January 24, 2001

A bill designed to reform the Export Administration Act has been reintroduced in the Senate. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Phil Gramm (R-TX) and Sens. Mike Enzi (R-WY), Paul Sarbanes (D- MD) and Tim Johnson (D-SD) introduced it. A similar bill gained strong bipartisan support in the last Congress, but a crowded Senate agenda prevented it from final passage.

Enzi hopes the bill can be marked up by late February. More than a dozen failed attempts have been made to reform and reauthorize the EAA to reflect the national security risks and technologies of today, he noted.

"We unanimously passed the EAA in the Senate Banking Committee last year. It was strongly supported by Republicans and Democrats, as well as exporters. The Clinton Administration supported the bill. Even President Bush endorsed the bill in campaign statements. It was prevented from coming up last year because of the crowded floor agenda, but now is the time to push for its passage," he said.

The bill would eliminate trade barriers while focusing controls on the items sensitive to national security. According to Enzi, "This bill puts up higher fences around the most sensitive items and focuses our enforcement efforts on restricting high technology exports to all the truly bad actors. At the same time the bill takes into account the realities of today's global economy. It does not leave us with a false security and recognizes items that are available from foreign sources or available in mass-market quantities cannot be effectively controlled for national security and foreign policy reasons."