Sens. Lee, Klobuchar, Blumenthal Send Letter to DOJ, DOT About Airline Surcharges
WASHINGTON – Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) sent a letter to Transportation Department Secretary Anthony Foxx and Attorney General Loretta Lynch urging them to investigate the potential anti-competitive implications of comments made by Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr.
“On June 8, 2015, at a panel of the IATA conference with more than 100 executives from competing airlines in the audience, Mr. Spohr announced that Lufthansa was planning to impose an $18 surcharge on price comparison websites,” the letter reads. Later questioned about other airline reactions to his statement, Mr. Spohr said, “It's a first step and I believe others will follow.”
“Lufthansa’s conduct, encouraging competitors collectively representing the vast majority of the market to follow Lufthansa’s lead in raising prices, raises the question of whether they have run afoul of the Sherman Act,” the letter explains.
Sens. Lee, Klobuchar, and Blumenthal called on DOT and DOJ to “thoroughly investigate this matter and, if you find that there has been a violation, to address it with an appropriate remedy.” Lee and Klobuchar are the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights.
Full text of the letter is available here.
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Email Privacy Bill Delayed By Warrantless Search Amendment
WASHINGTON – Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) released the following statement Thursday after pulling the ECPA Amendments Act from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s markup agenda:
“Since the original passage of ECPA in 1986, a lot has changed, especially when it comes to how we communicate and how we store our private documents and thoughts. Email and cloud storage have become a standard part of American life, and our privacy laws need to be updated.”
“Sen. Leahy and I have attempted to bring before this committee a bill that does one simple thing: eliminate the 180-day rule that suggests that our privacy interests expire when an email turns six months old. This is a change that has such wide support that it passed out of the House 419-0. It has brought together a coalition that includes groups such as the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Tax Reform, the ACLU, the Center for Democracy and Technology, and the tech community.”
“Unfortunately, some Senators on the committee have decided late in the day that this bill should be a vehicle to move an unrelated and controversial expansion of the use of national security letters by the FBI. Such an expansion would swallow up the protections this bill offers to the American people. While there are other concerns we had hoped to negotiate, the national security letter amendment is something I cannot in good conscience have attached to this bill.”
“So, with great reluctance, I have requested that Chairman Grassley withdraw the ECPA Amendments Act from the markup agenda until such time as we can proceed without risking that this bill actually decrease the privacy of our citizens.
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Lee Speaks in Opposition of Ex-Im Bank Nominee
WASHINGTON—Today, Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) delivered remarks on the Senate Floor regarding Export-Import Bank nominee Mark McWatters. Remarks as prepared for delivery are available below.
Mr. President: reserving the right to object.
What’s being proposing here today is to unleash the Export-Import Bank from the constraints it is currently under and to allow it to begin authorizing transactions above $10 million. Between 2007 and 2014, 84 percent of the Bank’s subsidy and loan-guarantee deals exceeded $10 million, and the vast majority were given to the wealthiest, most well-connected businesses that should have no problem acquiring financing on the open market.
Mr. President, the Export-Import Bank represents everything the American people despise about Washington. This Great Depression era relic has grown into one of the most treasured favor banks of well-heeled lobbyists, by big government, and for politically favored businesses.
It is an 82-year-old case study in corporate welfare, and for some reason this Senate continues to support it.
Ex-Im has managed to live through more than 30 corruption and fraud investigations into its system of doling out taxpayer-backed subsidies and loan guarantees to foreign buyers of U.S. exports. And in 2013, for half of the financing deals in its portfolio, Ex-Im was either unable or unwilling to provide any justification whatsoever connected to its mission.
Mr. President, that’s $18.8 billion in estimated export value that apparently had no connection to Ex-Im’s mission.
Many of Ex-Im’s supporters claim that the Bank’s main function is to support small businesses. But this claim doesn’t stand up to even a modest amount of scrutiny.
Look at the institution’s track record: only one-half of one percent of all small businesses in America benefit from Ex-Im financing. And even that tiny figure may be an overestimation because Ex-Im uses such a broad definition of “small business.”
Mr. President, confirming this nominee would allow Ex-Im to return to its old ways of approving massive financing deals for the largest corporations in coordination with the largest banks – all with the backing of American taxpayers.
Permanently ending the Export-Import Bank would be a small but important and symbolic step toward restoring fairness to our economy and our government. It would prove to the American people that their elected representatives in Congress have the courage to eliminate one of the many federal programs that foster cozy relationships between political and economic insiders, providing a breeding ground for cronyism and corruption.
But so long as this Senate remains unwilling to close Ex-Im, we should at the very least make sure that it does not have the ability to further advance its cronyist agenda.
And so, Mr. President, I stand with the senior Senator from Alabama, and I object.
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Bipartisan Coalition of Senators File 'Due Process Guarantee Act’
Amendment to NDAA
WASHINGTON – Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Rand Paul (R-KY), Tom Udall (D-NM), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Susan Collins (R-ME) introduced the Due Process Guarantee Act Monday as an amendment to the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This amendment will protect the Due Process rights of American citizens and lawful permanent residents in the United States by prohibiting their indefinite detention under any general authorization of military force or declaration of war. Previous provisions in the Defense Authorization Act have placed Americans’ Fifth Amendment rights at risk and set dangerous legal precedence for the future.
“Twenty-first century warfare has presented unique legal issues to our federal government," Lee said, "but we cannot sacrifice the core values and protections of the Constitution and Bill of Rights for any reason. This amendment guarantees that U.S. persons in the United States cannot be held indefinitely without due process of law - one of the principles upon which our nation was founded - while still allowing the federal government to have the intelligence gathering and law enforcement tools necessary to protect our country and keep our deployed service members safe."
This amendment does not undermine the ability of the United States to capture enemy combatants on foreign battlefields under the law of war. Similar language was adopted with significant bipartisan support on the FY 2013 NDAA, but was removed in conference.
