Congressional Integrity and Pension Forfeiture Act of 2011

Madam Speaker, I thank the members of the Judiciary Committee, both the chairman and the ranking member, and, as all have applauded, Congresswoman Slaughter and Congressman Walz for their continued leadership. And I am very pleased to have been one of the, as they say, long-suffering cosponsors since, I believe, the 110th Congress.

It's important for our colleagues to understand that I think we all come here with the intent to serve this country, and to serve it well. And I believe that when we self-regulate, we only enhance this institutional body that has such enormous history because of the changing times.

I don't believe that Members of Congress are spending their time dwelling on information that they have and using it for self-purpose, but we now stand here united saying that Members of Congress, employees of Congress, and all Federal employees are prevented from using any nonpublic information derived from the individual's position as a Member of Congress or employee of Congress, or gain from performance of the individual's duties, for personal benefit.

That is waving a flag to all of our constituents, to the Nation that says that we're here to stand united for you. I hope that helps us as we move forward on payroll tax relief and unemployment. But there is a challenge that I think we have missed, and I think Senator Grassley has carefully analyzed why he is in essence offended, even with 16, if you will, drafting errors, which I hope that as we move to conference--that we must do--will be corrected.

I will yield to the gentleman.

I thank the gentleman for clarifying it.

I still think that we should rush quickly to conference because what is missing from this--and we can't say it more often than over and over again, from the Abramoff matter that all of us knew of years ago and by ``political intelligence'' refers to information that is potentially market-moving, is nonpublic, or not easily accessible to the public, is gathered and analyzed. Therefore, we are missing a large gap by leaving out the provision on political intelligence, a $100 million industry.

Yes, we're going to support this legislation, but we can't get to conference soon enough to make this bill comparable and ready for the American people. We must regulate ourselves because they have trusted us to lead this Nation.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to debate the S. 2038--Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge, STOCK, Act which would amend the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995 and the Ethics in Government Act. The legislation would require the Senate and the House of Representatives to implement an electronic filing

system for financial disclosure forms and provide the public with on- line access to that information in a searchable database. S. 2038 also would make clear that Members of Congress, Congressional employees, and federal employees are prohibited from using nonpublic information for personal financial benefit. In addition, the legislation would require more timely reporting of information about financial transactions by Members and staff.

The STOCK ACT would prohibit Members of Congress, employees of Congress, and all federal employees from using ``any nonpublic information derived from the individual's position as a Member of Congress or employee of Congress, or gained from performance of the individual's duties, for personal benefit.''

The bill before us today is not the same measures that had received overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate or the House. The measure before us today has been brought onto the Floor under the cover of darkness. There was zero transparency in the process and there is no opportunity to offer amendments.

I firmly and unequivocally believe that the American people deserve to know that their elected officials only have one interest in mind, which is doing what is best for the country rather than their own financial interests. This behavior is particularly disturbing at a time when so many Americans are struggling to make ends meet. Members of this body and any public servant should not have a financial edge because of information they have attained while serving the American people.

The issue before us today is not whether a insider trading law should exist for lawmakers. The issue before us today is one of fairness and transparency. As we attempt to shine a spotlight on those who may profit on insider knowledge, the Republican led majority in the House has closed out the possibility of improving this bill.

The night before last, the Rules Committee passed a rule on a straight party-line vote. The rule has allowed the Republican majority to bring up their own version of the STOCK Act under a suspension of the rules.

Let me be clear; Republican leadership has brought a bill onto the Floor under a suspension of the rules. They utilized the most restrictive process the House has to offer. In fact, this process is so restrictive that it is often reserved for noncontroversial items such as naming post offices, buildings, or even playgrounds.

For this bill, of all bills, to be brought up under suspension of the rules is unfathomable. The Republican-led majority has given Democrats no opportunity to offer their own amendments in order to improve the bill. In addition, there is no chance for the Democrats to offer our own alternative, under a Motion to Recommit.

As a Senior Member of the Judiciary Committee, I find the actions of the Republican-led House to be outrageous. It is a direct contradiction to the original bipartisan effort supported in this House by 285 Members of this body pushed by Ms. Slaughter, a bill which was composed over the course of 6 years.

Further, considering the bipartisan support received for the initial Senate version of the STOCK Act and the significant bipartisan support received by the bill introduced by my dear colleague Ms. Slaughter it is curious that the Republicans have chosen to put forward their own version of the STOCK Act which waters down government reform and leaves out a critical piece of the STOCK Act--namely, the registration of the political intelligence industry.

Registration of the political intelligence industry was included in the Senate passed bill, but stripped out of this watered down Republican version. Instead of requiring registration, my Republican colleagues only require a study of the industry.

It is as though the Majority wishes to ignore the fact that regulation of the political intelligence community was supported by 285 Members of Congress who were co-sponsors of the original Slaughter-Walz bill. Instead, what we now know is that after emerging from behind closed doors, the bill introduced by Republicans does nothing to regulate the political intelligence community.

Regulating the political intelligence industry is vital to this piece of legislation. A study will not have the same impact as a requirement that these firms register and come out from the shadows.

Political intelligence firms or people who have special relationships with government officials can obtain nonpublic legislative information or learn about pending legislative decisions by attending lobbying sessions, or communicating directly with lobbyists and lawmakers.

The term ``political intelligence'' refers to legislative information that is potentially market-moving, is nonpublic or not easily accessible to the public, and is gathered, analyzed, and sold to or shared with interested parties by firms or people with access to such information. Political intelligence is typically sold to independent companies or third parties whose business demands knowledge of upcoming market and industry affecting legislative decisions.

The political intelligence industry must be regulated. These firms have grown drastically over the last few decades, and are now a $100 million a year industry. Every day these firms help hedge funds and Wall Street investors unfairly profit from nonpublic congressional information. These firms have no congressional oversight and can freely pass along information for investment purposes. In 2005, insiders profited from a last-minute government bailout of companies who were embroiled in asbestos litigation. We must prevent such windfalls from happening again.

The U.S. House of Representatives Ethics Manual states that its members should ``never use any information coming to him confidentially in the performance of governmental duties as a means for making private profit,'' and the Senate Ethics Manual states that its Conflict of Interest Rule 37(1) provides for ``a broad prohibition against members, officers or employees deriving financial benefit, directly or indirectly, from the use of their official position[s].'' No arrests or prosecutions, however, have ever been made against members of Congress for insider trading based on nonpublic congressional knowledge.

While Members of Congress are not exempt from federal securities laws, including insider trading prohibitions, it remains unclear whether a member of Congress has a fiduciary duty to the United States--misappropriating information gained through an employment relationship is illegal, but case law conflicts as to whether members of Congress actually constitute ``employees'' of the federal government--whether the information on which the Member trades is ``material''--Is there ``a substantial likelihood'' that a reasonable investor ``would consider it important'' in making an investment decision?--and whether the information on which the Member traded is ``nonpublic.''

The bill before us today has utilized Senate language which clarifies federal ethics rules and establishes a fiduciary duty against insider trading by all three branches of government. This measure does give the Securities Exchange Commission, SEC, Department of Justice, DOJ, and Commodities Futures Trading Commission, CFTC, clear authority to prosecute insider trading cases throughout the federal government, as well as clarifying that 28,000 executive branch employees will be subject to the same online, public financial disclosure rules as will be applied to Congress. In addition it adds more specific disclosure restrictions on executive branch officials, and requires that their disclosures be online within 30 days of submission.

Even so, this measure is still a watery version of Ms. Slaughter's bill. We have been denied the opportunity to amend the bill on the Floor today in a manner that would ensure bipartisan support.

Again, Republican-led House has gone too far. They not only not eliminated the political intelligence registration requirement and replaced it with a 12-month GAO study. They have also removed from this measure the anti-corruption provision that restored criminal penalties in some public corruption cases. This provision had been unanimously approved by House Judiciary in December.

House Republican leadership should have allowed this bill to be finalized in an open and transparent manner. Instead, the Majority continued their ``my-way-or-the-highway'' approach. They shut out their colleagues, and made partisan changes to what was a bipartisan bill.

I thank the gentleman.

Madam Speaker, let me just point out a couple of things in response to what has been said on the floor about the bill before us. Had we adopted, had we accepted the Senate bill, we would have had 16 drafting errors not corrected; 16 misstatements in the Senate bill that drafted the wrong provisions of the ethics laws that already existed and would have ensured that what was said on the Senate floor and is being said here would not be enforced in law, number one.

Number two, if we had taken the Senate bill, the absolute prohibition

about Members participating in IPOs would not be before us. That is an addition that we have in the House bill. That is an additional prohibition. That makes that an illegal act. It has not been in the past. The Senate bill did not even talk about that.

Third, with respect to the issue of political intelligence, I respect the Senator from Iowa very much, but I doubt he has ever prosecuted anybody and put them in prison for conflict of interest during their public service. I have.

I understand when you do that, you have to deal with the very careful constitutional questions of people dealing with their right to apply before the government their grievances. That has become known now as lobbying. It is a constitutionally protected activity.

And the idea that we have a Congress committed to transparency means that we give out as much information as we possibly can. Those are difficult, conflicting interests that have to be carefully determined if we're going to deal with the question of political intelligence. It does us no good to pass a bill that will be rendered unconstitutional. And it does us no good to not carefully consider this. As a matter of fact, on the Senate floor, it was Senator Lieberman who asked his fellow colleagues to give them time on the Senate side to study the issue so that, precisely, they would not render the bill unconstitutional. I might add that Senator Lieberman also served as Attorney General of his State, and knows whereof he speaks.

If the gentleman would send someone over here, you can make a copy of it right now.

I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding.

Madam Speaker, at the very outset, I would like to thank Members on both

sides of the aisle for attempting to try and deal with a serious issue. I'd like to particularly point to staff who have worked over this last weekend, including four attorneys on my House Administration Committee, who spent a good portion of this last weekend going through the Senate bill and trying to come up with what we believe is a responsible bill, a tough bill that could pass this House, and frankly did not include the errors that we found in the bill on the Senate side.

Several months before the STOCK Act debuted in the Senate, questions were raised publicly about the application of existing laws relating to insider trading. Specifically, there were questions as to whether or not the current laws applied to Members of Congress or their staff. As chairman of the Committee on House Administration, I and my staff carefully reviewed current law, and we concluded that the prohibition on insider trading and the criminal penalties associated with it are very much applicable, and not just to Members of Congress and staff of the legislative branch.

Let me be clear. Let us disabuse anyone of the notion that somehow they could engage in insider trading between now and the time the bill gets on the President's desk and he signs it. It is already illegal. That is the advice I've given Members when I've been asked. That's the advice I've given to the press when they've asked. It's the advice that's been given by the Ethics Committee to Members of Congress and to staff. No one within the House of Representatives or the Senate or the executive branch or even the judicial branch, regardless of responsibility, title or salary, should be under the false impression that they are somehow exempt under these laws. They are not.

I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

I would be very happy to respond to that, and I will a little bit later on in my statement. Thank you very much.

In addition to the Congress sometimes dedicated to redundancy, there is a question of clarification. The fact that we've had questions asked of us over the last several months as House Administration chairman, as the Ethics chairman has done, gives rise to the question that some have asked, and we have tried to disabuse them of that notion all along. Although we create and uphold the laws of the land, we are not above them. As their elected representatives, we owe our constituents the assurance that the decisions we make here in the people's House are, in fact, for the people and not ourselves. This assurance, Madam Speaker, must be government-wide. America not only needs to know that all of their government officials are subject to insider trading laws, but also need to know and need proof that they are adhering to them, which is exactly what the amended version of the S. 2038 accomplishes.

In 2010, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Skilling v. United States that set out several specific questions that it said must be answered in criminal statutes on honest services. The Senate bill ignored the Supreme Court's guidance and failed to answer the questions it set out. The amendment does more than eliminate the Senate's defective provisions and numerous drafting errors.

Our bill before us also strengthens the previous House and Senate proposals by first clarifying the broad application of insider trading laws, making sure no one questions it. As I say, it is already against the law, and no Member ought to rush out now and attempt to use his insider trading information for insider trading thinking that he or she is not covered. They are already covered.

It expands the financial transaction disclosure requirements. We are going to be required now, in terms of actual financial transactions, to report within a 30-day period as opposed to doing it quarterly. We're also going to be required to disclose our mortgages, which are not required right now. So we are expanding the disclosure requirements. We extend the post-employment negotiation restrictions. We expand prohibitions on influencing private hiring decisions. This is an additional point.

I would say to my friend from Michigan, the former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, we end the preferential treatment of government officials by prohibiting them from accepting exclusive access to IPOs. That has not been against the law. There's been some suggestion that might have been carried on by some Members. I have no evidence whether it has or it has not; but that is an additional prohibition placed in this, which I believe was not in the Senate bill, is not under current law, but it does make it explicit. Members of Congress cannot participate in accepting exclusive access to IPOs.

Certainly.

I would be happy to if they don't know that already. But when you read the newspapers, you would think that somehow it is proper and appropriate.

I want to make it clear not only to our colleagues but to the American public, it is against the law now, it has been against the law. If anybody has evidence of this, they should report it to the proper authorities because it is against the law.

Madam Speaker, the amendment before us, when applied to the underlying bill, creates the clarity and accountability necessary to ensure that government officials--elected, appointed, and otherwise-- adhere to Federal insider trading laws. It prohibits Members, officials, and employees of every branch of government from using nonpublic privileged information for personal gain, and it creates a disclosure mechanism for finding out when they do so. Additionally, the bill denies pensions for Members convicted of crimes. That is an addition to current law. It eliminates bonuses for senior executives at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. That is an addition to current law. And it directs the GAO to utilize----

With that, I would urge that all vote for this strong, strong STOCK Act.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (S. 2038) to prohibit Members of Congress and employees of Congress from using nonpublic information derived from their official positions for personal benefit, and for other purposes, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on S. 2038, as amended, currently under consideration.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, every Member of this House has sworn a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution and to faithfully execute the office to which they have been entrusted by their constituents. The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge Act, or STOCK Act, goes to the heart of what it means to faithfully execute public office.

The government exists to promote the public good, not to enrich government officials and employees. Those who are entrusted with public office are called public servants because their work should always serve the public rather than themselves. No one should violate the sacred trust of government office by turning ``public service'' into ``self-service.''

The risk of government self-dealing is heightened by the huge growth in recent years of the Federal Government and its increasing entanglement with the private economy. The risk of self-dealing increases when the government undertakes to spend nearly $1 trillion in stimulus money on private companies like Solyndra, or when the government inserts itself into the one-fifth of our economy represented by health

care and dictates the terms of private insurance policies.

The decisions made by Big Government can have big money consequences. Big Government can move markets. That's why we need strong rules to reassure the public that decisionmakers are not enriching themselves by investing based on insider knowledge of government policies.

This is the goal of the STOCK Act, and the House version of the STOCK Act achieves this goal. It strengthens the Senate proposal by expanding the scope of the bill to require more disclosure and prevent all office holders from profiting from insider information.

The House bill expands the legislation so that the ban on insider trading applies to all legislative, executive, and judicial branch officials and their staffs. The American people deserve to know that no one in any branch of government can profit from their office. All three branches should be held to the same standard because all three branches must be worthy of the public's trust.

And the bill ensures that Members of Congress who commit a crime do not receive a taxpayer-funded pension. The STOCK Act clarifies that Members of Congress and other government insiders have to play by the same rules against insider trading that have applied to the private sector for nearly 80 years.

Under the House bill, no Federal Government official may use nonpublic information which they learn about by virtue of their office for the purpose of making a profit in the commodities or stock markets.

The bill strengthens financial disclosure rules for public officials. Financial disclosure forms will be made publicly available in searchable, downloadable databases on government Web sites.

The bill requires prompt reporting of significant securities transactions by key legislative and executive branch officials. This will bring the financial dealings of public servants into the light of day.

The STOCK Act also strengthens disclosure of officials' mortgages so that public servants do not receive special rates and offers by virtue of their office.

The bill expands the list of crimes that result in a forfeiture of government pension rights, and it prevents Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from paying lucrative bonuses to the executives who bear so much responsibility for the housing crisis.

The House bill adds a provision to prevent government officials from receiving special early access to the initial public offerings of stock, which can result in major profits for the well-connected.

The bill requires executive branch officials to disclose their negotiations for private sector jobs, just like legislative branch officials do under current law. And the bill makes it a crime for executive branch officials to pressure private businesses to hire employees of a certain political party, a government law that currently only applies to Congress.

The STOCK Act increases disclosure and accountability for every branch of the Federal Government and ensures that public servants don't breach the trust of the American people.

Madam Speaker, for all the above reasons, I support this legislation and encourage my colleagues to support it as well.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Ross) who's an active member of the Judiciary Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Dold) who is also a member of the Financial Services Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my Texas colleague, Mr. Canseco, who is a member of the Financial Services Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Duffy), who is a member of the Financial Services Committee.

Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor), the majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren) who is a senior member of the Judiciary Committee and also chairman of the House Administration Committee.

I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Madam Speaker, how much time remains on each side?

Madam Speaker, we are prepared to close, so I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren), chairman of the House Administration Committee.

I am afraid I will have to object. The gentleman's time has expired.

Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I thank the gentleman for yielding and thank him for giving us this opportunity to discuss an important matter--the integrity of Congress--on the floor of the House.

I, too, want to join the distinguished majority leader, Mr. Cantor, in praising the leadership of Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, our ranking member on the Rules Committee, and Congressman Tim Walz for their extraordinary leadership over time, their persistence, the approach that they have taken to this to remove all doubt in the public's mind, if that is possible, that we are here to do the people's business and not to benefit personally from it.

I listened attentively to the distinguished majority leader, Mr. Cantor's remarks about the STOCK Act and its importance. And it just raises a question to me as to, if it is so important, and it certainly is, why we could not have worked in a more bipartisan fashion either to accept the Senate bill which was developed in a bipartisan fashion and passed the Senate--what was it?--94-6. It's hard to get a result like 94-6 in Congress these days, but they were able to get the result because they worked together to develop their legislation.

We had two good options. One was to accept the Senate bill, or to take up the Slaughter-Walz legislation which has nearly 300 cosponsors. Almost 100 Republicans cosponsored the original STOCK Act. The discharge petition has been calling upon the leadership to bring that bill to the floor. What's important about that is that if we passed that bill, we could go to conference and take the best and strongest of both bills to get the job done.

Instead, secretly, the Republicans brought a much-diminished bill to the floor. It has some good features. So I urge our colleagues to vote for it to bring the process along. What's wrong with it, though, is that it makes serious omissions. And I want to associate myself with the remarks that had been made earlier; but I think they bear repetition, in any event.

Senator Grassley's remarks are stunning. It is really a stunning indictment of the House Republicans in terms of their action on this bill. And I know my colleague has read this into the Record already, but I will, too.

Senator Grassley said: ``It's astonishing and extremely disappointing that the House would fulfill Wall Street's wishes by killing this provision''--that would be the provision on political intelligence. ``The Senate clearly voted to try to shed light on an industry that's behind the scenes. If the Senate language is too broad, as opponents say, why not propose a solution instead of scrapping the provision altogether? I hope to see a vehicle for meaningful transparency through a House-Senate conference or other means. If Congress delays action, the political intelligence industry will stay in the shadows, just the way Wall Street likes it.''

Well, the Senator's statement is very widely covered. The Hill today has a big, full page, ``Grassley: Republicans caved. Iowa Senator says House doing Wall Street's bidding.''

I think it is important to note that on the Senate side there was interest in doing this study that is now in the House bill, and it was rejected by the Senate by a 60-39 vote, to include the political intelligence provision in the bill, rejecting the study. Now that that has already been rejected in the Senate, it's resurrected on the House side, a weakening of the bill.

So whether it's the political intelligence piece proposed by Senator Grassley or Senator Leahy's piece about corruption, I think it is really important that those two elements be included in the bill. A good way to do that, to find a path to bipartisanship in the strongest possible bill, is to pass the bill today despite its serious shortcomings. And it is hard to understand why the shortcomings are there, but nonetheless they are. But pass the bill today and go to conference. To pass earlier or to accept the Senate bill, or to take the original STOCK Act, strong STOCK Act to the floor. Both of those were rejected. Pass this bill and go to conference. It is very important that the House and the Senate meet to discuss these very important issues. With all due respect to a study on political intelligence, that's really just a dodge. That is just a way to say we're not going to do the political intelligence piece.

So again, with serious reservations about the bill but thinking that the better course of action is to pass it, and I don't want anybody to interpret the strong vote for it to be a seal of approval of what it is, but just a way of pushing the process down the line so that we can move expeditiously to go to conference for the strongest possible bill.

I want to close again by saluting Congresswoman Louise Slaughter and Congressman Tim Walz for their relentless persistence and dedication to this issue. Had they not had this discharge petition and the nearly 300 cosponsors, bipartisan, nearly 100 of them Republicans, I doubt that we would even be taking up this bill today. So congratulations and thank you.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, Members of the House, we come here this morning as the leaders of the Judiciary Committee, and I have to assume that the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Smith, like myself, is deeply disappointed that we're bringing a bill that we've never had a hearing on before the committee before the Congress for disposition.

Here was a bill referred to six committees: Financial Services, Agricultural, Judiciary, House Administration, Ethics, and the Rules Committee. Only one hearing was held in one of these committees on this measure. It's never been before Judiciary or any other committee, and so I want to begin by complimenting the author of this measure, the ranking member, former chairwoman of the Rules Committee, the gentlelady from New York, Louise Slaughter, for a serious and important amendment that has never been treated fairly.

Now, I don't know what the explanation is. Maybe we can get to it during this proceeding. But I think that this is not the way that we want to move forward with a bill that was supposed to get to an insider trading ban that everybody wanted, because there's no reporting requirement in this bill.

So, I will reserve the balance of my time and look forward to the discussion.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased now to recognize the original author of this bill, and because of her deep concern about this matter, I am going to yield the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter) as much time as she may consume.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased now to yield as much time as he may consume to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota, Tim Walz, who joined with the ranking member of the Rules Committee in introducing the original bill.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Virginia, Bobby Scott, the ranking member of the subcommittee to which this measure would have gone had we been able to hold hearings.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased now to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Tennessee, Steve Cohen, a member of the Judiciary Committee, one who has worked on this matter even though we couldn't hold hearings.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

May I ask the distinguished majority leader one question, why he took political intelligence out of this provision?

I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Well, I thank the gentleman because there are some Members on the gentleman's side of the aisle that say, if Congress delays action on the political intelligence industry, we will stay in the shadows, just the way Wall Street likes it. So I think we ought to think about that. And I'm hoping that the leader will continue the examination of the political intelligence industry piece.

I am now pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California, Nancy Pelosi, the distinguished leader on our side of the aisle.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

I would just like to compliment the distinguished gentleman from California who was an Attorney General himself and is very sharp on these matters. Could you make available to us these 16 drafting errors of the Senate? I'd be delighted to get them from you.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

I thank the gentleman very much.

I'm pleased now to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings), the ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Madam Speaker, I'm prepared to close, and I do so by yielding the balance of my time to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Will the gentlelady yield to me just briefly?

Because we've got the 16 from our distinguished Judiciary colleague Mr. Lungren. These are merely technical errors that are corrected by the enrolling resolution that surely he must have heard about. These aren't errors that would have gone into the bill.

I thank the gentlelady for yielding.

Will the gentleman yield?

Thank you, sir.

Why are we passing this law if the conduct we are prohibiting is already illegal?

I want to thank the gentleman for bringing us this information. I will take back to everybody on this side of the aisle not to rush out and try to do any last-minute deals because it is already illegal if you will do the same with the Members on your side.