This is a good question. I'd love to hear some debate.
I think the folks in the House of Representatives and Congress are just that - "Old folks" who don't even begin to understand the Internet.
A quick search under Spam laws lead me to
http://www.spamlaws.com/us.html which gives a lot of conflicting information.
Our Lightspeed Media addresses get a ton of spam and virus crap. I think it's funny when an adult webmaster gets spam email. I got one today and decided to play around with their remove link; Any email address I put in returned "your email address will be removed" which means it's pretty much bullshit.