Foia Improvement Act of 2015
Floor Speech
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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I want to thank my colleague, the Senator from Vermont, for being together with me on what some people would regard as the Senate's odd couple--people with very different views on a lot of different things but who try to work together on legislation such as this, freedom of information reform legislation, but I can think of others that we worked on as well, such as patent reform and criminal justice reform.
I think most people are a little bit surprised when they see us fighting like cats and dogs on various topics, which we will--and those fights are important when they are based on principle--I think they are a little bit surprised when they see us then come together and try to find common cause, common ground on things such as this, but this is the sort of thing that makes the Senate work. This is the sort of thing that the American people deserve, when Republicans and Democrats, people all along the ideological spectrum, work together to find common ground.
I couldn't agree with the Senator more about, really, a statement of human nature. It is only human nature to try to hide your failures and to trumpet your successes. It is nothing more, nothing less than that. But what the Freedom of Information Act is premised on is the public's right to know what their government is doing on their behalf.
I know some people might think, well, for somebody who is a conservative, this is a little bit of an odd position. Actually, I think it is a natural fit. If you are a conservative like me, you think that the government doesn't have the answer to all the challenges that face our country, that sometimes, as Justice Brandeis said, sunlight is the best disinfectant.
Indeed, I know something else about human nature: that people act differently when they know others are watching than they do when they think they are in private and no one can see what they are doing. It is just human nature.
So I have worked together with Mr. Leahy, the Senator from Vermont, repeatedly to try to advance reforms of our freedom of information laws, and I am glad to say that today we will have another milestone in that very productive, bipartisan relationship on such an important topic. This is Sunshine Week, a week created to highlight the need for more transparent and open government.
Let me mention a couple of things this bill does. It will, of course, as we said, strengthen the existing Freedom of Information Act by creating a presumption of openness. It shouldn't be incumbent on an American citizen asking for information from their own government-- information generated and maintained at taxpayer expense--they shouldn't have to come in and prove something to be able to get access to something that is theirs in the first place. Now, there may be good reason--classified information necessary to fight our Nation's adversaries, maybe personally private information that is really not the business of government, but if it is, in fact, government information bought for and maintained by the taxpayer, then there ought to be a presumption of openness. This legislation will, in other words, build on what our Founding Fathers recognized hundreds of years ago: that a truly democratic system depends on an informed citizenry to hold their leaders accountable. And in a form of government that depends for its very legitimacy on the consent of the governed, the simple point is, if the public doesn't know what government is doing, how can they consent? So this is also about adding additional legitimacy to what government is doing on behalf of the American people.
I just want to again thank the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. We had a pretty productive couple of weeks with passage of the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which the Presiding Officer was very involved in, and now passage of this legislation by, I hope, unanimous consent. Presumption of Openness
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Mr. CORNYN. I thank Senator Leahy for his remarks and for working together on this important bill. This bill is a good example of the bipartisan work the Senate can accomplish when we work together toward a common goal. I agree with Senator Leahy that the crux of our bill is to promote disclosure of government information and not to bolster new arguments in favor of withholding documents under FOIA's statutory exemptions.
I want to clarify a key aspect of this legislation. The FOIA Improvement Act makes an important change to exemption (b)(5). Exemption (b)(5) permits agencies to withhold documents covered by litigation privileges, such as the attorney-client privilege, attorney work product, and the deliberative process privilege, from disclosure. Our bill amends exemption (b)(5) to impose a 25-year sunset for documents withheld under the deliberative process privilege. This should not be read to raise an inference that the deliberative process privilege is somehow heightened or strengthened as a basis for withholding before the 25-year sunset. This provision of the bill is simply meant to effectuate the release of documents withheld under the deliberative process privilege after 25 years when passage of time undoubtedly dulls the rationale for withholding information under this exemption.
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Mr. CORNYN. I thank Senator Leahy for that clarification and agree with his remarks. If there is any doubt as to how to interpret the provisions of this bill, they should be interpreted to promote, not detract, from the central purpose of the bill which is to promote the disclosure of government information to the American people.
17, S. 337.
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Mr. CORNYN. I thank the Presiding Officer.
Again, let me express my gratitude to my partner in this longstanding effort. Since I have been in the Senate, Senator Leahy has worked tirelessly, together with me and my office and really the whole Senate, to try to advance the public's right to know by reforming and expanding our freedom of information laws.
Thank you.
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