Trent Lott: “It remains my hope that we can work with Chairman McCain and other members of the Committee to produce a bill that more…”

“It remains my hope that we can work with Chairman McCain and other members of the Committee to produce a bill that more of us can support. We need to recognize that American industry will have increased difficulty of competing in the international marketplace unless we provide some real reform. It is as if we erected a 30-foot wall between the United States and the rest of the world. The problem is that in today marketplace, American industry only has a 10-foot ladder while their foreign competition has a 35-foot ladder. Foreign firms are able to climb the wall while our American industry faces an insurmountable obstacle. This is both short-sighted and wrong. If we follow our current path, we will rue the day when we allowed our policies drive world leadership of the important information security business to shift to Germany, Russia, Japan or China. I fully intend to work toward a legislative solution that will help solve the problem while protecting American security interests. We need to create the mechanisms that will allow American companies to have the same sized ladders that the rest of the world can use.”