Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. MILLER of Michigan. I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Madam Chair, let me just read for our colleagues the preamble of our Constitution:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Madam Chair, this great statement that is the foundation for our Federal Government provides us the direction that we need to our primary responsibilities. I would suggest that this legislation helps us fulfill every one of the responsibilities mandated on us by our Constitution. Now let's just take them one by one.

``Establish justice''--it is just to protect American companies from the theft of their intellectual property by attackers and by competitors.

``Insure domestic tranquility''--can you even imagine the threat to domestic tranquility if our power grid is successfully attacked by a foreign state like North Korea and this Nation is left in the dark?

``Provide for the common defence''--what is more common than our power grid, our financial system and our economy? Are we not required to defend all of that?

``Promote the general welfare''--again, if our power grid is taken down, it is impossible to promote the general welfare.

``Secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity''--our intellectual property, made with American ingenuity, our life savings in banks, under threat from foreign actors, our jobs, our economy. All of these blessings of liberty are currently at risk if we do nothing.

I've heard some suggest, Madam Chair, that they have constitutional concerns about passing this bill. I would just suggest to them that I believe strongly that you should have constitutional concerns about not passing this bill. I do not believe that our Constitution gives foreign state actors like China or Russia or North Korea or Iran uncontested access to the critical systems of private American companies. To the contrary, I believe that our Constitution requires us, the Federal Government, to defend them.

I certainly want to applaud the great work that has been done by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Rogers of Michigan, and certainly applaud our ranking member, Mr. Ruppersberger.

Gentlemen, you have worked so closely together on your committee and with other committees as well on this great piece of legislation.

I would urge all of my colleagues, Madam Chair, to join me in fulfilling our oath and in voting ``yes.''

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