Electronic Message Preservation Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HODES. I thank my distinguished colleague, Mr. Clay, for his leadership along with Mr. Waxman on this bill.

I rise today in strong support of H.R. 5811, the Electronic Message Preservation Act. My colleague from Virginia has said that the Archivist suggests that the requirement for certification under this bill is unprecedented. Well, this bill is filed, in part, as a response to White House practices that have been unprecedented and show clearly the need for this legislation. The documents, which include e-mails, correspondence, memos produced by an administration belong not to the President but to the people of the United States.

This bill will help ensure that these records are preserved properly for our future generations, and more importantly, this bill will help lift the veil of secrecy that has fallen over our government under this administration.

Every day the President and his staff generate thousands of documents on the issues confronting our Nation. These documents contain important insights into the way that our government is making decisions that affect our lives. Why are those decisions being made? Who benefits? Who gets to influence our government leaders?

We have serious concerns about the way the White House is preserving these documents, or not preserving them, and whether the true purpose of not preserving them is to hide the dealings from the American people. Through the investigations by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, we have learned that the White House lost hundreds of days of e-mail records between the years 2003 and 2005. Additionally, it appears that senior officials in the White House have been found to be skirting the historical record laws by using an e-mail system provided by the Republican National Committee for most of their e-mail correspondence.

For example, Karl Rove, former Deputy Chief of Staff, is said to have used the RNC system for 95 percent of his e-mail correspondence to which the American people will never have access. Under the Presidential Records Act, the President has the sole authority to manage his records during his time in office. The General Accountability Office found that this administration did not keep records as it was required to.

So the question becomes: What were they trying to hide? It is no surprise that the administration that leaked Valerie Plame's covert identity and organized propaganda to promote a war in Iraq is evading record-keeping practices to hide information from the American people. This is arguably partisan politics at its worse, and the only remedy is more accountability and more sunshine. The Electronic Message Preservation Act will help to make sure that these important records are kept and help shine light on what our government is doing and why.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to enter for the Record a letter supporting this legislation that brings accountability back to the White House. The letter was signed by a number of groups that advocate for an open, transparent government, including the Government Accountability Project and openthegovernment.org.

Mr. Speaker, the Bush administration has been one of the most secretive and least transparent and most closed in American history. We still don't know what was said in closed-door meetings with Big Oil executives to set our energy policy, and today, we suffer from record-high gas prices. The secrecy in the White House has prevented officials in the White House from being held accountable to the American people.

The Electronic Message Preservation Act will reform White House record keeping and allow the American people to have confidence that future administrations will not be able to hide the truth from the people of this country or from history.

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