Yuval Levin: “[T]he general outline is a very pro-growth reform of the business tax code alongside a version of the pro-growth and pro-family reform of the individual tax code …” (Yuval Levin, Op-Ed, “The Next Conservative Tax Reform,” NRO, 9/23/14)

• Levin: “In terms of both policy and politics, this combination of business and individual tax reforms would seem to have great promise.” (Yuval Levin, Op-Ed, “The Next Conservative Tax Reform,” NRO, 9/23/14)
• Levin: “[T]he approach they lay out seems like a plausible general outline for the next conservative tax reform.” (Yuval Levin, Op-Ed, “The Next Conservative Tax Reform,” NRO, 9/23/14)

Reihan Salam: “The good news is that a small number of elected conservatives, led by Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, have been pointing the ways towards a GOP worth supporting.” (Reihan Salam, Op-Ed, “How Corporate Tax Reform Can Combat Crony Capitalism,” NRO, 9/23/14)

• Salam: “[Senators] Lee and Rubio have outlined a new tax proposal that is a much bigger deal than it appears to be at first glance.” (Reihan Salam, Op-Ed, “How Corporate Tax Reform Can Combat Crony Capitalism,” NRO, 9/23/14)
• Salam: “[I]t is Lee and Rubio’s approach to overhauling corporate taxes that deserves particularly close attention. … If Lee and Rubio follow through on all of these steps, they will spark a revolution in the way business is done in America.” (Reihan Salam, Op-Ed, “How Corporate Tax Reform Can Combat Crony Capitalism,” NRO, 9/23/14)
• Salam: “In a few short months, these two lawmakers have gotten off to an excellent start. If congressional Republicans are to ever deserve the support of rank-and-file conservatives across the country, they should follow Lee and Rubio’s lead.” (Reihan Salam, Op-Ed, “How Corporate Tax Reform Can Combat Crony Capitalism,” NRO, 9/23/14)

AEI’s James Pethokoukis: “Lee and Rubio offer smart, modern tax reform” (James Pethokoukis, “Lee and Rubio offer smart, modern tax reform,” AEI, 9/24/2014)

• Pethokoukis: “Republicans Mike Lee and Marco Rubio have sketched out an ambitious tax reform plan to boost business spending and increase take-home pay for America’s beleaguered middle-class families.” (James Pethokoukis, “Lee and Rubio offer smart, modern tax reform,” AEI, 9/24/2014)
• Pethokoukis: “The senators have fashioned a pro-growth, pro-family, pro-innovation plan rooted in economic and political reality that deserves serious consideration as a key element in any agenda for reenergizing the American economy.” (James Pethokoukis, “Lee and Rubio offer smart, modern tax reform,” AEI, 9/24/2014)
• Pethokoukis: “But developing a real-world tax reform plan — one that boosts family incomes, makes American companies more competitive, invests in human and business capital, simplifies the code, increases GDP growth, and achieves revenue neutrality without unrealistic assumptions — is tricky business. The Lee and Rubio plan — at least as outlined — already ticks a lot of those boxes.” (James Pethokoukis, “Lee and Rubio offer smart, modern tax reform,” AEI, 9/24/2014)

Americans for Tax Reform (ATR): “These tax proposals are a great contribution to the current tax debate and anyone serious about tax reform should support these measures.” (Jesus Rodriguez, “Rubio-Lee Tax Reform Plan Good for Growth, Good for Families,” ATR, 9/23/14)

• ATR): “ATR is supportive of three important components of their proposed tax plan.” (Jesus Rodriguez, “Rubio-Lee Tax Reform Plan Good for Growth, Good for Families,” ATR, 9/23/14)
• “ATR supports reducing the business tax rate. … ATR supports Rubio and Lee’s full expensing tax relief proposal. … ATR supports Rubio and Lee’s territorial taxation proposal.” (Jesus Rodriguez, “Rubio-Lee Tax Reform Plan Good for Growth, Good for Families,” ATR, 9/23/14)

YG Network: “Simplifying the tax infrastructure to just two income tax brackets—15% and 35%—would eliminate unfair deductions. [link]” (YG Network, Twitter, 9/23/2014)

• YG Network: “Eliminating the marriage and parent tax penalties will help hard working American families gain an economic foothold. [link]” (YG Network, Twitter, 9/23/2014)
• YG Network: “We need pro-family, pro-growth tax reform that benefits working middle-class families. [link]” (YG Network, Twitter, 9/23/2014)

Ramesh Ponnuru: “The result of this reform would be a simpler business tax system, more investment in the U.S. and less corporate debt.” (Ramesh Ponnuru, “Obama Is Inverted on Inversions,” Bloomberg, 9/23/2014)

Steve Forbes: “Senators Lee and Rubio propose something closer to a #FlatTax [link]” (Steve Forbes, Twitter, 9/23/2014)

CNBC’s Larry Kudlow: “[G]ood start …” (Larry Kudlow, Twitter, 9/23/2014)

The Daily Caller: “Lee And Rubio Outline Ambitious Plan To Reform Tax Code” (Rachel Stoltzfoos, “Lee And Rubio Outline Ambitious Plan To Reform Tax Code,” The Daily Caller, 9/23/14)

Tax Foundation’s Andrew Lundeen: “Plenty to like in the Rubio/Lee business tax reforms: [link]” (Andrew Lundeen, Twitter, 9/23/2014)

American Council for Capital Formation’s Margo Thorning: “Senator @marcorubio & @SenMikeLee's #taxreform plan will spur US investment…” (Margo Thorning, Twitter, 9/23/2014)

YG Network’s April Ponnuru: “Very important piece by [Sens. Mike Lee and Marco Rubio]. Conservatives can and should be pro-growth AND pro-family. [link]” (April Ponnuru, Twitter, 9/23/2014)

Real Clear Politics’ Nicholas G. Hahn III: “Spot on …” (Nicholas G. Hahn III, Twitter, 9/23/2014)

Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Vance Ginn: “How to provide pro-growth tax reform. The general direction of a flatter national income tax rate is wise. [link]” (Vance Ginn, Twitter, 9/23/2014)

Michael Medved: “I love your tax reform proposal. I think it’s just what’s needed to maybe get us off the dime and get us moving in the right direction.” (Michael Medved Interview with Senators Marco Rubio and Mike Lee, “The Michael Medved Show,” YouTube, 9/23/2014)

• Medved: “Radical and very encouraging …” (Michael Medved Interview with Senators Marco Rubio and Mike Lee, “The Michael Medved Show,” YouTube, 9/23/2014)
• Medved: “One of the things I love Senator Rubio is this follow on to some previous, very imaginative, very dynamic anti-poverty proposals that you have put on the table.” (Michael Medved Interview with Senators Marco Rubio and Mike Lee, “The Michael Medved Show,” YouTube, 9/23/2014)

Chairman Leahy, Ranking Member Grassley, Members of the Committee: each one of us, upon arrival to the United States Senate, swore a sacred oath—to ourselves, to each other, and to our fellow Americans—pledging to defend and support the Constitution of the United States.

In taking this oath, before God and country, each of us made a solemn promise to be bound—above all other loyalties and partialities—by our allegiance to the Constitution.

We do this because we are made free by God, but it is this document, and our commitment to uphold it, that keeps us free.

I am deeply dismayed that today, we gather here to consider a proposal—S. J. Res 19—that would considerably weaken the First Amendment of the Constitution.

The primary argument in support of this amendment is that “money isn’t speech.” Of course money is not the same thing as speech. Money is simply a tool used to carry out other activities.

But if Congress had the power to restrict the use of money to speak, the exercise of that power would unavoidably interfere with people’s ability to speak.

Freedom of speech is not simply one among many liberties protected in the Bill of Rights—it is absolutely essential to the health of our Republic. This is especially true of political speech, even when it contradicts the prevailing order.

As Justice Powell put it in Gertz v. Welch (1974): “Under the First Amendment there is no such thing as a false idea. However pernicious an opinion may seem, we depend for its correction not on the conscience of judges and juries but on the competition of other ideas.”

But it doesn’t take a complicated constitutional exposition to see what this proposed amendment is really about: power…giving it to sitting Members of Congress and taking it away from the American people, including, not coincidentally, any potential candidate that might like to challenge a sitting Member of Congress.

As we have seen in the unfolding scandal at the Internal Revenue Service, there is a permanent temptation facing those in power to muzzle dissent—and a permanent inclination to deceive oneself into thinking that such a temptation does not exist.

This is precisely why we have a written Constitution that checks those in authority and prevents the kind of proposal represented here today.

In Federalist 51, James Madison, the lead author of our Constitution, anticipated debates in which we’re engaged today, and he makes perfectly clear the folly of an amendment such as S. J. Res 19. 

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary,” Madison wrote. “If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”

One of the most important of such “auxiliary precautions” is the First Amendment and its protections of the freedom of speech.

The proposed amendment would cripple this protection and irrevocably damage our most precious possession as Americans: our freedom.

For these reasons, I strongly urge my colleagues to join me in voting against the proposed amendment.

Today, in Riley v. California, the Supreme Court by a 9-0 vote ruled that police officers may not search the data on cell phones seized incident to an arrest.  While law enforcement officers may hold a phone seized at the time of arrest, they must get a warrant before accessing the content stored on the phone, including text messages, photos, and emails.
 
In the opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that a 16-gigabyte cell phone can hold “millions of pages of text, thousands of pictures, or hundreds of videos,” and that such a large amount of data in such varied formats presents significant consequences for privacy.  These concerns are magnified in the context of the limitless storage capacity of email and cloud computing, an area where law enforcement is able to access content older than 180 days without a warrant.  
 
I believe the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision demonstrates the shift in the expectations of privacy we have for our digital information.  This case underscores the need to extend similar protection to the information we store in our email and in the cloud.  The Leahy-Lee ECPA Amendments Act, S. 607, would require that the government get a warrant to access documents and content we store in the cloud and in our email accounts, eliminating the antiquated 180-day rule.
 
The ECPA Amendments Act was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by voice vote and awaits consideration on the Senate floor.

Today’s hearing addresses AT&T’s recent announcement of its intention to acquire DirecTV.  AT&T and DirecTV are well-known and successful companies.  AT&T is primarily a provider of mobile and fixed telephone, but it has in recent years made impressive inroads in the markets for video and high-speed internet.  DirecTV, on the other hand, is a satellite-video provider.  It has grown to become one of the largest multichannel video programming distributors or MVPDs in the country with around 20 million subscribers. 

The companies do not, for the most part, compete in the same markets.  Their primary products are not substitutes, but rather are complements.  Mergers of complements have the potential to create efficiencies that a merger of substitutes may not, and such transactions have traditionally been approved. 

This merger has nonetheless attracted attention.  The markets for video and internet are extremely important to consumers, and this transaction is occurring only months after Comcast and Time-Warner—two large players in the markets for video and internet—announced their intention to combine.  In addition, AT&T and DirecTV do offer substitute video products in some parts of the country, and the transaction has the potential to affect the competitive landscape in those areas.

As always, the guiding principle for our antitrust analysis is consumer welfare.  Indeed, as Robert Bork wrote in The Antitrust Paradox: “Competition must be understood as the maximization of consumer welfare.”  In antitrust, as in other areas of government policymaking, competitors often stand to benefit from government regulations or restrictions on their rivals.  As much as any other entity, competitors to merging parties have a constitutional right to petition and lobby the government.  They often have valuable information and insight into markets that will be affected by a transaction, and in many cases competitors simply want to ensure that antitrust enforcers protect competition and ensure a level playing field.  At the same time, history and experience have taught that competitors can and will seek to use the antitrust process to gain an advantage.  It is therefore essential that we remain on guard to ensure that government process not be used to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.  Where our policies and approach to antitrust ensure that free markets operate effectively and consumers choose the winners and losers, we obtain the best outcome for the country.

Applying these principles to this transaction will require a close look at those areas where the transaction may impact competition, such as where AT&T and DirecTV currently compete for video subscribers.  It requires scrutiny of the market for programming, where consolidation is reducing the number of buyers of video content and may potentially impact the range of choice of content that may be available for consumers going forward.  This transaction’s effect on the practice of bundling and the impact of that practice on consumers also merits discussion.

Proper antitrust principles, however, also require due weight be given to the pro-competitive aspects of this deal.  AT&T has committed to expand high-speed internet access to 15 million Americans who otherwise may not have such access.  The market for high-speed internet in some respects is both more important to consumers in the long term and suffers from less competition than the market for video.  This deal may thus offer real efficiencies and benefits to consumers—including innovation in a new internet distribution technology—that would not obtain if the deal is blocked.    

Markets change rapidly, and nowhere is this as true as it is for markets in technology-driven industries such as voice, video, and internet.  In response to such changing circumstances—and as we have seen with increasing frequency of late—incumbent companies may seek to consolidate.  In some cases, this behavior may be part of a nefarious attempt to forestall change—to prevent new products or technologies from making an incumbent obsolete.  In other cases, however, this behavior simply represents intelligent business planning to adapt to, and take advantage of, new trends.

Accordingly, in fast-moving markets, consumers may be harmed by government intervention as easily as they may be harmed by consolidation, and it is essential that, in considering important transactions such as the one before us, we apply rigorous economic analysis and ground our conclusions in the evidence.  By ensuring that we protect competition, and not any individual company or competitor, we can help create market conditions that benefit consumers and promote economic development.