Joseph Lieberman

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration of S. Res. 525 and that the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I further ask that the amendment offered by the Senator from Florida, Mr. Nelson, which is at the desk, be agreed to; the resolution, as amended, be agreed to; the preamble be agreed to; the motions to reconsider be made and laid upon the table, with no interviewing action or debate, and that any statements relating to the measure be printed in the Record at the appropriate place as if read.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, the majority leader filed cloture on the cyber security bill today. As a result, the filing deadline for first-degree amendments to S. 3414 is 1 p.m. on Wednesday. I want to indicate to my colleagues that we continue to work on an agreement on amendments to the bill which I hope we can reach. If no agreement is reached, the cloture vote will be on Thursday.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. If there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it adjourn under the previous order.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn until 9:30 a.m., on Wednesday, August 1; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, and the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day; that the majority leader be recognized, and the first hour be equally divided and controlled between the two leaders or their designees, with the Republicans controlling the first half and the majority controlling the final half.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, may I ask what the pending business is now?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I rise to speak on the motion to proceed to S. 3414, which is the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. This cloture motion has been filed that will ripen sometime tomorrow, but I think it is the hope of Members on both sides of the aisle that we can proceed to vote on the motion to proceed today. I am hopeful colleagues on both sides of the aisle will vote to proceed, because although there continues to be some disagreement about the content of this bill and different approaches taken, I don't think there is any Member of the Senate who doesn't appreciate the fact that our country is currently under cyber attack every day, our businesses are victims of cyber theft every day, with the consequential loss of billions of dollars' worth of investments and, I would say, tens of thousands of jobs going elsewhere. So this bill is not a solution in search of a problem; it is an attempt to solve a problem. Although there may be differences still on different components of the bill, I hope everybody will join together in at least saying: Let's proceed to the debate, and let's see if we can reach a conclusion before we leave for the August break next week. I will report in this regard that this morning there was a second meeting held of those who have been most active in supporting different legislation that deals with the cyber threat to America. Senator Collins and I, Senator Feinstein, Senator Rockefeller, Senator Carper-- who introduced the pending matter, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012-- Senators Hutchison and Chambliss were there today, Senator Coats--who introduced the so-called SECURE IT Act--and then a group of peacemakers-bridge builders, Senators Kyl and Whitehouse, Senator Graham, Senator Coons, Senator Blumenthal, and Senator Coats, again, who sits in two of the three groups, which makes him a superbridge builder. It was a very good, substantive discussion, in which we were all fleshing out the details of the various proposals. We are seeing some areas where I think we feel we have a real opportunity to agree and some areas where it may be more difficult, but we haven't given up. But overall, I would say this process has been very encouraging. Basically, all the leading parties in the Senate and all the Senators are around the same table talking, which is very constructive to have happen. I appreciate that. To me, it is more reason to vote to proceed. I wish to begin by thanking the aforementioned Senators Collins, Rockefeller, Feinstein, and Carper, who joined me in sponsoring S. 3414, which I wish to talk about a bit now in this opening statement. I also wish to thank the majority leader, Senator Reid, for seeing the cyber threat to America in all its urgency and reality last year, urging Senator Collins and me to go forward and work on legislation, to work across party lines to get a bill out and now to thank Senator Reid for keeping his commitment to bring this bill to the floor, even though, as always, there are clearly other important issues vying for this body's attention. But, to me, there is none more important to America's security and prosperity than this topic, which is cybersecurity and the cybersecurity bill that is now pending. I would like to make three points in my remarks to my colleagues. First is that the danger of cyber attacks against the United States is clear, present, and growing, with enemies ranging from rival nations to cyber terrorists, to organized crime gangs, to rogue hackers sitting at computers almost anywhere around the world. The pending matter, S. 3414, Cybersecurity Act of 2012, responds directly and effectively to this danger. Second, this bill has been a long time in coming. In this regard, I note a letter sent out by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce overnight that, I must say, I found very disappointing overall because, if I may state it affirmatively, it doesn't embrace the same spirit I see Members of the Senate embracing; that although we have different positions, we can't afford to be inflexible. We can't be closed to compromise because of the urgency of the threat to our country and because of the general principle that has not been as evident in the Senate and Congress generally as it should be in recent years; that we never get anything done unless there is some compromise. I am not talking about compromise of principle. But if we go into every negotiation saying, I will only accept 100 percent of what I want, ultimately we are not going to get anything, if we can get 80 percent, 75 percent, 60 percent-- particularly when we are dealing with a threat to the security of the United States and our prosperity as real as the cyber threat. I hope our friends at the Chamber will reconsider the tone of their opposition and come to the table to talk with us about their concerns and see if we can't reach common ground because there is a larger national interest at stake than represented by any particular group or any individual Senator or their point of view. In their letter of July 25, 2012, signed by R. Bruce Josten, executive VP for government affairs of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Chamber says that: . . . S. 3414, the ``Cybersecurity Act of 2012,'' which has been rushed to the floor without a legislative hearing or markup. The bill was introduced just last week and remains a moving target; new and modified provisions of the bill are expected to be released in the coming days. If they are, it is going to be a result of the give-and-take compromise that leads to legislation that is going on now. But I wish to respond to the idea that this came out of nowhere. This bill has been a long time in coming. As a matter of fact, I went back and looked at the records. I attended my first hearing on cybersecurity as a member of the former Senate Governmental Affairs Committee--the predecessor to the current Homeland Security Governmental Affairs Committee--under the leadership of then-Chairman Fred Thompson. That was back in 1998, 14 years ago. I have been concerned ever since about the growing threat of cyber attack. Along with my dear friend and colleague on the committee, Senator Collins, our committee has held multiple hearings on cybersecurity; that is, the new Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, and we weren't alone. There have been numerous hearings over the past several years and markups by multiple committees in both the Senate-- many held by our colleagues Senator Rockefeller and Senator Feinstein in the Commerce and Senate Intel Committees--as well as in the House. Those deliberations and discussions were informed by numerous government and private sector studies on the dangers that lurk in cyberspace. So this bill didn't come out of nowhere. We reported a bill out of our committee, with a lot of hearings and an open markup. We began, at the majority leader's direction, to negotiate with the other committees, particularly Commerce and Intel. We reached agreement, which is essentially what this bill is. Incidentally, we then altered this bill--Senators Collins, Feinstein, Rockefeller, and I, in response to the bipartisan Kyl-Whitehouse group recommendations--to make it nonmandatory but still significant. So this bill has been aired and worked on and is ready for action. But more to the point, the Senate needs to act. That is why it is so important we adopt the motion to proceed, because this threat is real, dangerous, and growing every day. Third, this bill, S. 3414, is the result of bipartisan compromise. It is both bipartisan and it is the result of compromise. We cosponsors, as I mentioned, gave up some elements we thought were important that we had in our original bill. Given the cyber threat, we actually thought it was more important to move forward with a bill that will significantly strengthen our cybersecurity, even though it doesn't do everything we want it to do and thought should be done. We didn't want to lose the chance to pass cyber legislation this year that could prevent a cyber 9/11 attack against the United States before it happens, instead of rushing in the midst of mayhem back to the Senate and House to adopt cybersecurity legislation after we suffer a major attack. As I said, we have incorporated ideas from Senators Whitehouse, Kyl, and the other Members whom we were working with quite diligently to help us find common ground. I wish to explicitly and enthusiastically thank them for their efforts. We have heard and responded to Senators Durbin, Franken, Wyden, and others, and advocacy groups across the political spectrum from left to right, who have pressed for greater protections for privacy, personal privacy in this bill. We have made substantial changes designed to address concerns from stakeholders and colleagues. I am confident we can work through more issues as we debate the bill on the floor. But the main point here, if I may use quite a familiar expression around here with a slightly unique follow-on phrase, I hope: If in our quest for cybersecurity legislation we allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good, we are going to end up allowing our enemies to destroy a lot that is good in the United States of America. We have to act together for the good of the Nation, get the debate started and bring amendments to the floor for an up-or-down vote. Let me stress at this point that Senator Reid, the majority leader, has been quite clear that his desire, his intention is to have the process be an open amendment process so long as the amendments are germane and relevant to the topic of the bill, cybersecurity, not just open to any amendment about any subject. I want to go back over these three points and talk about them in a bit more detail. Let me start with the reality of the threat. I want to read from a letter sent to us recently by some of our Nation's most experienced security leaders from both Republican and Democratic administrations. Here is a letter to the majority and minority leader, signed by former Bush administration Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff; former Bush administration Director of National Intelligence ADM Mike McConnell; former Bush Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; former NSA and CIA Director General Michael Hayden; former vice chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Marine Gen. Jim Cartwright; and former Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn. I quote from the letter. It is quite an impressive group, clearly bipartisan--nonpartisan. We write to urge you to bring cybersecurity legislation to the floor as soon as possible. Given the time left in this legislative session and the upcoming election this fall, we are concerned that the window of opportunity to pass legislation that is in our view critically necessary to protect our national and economic security is quickly disappearing. These security leaders went on to say: Infrastructure that controls our electricity, water and sewer, nuclear plants, communications backbone, energy pipelines and financial networks must be required to meet appropriate cybersecurity standards. We carry the burden of knowing-- It is really chilling. We carry the burden of knowing that 9/11 might have been averted with the intelligence that existed at the time. We do not want to be in the same position again when ``cyber 9/11'' hits--it is not a question of whether it will happen--but when. That is not a statement from a Member of the Senate or an advocate on one side or the other. These are proven national security leaders who have worked in administrations of both political parties. ``It is not a question of whether a cyberattack will happen,'' they say, ``but when.'' Many others have issued similar warnings. Secretary of Defense Panetta has said the next Pearl Harbor-like attack against America will be launched from cyberspace. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey has warned: ``A cyberattack could stop our society in its tracks.'' Just this month, National Security Agency Cybercommand Chief Gen. Keith Alexander blamed cyber attacks for: ``The greatest transfer of wealth in history.'' General Alexander estimated that American companies lose about $250 billion a year through intellectual property theft through cyberspace; $114 billion to theft through cyber crime; and another $224 billion in downtime the thefts caused. We talk a lot here in the Senate these days, as we must, about how we protect American jobs. It turns out that in creating more cybersecurity in our country we are also going to protect tens of thousands of jobs which otherwise are going to end up elsewhere in the world because they will have stolen the industrial secrets that lead to the new industries that create those jobs. General Alexander concluded this part of the statement he made by saying: `` . . . this is our future disappearing before us.'' Cyber attack. These fears are not speculative. Let me go through a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal that President Obama wrote. In a future conflict, an adversary unable to match our military supremacy on the battlefield might seek to exploit our computer vulnerabilities here at home. Taking down vital banking systems could trigger a financial crisis. The lack of clean water or functioning hospitals could spark a public health emergency. And as we have seen in past blackouts-- Which were caused by natural disasters, for instance-- the loss of electricity can bring businesses, cities and entire regions to a standstill. These fears are not speculative. They are not theoretical. They are based on existing facts and existing vulnerabilities. Consider, if you will, this recent story in the Washington Post that detailed how a young man living an ocean away used his computer to hack into the control panel of a small town water utility in Texas. It took him just 10 minutes and required no special tools or training. The utility had no idea of what had happened until the hacker posted screen shots of his exploit online as a warning of how vulnerable all of us are. Imagine if terrorists decided to target a string of small utilities across the United States and either cut off fresh water or dumped raw sewage into our lakes, rivers, and streams. We would have an environmental and economic disaster on our hands. But this is a real possibility. This brings me to my second point. We need to act and act now. The challenge of cybersecurity has been studied for a long time and there is no need for more studies or hearings or delay, as the Chamber letter requests. I went back to the Congressional Research Service. According to a report that they issued, in the 112th Congress alone there have been 38 hearings and 4 markups in the House and 33 hearings in the Senate on cybersecurity. In the 112th Congress, the Judiciary Committee also held a markup on the Personal Data and Privacy Security Act and in previous Congresses the Senate has held markups on cybersecurity legislation in five separate committees under regular order, all of which is included in the bill that is pending before us today. Since 2005, the Senate Homeland Security Committee alone has held 10 hearings with 48 witnesses testifying and took questions over a total of 18 hours. Look at the bill's cosponsors. S. 3414: Senators Collins and I, along with Senators Feinstein and Rockefeller, have held numerous hearings, forums, and cybersecurity demonstrations for Members and staff. All these hearings and briefings were further informed by, according to the CRS, a total of 60 governmental reports totaling 2,624 pages produced by the GAO, the Department of Defense, the OMB, the Department of Energy, and other Federal agencies. This doesn't count the many more reports from the private sector--computer security firms such as SEMANTEC and think tanks and academic institutions such as MIT and the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This matter is ready for action. I go back to a 1936 book Winston Churchill wrote, ``When England Slept.'' Not ``Why England Slept'' but ``When England Slept'' . He asked his colleagues in the Parliament who were refusing at that time to act decisively to counter the rise of German military power despite its clear threat to Europe--Churchill said: ``What will you know in a few weeks about this matter that you do not know now . . . and have been not been told any time in the last six months?'' I think the same can be said now. That is why I think it is so important to adopt the motion to proceed and get something done before we leave Washington for the August break. Finally, in the interest of moving forward, my cosponsors and I, as I indicated earlier, have made a major compromise in the bill we are bringing to the floor in terms of how we deal with critical cyber infrastructure. Here again, we are talking not about small businesses around America, we are talking about powerplants, energy pipelines, water systems, financial systems that we all depend on for our banking, water--sewer systems, for instance--that if sabotaged or commandeered in a cyber attack could lead to catastrophic deaths and economic and environmental losses. In our original bill, Senators Collins, Feinstein, Rockefeller, and I called for mandatory cyber safety standards for all critical infrastructure after those standards were developed in consultation with the private sector. We did not think this was a unique or onerous requirement but our responsibility in carrying out our constitutional oath to provide for the common defense. Since antiquity, as a matter of fact long before the American Constitution, societies have chosen to adopt safety standards to protect their citizens, particularly safety standards for physical structures starting with the homes we live in, but also our offices, factories, and critical infrastructure such as powerplants and dams. Today we call these building codes. Can you imagine if there were no building codes, the danger that people would take when they walked in our office buildings or factories or apartment houses or residences? I cannot resist saying these building codes in some sense are as old as the Bible. Here I go to Deuteronomy 22:8 which says: When you build a new house, you shall build a parapet for your roof, so you shall not bring the guilt of blood upon your house if anyone should fall from it. There is direct relevance in a very different context from the Biblical context to what we are trying to do here, which is to build a kind of parapet around our cyber systems so we do not bring the guilt of blood on us because somebody has attacked through those cyber systems. The reason we have done this over antiquity in the physical world is obvious. If one of our homes catches fire because of the wiring not up to code or it happens in an apartment building or an office building, the people in it are endangered, obviously, but also the lives and homes of our neighbors, the community are in danger as well. Numerous bipartisan national security experts have been in total agreement that mandatory requirements are needed to protect our national and economic security from the ever-rising risk of cyber attacks. But it was this provision, seen in the context of regulation of business while we were seeing it as homeland security, protecting homeland security, that was the most controversial in our compromise bill and drew the most criticism. To be more specific about it, it threatened to prevent passage of any cybersecurity legislation this year which, for the sponsors of this bill, was simply an unacceptable result. Following the rule that no matter how deeply one believes in the rightness of a provision in a bill, we agreed to change it because there is so much else that is critically important in our bill that will protect America's cybersecurity. So we withdrew the mandatory provision and created all the standards for performance of how the most critical infrastructure, cyber structure, would protect itself. But then we left it voluntary; however, we did create some incentives. Let me be clear that the decision is to be what we all want it to be, which is as a result of a collaborative, cooperative effort that businesses that operate the most critical cyber structure, such as, electrical systems, water systems, transportation, finance, communications, will want to comply. Under our revised bill, private industry, which incidentally owns as much as 85 percent of the Nation's critical infrastructure--that is the American way, and that is great. But when that 80 to 85 percent of our critical infrastructure can well and probably will be the target of not just theft but attacks by enemies of the United States, we have to work together to prevent that. In our bill we give the private sector the opportunity to develop a set of cybersecurity practices which will then be reviewed by the new National Cybersecurity Council that our bill creates. It will be chaired by the Secretary of Homeland Security and made up of representatives of the Department of Defense, Commerce, Justice, and the intelligence community, and presumably the Director of National Intelligence. This National Cybersecurity Council will review the standards agreed upon by the private sector and decide whether they are adequate to provide the necessary level of cybersecurity for the American people. Owners of critical infrastructure will then have a decision to make. Do they want to essentially opt into the system or do they want to not do so? That is up to them under the bill as is put before them because it is voluntary. If they opt in--and this is what we hope will be an incentive--they will be entitled to receive some benefits, the most significant of which will be immunity from certain forms of liability in case of a cyber attack. We also offer expedited security clearances and prioritize technical assistance from our government on cyber questions from those critical covered cyber-infrastructure companies that opt into the system. I think our colleague from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, has a very good metaphor for what we are trying to do. As he said, we are trying to build Fort Cybersecurity where we essentially become part of a system that provides greatly enhanced protection from cyber attack and cyber theft, but we are not compelling anybody to come into Fort Cybersecurity. We are encouraging them to do so, and we are giving them some incentives to do so. Of course, we hope that sound and wise administrators of those companies and forces of the marketplace will encourage them to make a decision to come into Fort Cybersecurity. Finally, our bill contains information-sharing provisions, which I think most people who have looked at the threat of cyber attack and cyber theft think are very important. These provisions will allow the private sector and government to share threat information between each other and among themselves. In other words, one private company can share information about an attack with another private company to see if the attack is part of a broader pattern. For instance, they can talk about where it may be coming from to raise their cyber defenses against it, and to do so without fear of-- well, for instance, any trust action by the State or Federal Government. Also, very often companies that believe they have been a victim of cyber attack will go to the Federal Government, the Department of Homeland Security, or the National Security Administration for help; however, a lot of them don't. Part of the reason for that is they fear, among other things, they may compromise the privacy of their records. Others, quite frankly, don't want to admit they have been attacked. This is a real problem. I will come back to that in just a moment. We give protection from liability for companies that share their information with the government. Yet there were many individual Senators and many people from outside groups who are focused on privacy who were concerned that in doing this we were opening up a method by which parts of our Federal Government could basically violate privacy restrictions, take personal information off of the information shared by a private company with the government, and they be the victim of some kind of public intrusion or even law enforcement. So I think we negotiated a good series of agreements on this which, one, will ensure that companies who share cybersecurity information with the government give it directly to civilian agencies and not to military agencies. That was a concern people had. Second, we ensure that information shared under the program be reasonably necessary and described as a cybersecurity threat. In other words, not just wantonly share it because some of this is private information. Third, we restrict the government's use of information it receives under the cyber information-sharing authority so that it can be used only for actual cybersecurity purposes and to prosecute cyber crimes with two exceptions broadly agreed on: One is that the information can be used to protect people from imminent threat of death or physical harm; and, two, to protect children from serious threats of one sort or another. Next, we would require annual reports from the Justice Department, Homeland Security, the defense and intelligence community, and inspectors general to describe what information has been received in the previous year, such as, who got it and what was done with it. Finally, we allow individuals to sue our government if the government intentionally or willfully violates the law; that is to say, the law relating to these privacy protections. I am very pleased by these changes we made. I want to say this loudly and clearly: This bill is about cybersecurity. But in trying to elevate our cybersecurity, we didn't want to compromise people's privacy or their freedom. So what I have just read was intended to assure that this bill, as best we could, would not compromise privacy or freedom rights. Then I took this set of compromises to the most important people in our government who are focused on cybersecurity--the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, the FBI--and they all said, I am pleased to say, these privacy protections will not inhibit their ability to protect America's cybersecurity. They can live with these without the slightest diminishing of their focus, which understandably is not privacy but it is cybersecurity. They said these amendments to our original bill don't inhibit what they are doing. I conclude by, again, urging my colleagues to vote, presumably today, yes on the motion to proceed so we can get the debate started, so we can continue to work to achieve common ground and a meeting of the minds and enact this piece of crucial national and economic and security legislation in this session of Congress. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, for the information of my colleagues, I know the Senate majority leader is in discussions with the Republican leader, and I know the hope is we can soon have the vote on a motion to proceed to S. 3414. But as yet I have not been informed there has been the necessary meeting of minds. I hope it will be soon, and I hope everyone will support it. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I will yield to the leader. I thank him, too, for that resounding vote, which seems to me not that the debate is over but the debate is going to begin, and an overwhelming majority of the Members of the Senate want to adopt cybersecurity legislation.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 26, 2012, at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 26, 2012, at 9:30 a.m. in room SR 328A of the Russell Senate Office Building.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 26, 2012, at 10 a.m. to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Financial Stability Oversight Council Annual Report to Congress.''

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, to conduct a hearing entitled ``CCDBG Reauthorization: Helping to Meet the Child Care Needs of American Families'' on July 26, 2012, at 10 a.m. in room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 26, 2012, in room SD-628 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, at 2:15 p.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``Regulation of Tribal Gaming: From Brick & Mortar to the Internet.''

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on July 26, 2012 at 10 a.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct an executive business meeting.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate, on July 26, 2012 at 1 p.m., in room SD-226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, to conduct a hearing entitled ``Nominations.''

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Select Committee on Intelligence be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on July 26, 2012, at 2:30 p.m.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I suppose Senator McConnell, the leader, has given a preface as to what I want to say. I think the American people should know where we stand on these important questions. That is why I come to the floor, to indicate that I will vote in favor of proceeding to debate on S. 3412, Senator Reid's proposal to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. But if the matter does come to a full discussion and debate on the floor, as I hope it will, I will not vote for it in its current form, and I want to explain why. I feel strongly that the first thing the American people want us to do is get the economy going again so that the economy is creating jobs. I am convinced the best thing Congress can do to restore economic growth and job creation is to enact a comprehensive, bipartisan plan to balance our budget along the lines of the Bowles-Simpson Commission recommendations. Unfortunately, S. 3412, which is the so-called middle-class tax cut-- which would extend the existing reduced tax rates on couples making less than $250,000, but would raise taxes on others making more than that--does not represent such a plan. In other words, it is not a bipartisan plan to balance our budget in a way that will create job growth. Its enactment at this time, in my opinion, would only serve to preclude debate and action on exactly the broader type of reforms we need to fix our broken Federal Government fiscal system. Just imposing across-the-board tax increases for individuals and small businesses that make over $250,000 a year is neither tax reform nor the balanced deficit reduction agreement our country needs right now. I do not hesitate, and I will not hesitate, as part of this kind of balanced, bipartisan debt reduction--hopefully, debt elimination--plan to vote to increase the amount of taxes that the wealthiest Americans are paying. But I will not do that as part of a scatter-shot approach. It has to be part of a program that reduces spending, that reforms spending on our entitlement programs--which are the fastest growing element of our Federal budget--and that reforms our tax system. The bill before us is not such a plan. I have said over and over that there is plenty of time this year to get a bipartisan, balanced budget program passed in Congress, and that I would vote against both the President's partial repeal of the so- called Bush tax cuts and the Republican plan to extend all the cuts for another year. I think we can do better this year, and I think we must do better. I know that is exactly what our constituents want us to do. We can cut spending, adopt tax reform, and entitlement reform. While that hope is alive, I am going to vote against both partial measures and proposals to put off the tough decisions about our economic future that our constituents elected us to make. I think both the Democratic plan, which is the subject before us right now in this motion to proceed, and Senator Hatch's plan do not make it. They are partial, and they basically kick the can down the road again without solving our economic problems. Giving the private sector the confidence about our future to invest the trillions of dollars in cash they are sitting on now--which is the only thing that will get our economy growing and creating more jobs; and the private sector businesses will not do that today because they do not know where this government of ours is going-- they do not have a sense of certainty and confidence. So as I said, if for some reason the process that the Senate is facing today changes, and both the Democratic plan to raise taxes on people over $250,000 comes up for a vote and Senator Hatch's Tax Hike Prevention Act, which extends all the tax cuts for another year, comes up, I will vote against both of them because I do not think they do what our country needs to be done. There is plenty of time, as I said, left this year to do what we have to do. Why am I going to vote to proceed to debate on either or both of these if I am opposed to each of them as they are drafted? It is because I think there is nothing more important we could do in this Congress than to begin to confront and debate the challenge of our time, which is to get our Federal Government back in balance, to make the tough decisions that will do that, and thereby get our economy going and creating jobs again. Debate, yes. Let's not hide from debate. Let's confront it and deal with it as quickly as we can. But these two proposals, in my opinion, do not do what our economy needs to be done. I will say a final word about the deep hole we are in and about the idea of raising taxes on everybody making more than $250,000, but raising no taxes on people making less than $250,000. The truth is we are in a deep hole in this country. We are heading toward what has now begun to be popularly called the fiscal cliff. The challenge to our government is whether we are going to have the courage, the honesty, the leadership qualities to come together across party lines and protect our economy and our country before we begin to go over the fiscal cliff. I know that requires us to make difficult decisions. Maybe it is easier for me to say because I am not running for reelection this year, but I honestly believe what the American people would most like us to do is to do what we think is right, to do something that does not seem like conventional politics, to have the guts to enact tax reform, entitlement reform, and cut spending. That is really what they want us to do because that is what they know the country needs us to do. Let me come back to this $250,000. I know it is politically appealing, but the truth is to balance our budget again we are going to have to ask most every American to give a little something so our country will grow and everybody will benefit. Sure, the people who are making the most should pay more in revenue, but I think we are at a point where we cannot simply say to what we generally describe as the middle class that they do not have to give anything else. I think that would be wrong. That is not consistent with the revenue system we have now, which is a progressive and fair system. I want to build on that, reform it in some ways to make it more constructive and make it more likely to incentivize growth in our economy. But let's not take anything off the table. Our economy, as precarious as it is, as it faces very uncertain effects from economic troubles in Europe and even in China now, I think we have to be very careful about raising anybody's taxes in the short run; that is, next year. What we need is a long-term balanced debt reduction program for America. So that is why I will vote to proceed to vote for debate on these subjects we desperately need, but neither the Democratic or Republican approaches do what this country needs. Therefore, if they come to the floor and we have a debate, I will try to amend them with something like the Bowles-Simpson recommendations. If that fails, I will vote against them because we can do better than that, and the American people have a right to expect that we will. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank my dear friend, the ranking member on the Homeland Security Committee, for her excellent and thoughtful statement. I thank Senator Rockefeller, the chair of the Commerce Committee, for his compelling statement on behalf of proceeding and, of course, on behalf of the underlying bill. I think these two statements set the table for the debate that will follow in the next several days. Within the next day or two, certainly no later than Friday, we will vote on the motion to proceed to the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. I appeal to our colleagues to come together across party lines and vote to proceed, as a way of saying that we recognize exactly what Senator Rockefeller and Senator Collins have said: We have a problem here. We are vulnerable to cyber attack. It is not just speculative. We are being attacked. We are being robbed every day through cyberspace. And we are not adequately defended. It is as simple as that. Part of the problem, as my colleagues have said, in the challenge is that 80 to 85 percent of our critical infrastructure in this country is privately owned. That is the American way. That is the way it ought to be. But that privately owned infrastructure is vulnerable now to attack by our enemies, and we have to work together--public and private owners, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, Americans all--to figure out a way to say to the private owners of critical cyber infrastructure, You have got to do more to protect our security, to protect our prosperity. And that is what this bill is all about. My colleagues have described the challenge, the inadequacy of the current defenses, the work that has been done on our bill, the compromises that have been made all along the way. I thank the Presiding Officer, the Senator from Rhode Island, Senator Whitehouse, and Senator Kyl from Arizona and the others who worked on a bipartisan basis to help us find common ground. This question of cybersecurity is, again, a test of whether this great deliberative body still has the capability to come together and solve our Nation's most serious problems. We had a couple of votes today. I suppose some people could say they were show votes. I took them seriously. But they all involved the terrible fiscal shape our country is in, $16 trillion in national debt. Earlier in my life I couldn't believe we could come to this point. And why have we? Because we haven't been willing to make tough decisions. We haven't been willing to work across party lines to do some things that might be politically controversial to fix a problem we have. So the problem gets tougher and tougher to fix. This is another one. Usually, even in the most partisan and ideologically rigid times, when it comes to our national security we put our party labels aside and our party loyalties aside, and we have acted based on our loyalty to our country--to the oath of office we took to protect and defend not our ideology or our party but to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, our freedom. That is as much in jeopardy from cyber attack as any other source of threat to our country. I appreciate the opening statements that have been made. I am actually very optimistic about the vote on the motion to proceed that will occur in the next day or two, and I am increasingly hopeful we are going to pass, before we break for August, a strong cybersecurity bill. It is not going to be the bill Senator Collins, Senator Rockefeller, Senator Feinstein, and I started out with. We have compromised along the way. I have in my office in a very prominent place a picture of two of Connecticut's representatives to the Constitutional Convention, Sherman and Ellsworth. I have it there because these two were the creators, the source of the so-called Connecticut Compromise. Some people erroneously refer to it as the Great Compromise. The correct title is the Connecticut Compromise. This was the conflict between the States that had a lot of population and the smaller States, how were they going to be represented in this new Congress. Sherman and Ellsworth came up with a great compromise: We will have one body--the Senate--where every State has two representatives, and another body--the House--where you are represented by population. I always like to say to people, the very institution we are privileged to be Members of was created as a result of a compromise. Generally speaking, in this Congress--which represents 310 million people, extraordinarily diverse in every way--you can't succeed here, we can't get things done if people say, I must get 100 percent of what I want on this bill or I am going to vote against it. That is the way we have felt and that is why we have compromised, particularly because of the urgency of the cyber threat, which is real, present, and growing. Senator Collins and I have felt very strongly, we want to get something started. It can't just be anything, it has to be real. S. 3414 is real. It will be effective. The standards are no longer mandatory, but there are enough incentives in here. And the very fact that there will be standards, private sector generated but approved by a governmental body, I think will create tremendous inducements--yes, maybe even pressure--on CEOs and private operators of critical cyber infrastructure to adopt those standards and implement them in their business or else, God forbid, in case of attack, they will be subject to enormous, probably a corporation-ending, liability. I am very encouraged, thanks again to a lot of good work done by a lot of people, that we have started today, the lead sponsors of the other bill, SECURE IT, the lead sponsors of this bill, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, and the group that has been working so hard, a bipartisan group, to bring us together. We did come together today. We are going to meet again tomorrow morning, and I think we are involved in a collaborative process that will not only lead to the passage of cybersecurity legislation this year that will be effective to protect our national security and prosperity but will in its way prove to the American people that we are still capable here in the Senate of coming together across party lines to fix a problem--in this case, to protect our great country. With that, and knowing we will be back tomorrow, I yield the floor.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Kansas. Normally, when you yield the floor to a colleague in the Senate, you are not sure how long they are going to speak. So he not only kept his word to speak for less than 3 minutes, he proved that he continues to have some lingering holdover reflexes from his service in the House of Representatives, where they always speak shorter than we do. Mr. President, what is the pending business?

Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair. Mr. President, I rise to support that motion to proceed to S. 3414, which is the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, and I do so with the hope and request that all of our colleagues will vote yes on this motion to proceed so we can begin what I think is a crucial debate about how best to protect our national and economic security in this wired world where threats increasingly--and thefts--come not from land, sea, or sky, but from invisible strings of ones and zeros traveling through cyberspace. This bill has been a long time in coming to the floor. A lot of work has been done on it. But I must say, I have a sense of confidence, certainly, about the inclination of the overwhelming majority of Members of the Senate to vote to proceed to this matter because I think everyone in the Chamber understands what we are dealing with is not a problem that is speculative or theoretical. Anybody who has spent any time not even studying the classified materials on this but just reading the newspaper, following the media, knows that America is daily under constant cyber attack and cyber theft. The commander of Cyber Command, GEN Keith Alexander, said recently in a speech that cyber theft represented the largest transfer of wealth in human history. That is stealing of industrial secrets and moving money from bank accounts. I believe he said it was as if we were having our future stolen from us. It is all happening over cyberspace. Obviously, enemies--both nation states, nonstate actors such as terrorist groups, organized criminal gangs, and just plain hackers--are finding ways to penetrate the cyber systems on which our society depends, the cyber systems that control critical infrastructure: electric grid, transportation system, the whole financial system, the dams that hold back water, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This bill is not a solution in search of a problem. It is a problem that is real and cries out for the solution this bill would provide. There are some controversial parts of the bill. There has been some spirited debate both in committee and in the public media about it. There is a competing bill introduced by some of our colleagues called SECURE IT. But I want to report to the Chamber and to the public that there was a significant breakthrough today where the lead cosponsors of our bill, Senators Collins, Rockefeller, Feinstein, Carper, and I met with the lead cosponsors of the other bill, Senators Chambliss, McCain, and Hutchison, along with a group of Senators led by Senator Kyl and Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who, along with Senator Coons, Senator Mikulski, Senator Coats, and others who have been working very hard to create common ground because they recognize the urgency of this challenge. Well, this is good news. We got a motion to proceed, which, in the current schedule, will come up on Friday. I think it would send a message of real encouragement to the public that we can still get together across party lines on matters of urgent national security if we adopted that motion to proceed overwhelmingly, particularly now that we are engaged in dialogue with the leaders of these main bills and people trying to bridge gaps that began to meet today. We will meet again tomorrow morning. So I think we have a process going that can lead us to a very significant national security accomplishment. I am going to yield at this time to Senator Rockefeller, the chair of the Commerce Committee, whose committee produced a bill of its own. He worked very closely with Senator Collins and me to blend our bills. We did. Senator Feinstein came along with her chairmanship of the Intelligence Committee of the Senate, did some tremendous work on the information-sharing provision, title VII of the bill before us. I know Senator Rockefeller has another engagement which he has to go to. So I am going to yield to him for his opening statement. Then Senator Collins, who, as always, for all these years, has been just the most steadfast, constructive, sturdy, reliable, creative partner in working on this bill. It gives me confidence that together we will see it to success next week. So I will now yield to the distinguished senior Senator from West Virginia, who is a real expert on this subject and has contributed enormously to the bill that is pending before the Senate now.

Mr. LIEBERMAN

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I say to my friend from Arizona, of course, I agree with him. The reality is that the premature judgment about the victory of the Syrian freedom fighters is exactly that-- premature. The assassination, elimination of these critical leaders of this dictatorial government yesterday by the Syrian opposition was a very significant development. Apparently, the fighting continues in Damascus in a way that may bring exactly what my friend from Arizona says--more chaos in Damascus. But this fight is not over. This regime has a devastating inventory of weapons, including weapons of mass destruction, and as the Senator from Arizona said, Bashar Assad's father used those weapons--in that case, chemical weapons--against his own people decades ago, killing thousands of them on a single day. No, this fight is not over. The danger is that, as he said, it gets worse the more it goes on without the involvement of the civilized nations of the world that have to be led by the United States of America. I want to put in juxtaposition two significant events of the last 24 hours, which my friend has described. One is the suicide bombing, apparently, or the death of these leaders of the Assad government. Second is the vote in New York at the U.N. today. After months in which too much of the civilized world has been pleading with Russia and depending on Russia to change its mind and come in and get Bashar Assad out of there, this veto today shows they are not going to do it. I will yield in a moment because I see the presence of the majority leader. First, I will finish this thought. The reality is now that the figleaf has been taken off of the plan since it went into effect and allegedly brought a cease-fire in Syria, thousands more Syrians have been killed. The reality is that Russia will not join in trying to stop the slaughter in Syria, and the slaughter will only be stopped by facts on the ground, and those facts are military. It will not get better until the United States leads a coalition of the willing to support the opposition and bring about the early end of this horrific regime that now rules Syria. With that, I yield the floor to the majority leader. Order of Business

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Well, the Senator makes a very important point. Let me relate it back to one of the excuses that has been given for the United States not to have become more involved on the side of the opposition to Assad, which is the side of freedom, which is where our national values call us to be. One of the excuses for not getting involved is this argument: We don't know who is going to follow Assad. It could be Islamist extremists. Well, my reaction to that is that the longer we sit back, the more likely it will be people who are not friendly toward the United States because in their hour of need--unlike the situation in Libya that the Senator just described--we were not with them. The Senator and I have been to Turkey together, and I made a trip to Lebanon. In each case, we talked to the leaders. In one case, in Turkey, we spoke to the leaders of the Syrian opposition, the Syrian National Council, and we met with the heads of the Free Syrian Army and met with individual refugees. My own judgment is that these people are not extremists or radicals; they are patriots, nationalists, people who want a better life than they were living under Assad. Now, increasingly, they are people whose relatives or friends have been killed by Assad's military, and so they have a fury in them, an anger that they didn't have before because now they have been victims. Now, can I say that there are no Islamist extremists who are now fighting in Syria against Assad? I cannot say that. I think the longer we stand back and don't partner openly and strongly with the Syrian freedom fighters, the greater the danger is that, one, extremists will be what follows Assad and, two, even if we are lucky enough and it is not extremists, it will be a leadership group that will not feel any particular sense of gratitude toward the United States because we were not with them when they needed us.

Mr. LIEBERMAN. Madam President, I thank Senator McCain for his leadership. This is one of those cases where we have the opportunity-- and it is painful that we have not taken it over these many months of the uprising in Syria--not only to do what is right but to do what is best for our country diplomatically. In other words, what is right is to be on the side of freedom, to be with the people fighting against a brutal dictator. That is the right thing to do. What is right is to enter this fight to stop the slaughter of innocent men, women and, literally, children. But there also happens to be a strategic opportunity. I ask my friend from Arizona about this. Does he agree Syria's Assad is not only the best friend but the only friend and ally Iran has in the Middle East? Iran is our No. 1 strategic threat in the world today; the No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism, in a headlong effort to build nuclear weapons that will totally change the peace of the world if they get them. So here we have an opportunity not only to do what is morally right but to help overthrow the best friend of our worst enemy--Iran. As the Senator remembers--we were there together--when GEN James Mattis, a great American military leader and head of Central Command overseeing the Middle East, said that if Assad is overthrown, it will be the worst setback Iran has suffered in more than a quarter of a century. That will, in turn, I think, open tremendous new possibilities in Lebanon, which has been under the Syrian-Iranian influence. Even in Iraq, where the new Iraqi Government has felt, I think, pressured on both sides from Iran and Iran's ally Syria on the other side, if Syria is not controlled by an Iranian puppet, I think we may see some more independence from Iraq that we would like to see. I ask the Senator from Arizona if he agrees there is not just a moral imperative but an extraordinary strategic opportunity here to get in and shape history.