bush administration, and this one, the Obama administration, say is rising rapidly to being the No. 1 threat to American security. Over the Internet now, because of our vulnerability over cyber space, a foreign enemy can do us more damage than the terrorists did to us on 9/11. It is that stark. So that is one reality.

The other reality is that Senator Collins and I, Senator Rockefeller and Senator Feinstein, have been working literally for years. As Senator Reid said, because of the urgency of the problem, we decided we cannot just fight for 100 percent of what we thought was best to protect our security. We pulled back; we made it not mandatory. We have standards being set for the private sector to defend itself and us better, and we are creating carrots and not sticks to encourage them to opt into those cyber security standards. That is one reality.

The other reality is that in our government--notwithstanding controversy here--all the Departments are working like a team. As General Alexander, the head of Cyber Command at the Department of Defense says, cyber security is a team sport--the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, the FBI, the intelligence community all working together to protect our country. But they do not have the tools they need, and they urgently need this bill.

Yet the other reality is, in the Senate, where once again we are gridlocked, we cannot even get the consent necessary to take up amendments to vote on. Senator Collins and I have said all along: Just get this bill to the floor. Let the Chamber, the 100 Senators, work their will on germane and relevant amendments, and something good will result for the country. So here is the bill on the Senate floor, and yet Members are blocking us from taking up those amendments. And I am afraid the consequence is that they are running out the clock.

A lot of good work done by those of us who have sponsored the pending legislation, in a very constructive, bipartisan group, led by Senator Kyl and Senator Whitehouse--including three additional members of the Democratic Caucus and Republican Caucus--have worked very hard to bridge the gaps. We have come closer together, but we are not going to work this out unless we can vote.

I wish we had not come to this point, but Senator Reid has made the correct and necessary decision, and it will confront the Members of the Senate on Thursday with a decision: Are you going to vote for cloture to at least allow the Chamber to consider all the amendments on this bill that are germane and relevant or are you going to say: No, I will only settle for exactly what I want, and I do not want this bill; therefore, I am going to vote against cloture and run the risk--which all the independent cyber security experts in our Nation tell us we will run if we do not do anything--that we will suffer a major attack or at least we will continue to suffer major cyber theft.

So I am saddened. We have worked very hard on this. But that is not the point. The point is, there is an urgent necessity to pass this legislation. It ought to be nonpartisan. It ought not to be the victim of special interest pleading. It ought to be all of us coming together, as we usually have on national security matters, to put the national security interests of the American people ahead of special interests, to resolve our differences, to settle for less than 100 percent, and to get something done to protect our country or is this going to be another case where the Senate fails to bridge the gaps, fails to be willing to make principled compromises and therefore fails not only to fix a problem but, in this case, to protect our country from a very clear and present danger of cyber attack and cyber theft?

So Thursday will be the day of decision. I hope perhaps meetings can occur tomorrow in which we can reconcile our differences and agree on a method to go forward. If not, every Member of the Senate is going to have to decide whether they want to block action on cyber security legislation or whether they want to go forward and consider the amendments on both sides that have been filed.

I thank the Presiding Officer and yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Udall of Colorado.) Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. President, it strikes me, as I call you, Mr. President, that I once had the high honor to support a man who shared your name, indeed your father, for President of the United States. So it is nice to be able to call you Mr. President.