Political Quotes

“I commend the Senate for unanimously passing the Faster FOIA Act of 2011. This important bill will establish a bipartisan commission to examine the root causes of agency delays in processing Freedom of Information Act--FOIA--requests, and to recommend to the Congress and the President steps to help eliminate FOIA backlogs. Senator Cornyn and I first introduced this bill in 2005, because we were concerned about the growing problem of excessive FOIA delays within our Federal agencies. During the intervening years, the problem of excessive FOIA delays did not go away. That is why in 2010, we reintroduced this bill and the Senate unanimously passed it last year. After the Judiciary Committee's hearing in March on FOIA, we reintroduced this bill yet again--with the hope that the Congress will finally enact this good government legislation. Today, the Senate is doing its part to achieve that goal. While the Obama administration has made significant progress in improving the FOIA process, large backlogs remain a major roadblock to public access to information. A recent report released by the National Security Archive found that only about half of the Federal agencies surveyed have taken concrete steps to update their FOIA policies in light of these reforms. These delays are simply unacceptable. The bipartisan FOIA commission established by this bill will help to reverse this trend.…”