Political Quotes

“I thank the chairman of the committee for the opportunity to present the amendment here today. Very briefly, I will talk about the genesis of this amendment, which is very simple, by the way. It adds a 7-year sunset to all the provisions of the bill. Madam Chair, in going through the review of this bill, it occurred to me that this was a really close call. There were folks whom I respect with a great deal of credibility who reached out to me and said: Look, here are the difficulties with this bill and why we should defeat this bill. At the same time, there are a lot of folks for whom I have a great deal of respect and have a great deal of credibility in the industry who also reached out to me and said: Look, this is a very serious problem. Here are the good things in the bill, and here is why you should support it. It is probably not unusual that we have that circumstance before us where it is a close call. We are balancing two very critical things: security--specifically, cybersecurity--on one hand, and privacy, liberty interests, on the other. It is a balancing act that we are called on to do many, many times here in Washington, D.C. As I was going through the bill, taking input from both sides of the argument, it occurred to me: All right, what if we have got it wrong? What if we have the balancing act wrong?…”