Earlier this week, the Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA) sent a letter to members of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee ahead of their markup of S. 1409, the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), and S. 1418, the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Act (COPPA 2.0). These two bills contain several issues, ranging from unconstitutional age verifications, ignorant consent requirements, heightened data collection, and a fundamental misunderstanding of targeted advertising. Protecting internet users of all ages begins and ends with data privacy and security. Unfortunately, the legislation passed out of committee unanimously by voice vote, but we’ll be keeping our eyes and ears open as it heads to a full Senate vote. Read our full letter here.
Bill of the Month
The Taxpayers Protection Alliance’s (TPA) Bill of the Month for July 2023 is the Streamline Pentagon Budgeting Act, introduced by Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), John Garamendi (D-Calif.), Warren Davidson (R-Ohio), and Seth Moulton (D-Mass.). This legislation would repeal the statutory requirement for military services to submit an annual list of unfunded priorities to Congress. Unfunded priority lists (UPLs), formerly known as unfunded requirement lists, are reports that every U.S. military service, combatant commands (COCOMs), and the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) annually submit to Congress pursuant to 10 U.S.C. §222a and 10 U.S.C. §222b. These reports contain military programs, activities and mission requirements not included in the President’s annual budget request. UPLs have existed since the mid-1990’s, but the requirement for their submission was enacted as part of the fiscal year (FY) 17 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) (Section 1064, P.L. 114-328). By 2021, these pentagon wish-lists cost taxpayers $18 billion. Costs ballooned to $49 billion a few short years later in FY23. This amount is similar to the entire Agency for International Development budget, and more than NASA’s $32 billion budget in FY23. This year, the Pentagon’s UPLs totaled $16.4 billion. That’s more than the President’s budget requests for entire departments. It dwarfs the Department of the Treasury ($16.3 billion), Department of Labor ($15.1 billion), Social Security Administration ($15.5 billion), Department of Commerce ($12.3 billion), Environmental Protection Agency ($12 billion), and Small Business Administration ($987 million).
Reps. Jayapal, McClintock, Davidson, Garamendi and Moulton took action during the ongoing FY24 NDAA process by submitting the Streamline Pentagon Budgeting Act as an amendment to defense policy package. It was rejected by the House Rules Committee and failed to receive a vote on the House floor. Now, their standalone bill has been referred to the House Armed Services Committee for consideration. In FY23, the Department of Defense (DoD) retains $2.01 trillion in budgetary resources, compromising 15.1 percent of the federal budget. The U.S. spends more on defense than the next ten countries combined. With a current national debt of more than $32.6 trillion, Congress must act to rein in wasteful spending. The Streamline Pentagon Budgeting Act would remove the requirement for military services, COCOMs and the MDA to submit unfunded wish lists to Congress, saving billions of taxpayer dollars annually. It is for these reasons, among others, that TPA is proud to make the Streamline Pentagon Budgeting Act its Bill of the Month for July 2023.
Hands off the Internet
Like America, the internet as we know it today was conceived in liberty. Now, politicians of both parties hope to stifle it with ill-conceived (and often-unconstitutional) regulatory regimes. Congress has considered several proposals to exert sweeping control over online speech, markets, communications security, and much else, though it has yet to approve anything beyond a few targeted bills, some of which have spectacularly backfired in the exact ways proponents of internet freedom have warned. In the meantime, several states have passed internet-regulation bills, of which many require social media platforms (or, in some cases, a broader set of websites) to verify their users’ age.
Barring underage teens from using social media without affirmative parental consent – and consequently mandating universal age verification on social media – has in recent months gained more support – often bipartisan – than perhaps any other internet-related policy proposal. Utah codified such a law in March, and the 118th Congress has seen several such proposals introduced. However, requiring platforms to block all underage users by default, absent parental consent, unconstitutionally restricts teens speech rights. Consider Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (2011), in which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a California statute that forbade minors to purchase violent video games. The late Justice Antonin Scalia swatted away arguments that by-default bans support “parental rights,” as some suggest. Moreover, enforced age verification violates the First Amendment. To verify thoroughly the age of minors, a platform must perforce verify the age of all users. This, when required by government, infracts Americans’ right to speak anonymously, a right the Supreme Court recognized in McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission (1995). “Under our Constitution, anonymous pamphleteering is not a pernicious, fraudulent practice, but an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority. “Anonymity is a shield from the tyranny of the majority.” Justice Clarence Thomas examined the historical record, concluding that “the Framers understood the First Amendment to protect an author’s right to express his thoughts on political candidates or issues in an anonymous fashion.”
In 2022, California (ever the vanguard in progressive policy campaigns) instituted a so-called “age-appropriate design code” in the aptly named Age-Appropriate Design Code Act (AADCA). Ultimately, the AADCA’s overbroad, byzantine provisions coerce platforms to enforce content-moderation practices that please progressives in Sacramento. It contains numerous provisions, entailing crushing compliance costs, but its core requirement is that “The law will require any business (as defined by California statute) offering online services ‘likely to be accessed by children’ to ‘[e]stimate the age of child users with a reasonable level of certainty appropriate to the risks that arise from the data management practices of the business or apply the privacy and data protections afforded to children to all consumers’ (emphasis added). In other words, if a company cannot erect obstacles for childusers specifically, it must create obstacles for all.” Thus, the AADCA tacitly mandates age verification for an overbroad slate of websites. The statute requires, moreover, that digital services launching new products and features to assess the potential harms underage users could experience and to mitigate them. Add thereto the introduction of many other weighty compliance burdens. Trade group NetChoice quickly challenged the AADCA’s constitutionality on myriad counts. “[S]elf-censorship is AB 2273’s self-professed aim,” NetChoice contends. The fatal over-broadness the AADCA displays typifies too many policy makers’ approach to internet regulation. They advocate instituting sweeping regulatory regimes that would degrade greatly the quality of online speech or commerce, little appreciating the maelstrom of havoc and unintended consequences their proposals would trigger.
Too many recent proposals seek to appropriate to government the rights and responsibilities of parenthood, as Justice Scalia wrote of California’s video-game ban. Lockout-by-default laws “do not enforce parental authority over children’s speech and religion” – or anything else – “they impose governmental authority, subject only to a parental veto,” to borrow from his Brown opinion. While government surely must act on its compelling interest to protect minors, it must simultaneously protect the sphere of authority parents rightfully dominate. Simply put, the state ought not regulate away all parenting mistakes. Many parents feed their children too much unhealthy food – one fifth of children and adolescents are obese – yet no liberty lover would advocate direct state intervention in family meal planning. Likewise, many parents certainly should do more to monitor their children’s online habits, e.g., screening for age-inappropriate content and online predators; and limiting access time. This does not, however, justify the passage of flagrantly unconstitutional statutes that compromise the on- and off-line security of all Americans; nor the usurpation of parents’ duties as the primary protectors or their offspring.
Tech companies, moreover, continue to respond to parental concerns with ever-improving child-safety tools. While still imperfect, these tools have developed extensively in recent years. America predicated her rise to greatness on robust families, thick webs of community-level institutions, and individual liberty. Politicians ought to harmonize public policy to these ideals in physical and digital spaces alike.
BLOGS:
MEDIA:
July 21, 2023: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about taxpayer funding of MONSE and Safe Streets.
July 21, 2023: New American mentioned TPA in their story, “Federal Reserve Officially Launches New Instant Pay Service.”
July 24, 2023: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about the Board of Estimates and grants to nonprofits.
July 26, 2023: The American Spectator ran TPA’s op-ed, “Government’s Attack on Free Speech Can Only Be Stopped by Congress.”
July 26, 2023: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) quoted TPA in their story, “Appointment of new Baltimore fire chief raises concerns about filling other top positions at city agencies.”
July 27, 2023: I appeared on WBOB 600 AM (Jacksonville, Fla.) to talk about earmarks, government spending, and inflation.
July 27, 2023: WBFF Fox45 (Baltimore, Md.) interviewed me about Baltimore County’s ShotSpotter pilot program.
July 27, 2023: Inside Sources ran TPA’s op-ed, “Private Broadband Providers Invested Trillions in Infrastructure Before BEAD.”
Have a great weekend!
Best,
