================================================================= ALAWON Volume 7, Number 86 ISSN 1069-7799 July 22, 1998 American Library Association Washington Office Newsline In this issue: (111 lines) ACTION ALERT: AMENDMENTS BY SENS. MCCAIN AND COATS ATTACHED TO APPROPRIATIONS BILL; _________________________________________________________________ ACTION ALERT: AMENDMENTS BY SENS. MCCAIN AND COATS ATTACHED TO APPROPRIATIONS BILL In a carefully orchestrated move that left Senate opponents scrambling, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Dan Coats (R-IN) on July 21 attached S. 1482 and S. 1619 to the Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary appropriations bill. By doing so, they effectively blocked Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT) from offering his Internet Use Policy amendment as a substitute for Sen. McCain's proposal. Sen. Coats' bill is S. 1482, a bill to prohibit commercial Web distribution of material that is "harmful to minors." Sen. McCain's bill is The School Internet Filtering Act (S. 1619), a bill which would require all E-rate eligible schools and libraries to install filtering software on some or all of their computer terminals in order to get the E-rate. With only a handful of Senators on the floor, both the Coats and McCain bills were adopted by voice vote as "amendments" just after the Senate reconvened. Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), spoke in favor of S. 1619. Sen. Coats' bill was offered as an amendment to the appropriations legislation; Sen. McCain's bill was offered as an amendment to the Coats bill. The Burns amendment would require local use policies as a prerequisite for participating in the E-rate rather than have a federal mandate requiring filtering on all Internet-accessible school computers and on at least one computer in each public library. However, it is unclear at this writing whether there will be an opportunity for Sen. Burns to also add his proposal onto the appropriations bill or to force a debate between the McCain and Burns approaches. Later in the floor debate, Sen. Burns said: "...I continue to believe that local communities acting through their school and library boards, rather than software programs that are, at best, questionable, or the federal government, are in the best position to make decisions on this critical issue." At this writing the full appropriations bill has not yet passed. The Senate continues to debate a number of other amendments, many of which are also not germane to appropriations issues. There could yet be other strategies used by Senate opponents to S. 1482 and S. 1619 to try other ways to remove the language from the appropriations bill or at least give some other alternative for conference committee with the House version. ACTION NEEDED: Please protest the adoption of Sen. McCain's E-rate filtering amendment (S. 1619) and the Sen. Coats' amendment (S. 1482) to the Commerce, Justice, State and Judiciary appropriations bill by contacting your Senators, including Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD). The U.S. Capitol Switchboard number is 202-224-3121. THE MESSAGE: (1) ASK for Senate debate on other approaches to guiding Internet access. (2) EMPHASIZE that local use policies and decisions made by local library and school boards are the best way to serve students and library users. (3) STRESS that federal mandates are not appropriate or necessary for E-rate participation. BACKGROUND: In the past few weeks both Sens. McCain and Coats made efforts to bring their bills to the floor. Because of the controversial nature of the bills and the pre-recess schedule, unanimous consent was needed but neither Senator was successful. By attaching both measures to the appropriations bill, the two Senators bypassed the process of getting unanimous consent. They also avoided any serious debate on the merits of their legislation, repeating the pattern similar to the Communications Decency Act--passing suspect legislation without full consideration of the constitutional questions. For now librarians seeking E-rate discounts must wait and see whether filtering and blocking the Internet becomes a condition for E-rate participation. More will be reported as soon as further action is taken in Congress. _________________________________________________________________ ALAWON is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. To subscribe, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc @ala.org. To unsubscribe, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/ washoff/alawon. Visit our Web site at http://www.alawash.org. ALA Washington Office 202.628.8410 (V) 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, #403 202.628.8419 (F) Washington, DC 20004-1701 800.941.8478 (V) Lynne E. Bradley, Editor Deirdre Herman, Managing Editor Contributors: Carol C. Henderson All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. =================================================================