mr. ruppersberger. mr. ruppersberger: our bill is extremely limited and we are attempting to allow our government, intelligence community to give the information that's necessary to protect our citizens from these cyber attacks. ours is the most active bill that is out there now. our bill hopefully will pass and go to the senate and lot more negotiations. there is a lot more work to do such as homeland security. and i know there are some issues involved in homeland security markup. i know that there are issues involving judiciary. and i can say this. i know that the chairman and i for one year now have worked very openly with every group that we think would be involved in this bill. and because of different positions taken, including aclu and other positions and this bill is better and hope that it passes. we clearly will work with you, but we on the intelligence committee are very limited to our jurisdiction. and that's why a lot of these issues we can't deal with other than what is in our bill right now. i

mr. ruppersberger, people on both sides of the aisle. finally i also want to take a second to thank the staff of the various committees who have worked on this issue as well as josh martin, michael seeds of my office, as well as general stewart, the speaker's national security advisor whose guidance on substance and process was invaluable. mr. speaker, we will have ample opportunity to debate the merits of the individual pieces of legislation, but i think it's important at the beginning just to step back and say why all this hubbub about computers? what does all that mean? i think we should start with the point that cyber, and that includes networks connected to the internet and networks that are not connected to the internet, but cyber is deeply ingrained in virtually every facet of our lives now. from the time we get up till the time we go to sleep. and all the times in between. we very much depend on cyberand anything you very much depend on can and often does become a vulnerability. so we know of it at least three different kinds of

mr. ruppersberger and members of the committee and worked with the privacy groups and civil libertarian answer --s. and this doesn't do anything. i get it, it sounds great and you are going to run out and do some bad things with it. this is our nation's defense. this is the last thing we need to do to protect this country. we have done it since 9/11. we did homeland security. we've done the patriot act. we have done other things that this body and the other body and the president of the united states signed to protect this country as our constitution tells us to do for the common defense of this great nation. and i'll tell you something, we can have this debate. we can talk about a bill that does absolutely nothing to protect someone's private password at home or get about the business to try to give the private sector just a little bit of information to protect people's private information in the comfort of their home so we can protect this nation from a catastrophic attack. the director of the national security didn't say maybe, could happen, they said it will happen. this is the one small t

ruppersberger. and i thank the gentleman and yield back. mr. hoyer: i thank the gentleman for his information. the gentleman in his comments indicates we might go to conference on the surface transportation bill. as the gentleman knows the senate surface transportation bill passed overwhelmingly and with a very substantial bipartisan vote and a vote led by senator boxer and senator inhofe of oklahoma. there were 22 republican senators, about half the republican senators voted for it. and so it passed overwhelmingly. i'm wondering given the time frame in which we are dealing whether or not the gentleman feels comfortable with some assurance that we are going to move to go to conference so we can get a conference under way. i know that's -- the majority indicated it wanted a bill so it could go to conference. i have had discussions with i think you, but i know mr. boehner, the speaker, and mr. mccarthy that that was the intent. to go to conference. would it be -- what would preclude us, i suppose, would be the better way to phrase the question, from having a motion to go to conference next week?