Orrin Hatch: “I have decided to support the budget agreement, though it is by no means the budget solution that I would have written…”

“I have decided to support the budget agreement, though it is by no means the budget solution that I would have written and it contains some imperfections. Following up on earlier remarks today in a colloquy on the Senate floor by my colleagues from Florida, Pennsylvania, and the Senate Budget Committee Chair, Senator Murray, I wish to provide some instructive remarks about the Death Master File provision of the budget agreement. The Death Master File is a data set compiled by the Social Security Administration, and made available to various researchers and business interests through the Commerce Department. Many researchers, genealogists, and businesses use the data for bona fide reasons including fraud prevention, ancestry research, identifying remains of deceased individuals, retirement plan administration and prevention of improper payments. As long as they can show the Commerce Department that they have rigorous privacy protections and protocols put in place, they should be able to become certified by Commerce to have access to the Death Master File data. I concur with what much of what my colleagues have said in their recent colloquy about the Death Master File provision of the budget agreement. Specifically, I wish to reiterate the need for balance in the regulatory process and in the rulemaking procedures that the Commerce Department is called upon in the budget legislation to undertake.…”