Senate effort to pass TikTok bill likely to take until summer

[RAY BOGAN]

The TikTok bill which quickly passed the House in a 352-65 vote in just eight days is stalled in the Senate with no clear path forward. After a classified briefing Wednesday, Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., told SAN it’s yet to be determined whether the Senate will take that bill up, or write something entirely new. 

[BOB CASEY]

“We don’t know yet what the Senate will do in terms of whether it will be the same bill, a different bill, alterations of the bill or not. But that’s yet to be determined by both parties in the Senate,” Casey said. 

[RAY BOGAN]

The House passed bill requires TikTok to be sold off by its parent company ByteDance or be banned in the United States. Lawmakers explained that because ByteDance is based in China, the Chinese Communist Party can use the app to collect data on Americans and spread disinformation. 

If the Senate makes just one amendment to the bill, it will need to go back to the House to be reapproved before it can be signed by the president. 

[JAMES LANKFORD]

“It’s likely because obviously the House has a proposal, the Senate is going to be able to take a look at its own solutions as well and to be able to determine what’s the best way to resolve this,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said. “No one wants to take away the ability of Americans to be able to share cat videos with each other, that’s not a big deal. But the ability for a communist government to be able to reach into the homes and lives of individuals here in the United States.”

[RAY BOGAN]

Not taking into account how slowly the Senate works, passing a TikTok bill in the chamber will take a minimum of a month based on the legislative schedule. But the effort is more likely to go into the summer. Congress has three weeks off between now and the end of April and Senators want to hold a yet to be scheduled public hearing before they take action. 

Senators received a classified briefing from the FBI and Director of National Intelligence on TikTok’s ability to surveil and distribute Chinese government disinformation Wednesday. The Chairman of the Intelligence Committee told reporters he wants to make some of that information public.

Opponents of the bill contend that this is big government singling out an individual company and that they should really be curbing all social media companies. Sen. Lankford was in the classified briefing and told SAN he didn’t hear anything to address those concerns. 

[LANKFORD]

“I’ve been tracking this for a while to be able to see how China is using the data of Americans, how they’re harvesting American’s data, and then the potential they have to be able to influence that,” Lankford said. “We’ve seen not just that they could do it, that they are doing it. We’ve also seen in other countries how they’ve actually engaged to be able to influence, whether it be the public policy, whether it be elections.” 

[RAY BOGAN]

If the House bill becomes law, ByteDance will have six months to sell TikTok before a ban takes effect. There are already American investors seeking to buy the company. The Financial Times puts its forced sale value at $88 billion.