Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. Speaker, this is the final amendment to the bill, which will not kill the bill or send it back to committee. If adopted, the bill will immediately proceed to final passage, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, it is very timely that we are considering the intelligence authorization bill today, as there have been several troubling incidents in the last few weeks that require an immediate response by the Congress.

I know that Members on both sides of the aisle care deeply about airport security and cybersecurity, and we agree that Congress must do everything possible to keep the American people safe.

Last week, we learned that there were 73 people employed at airports across the country that should have been disqualified for employment because they are on a terrorist watch list. The American people deserve the highest level of security at our airports, and, quite frankly, I believe for all of us the status quo is unacceptable.

While it is easy for us to blame the TSA for this lapse in security, it is shocking that the TSA does not have access and that the current policy does not authorize them to have access to the information that they need so that they can keep us safe, nor do other appropriate agencies.

As much as we agree that reforms are needed at TSA, we should all agree that they should have all the information they need to do their jobs. It is critical that our intelligence and security agencies are sharing information with each other because they have the same mission--keeping the American people safe.

This motion to recommit simply states that the Director of National Intelligence must provide all information on new and changing terrorist threats and the updated terrorist watch list information to TSA and to anybody else in the government that needs to have it.

In addition, to improve information sharing, I think everybody in this Chamber knows that we must address cybersecurity. Cyber attacks are becoming a routine event in the United States today, and it demands an immediate response and investigation. Americans deserve the peace of mind in knowing that their personal information is secure and not vulnerable to hacking by cyber criminals, yet there is a growing list of recent incidents that continues to put the privacy of everyday Americans, our constituents, at risk.

The recent breach of over 4 million records of Federal employees at the Office of Personnel Management and a hack of 80 million records at Anthem Health Insurance and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield are just a few of the prominent examples of this growing threat. And who is paying the price? Working families.

For each cyber attack that you read about in the newspapers, there are many more that are going unreported or, worse, undetected. In fact, some security experts are concerned that China is now building a massive database with the personal information of many, many American citizens.

Furthermore, American companies are increasingly becoming targets of cyber attacks. With a recent report estimating that this is costing our economy more than $445 billion, we simply cannot wait any longer to protect the privacy of everyday Americans from hackers and cyber criminals in Russia and China.

This motion to recommit simply requires the Director of National Intelligence to prioritize efforts to uncover and foil attempts to steal the private, personal information of Americans. This is the least we can do to respond to the attacks on the privacy of the American people. Let's show the American people that Congress is listening.

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