Political Quotes

“I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Issa for sponsoring this bill with me. This bill, if enacted, would be a landmark reform of our most important open government law, the Freedom of Information Act. This legislation would make significant improvements to the current law, which has not been consistently implemented. During the Clinton administration, Attorney General Janet Reno adopted a policy under which the Department of Justice would defend an agency's use of a FOIA exemption only when the agency could reasonably foresee that disclosure would harm an interest protected by that exemption. In the Bush administration, Attorney General John Ashcroft reversed this standard and directed the Justice Department to defend agency decisions to withhold records, as long as they had a legal basis for doing so. President Obama, to his credit, on his first day in office, directed agencies to implement FOIA with a presumption of openness. Attorney General Holder overturned the Ashcroft standard and reinstated the foreseeable harm standard. The legislation before us today would codify, in law, this presumption in favor of disclosure, no matter who is President. Under this bill, an agency would not be allowed to withhold information in response to a FOIA request, unless disclosure is prohibited by law or would cause specific identifiable harm to an interest protected by one of FOIA's exemptions.…”