Freedom of Information Act Amendments

Floor Speech

Mr. ISSA. I thank my friend and fellow ranking member.

Chairman Frank, I am perfectly happy to work with you on this. I'm perfectly happy to be associated with you. When people who are considered at least in their own districts as smart come together and realize that we reached the wrong conclusion, we allowed a bill that we worked on hard, in which each of us had victories and failures, each of us would say something was flawed, to have a flaw that was not picked up by any of us or by countless staff. That is what Senate bill 3717 at least partially undoes.

The Dodd-Frank Act was not envisioned to cause the problem that it clearly caused. We can find no evidence of anybody deciding that we would simply shut down the ability for FOIA, and yet that was the effect it had. When this was brought to congressional awareness, multiple bills, including one that myself dropped and also one that Chairman Towns put, plus Senate bills, all were feverishly put in in order to unring the bell. I would say today that we are considering an A version of the unring-the-bell type bill; but I am particularly pleased that on numerous occasions, working with Ranking Member Bachus and with Chairman Frank, we have agreed that this is only a first step. It's the one you can do in the latest days of a Congress, knowing that in fact follow-on legislation is required.

This is in addition to the promise that Chairman Frank made me in open session when we were unable to get some of the provisions that Chairman

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