Hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee - Executive Business Meeting

Hearing

Today, we have two pieces of legislation on the agenda.

The first bill on the agenda is S. 1169, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
Reathorization Act, which Senator Whitehouse and I introduced in April. Senators Leahy,
Cornyn, Whitehouse and Durbin have joined as cosponsors of this bill, which would update,
revise and extend programs for our nation's most vulnerable children and also strengthen
safeguards for youth who encounter the criminal justice system. We are still making some small
revisions to this legislation, and it will be held over a week.

The second bill on the agenda is S. 1599, the Criminal Antitrust Anti-Retaliation Act of 2015.
This is an important piece of legislation the Ranking Member and I have been working on. I
hope we can report it out of committee today.

Too often whistleblowers who expose waste, fraud and abuse are treated like second-class
citizens. They often risk their careers simply by telling the truth. It happens in both the federal
government and in private business. The legislation Ranking Member Leahy and I have
introduced will protect criminal antitrust whistleblowers from workplace retaliation.

In 2004 Congress passed the Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement and Reform Act. The goal
of that bill was to encourage self-reporting of criminal antitrust activity. However, the bill didn't
provide any protections for innocent third-parties who blow the whistle on criminal antitrust
activity. When this law was reauthorized in 2010, we asked the Government Accountability
Office to examine whether whistleblower protection would be appropriate. The Government
Accountability Office released its report in 2011 and suggested that Congress consider adding a
civil remedy for antitrust whistleblowers who are retaliated against. And that's what this bill
does.

Since we're willing to incentivize folks to report their own bad behavior, surely we ought to
protect those who blow the whistle on the bad behavior of others. In this case, that bad behavior
harms businesses, consumers, and our economy. The bill we introduced this Congress is
identical to the legislation that passed out of committee, as well as the entire Senate,
unanimously last Congress.

Over the past few weeks we've ironed out a few concerns that were raised this Congress. The
Managers' Amendment reflects those changes. This is a good, narrowly focused bill that will
strengthen the enforcement of our criminal antitrust laws. I appreciate the Ranking Member's
work on this legislation, and urge my colleagues to support it.

Source