Sen. Phil Gramm, chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, made the following statement on the conference report filed on the electronic commerce legislation:

"The electronic-signature bill is an important step into the future that establishes legal footing for electronic commerce, which, over time, will be parallel to the existing paper-based commerce.

"I want to commend Senator Spencer Abraham for initiating this historic bill and fighting to see that it served the promotion of electronic commerce in America.

"Progress was made in addressing my final concerns. With regard to the consent process, the additional burden that is established in the bill can be waived by regulators if they find that it is too burdensome. While I would have preferred to have set a sunset date for these additional hurdles, the availability of a regulatory waiver is an improvement over the original bill.

"While there is still a delay for the use of electronic commerce in financial services, the disparity between the financial industry and other industries has been significantly reduced.

"Finally, the loophole that would have allowed states to require both paper and electronic notification has been closed.

"Based on these changes, I intend to vote for the bill. And I intend in the next Congress very quickly to review each of these provisions to see if the process can be rationalized and accelerated."