Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Marco Rubio (R-FL) delivered opening remarks and questioned witnesses at a hearing on countering China’s influence in the United States. Watch Rubio’s opening remarks here as well as Part I and Part II of...
Approximately 302,000 Americans live with spinal cord injuries. To help these people achieve a better quality of life, there is a need to increase education and invest in research. U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) successfully led a bipartisan...
Foreign investment is one of the legal means that adversaries, like China, can use to collect Americans’ data, exasperating both privacy and national security risks. To counter this, U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) reintroduced the...
U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) joined Special Report with Bret Baier to discuss the impending government shutdown, the possibility of a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal, and the indictment of Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ). See below for highlights and watch the full...
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced three additions to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) Entity List. These are the first additions by the Biden Administration since June. U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), author of the bipartisan...
Congress should think before it regulates AI U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) September 26, 2023 Washington Times To prevent next-generation computer programs from wreaking havoc on American society, [some members of Congress want] to enact comprehensive regulation at...
Washington, D.C. — U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL), Chris Coons (D-DE), John Kennedy (R-LA), and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) reintroduced the Small Business Credit Protection Act, legislation that would require credit bureaus to inform small businesses of a nonpublic personal data breach within 30 days. The bill would also prohibit credit bureaus from charging small businesses for a credit report within 180 days following a breach. In response to the 2017 Equifax data breach, Congress amended the Fair Credit Reporting Act to enhance some federal credit protections for “consumers.” However, business credit is excluded from the statutory definition of “consumers” and thus, while small businesses’ nonpublic information was subject to the breach, the changes did not apply to those using business credit. Rubio first introduced this legislation in November 2018. Congressman Gregory Steube (R-FL) will introduce companion legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
A one-pager of the bill is available here.
“The federal government must uphold the trust that Americans need to fully participate in our economy,” Rubio said. “My legislation, the Small Business Credit Protection Act, would ensure that small businesses receive protections in cases of a security breach. I urge my colleagues to join me in passing this bipartisan bill so that we can continue to protect America’s small businesses – the cornerstone of our economy.”
“Entrepreneurs need to build and maintain healthy credit as they grow their businesses,” Coons said. “That’s why it is so vital that government help protect the private credit information of small business owners, just as they do for consumers. I’m proud to introduce the bipartisan Small Business Credit Protection Act, which ensures if a small business’s private data is breached, business owners will be notified by credit bureaus just as swiftly as individuals are.”
“We’ve taken important steps to protect consumers, but small businesses’ credit data have also been compromised, and they deserve protection,” Kennedy said. “Consumers and mom-and-pop businesses are counting on us to safeguard their data privacy when new threats arise every day.”
“As small businesses in Florida and around the country begin to recover from last year’s challenges, we need to do our part to help them by holding credit bureaus accountable for their failures,” Steube said. “This legislation is an important step that direction through ensuring that our small businesses have access to the tools and information necessary to protect consumers from breaches.”
Following the Equifax breach, Rubio urged the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton to require companies to promptly disclose significant hacks of material impact that make Americans vulnerable to identity theft.