Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to discuss the issue of our veterans as it relates to H.R. 3102. I commend you for working to include important reforms of the SNAP program in this bill. However, some concerns have been raised regarding the bill's impact on veterans who rely on SNAP benefits.

While the eligibility and work requirement reforms included in this legislation are important, I believe they will have unintended consequences on our veterans. Some of our veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan live in a world that is somewhere between battle fatigue and PTSD. That means they may need a little extra time to transition from service to employment than their fellow citizens. And, unfortunately, veterans have been hit hard during the recession. They are unemployed at higher rates than the rest of the country. In Michigan alone, there are 25,000 unemployed veterans staring down at a north of 9 percent unemployment rate.

I ask the chairman if he would commit to work with me in conference to include language ensuring veterans remain protected in the future the way they are protected today. While this would not impact a large number of soldiers, sailors, and marines, it would have a huge impact on the confidence our servicemembers have in their government to keep our promise to them. And that promise is that when you put your life on the line for the United States of America, you will have the support, especially in these difficult economic times, of the people of the United States.

Our Nation's veterans have sacrificed for this country, and it is especially important that in difficult times they have this support.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, I think the American people and, certainly, some well- intentioned Members in this Chamber have legitimate concerns. They should be addressed. We should have time and education on what actually happens in the particular program of which we speak.

I will pledge to each one of you today and give you my word that this fall, when we do the Intel authorization bill, that we will work to find additional privacy protections with this program which have no email, no phone calls, no names, and no addresses.

Fourteen Federal judges have said, yes, this comports with the Constitution; 800 cases around the 1979 case have affirmed the underpinnings of the legality of this case--800. So 14 judges are wrong, and 800 different cases are wrong. The legislators on both Intelligence committees--Republicans and Democrats--are all wrong.

Why is it that people of both parties came together and looked at this program at a time when our Nation was under siege by those individuals who wanted to bring violence to the shores of the United States?

It is that those who know it best support the program because we spend as much time on this to get it right, to make sure the oversight is right. No other program has the legislative branch, the judicial branch, and the executive branch doing the oversight of a program like this. If we had this in the other agencies, we would not have problems.

Think about who we are in this body. Have 12 years gone by and our memories faded so badly that we've forgotten what happened on September 11?

This bill turns off a very specific program. It doesn't stop so- called ``spying'' and other things that this has been alleged to do. That's not what's happening. It's not a surveillance bill. It's not monitoring. It doesn't do any of those things.

What happened after September 11 that we didn't know on September 10--again, passing this amendment takes us back to September 10, and afterwards we said, wow, there is a seam, a gap--was somebody leading up to the September 11 attacks who was a terrorist overseas, called a ``terrorist,'' living amongst us in the United States, and we missed it because we didn't have this capability.

What if we'd have caught it?

The good news is we don't have to what-if. It's not theoretical. Fifty-four times this and the other program stopped and thwarted terrorist attacks both here and in Europe--saving real lives. This isn't a game. This is real. It will have a real consequence. This is hard.

Think about the people who came here before us in this great body-- Madison, Lincoln, Kennedy served here--and about the issues they dealt with and about the politics of ``big'' and of moving America forward while upholding the article I mandate to this House in that we must provide for the general defense of the United States. Think of those challenges. Think of those challenges that they met.

Are we so small that we can only look at our Facebook ``likes'' today in this Chamber, or are we going to stand up and find out how many lives we can save?

Let us get back to the big politics of protecting America and of moving America forward. Soundly reject this amendment. Let's do this right in the Intel authorization bill.

Mr. Speaker, twenty-nine exceptionally bright students from Howell High School in Michigan won a competition on their knowledge of the Constitution. As the winners of this competition, they came to Washington D.C. the last weekend in April to participate in the national finals of the ``We the People . . . The Citizen and the Constitution'' program.

The ``We the People . . . The Citizen and the Constitution'' program, administered by the Center for Civic Education, helps elementary and secondary students build a strong foundation of knowledge of the history and philosophical influences of the Constitution. The knowledge gained from this experience teaches the students about civic responsibility and how to enhance and uphold the democracy of this nation.

The final activity in this program, which took place April 27-29, gave students the opportunity to ``testify'' in a simulated congressional hearing. This experience allows them to utilize and demonstrate their understanding and teaches them how to evaluate, take, and defend positions on issues based on constitutional principles. I am happy to announce that the Howell High team won the Outstanding Unit Six award. Overall the team finished 16th in the nation with Unit One also placing in the top ten and Unit Two finishing 14th overall.

I am honored and proud to recognize the achievements of these students, they are Unit One: Heather Buja, Brody Kutt, Aaron Osborne; Unit Two: David Grusendorf, Lauren Lomasney, Nicole Trudeau, Jason Wisby; Unit Three: Ashley Carignan, Megan Isom, Jeremy Johnson, Sarah Kenney, Francesca Mettetal, Benjamin Schultz; Unit Four: Katherine Beard, Dillon Higgins, Adam Hukkala, Samantha Rineman, Christina Szkrybalo, Jake Tholen; Unit Five: Michael Beard, Grant Bowman, Jarrid Rector-Brooks, Erika Seneca!, Karsyn Textor; and Unit Six: Breanne Casper, Nadja Grauer, Abigail Harrington, Andreja Petrulis, Jonathon Reck. I also recognize Linda Start, the Michigan state coordinator for the ``We the People . . .'' program.

I would also like to applaud Mark Oglesby, the teacher who has led the Howell High School class to this national competition after eleven years of competing in the state of Michigan.

It was a pleasure to meet these students while they were here and I wish them the best in their future endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate Doctor Ken Elmassian on his new position as President of the Michigan State Medical Society.

Doctor Elmassian is truly one of the great medical professionals and a leader in his community. After graduating from the Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine in 1976, Doctor Elmassian completed a residency program in anesthesiology. His impressive career then began in Flint as an attending anesthesiologist at Flint Osteopathic Hospital. After returning to Lansing, he served as the Director of Cardiac Anesthesiology at McLaren Greater Lansing where he held many leadership positions including the chair of the Credentials Committee, member of the Critical Care Committee, vice-chair of the Department of Anesthesia, Medical Staff Secretary, and Chief of Staff as well as a member of the Board of Trustees.

These prestigious positions and titles do not take away Doctor Elmassian's focus and understanding of how patient health and professional development interact within the broader context of our state and local communities. He has held numerous leadership positions in the Ingham County Medical Society (ICMS) as delegate to the Michigan State Medical Society, chair of the Legislative Committee, past treasurer, and past president and continues to serve the ICMS as a member of its Board of Directors.

As an active member of the Michigan State Medical Society, Doctor Elmassian has served

on the Board of Directors and on both the Legislative and Financial Committees of the Board. He also enthusiastically participated for many years on the Committee on State Legislation and Regulations, as well as the MDPAC Board, the Committee on Federal Legislation, as well as other committees and task forces.

Doctor Elmassian's philosophy of engagement puts patients before politics. He believes that organizational relationships, ongoing interaction with state and federal policymakers, and coalition building are integral to developing sound health policy. It is Doctor Elmassian's philosophy that together we will achieve better outcomes for patients and providers.

As a licensed commercial pilot, Doctor Elmassian enjoys vacationing in Glen Arbor in the summer, reading biographies, the opera, mountain treks in New Hampshire, and exercising, all of which he enjoys most with his family, which includes his wife, Georgina and their sons, Joshua and Zachary.

I ask that the House of Representatives join me in thanking Doctor Elmassian for his exemplary service to his community and congratulating him on his installation as President of the Michigan State Medical Society.

Madam Chair, I submit the following letters.

Congress of the United States, House of Representatives,

Committee on the Judiciary,

Washington, DC, April 10, 2013.

Hon. Mike Rogers,

Chairman, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence,

Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Rogers: I am writing concerning H.R. 624, the

``Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act,'' which is

scheduled for consideration in your Committee today. This

bill contains provisions that fall within the Rule X

jurisdiction of the Committee on the Judiciary.

As a result of your having made mutually agreed-upon

changes to the provisions in question, and in order to

expedite the House's consideration of H.R. 624, the Committee

on the Judiciary will not assert its jurisdictional claim

over this bill by seeking a sequential referral. The

Committee takes this action with our mutual understanding

that by foregoing consideration of H.R. 624 at this time, we

do not waive any jurisdiction over subject matter contained

in this or similar legislation, and that our Committee will

be appropriately consulted and involved as the bill or

similar legislation moves forward so that we may address any

remaining issues in our jurisdiction. Our Committee also

reserves the right to seek appointment of an appropriate

number of conferees to any House-Senate conference involving

this or similar legislation, and requests your support for

any such request.

I would appreciate your response to this letter confirming

this understanding with respect to H.R. 624, and would ask

that a copy of our exchange of letters on this matter be

included during floor consideration.

Sincerely,

Bob Goodlatte,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and add extraneous material on the bill, H.R. 624.

Mr. Chairman, while I do not oppose the amendment, I ask unanimous consent to control the time in opposition.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chair, I will support this amendment, and I want to thank the gentlelady from Arizona for her diligence and work in coming down to the briefings and getting well educated on the threat and familiarizing herself with the classified material. Thank you for your extra work on this issue, and thank you for being a strong voice in advocating our solution.

This amendment is important. It adds the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security to the list of entities responsible for creating an annual report reviewing the use of information shared with the Federal Government. The amendment also adds the congressional Homeland Security Committee to the recipients of the report. This adds one more layer of oversight to make sure our civil liberties and privacy are protected in the bill.

I stand in support and appreciate all the efforts of the gentlelady from Arizona, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he might consume to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Ruppersberger).

I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, while I do not oppose the amendment, I ask unanimous consent to control the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I will support this amendment; and I want to thank the gentlelady for her work and interest on this very,

very important issue and her taking the time to be involved in the process of making this a better bill and protecting privacy and civil liberties.

What this bill does is add a Privacy Officer and Officer of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the Department of Homeland Security to the list of entities responsible for producing an annual report assessing the privacy and civil liberties impact of activities conducted by the Federal Government under this bill.

Because the bill requires the Senior Privacy and Civil Liberties Officer of each department or agency receiving information under the bill to participate in the report, I will not oppose this effort to specifically include these officials from the Department of Homeland Security.

I think this is, again, making more clarification, making our privacy and civil liberties protection that much more robust in the bill, and I want to thank the gentlelady for her efforts.

With that, Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

I would thank the gentlelady again and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I support this amendment, which makes very, very clear that nothing in this bill authorizes the government to target an American citizen for surveillance. It's incredibly important.

Though the underlying bill would not allow the surveillance of an American citizen under CISPA, I will support this amendment as a further clarification that settles some Members' concerns and ensures the scope of the bill stays as narrow as we intended it to be.

The amendment is an important myth buster about the intentions of CISPA. I commend Mr. LaMalfa for his leadership on this issue and urge strong support for the LaMalfa amendment.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I support this amendment and agree that we must employ international cooperation to combat the scourge of economic cyber espionage and leverage our official state relationships and alliances to help stop the bleeding.

China's economic espionage has reached an intolerable level, and I believe U.S. officials should demand that it stop at every meeting and engagement we have with Chinese officials. Moreover, the United States and our allies in Europe and Asia have an obligation to confront Beijing and demand they put a stop to this piracy.

Beijing is waging a massive trade war on us all, and we should band together to pressure them to stop. Combined, the United States and our allies in Europe and Asia have significant diplomatic and economic leverage over China, and we should use this to our advantage to put an end to this activity.

I commend the gentleman from Minnesota for offering this amendment, and I urge my colleagues' strong support for it.

Thank you, Mr. Barton, for your work on this.

Last year, you expressed strong reservations about certain privacy protections, and you were willing to sit down and work with us to try to find and make sure that we sent that very clear

message about protecting privacy in this bill. I thought the language was excellent, and it added to that purpose. It really does prevent any information in the bill from being misused by a company for anything other than the bill's strictly defined cybersecurity purpose. But his amendment adds an important clarification to make Congress' intent absolutely clear, to try again to reassure the American public that this is about protecting privacy and civil liberties while protecting the country.

I want to thank Mr. Barton for working with me and my ranking member on this important issue, and I urge my colleagues to strongly support this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, while I do not oppose this amendment, I ask unanimous consent to control the time in opposition.

I want to thank the gentlelady for working with us. It is her concern and a genuine concern, and we've had discussions on this bill about the protection of privacy. It's an important element of the way we move forward to try to protect those companies that you talk about in the networks that protect the jobs of every American and the privacy of every American.

Every piece of this bill is voluntary. No one is pressured or compelled to give anything to the government under this bill. In fact, the bill contains two important protections to drive this point home:

First, the bill prohibits the government from requiring a private sector entity to share information with the government. It is completely, 100 percent voluntary;

Second, the bill prohibits the government from conditioning the sharing of classified cyber threat intelligence with a private sector entity on the provision of cyber threat information back to the government in return. In other words, no quid pro quo, and this is a good protection that I know the gentlelady supports.

I believe that these important provisions make it very clear that every molecule of this bill is 100 percent voluntary, and this amendment, I think, reaffirms the strong language that is in the bill in order to give that next level of confidence on all the privacy amendments we've adopted today and to make it very clear that it is paramount that we protect individuals' privacy in the conduct of sharing cyber threat information.

I, therefore, support the amendment, and would urge the body to do the

same. Again, I thank the gentlelady for her work on this issue and for working with the committee to come to a better place.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I want to thank Mr. Thompson and Mr. McCaul for working so hard on this particular amendment to try and get it right. An agreement was agreed to and then undone, and then agreed to by some involvement who are filled with self-importance beyond this Chamber. We were able to work out those differences and get to a place where we all agreed.

This is an important amendment. This is that civilian face that so many talked about for so long on this bill. And I want to thank both the chair and the ranking member of Homeland Security for working through all of the difficulties to get us to this place where we could present that civilian face and add yet one more reassurance about privacy, civilian liberty protection, and that this is not a surveillance bill.

And I want to thank again Mr. Thompson for your graciousness, your patience for working with us, and Mr. McCaul for your leadership on this issue as well. I urge strong support for the McCaul-Thompson- Ruppersberger-Rogers amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition.

You know, it's the time-honored tradition of this House that we allow the minority of whomever is in the majority to have a motion to recommit, and it's a legislative instrument designed to draw that very bright line down the center of this Chamber. It tends to be music to your ears on the oral presentation and poison to the paper when you get to the details.

I appreciate the gentleman's efforts. Well done, sir; I tell you that.

Clearly, this belongs in employer-employee law. I'm sure the Labor Committee, Mr. Kline, would be delighted to deal with this very serious issue. It doesn't comport to our language, has nothing to do with our bill. But I'll take this opportunity again to say thank you for that very bright line in the center of the aisle, to commend all of the folks on both sides of this aisle who have come together on a bill that is so important to our national security. I'm going to give you a couple of quick examples.

American Semiconductor, a company that lost its intellectual property to China, theft of China. The President one time called American Semiconductor a model of cooperation with China.

Their partner in China stole their intellectual property, canceled their contracts, and almost put them out of business. They were worth $1.8 billion. Now they're worth $170 million. Their stock price is down 90 percent, from a $44 high to just $2 today. They had to lay off 70 percent of their staff.

That's real. Those are real people losing real jobs to intellectual property theft as we speak.

The credit cards in your pockets will get hit 300,000 times by people trying to steal that information today, alone. Each and every one of them.

There's an unnamed large manufacturing company here in the United States. Through cyber espionage, they lost a particular product. They stole the blueprints, took it back to China, and repurposed it to compete in the global market against this particular company. Their estimate: 20,000 manufacturing jobs lost.

This is as serious an issue as we are not prepared to handle as Americans, and it is happening every minute of every single day.

When you look at the weight of those issues of the people before us in this Chamber and what they had to deal with--people like Adams and Henry and Madison--it was the size of their politics that tipped the scale for making really hard, difficult decisions and moving on. I'm going to challenge everybody in this Chamber today to not have those small, petty politics about what gets done and doesn't get done, about what I wanted in there and didn't get in there, about how my feelings got hurt or didn't get hurt.

There are Americans suffering under the weight of loss of opportunity. And those are middle class jobs. That's one rung on the ladder that's taken out for any hope for moving up and prosperity in this country.

We have a constitutional obligation to defend this Nation. We have done it in a way that doesn't allow the government to meddle with the Internet. It protects privacy, it protects civil liberties, and it has the government not even touching the Internet. This is the answer to empower cyber information sharing, to protect this Nation, to allow those companies to protect themselves, and move on to economic prosperity. If you want to take a shot across China's bow, this is the answer.

Reject this motion to recommit and let's pass this bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that in the engrossment of the bill, H.R. 624, the Clerk be authorized to make such technical and conforming changes as necessary to reflect the actions of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill H.R. 624.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank my ranking member and both the Republican and Democratic staffs and the Republican and Democratic members of the Intelligence Committee for 2 years of long hours in negotiated efforts to reach the point that we are.

I want to back up just a little bit and tell you how we got to where we are today. We sat down some 2 years ago when the ranking member and I assumed the leadership of the Intelligence Committee and we looked at the one threat that we knew existed but we were not prepared to handle as Americans, both the private sector and the government. And we knew that we had to do something about this new and growing and misunderstood cyber threat and what it was doing to our intellectual property across the country, what it was doing to the freedom and open Internet that we so enjoy and are increasingly dependent on and the commercial value of our growing economy. And it was at risk. The private sector was at risk because people were stealing their identities, their accounts, their intellectual property, and subsequent to that, their jobs, and people began to question the value of getting on the Internet and using it for commercial purposes. Their trust in the free and open Internet the way we've embraced it in the United States really was at risk.

How do we solve that problem? We knew that nation states were investing millions and billions of dollars to generate cyber warriors to go in and crack your computer network. I don't care if you had intellectual property--those blueprints that made your business successful, or maybe it was your bank account, or your ability to have a transaction. If they could interrupt that, they could do great harm to our economy and to the United States.

We saw nation-states like Russia and China and now Iran and North Korea and others developing military-style attacks to actually do harm to the U.S. economy, to hurt the very men and women who get up every day and play by the rules and think that the Internet would be a safe place for them to interact when it comes to commerce. We want that to continue.

So we sat down and we talked to industry folks, people who are in the business, high-tech industry folks from Silicon Valley, financial services folks from New York City, manufacturers from across the Midwest, who were losing intellectual property due to theft from nation-states like China. We talked to privacy groups. We talked to the executive branch. And over the last 2 years, there were some 19 adjustments to this bill on privacy.

We believe this: this bill will not work if Americans don't have confidence that it will protect your privacy and civil liberties while allowing one very simple thing to happen: cyber threat material, that malware that goes on your computer and does bad things, allows somebody else to take over your computer to attack a bank, allows them to go on your computer and steal your personally identifiable information and use it in a crime, allows them to go into your network at work and steal your most valuable company secrets that keep you alive and build great products here in the United States--could we allow the government to share what they know with the private sector and allow the private sector to share when it comes to just that cyber threat, those zeros and ones in a pattern that equates to malicious code traveling at hundreds of millions of times a second the speed of light, can we share that in a way to stop them from getting in and stealing your private information?

And the good news is the answer is, yes, we can do this. We can protect privacy and civil liberties, and we can allow this sharing arrangement, but not of your identity, not of your personally identifiable information. As a matter of fact, if that's what's happening, it won't work. But at the speed of light, from machine to machine, from your Internet service provider before it ever gets into your network they bounce out the nastiest stuff that's in there that's going to take over your computer, steal your money, steal your personally identifiable information, steal your company secrets. And they can identify that by a pattern and kick it out. They'll say, Something looks bad about that. Can the government take a look at that and say, you know what? This is a Chinese attack, it's an Iranian attack, it's a North Korean attack--let's defend our networks. It's really very simple.

Today, what you see is a collaborative effort. This isn't a bill by Dutch Ruppersberger and Mike Rogers and this is the only way it has to be. We have taken suggestions from all the groups I just talked about, from privacy to the executive branch to industry to other trade associations. And this is the bill that mutually all of those people, representing tens of millions of employees around this country, said this is the way you do this and protect the free and open Internet and you protect civil liberties. And you finally raise that big red sign that tells people like China and Iran and Russia, stop. We're going to prevent you from stealing America's prosperity.

I heard a lot of debate earlier on the rule. I've heard a lot of misinformation. There are people who don't like it for whatever reason, maybe it's conviction, maybe it's politics, maybe it's political theater. And I have a feeling there's a little bit of all of that when they talk about this bill.

This bill does none of the things I've heard talked about in the rule--that

it's an exchange of information that they've never seen with the government. This is not a surveillance bill. It does not allow the national security agencies or the Department of Defense or any of our military organizations to monitor our domestic networks. It does not allow that to happen. We would not allow that to happen.

So some notion that that's happening is just wrong, and some of the folks who are pretending otherwise know it's wrong. This is important.

You know, the Iranians, by public report, are laughing at our shores, looking for weaknesses in our financial institutions. They're not doing it for benevolence. They're doing it to try to create chaos in our markets here at home. This isn't 10 years or 20 years. This is today. It's happening today.

The average credit card in your purse, Madam Chair, will be hit 300,000 times today by bad actors trying to get in and steal your personal information--all those cardholders' information--and use it to commit a crime.

Today, hundreds of millions of times across this great country companies will be besieged by DDoS attacks trying to overwhelm their systems and shut them down and not allow commerce to happen, by people who are trying to get into their networks and steal something valuable.

This bill is that right balance between our privacy, civil liberties, and stopping bad guys in their tracks from ruining what is one-sixth of the U.S. economy. It's that important, and it's important that we get at it today.

We must do more to improve our cybersecurity, and this bill is that vital first step toward that bill. Our intelligence agencies collect important information overseas about advanced foreign cyber threats that could dramatically assist the private sector. That information is the intelligence community's unique value-added when it comes to our cybersecurity.

Unfortunately, we are not getting the full value of those intelligence insights. As I said, the intelligence community is not monitoring the Internet. They don't know what's happening on the domestic Internet. So when there is a nasty piece of source code or malicious source code attacking the private sector, the only way we're going to know that is if we--and these folks are victims of crime, by the way--if we allow them, in a classified environment, to share malicious source codes--zeros and ones in the right pattern--with the government and say, Hey, I am the victim of a crime. Here's what it looks like. Can you help? The government needs to be able to share this threat intelligence so that the private sector can protect its own networks.

The government is going to reciprocate. Our intelligence services go overseas. They find out what the bad guys are doing. They come back and protect the government networks. The problem is, because of laws and policies and procedures, we can't share that with the private sector so they can protect their own networks. Wouldn't it be great if they know what's coming? If you know what you're looking for, you can stop it. That's really what we're talking about doing here, Madam Chair.

We must also modernize the law to give the private sector clear authority to share cyber threat information within the private sector, as well as the government, on a voluntary, anonymous basis.

Again, if you believe in the free and open Internet and you look at all the bills that have been introduced, there is a chomping at the bit in this town to go out and try to put their mitts on the Internet. They want to get in there and start regulating and standards and setting up procedures. They want to get in from business-to-business communication. They want the government to be at every corner of the Internet. I reject that wholly. It's the wrong approach. It will not work. It will bring the Internet to a halt. This is the only bill that doesn't have new mandates, new authorizations for any government involvement in the Internet.

It does something very simple. I'm going to repeat it a lot today, Madam Chair. It allows the government to share zeros and ones in the right pattern with the private sector. And zeros and ones from the private sector, when they know it's malicious and attacking their networks, they share it with the government and say, This is a problem. Can you help me? That's what this bill does. And we've got a long list of privacy protections and restrictions to make sure that that's all that this bill does. The bill achieves all of these important goals that I just walked through, and it will empower the private sector, which already does significant work to protect computer networks, to do even more.

The bill will allow the government to share cyber threat intelligence more widely with American companies in operationally usable form so they can help prevent state-sponsored cyber spies from stealing American trade secrets. It also provides clear, positive authority to allow companies to share cyber threat information with others in the private sector. It also provides authority to allow those companies to share threat information on a purely voluntary and anonymized basis with the government, meaning no personal identifying information.

This bill will not require additional Federal spending. It will not require the creation of a vast new government bureaucracy. It will not impose any Federal regulations or unfunded mandates on the private sector. To the contrary, it will be a critical, bipartisan first step toward enabling America's private sector to better defend itself from the advanced state-sponsored cyber threats in which we live in today.

I'm very proud of the open and transparent process that produced this bill. We've had a great conversation over the last 2 years with a broad range of private sector companies, trade groups, privacy and civil liberties advocates, and the executive branch. I appreciate all the constructive input we have received from the process. This bill has been revised every step of the way in this process, and all of that has been based on discussions with all the groups I just mentioned.

I just want to cover some of the privacy protections we've added along the way.

The bill prohibits the government from requiring private sector entities to provide information to the government. There is nothing in here that has any requirement that the private sector must share cyber threat information. If they don't think it's in their best interest to stop that cyber crime, they don't have to say a word. If they do, they're allowed to share just that cyber threat information with the right agencies in real time. Again, this is machine to machine so that they can deal with the international nature of that threat.

It encourages the private sector to anonymize or minimize the information it voluntarily shares with others, including the government.

In addition, the bill requires an annual independent inspector general audit and report to Congress of all voluntary information sharing with the government. That's another layer of oversight. We have built multiple layers of oversight into this bill so that we can gain the confidence of the public in its purpose, intent, and success.

The bill significantly limits the Federal Government's use of information voluntarily provided by the private sector, including a restriction on the government's ability to search that data--very important.

The bill also enforces the restrictions on the government by levying penalties against the government through Federal court lawsuits for any violations of those restrictions. Again, another layer of oversight.

In the markup, we've made some progress, as well, between the ranking member and the members on the committee negotiating and working out what changes we can make to, again, improve the confidence that people have in this bill. We have improved this bill every step of the way for the last 2 years, and the markup was no different. At our markup, which voted the bill out of committee on a strong 18-2 vote, we adopted five important amendments to further strengthen the bill's protections and safeguards.

We adopted an amendment by Mr. Langevin that made it clear that the bill contained no new authority to allow companies to hack back into networks in other companies. It certainly wasn't intended in the legislation. I thought it was a well-intended amendment. The last thing we want to do is

unleash digital vigilantism across the country and what that might do to our ability to continue to rely on the Internet as an engine of commerce.

We've put in place the private sector use restriction that limits companies' use of information received to only cybersecurity purposes. Mr. Heck and Mr. Himes worked diligently on this amendment to improve the bill and make it very clear that this is just about cybersecurity and cybersecurity purposes.

The bill previously gave the government authorization to create procedures to protect privacy and civil liberties and prevent the government's retention of personal information not necessary to understand a cyber threat. Last week's amendment makes those procedures mandatory. That was by Mr. Himes. We agreed that was the right place to put the burden to make sure there was no personal identifiable information that was not necessary to determine the nature of the attack.

We also struck the bill's authorized government ``national security'' use of information received from the private sector. This would have provided the government flexibility in the future to address advanced cybersecurity threats. In conversations with government national security lawyers in recent months, they assured us that this flexibility wouldn't be required in the near future. In light of that, and given the widespread misunderstanding this language was generating, we thought it was prudent to take it out. Ms. Sewell from Alabama offered that amendment and worked with the committee to make sure it was adopted.

We also added additional oversight in the already very strong oversight structure in the bill to monitor the government's receipt and use of cyber threat information voluntarily provided by the private sector. We added roles for the Privacy and Civil Liberties Board and the individual agency privacy officers to provide additional oversight of the government's use of information received from the private sector under this bill.

I'm also very proud to cosponsor an amendment today with Mr. McCaul and Mr. Thompson of Mississippi, Mr. Ruppersberger and myself that would put a civilian face on the privacy sector cyber information sharing with this government. It was a concern by many. It was something we had long debates and conversations on, and I think we came to an agreement that will at least end that debate. It puts the appropriate civilian face so that, again, people can have confidence in the intention of this bill and what it will do to protect cybersecurity on networks or allow the private sector to protect their own networks and protect civil liberties of Americans.

Other elements of the government, such as the intelligence community, will still receive the information they need to play their important roles, but only after it has been minimized and screened by a civilian entity like the DHS or, in some rare cases, the FBI.

This bill already contains several levels of strong protections to ensure that it improves cybersecurity without compromising our important civil liberties, but this bill will add a significant new privacy protection to that existing structure.

Again, Madam Chair, you can see the level of effort that we are doing here to protect privacy and civil liberties and still have a workable bill that stops nation-states like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea from getting into your networks and stealing your property.

We have yet to find a single U.S. company that opposes this bill. In fact, we have the enthusiastic support of nearly every sector of the economy, because they are under assault from foreign cyber attacks and they need our help. They need it now. Companies and industry groups from across the country, including Intel, the chip maker, IBM, the Internet Security Alliance, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, TechAmerica, TechNet, companies of Silicon Valley, the Financial Services Roundtable, U.S. Telecom, the Nuclear Energy Institute, and the National Association of Manufacturers, just to name a few, have sent the committee letters of support. And that list is growing by the day of people who are encouraged by the very light touch of the government; no new programs, no new authorizations, it's not a surveillance bill. This is the only appropriate way to try to deal with this problem.

By allowing the private sector to expand its own cyber defense efforts and to employ classified information to protect systems and networks, this bill will harness private-sector drive and innovation while also keeping the government out of the business of monitoring and guarding private-sector networks.

This important legislation would enable cyber threat sharing and provide clear authority for the private sector to defend its own networks while providing strong protections for privacy and civil liberties.

Madam Chair, with this great collaborative effort, with the effort facing this country, when you see this many Republicans and Democrats coming together, recognizing the threat and crafting a bill that meets that very important standard, this is the bill we should all stand up and enthusiastically support, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield 3 minutes to a current military officer and great member of the Intelligence Committee, the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Heck).

Madam Chair, I am proud to yield 3 minutes to a leader on the Homeland Security

Committee and the chair of the House Admin Committee, the gentlelady from Michigan (Mrs. Miller).

Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to a former military officer, the distinguished gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Pompeo).

I yield an additional 60 seconds to the gentleman.

I don't have any further speakers, and so I will continue to reserve the balance of my time to close.

Madam Chair, I yield myself 30 seconds.

I just want to make very, very clear--and I thank the gentlelady for working with us, she is a great member of the committee--nowhere in this bill does it allow the military to collect information on private citizens in the United States. This is not a surveillance bill. It does not allow it to happen. That needs to be very, very clear in this debate. It does not allow the military to surveil private networks in the United States. Period. End of story. That's the biggest part of our privacy protections. Again, I want to thank the gentlelady for working with us, but that's just an inaccurate statement, and I want to make that clear for the Record.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield myself the remaining time.

I just want to quickly, Madam Chair, address some of the moving targets on the bill. When we move to change something in the bill, the 19 privacy amendments, people who still decide they don't like it for, again, whatever reason, move their challenges of why they don't like it.

The newest, I think, straw man is that this somehow would violate contract law. Nothing in this bill allows you to avoid contract law. Nothing.

It's a red herring. It is not accurate. Nothing in this bill would allow this to happen. The fact that someone who was in the technical business would say this hurts job growth, that's interesting. The sheer number of companies who support this, from the Business Roundtable to the Financial Services Business Group to TechNet, who has companies like Intel Corporation, Symantec, Juniper, Oracle, EMC, social media, all stand up and say this is the right approach. It will allow us to protect our consumers of our product from foreign governments stealing their private information.

We need to understand what this bill is and what it is not. It is not a surveillance bill. Nothing in here authorizes surveillance. We're going to have an amendment to clarify that, to say it in the law so people can regain that confidence.

We argue, Read the bill. It's 27 pages. It is very clear. It is predominantly protections of your civil liberties, and it also allows companies to voluntarily share malicious source code--and that's source code that's committing a crime against their consumers and their company--with the Federal Government so they can go back overseas and find the Chinese or the Iranians or the Russians or the North Koreans who are perpetrating that crime. This bill is nothing more. It does do that.

Thanks to the ranking member and all who have gotten to this point. I look forward, Madam Chair, to the debate on the amendments, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

I offer this amendment to ensure that library records, firearm sales records, medical records, and tax returns are not included in any information voluntarily shared with the government under CISPA. Though the underlying bill would not permit this information unless it was cyber threat information, I will support this amendment, as it is a clarification amendment that settles some Members' concerns and reflects an amendment that was passed last year overwhelmingly.

With that, Madam Chair, I urge this body's support of this clarification amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, while I do not oppose the amendment, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time in opposition.

Madam Chair, I do not oppose this amendment, which clarifies that classified intelligence shared by the government with a certified cybersecurity entity may only be used, retained, or further disclosed for cybersecurity purposes. The amendment is consistent with language that is already in the bill requiring the DNI, the Director of National Intelligence, to ensure that such classified information is carefully protected.

I appreciate the gentleman's working with us and the ACLU to find an amendment that we could all agree on. I do not oppose this further clarification and would urge support by this body of the amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume to clarify that this doesn't call for investigations of those crimes based on this material, but only protection of the individuals that may--and I want to stress ``may,'' because, again, the PII, the personal identifying information, is stripped clean. But in some rare, rare cases, you might find that you have located the child who has been subjugated to child pornography. In those cases, you don't want to throw that away. There are parents out there begging for us to find this child. It's very rare, it's exceptional, doesn't happen often, but in that very rare case--and, remember, there's no personally identifiable information. It would allow for the protection, not investigation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chairman, while I do not oppose the amendment, I ask unanimous consent to control the time in opposition.

Madam Chairman, I will support the clarification in this amendment.

The amendment clarifies that independent contractors are eligible to receive security clearances to handle cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information shared under the bill, an important clarification amendment.

I appreciate the gentleman's work and effort in offering this amendment; And because the bill was not intended to exclude independent contractors, I will support this important clarification and would reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I just want to address my friend from California, who is a thoughtful member of the intelligence community.

This is a position that much has been debated about: Should the government regulate into the private sector their use of the Internet? I argue that is a dangerous place to go. They will have to promulgate rules; they will have to set what reasonable standards are; they will have to determine what the private sector does on the Internet. That's government in the Internet. One of the things that we decided to avoid in this bill was not to make that mandate, the burden to make sure that no PII, personal identifying information, is mandated in this bill; and it's stripped out at the place where the burden should be: on the government. To make sure it happens, we have four different layers of oversight built in just to make sure what we say that they're supposed to do according to the law, they follow the law--four levels of review.

We shouldn't put the burden on the victims. We don't do it if somebody sticks a gun in your face on the street or robs the bank or robs your home. What's the difference if they're robbing your Internet or stealing your blueprints that steals American jobs? The difference? There is none. Theft is theft.

Let us not move to get the government into regulating. Aspects of the Internet between private to private has been the explosion of growth in one-sixth of our economy. Keep the government out of it.

That's what we decided to do. We came to a very sensible place that protects that PII, that personal identifying information, and allows the government to stay out of regulating the Internet.

I think that's the right prudent course. I think most Americans are with us. Certainly the broad specter of industries who have joined this, from the high-tech industry to the financial services to manufacturing, have said, This is the right way to go. You stay out of our business. We'll share with you when we're victims of a crime.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, while I do not oppose the amendment, I ask unanimous consent to control the time in opposition.

Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), who has been a tremendous leader on cybersecurity efforts on the Intelligence Committee. Much of our work there is classified and it goes unnoticed, and rightly so. I think it would be wrong for us not to commend in public your great leadership and efforts and work with us to try to make sure that this bill does what we say we want it to do. It has been a great privilege and pleasure to work with you throughout that process, and without that leadership, we wouldn't be standing on the floor today. I want to thank the gentleman for that.

I will support the amendment, which clarifies that entities located across multiple localities are intended to be covered by provisions in the bill exempting information shared under the bill from certain disclosures otherwise required of public or quasi-public entities. The amendment replaces the term ``local'' with ``political subdivision.'' Because there is no intention to exclude such entities, this is intended as a clarification, an important clarification, and I will gladly support the amendment, and again thank the gentleman for his work on the totality of both national security issues and cybersecurity.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker and Ranking Member Pallone. I want to thank Anna Eshoo for being such a great partner in what is truly a collaborative effort to get this bill passed and protect our ability to protect so many Americans.

It's been about 10 years, Mr. Speaker, since September 11 and the anthrax attacks that followed. The threat of bioterrorism remains a very real danger, indeed, to the American people. As we have seen in events across northern Africa, our adversaries in al Qaeda and others are still hell-bent on their terrorism acts, and we know that they are interested in chemical and radiological and biological elements to further their political gains.

Fortunately, we have spent the last decade preparing for those chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats by developing and stockpiling numerous medical countermeasures to protect Americans in the event of attack. As a result of these efforts, we now have numerous vaccines and treatments in the Strategic National Stockpile that will save thousands of lives if we're attacked. However, the work to protect Americans against bioterrorism is not finished, and we must pass this bill or the future of America's public health preparedness infrastructure will be in jeopardy.

The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Reauthorization Act is a fiscally responsible bill that represents common ground between the bipartisan House-and Senate-passed preparedness bills in the 112th Congress.

I'd like to take this opportunity again to thank the bipartisan cosponsors--first, Anna Eshoo for her long-term commitment and partnership in this, certainly Mr. Pallone from New Jersey as well, Chairman Upton and Ranking Member Waxman, and all of our great partners in the Senate--for their support in what has been a very productive process to ensure the health preparedness of our States and hospitals for the next flu outbreak or pandemic.

This bill will reauthorize critically important biodefense programs designed to promote the continued development of medical countermeasures against chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats, and would strengthen the Nation's public health preparedness infrastructure. Reauthorizing these programs is essential to how the Nation would respond to these types of attacks.

The bill would also reauthorize programs for 5 years at the fiscal year 2012 appropriated level. The bill would not create a new program nor increase authorization for appropriations for an existing program. This bill would reauthorize and improve certain provisions of Project Bioshield and something we call PAHPA.

Again, I want to thank you, Mr. Speaker. I wish this bill Godspeed for the safety of all of our first responders and those who might be exposed to what we know is a real threat when it comes to the safety, health, and national security of the United States.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (S. 3454) to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2013 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States Government and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes.

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

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I appreciate the opportunity to be here on New Year's Eve.

I first wish to make an announcement with respect to the availability of the classified annex to the bill under consideration for the Members of the House. This is to reinforce a previous announcement I made to Members last evening.

Madam Speaker, the classified Schedule of Authorizations and the classified annex accompanying the bill remain available for review by Members at the offices of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in room HVC-304 of the Capitol Visitor Center. The committee office will be open during regular business hours for the convenience of any Member who wishes to review this material prior to its consideration by the House.

I recommend that Members wishing to review the classified annex contact the committee's director of security to arrange a time and date for that viewing. This will assure the availability of committee staff to assist Members who desire assistance during their review of these classified documents.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased that the House is considering this intelligence authorization bill today, the last day of the year. If passed and enacted, this will be our third intelligence authorization bill since I assumed the chairmanship and my friend the gentleman from Maryland became the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee.

In May, the House overwhelmingly passed, by a vote of 386-28, an intelligence authorization bill which is the same product as the bill that is before us today. I appreciate the ranking member's hard work on this year's bill and that of our colleagues in the Senate to achieve a bipartisan result between the two Chambers.

This is indeed a rare occurrence in this town these days, but this is truly a bipartisan, bicameral product that moves forward when it comes to protecting the United States and putting us in the best national security posture we could imagine.

The intelligence authorization bill is vital to ensuring that our intelligence agencies have the resources and authorities they need to do their important work. The intelligence community plays a critical role in the war on terrorism and securing the country from the many threats that we face.

The annual authorization bill, which funds U.S. intelligence activities spanning 17 agencies, is also a vital tool for congressional oversight of the intelligence community's classified activities. Effective and aggressive congressional oversight is essential to ensuring the continued success of our intelligence community, and therefore the safety of all citizens of the United States. The current challenging fiscal environment demands the accountability and financial oversight of our classified intelligence programs that can only come with an intelligence authorization bill.

The FY 2013 bill sustains our current intelligence capabilities and provides for the development of future capabilities, all while achieving significant savings and ensuring intelligence agencies are being good stewards of our taxpayers' money.

This year, the bill is significantly below last year's enacted budget but up modestly from the President's roughly $72 billion budget request for fiscal year 2013. It is also in line with the House budget resolution, which provides for a modest increase of defense activities above the President's budget.

The bill's comprehensive classified annex provides detailed guidance on intelligence spending, including adjustments to costly but important programs. The bill funds requirements of the men and women of the intelligence community, both military and civilian, many of whom directly support the war zones and are engaged in other dangerous operations designed to keep Americans safe.

It provides oversight and authorization for vital intelligence activities, including the global counterwar on terrorism and efforts by the National Security Agency to defend us from advanced foreign state- sponsored cyberthreats. And I can't tell you enough, Madam Speaker, how in this Chamber we have acted to stand up in the face of a growing cyberthreat not only to government networks but to private networks as well. We have, in a bipartisan way, given the first step on how we stand up our defenses here in the United States to protect us from nation-states like China and Russia--and now Iran--who seek to do us harm using the Internet. We will again aggressively pursue next year, with the help of my ranking member, actions needed, I believe, to protect the United States against what is the largest threat we face that we are not prepared to handle, and that is the growing threat of cyberattack and cyberespionage.

Countering the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is also a critical, important mission of our intelligence community, and we made sure the resources were available to that end, as well as for global monitoring of foreign militaries and advanced weapons systems and tests, and for research and development of new technology to maintain our intelligence agencies' technological edge.

And like the House-passed bill, this bill promotes operating efficiencies in a number of areas, particularly in information technology, the ground processing of satellite data, and the procurement and operation of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms. The bill holds personnel levels, one of the first and biggest cost drivers, generally at last year's levels. Even so, the bill adds a limited number of new personnel positions for select, high-priority positions, such as FBI surveillance officers to keep watch on terrorists, and personnel for certain other programs that will increase cooperation and training with our foreign partners in the critically important role for our intelligence agencies as we move to protect ourselves from threats all around the world.

The bill authorizes increased funding for intelligence collection programs, including increased counterintelligence to thwart foreign spies. It also increases funding for our intelligence community's comparative advantage--cutting-edge research and development. This is an incredibly important investment for the United States. If we are going to continue to lead in the ability to detect before they can do harm to the United States, we have to make the investment in research and development of high-end technological advancement.

While I cannot get into the specifics of a lot of these programs, it's important to mention them as we are going through the process each year in conducting oversight of intelligence activities and making funding recommendations that will help the community meet its mission in the most effective, fiscally responsible way.

The bipartisan fiscal year 2013 intelligence authorization bill we are considering today preserves and advances national security and is also fiscally responsible. The secrecy that is a necessary part of this country's intelligence work requires that the congressional Intelligence Committees conduct strong and effective oversight on behalf of the American people and even our colleagues here in the House. That strong and effective oversight is impossible, however, without the advancement of these bills.

I want to thank all of the members of the committee for their bipartisan effort to find agreement on a bill that saves money and moves forward smartly on protecting the interests of national security for the United States. I want to thank both of the staffs for working together to produce this bill. This truly is a collaborative effort both from staff and Members in this Chamber and in the Senate, proving that you can work in a bipartisan way to accomplish the best interests of the United States and, in this case, particularly when it comes to national security.

One final note: I want to congratulate Mrs. Myrick on her years of great service to the Intelligence Committee. She will be leaving us this year. This will be her last authorization bill that she will participate in. I am pleased to see that a provision she championed in May concerning the protection of the United States information technology supply chain is included in this bill. She has done great work in her time with the committee, and she certainly will be missed. She has been a true champion of the national security interests of this country. She is a great friend of mine, and I wish her well in her new endeavors.

I thank all who participated. I also want to take this opportunity to thank my chief counsel for celebrating his birthday today on the House floor with us on New Year's Eve day. I appreciate that very much.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I inquire if the minority side has a list of speakers.

Then I will continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The gentleman and I have had these conversations, and I respect his position greatly and the work he does in Congress.

I have some disagreements, and I'll tell you why--and I hope that the gentleman will consider voting for this bill today. The amount of oversight that the ranking member and I have increased on programs that may have concerns on behalf of Americans, because we have the same concerns. There are tools that America engages in, including air strikes. Air strikes have been something that we have used since we could figure out how to get something off the ground and throw something at the ground. They have been used as a tool. It's not a policy of the United States; it's a tool of the United States to make America safe.

The amount of oversight that happens--and I will tell you this: if there is any air strike conducted that involves an enemy combatant of the United States outside the theater of direct combat, it gets reviewed by this committee. I am talking about every single one. That's an important thing. There are very strict reviews put on all of this material. There are very strict guidelines about how these air strikes may or may not occur, because we have that same feeling. If people lose faith in the ability of our intelligence services to do their work, then they will be ineffective, and, therefore, we will be less safe.

Our argument has been we want that oversight, we want aggressive oversight, and we want thorough review. I can tell you--and I think you'd be proud--of the very work that we do on the committee to that end. We never really did covert-action reviews, except for sporadically. Now we do regularly, quarterly, and monthly covert-action reviews on this committee to make sure that we get it right, that they get it right.

I would be honored to yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

I appreciate that, and I reclaim my time.

I think this is very important. Again, I personally review and the committee reviews the material that comes to these committees.

There are many in the world who have political agendas about civilian casualties. I can tell you to rest assured that that is a point of review for any activity--I'm talking about any activity--that our intelligence community may or may not engage in. I think that you would be shocked and stunned how wrong those public reports are about civilian casualties, and I say that with all seriousness and with the very thought that every one of these events is reviewed.

If there is an air strike used as a technique anywhere in the world to keep America safe, it is reviewed if it comes within the purview of the intelligence community, both military and civilian, on this committee. Those reports are wrong. They are not just wrong; they are wildly wrong. And I do believe people use those reports for their own political purposes outside of the country to try to put pressure on the United States.

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

In reclaiming my time, I just want to assure the gentleman that every one of these is reviewed, and rest assured that the public reports about civilian casualties are not just a little bit wrong; they are wildly wrong.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Again, I want to thank my ranking member and both staffs on the Intelligence Committee for the long hours, hard work and thorough, detailed work

on the budgets and on the classified annex of this report.

I think it should alleviate many of the good concerns of Mr. Kucinich and others who are concerned about these activities. I think it's important to reiterate that we have the same concerns, which is why we are so thorough and why we have joined together in a bipartisan way to increase the level of congressional oversight and to increase our impact and influence on the policies of the intelligence community in order to make sure it conforms with what this body and what I think the United States of America wants and needs in its intelligence services.

We have now done, as I said before, regularly scheduled covert action, which, I think, should rest assured Americans that it is serious, thoughtful and thorough oversight. For counterintelligence activities, we now have regularly scheduled oversight. Every department is required to proffer its budget request, and we go over it line by line, dollar by dollar, policy by policy to make sure it conforms with the concerns of everyone in this body.

As I said before, these are very brave Americans who are serving in really tough neighborhoods all over the world--trying to collect information, trying to take actionable intelligence to a point that it protects us from harm here at home. They deserve our respect, our encouragement, our high-five and pat on the back when they come home. They want thorough oversight. You wouldn't believe it, but they do. They want to know that the work that they're doing would make America proud for them risking their lives and being away from their families and putting it all on the line to keep America safe.

That's why we agreed to do this in a bipartisan way and to be so thorough in its congressional oversight, because without that--without that confidence, without that faith of the American people that they're doing something on behalf of this great Nation--they will lose their ability to do what they do, and they will lose the courage and confidence that they need to do it in the right way. So that's what this bill reflects.

I understand your concerns. I look forward to our further conversations on this; and in further conversations, I'd like to have the opportunity, if we can arrange this, to give you some examples--a peek behind the curtain as to exactly what goes on in the processes of making sure that we keep the good people safe and that the bad guys are brought to justice. I think you'd be proud of that work. This bill reflects that.

Again, thanks to the ranking member and to the staffs and to the members on both sides of this committee. Thanks to Senator Feinstein and to Senator Saxby Chambliss for their help in putting this bill together.

I hope we'll get a large show of support with a strong vote of bipartisanship for the men and women who are serving at our intelligence posts all around the world today. Let's send this to the President so we can go about the business of keeping America safe and maybe even look at some other details that the Speaker may have interest in dealing with today.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. Speaker, in light of anticipated House consideration of S. 3454, the Intelligence Authorization Act for FY 2013, tomorrow, I wish to announce to all Members of the House that the Classified Schedule of Authorizations and the Classified Annex accompanying S. 3454 will be available for review by Members at the offices of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in room HVC- 304 of the Capitol Visitor Center beginning tomorrow morning at 8:30 a.m.

I recommend that all Members wishing to review the Classified Annex contact the committee's director of security to arrange a time for that viewing. This will assure the availability of committee staff to assist Members who desire assistance during their review of these classified materials.

I urge interested Members to review these materials in order to better understand the committee's recommendations. The Classified Annex to S. 3454 contains the committee's recommendations on the intelligence budget for fiscal year 2013 and related classified information that cannot be disclosed publicly.

It is important that Members keep in mind the requirements of clause 13 of House rule XXIII, which only permits access to classified information by those Members of the House who have signed the oath and met the requirements provided for in the rule.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6672) to reauthorize certain programs under the Public Health Service Act and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act with respect to public health security and all-hazards preparedness and response, and for other purposes.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials in the Record on H.R. 6672.

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

Although it has been more than 10 years since September 11 and the anthrax attacks that followed, the threat of bioterrorism remains a very real danger to the American people. Fortunately, we have spent the last decade preparing for chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear threats by developing and stockpiling numerous medical countermeasures to protect Americans in the event of such an attack. As a result of these efforts, we now have numerous vaccines and treatments in the Strategic National Stockpile that will save thousands of lives if we are attacked. However, the work to protect Americans against bioterrorism is not finished; and we must pass this bill, or the future of America's public health preparedness infrastructure will be in jeopardy.

The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Authorization Act, known as PAHPRA, is a fiscally responsible bill that represents common ground between the bipartisan House and Senate-passed preparedness bills. I would like to take the opportunity to thank the bipartisan cosponsors, including Chairman Upton and Ranking Member Waxman, as well as our great bipartisan partners in the Senate for their support in what has been a very productive process to ensure the health, preparedness of our States and hospitals for the next flu outbreak or pandemic.

The bill will reauthorize critically important biodefense programs designed to promote the continued development of medical countermeasures against threats and would strengthen the Nation's public health preparedness infrastructure. Reauthorizing these programs is essential to how the Nation would respond to a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear attack. PAHPRA will reauthorize critically important programs for 5 years at the fiscal year 2012 appropriated level. The bill would not create a new program nor increase the authorization for appropriations for the existing program.

H.R. 6672 would reauthorize and improve certain provisions of Project Bioshield and PAHPRA. Its passage, I think, is important for the future of our national security here at home.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished chairman and a great leader of this Congress, the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton).

Madam Speaker, I just want to say thank you and congratulate my friend, Anna Eshoo, for the work that she's done on this bill in such a bipartisan way. I think we would not have advanced to this degree without her great help and assistance.

With that, I would yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess).

Madam Speaker, at this time we have no further speakers, and I would continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, there are many things that keep me awake at night as the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The growing threat from chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear attacks not only abroad but here is of growing concern. Instability in governments that possess these materials, an increasing interest from those who would choose to do harm to the United States, desire to get their hands on these materials means that we must prepare ourselves here at home for the unfortunate, I think unlikely certainly in the short term, but possible position of being attacked with these disturbing weapons systems. This is that important step to protect Americans by increasing our stockpiles, and I would urge its passage.

With that, Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate Mr. Dennis Gehringer on his retirement from First National Bank of Howell after a distinguished 44 year career.

Mr. Gehringer's career is truly an American success story. He progressed from errand boy to teller to collector before becoming a Loan Officer and ultimately a Commercial Loan Officer in 1984. In addition to his job duty progression, Mr. Gehringer was also promoted in rank within the bank from an assistant cashier to assistant vice- president then to vice-president and retires as a Senior Vice President, a rank he has held since 1989, among the highest ranking officers in the bank hierarchy aside from the Chief Executive.

Although Mr. Gehringer gained significant professional accomplishments during his tenure, when asked, he said that he was most proud of the people that he and First National have helped over the years. From helping people start a business or just helping get a customer through a rough patch, Mr. Gehringer demonstrated the real value of a community banker with his ability to build relationships.

Mr. Gehringer has given back to the community where he has lived his entire life. He is the past President of the Livingston County Coin Club; an active participant with the Howell Chamber of Commerce; a Livingston County United Way Volunteer, and active in his church, St. Joseph's, as a Men's Club member and former Endowment Fund Chair. Mr. Gehringer also served on the Salvation Army board and as a Scout Master. Mr. Gehringer's community involvement was specifically recognized and celebrated on two different occasions. In 2001, he received the Charles W. Itsell Volunteer of the Year Award from the Livingston County United Way. Then, in 2003, the Howell Chamber of Commerce presented Mr. Gehringer with its Citizen of the Year Award.

Mr. Gehringer and his wife Laurie, who met at First National, have two children and one grandchild. Mr. Gehringer says he is most looking forward to spending more time with family, playing more golf, and continuing to enjoy the people and places of Livingston County.

I ask that the House of Representatives join me in thanking Mr. Gehringer for his exemplary service to his community and congratulating Mr. Gehringer on his retirement and we wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 5949, which would reauthorize the FISA, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments Act of 2008, or FAA, as we refer to it, for 5 years.

The FAA is currently set to expire at the end of the year. If that happens, the government will lose a critical tool for protecting Americans against foreign threats, including terrorists, and, as a result, will lose significant intelligence on these foreign targets. I want to emphasize, Mr. Speaker, foreign targets.

We were all reminded yesterday, while looking back on the horrible events of 9/11, of the threat that we face from those seeking to do us harm. Let me reassure you that even though we have been able to disrupt numerous plots over the years, our enemies want to do just as much harm today as they did then, and they just want to do it as badly as they did even 11 years ago.

The original FAA that is being reauthorized was sponsored by Representative Reyes in 2008, my Democrat predecessor, as chairman of the Intelligence Committee. It also reflected the work of then leader, Mr. Hoyer, to help develop the final product under the previous majority. I have been pleased to work in a collegial, bipartisan manner with my ranking member, Mr. Ruppersberger, on this clean reauthorization bill as well. In fact, the Intelligence Committee reported this bill out unanimously, which doesn't happen all that much around this place.

The administration has also indicated to us that reauthorizing the FAA is its highest national security legislation priority, and on Tuesday issued a statement strongly supporting this bill. I hope we can all recognize this is

an issue that is being driven by our national security needs and not by politics.

A few key points on the FAA. First, if we let this authority expire, we will lose a critical intelligence collection tool against foreigners on foreign soil.

If that happens, we lose information on the plans and identities of terrorists, information about the functioning of terrorist groups like al Qaeda and others, information on the intentions and capabilities of weapons proliferators, information on potential cyberthreats to the United States and other critical intelligence about foreign adversaries that threaten the United States of America.

Second, it is important to remember that this authority is focused on allowing the government to conduct intelligence collection targeting foreigners located outside of the United States--I'm going to say that again, Mr. Speaker, targeting foreigners located outside of the United States--and not on Americans located in the United States or anywhere else in the world.

Third, the FAA is subject to a robust oversight structure, including Congress, and I can assure you that the Intelligence Committee takes this responsibility extremely seriously. We have had numerous hearings, Member briefings, and staff briefings since the passage of FAA in 2008. Before the government can collect any intelligence under the FISA Amendments Act, a Federal judge must approve the government's surveillance process, including the targeting and minimization procedures required under the law.

One final point, in addition to the primary authority in FAA to target foreigners located abroad, it actually enhanced the civil liberties protections for Americans by requiring a court order to target an American for collection outside of the United States. Before 2008, the government only needed the Attorney General for approval. If this law expires, so do these enhanced civil liberties protections.

Mr. Speaker, contrary to what some may say, FAA is not about domestic surveillance and it does not authorize a sweeping dragnet of collecting on American communications. This is about foreigners on foreign soil. It is about giving our intelligence professionals the tools they need to quickly and effectively intercept the communications of those outside the United States who seek to do us harm.

Let's not forget the nature of the threat that, almost 11 years ago to the day, took so many lives in such a horrific way. And the examples that we see just yesterday of the ongoing target of U.S. civilians, if they're in the United States or they're in places like Libya, continues to be a threat to the personal safety of those we ask to stand in harm's way and protect and promote the values of the United States.

This is a critical piece of legislation supported by both parties and the President of the United States. Mr. Speaker, I would urge all of our colleagues here to stand united in the defense of the United States and support H.R. 5949.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 2 minutes to a friend of mine, the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson).

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

It's just important to remember that the due process protections of the United States are alive and well here. This is one of those programs that has an inordinate amount of oversight to make sure that we are not targeting Americans. Not only does the committee participate, but the Department of Justice has a separate review. There are strong internal reviews.

In the odd case where an American is intercepted, there are very strict procedures on how to destroy that information and correct that problem, and it has not happened, hardly frequently at all is the good news, which is why I think there is such bipartisan and strong support of our effort again to collect on foreigners who are outside of the United States, incredibly important.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers. I am going to continue to reserve and allow the gentleman from Maryland to close.

I reserve with the right to close.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my ranking member, Mr. Ruppersberger, for the fine bipartisan effort on this important national security issue.

I think the people at home can rest assured that we have taken every precaution to protect our civil liberties, which we all cherish in this Nation, and still have the ability to collect on foreigners overseas seeking to harm this great country, and I want to thank you for your work and commend the President for his letter of support of our bipartisan effort on this important national security issue.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a true American Hero, a man whose focus, drive, intellect and leadership were responsible for spawning innovative systems that have saved lives and ensured the security of our great nation.

Pedro Luis Rustan, known as ``Pete'' to all within the Intelligence Community, was an extraordinary American. His passing leaves a void within the Intelligence Community and for all his family and friends.

Pete may not have appreciated my remarks because he was never concerned about who received the credit, only that the job was done. However, he was a man who was grateful for the gifts that God gave him and he could think of no greater use for these gifts than service of the Nation that had blessed him and his family with freedom.

Pete was born in 1946 in a small city 40 miles from the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. In August 1967, he made a dramatic escape from Communist Cuba with his father, two sisters, and brother-in-law. They fled to a railway, climbed inside a railroad boxcar and jumped from the moving train as it approached the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo. Pete and his family swam and waded through a snake-infested swamp before reaching multiple tall security fences topped with barbed wire. Pete carried his younger sister on his back over the fences. After being picked up by a Navy patrol craft they sought and received political asylum.

In the early 1970s Pete studied electrical engineering at the Illinois Institute of Technology, and was quickly drafted into the Air Force. In the Air Force he served first as an enlisted man, and then successfully completed Officer Candidate School, becoming a U.S. Air Force officer. He eventually went on to graduate school at the University of Florida, from which he received a doctorate in electrical engineering in 1979.

During his 26-year career with the U.S. Air Force, Pete ran several advanced technology space programs and was mission manager for a joint NASA--Defense Department project, the Clementine mission, a small, low- cost spacecraft that made history by mapping the surface of the Moon and discovering ice at its south pole. Daniel Golden, a former NASA director, said that Pete always ``seemed to take on things that were impossible.'' He retired from the Air Force in 1997 with the rank of colonel but continued to deliver intelligence systems that accomplished the seemingly impossible with National Security technical systems.

After retiring from the Air Force, Pete consulted on commercial space ventures and for federal intelligence agencies. He was on an advisory board that recommended changes at the National Security Agency, one of the country's largest intelligence agencies. As Michael V. Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency said of Pete, ''He was hands-down the most valuable member of that board. He was creative. He was energetic. He was candid without ever being caustic or unkind.''

After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Pete returned to the government, leading research efforts in satellite reconnaissance for the Defense and Intelligence Communities. He held numerous positions at the National Reconnaissance Organization, NRO, including Director of the Advanced Systems and Technology Directorate, Director of the Ground Enterprise Directorate, Director of Small Satellite Development and most recently, Director of the NRO's Mission Support Directorate. He retired from the NRO officially in October 2011. In each instance he enhanced the capability of the organization and demonstrated his well earned reputation as a technical innovator and advocate of streamlined acquisition principles in space programs. He was a true asset to the NRO and to our country.

Pete contributed to improving the world outside of work as well. He personally led missions to a small impoverished town in Honduras where he provided shoes, developed aqueducts and tilapia fish farms. In his private and personal life he also was one who accomplished the seemingly impossible.

On June 28, Pedro ``Pete'' Rustan lost his battle with cancer but won his eternal reward after 65 vibrant years, passing away at his home in Woodbridge, Virginia. He is survived by his wife, Alexandra, and children, Peter and Amy. He leaves behind a legacy of intelligence systems and people whom he mentored to continue to achieve the seemingly impossible in his memory. He will be greatly missed in the Intelligence Community and by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.