Recommending that the House of Representatives find Lois G. Lerner, former Director, Exempt Organizations, Internal Revenue Service, in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with a subpoena duly issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, I call up the report (H. Rept. 113-415) to accompany the resolution recommending that the House of Representatives find Lois G. Lerner, Former Director, Exempt Organizations, Internal Revenue Service, in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with a subpoena duly issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, I call up the resolution (H. Res. 574) recommending that the House of Representatives find Lois G. Lerner, Former Director, Exempt Organizations, Internal Revenue Service, in contempt of Congress for refusal to comply with a subpoena duly issued by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material into the Record for the resolution made in order under the rule.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, on May 22, 2013, the committee started a hearing to investigate allegations that the IRS had, in fact, used a flawed process in reviewing applications for tax-exempt status.

To wit, I subpoenaed Lois Lerner to testify at that hearing because she was head of IRS' Exempt Organization's Division, the office that executed and, we believe, targeted conservative groups. The two divisions of the IRS most involved with the targeting were the EO Determinations unit in Cincinnati and the EO Technical unit in Washington, D.C., headed by Lois Lerner.

Before the hearing, Ms. Lerner's lawyer notified the committee that she would invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege and decline to answer any questions from our committee members. Instead of doing so, Ms. Lerner read a voluntary statement--self-selected statement that included a series of specifics declarations of her innocence.

She said:

I have not done anything wrong. I have not broken any laws.

I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have

not provided false information to this or any other

committee.

She then refused to answer our questions. She invoked her Fifth Amendment right. She wouldn't even answer questions about declarations she made during her opening statement.

Mr. Speaker, that is not how the Fifth Amendment is meant to be used. The Fifth Amendment is protection. It is a shield. Lois Lerner used it as a sword to cut and then defend herself from any response.

A witness cannot come before the committee to make a voluntary statement--self-serving statement and then refuse to answer questions. You don't get to use the public hearing to tell the press and the public your side of the story and then invoke the Fifth.

Additionally, Mr. Speaker, after invoking the Fifth, when asked about previous testimony she had made and documents, she answered and authenticated those and then, again, went back to asserting her Fifth Amendment rights.

It is disappointing that things have come to this point. Lois Lerner had almost a year to reconsider her decision not to answer questions to Congress.

Point of Order

I would be happy to anytime the Chair tells me my time has expired.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

In the meantime, after invoking, she gave a no-strings-attached interview to the Justice Department. This was said to the press entirely voluntarily before a large gathering. Her position with respect to complying with a duly issued subpoena has become clear. She won't. Her testimony is a missing piece of an investigation into IRS targeting.

We have now conducted 40 transcribed interviews and reviewed hundreds of thousands of documents.

Mr. Speaker, the facts lead to Lois Lerner.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan).

Mr. Speaker, if they hadn't made their applications, perhaps they wouldn't have been asked the inappropriate, abusive questions like, What books do you read? Who are your donors? as has happened.

With that, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor), the leader of the House.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to correct the record. It is now 40 transcribed interviews, and we have received 12,000 emails from Lois Lerner today. So that $14 million probably went up a little bit because today the IRS finally turned over some of the documents they owed this committee under subpoena for over half a year.

I now yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica).

Mr. Speaker, nobody answered the debunking that we put out, this document, nobody. This document makes it clear it was all about targeting and abusing conservative groups, and the gentleman from Virginia knows that very well.

With that, it is my honor to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Lankford), who has championed so many of these issues in our investigations.

Mr. Speaker, I simply want to correct the record. Earlier, a minority Member stated that, with 35 words said by Lois Lerner, our count is 305. Hopefully, their inaccuracy of their experts will be considered the same.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Vermont in advance for his ``yes'' vote on this because the only way to send this to the court to be decided is to vote ``yes.'' In fact, we are not trying Lois Lerner. We are determining that she should be tried. The question should be before a Federal judge.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis), a member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, it is my distinct honor to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins).

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

I have worked long and hard with the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia. She is a good person, but her facts simply are 100 percent wrong. Every single one of her assertions were simply not true. You can go to pages 11, 12, and 13 of this 400-plus page report, and you can see none of those statements are true.

We would have accepted a proffer from the attorney. We were not given one; although I will say he did tell us, one time, we wouldn't like what she said if she said something. When I went on national television, I did so because of written communication that indicated that she would appear and testify.

Additionally, the gentlelady did make one point that was very good. It was very good. The attorney told us that she needed another week to prepare, which we were willing to give her; but when we learned it was actually inconvenient for the attorney to necessarily prep her, we said, if he would come in with his client and agree that she was going to testify, we would recess and give her the additional week.

When they came in that day, no such offer was on the table from her attorney, but, in fact, he said she had decided that she simply didn't want to speak to us--not that she was afraid of incrimination--because you can't be afraid of incrimination and not afraid, back and forth. That is pretty clear.

Her contempt for our committee was, in fact, contempt for the body of Congress, while she was happy to speak at length, apparently, with the Department of Justice, perhaps with that $6,000 or $7,000 contributor to President Obama that is so involved in that investigation.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bentivolio).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Farenthold), a member of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), who, by the way, is, in fact, a constitutional scholar in his own right.

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

I regret that we have to be here today. If it is within my power, if at any time Lois Lerner comes forward to answer our questions, I am fully prepared to hear what she has to say, and at that point I would certainly ask that the criminal prosecution be dropped. It may not be within my power after today.

For more than a year, our committee has sought to get her testimony. For nearly a year we have sought to get her to testify honestly. It was shocking to us on the committee, on the top of the dais, that a lawyer represented by a distinguished lawyer would play fast and loose with the Fifth Amendment assertion. It is a pretty straightforward process to assert your rights. In fact, her attorney may have planned all along to have a controversy. I will never know.

What I do know is we asserted that she had waived because we were advised by House counsel, an independent organization, that she had. We continue to investigate, and only today, nearly a year after a subpoena was issued, the Treasury, the IRS, actually gave us another 12,000 emails. Like earlier emails, they indicate a deeply political individual, partisan in her views, who apparently was at the center of deciding that when the President, in this well, objected to Citizens United, that it meant they wanted us to fix it, and she was prepared to do it. That is for a different court to decide.

The only question now is did she in fact give testimony, then assert the Fifth Amendment, then give some more testimony, and can we have that kind of activity.

We have dismissed other people who came before our committee, asserted their Fifth Amendment rights. After enough questions to know that they were going to continue to assert, we dismissed them. We have a strong record of respecting the First, the Fourth, the Fifth, the Sixth Amendment and so on. That is what this Congress does, and we do it every day, and our committee does it.

Rather than listen to debate here which was filled with factual inaccuracies, refuted in documentation that is available to the American people, rather than believe that the minority's assertion should carry the day because the gentleman from Georgia said if about eight different if-thens, then they would vote for this, well, I believe that the gentleman from Vermont said it very well when he said: We shouldn't be doing this. We shouldn't be finding her guilty. This should be before a judge. He may not have understood what he was saying, because what he was saying is exactly what we are doing. We are putting the question of did she properly waive or not and should she be back before us or be held in contempt and punished for not giving it.

This won't be my decision. This will be a lifetime-appointment, nonpartisan Federal judge. The only thing we are doing today is sending it for that consideration. If the court rules that in fact her conduct was not a waiver, then

we will have a modern update to understand the set of events here.

We will still have the same problem, which is Lois Lerner was at the center of an operation that systematically abused Americans for their political beliefs, asked them inappropriate questions, delayed and denied their approvals.

The minority asserted, well, they could have self-selected. Maybe they could have, maybe they should have, but it wouldn't change the fact that under penalty of perjury the IRS was asking them inappropriate questions which they intended to make public.

The IRS is an organization that we do not have confidence in now as Americans. We need to reestablish that, and part of it is understanding how and why a high-ranking person at the IRS so blatantly abused conservative groups in America that were adverse to the President, no doubt. But that should not be the basis under which you get scrutinized, audited, or abused, and yet it clearly was.

Mr. Speaker, it is essential we vote ``yes'' on contempt. Let the court decide, but more importantly, let the American people have confidence that we will protect their rights from the IRS.

With that, I urge support, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Just shy of 1 year ago, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration reported the IRS had used inappropriate criteria to review applicants for tax-exempt status.

The very same day, Chairman Issa went on national TV, before he received a single document or interviewed a single witness, and said the following: ``This was the targeting of the President's political enemies effectively, and lies about it during the election year.''

Republicans have spent the past year trying to prove these allegations. The IRS has spent more than $14 million responding to Congress and has produced more than a half a million pages of documents. We have interviewed 39 witnesses, 40 witnesses, IRS witnesses, Treasury Department employees; and after all of that, we have not found any evidence of White House involvement or political motivation.

Yesterday, I issued a report with key portions from the nearly 40 interviews conducted by the committee to date; and these were witnesses, Mr. Speaker, called by the majority. These interviews showed, definitively, that there was no evidence of any White House direction or political bias; instead they describe in detail how the inappropriate terms were first developed and how there was inadequate guidance on how to process the application.

Now, let me be clear that I am not defending Ms. Lerner. I wanted to hear what she had to say. I have questions about why she was unaware of the inappropriate criteria for more than a year after they were created. I want to know why she did not mention the inappropriate criteria in her letters to Congress, but I could not vote to violate an individual's Fifth Amendment rights, just because I want to hear what she has to say.

A much greater principle is at stake here today, the sanctity of the Fifth Amendment rights for all citizens of the United States of America; and I will not walk a path that has been tread by Senator McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee.

In this case, a vote for contempt not only would endanger the rights of American citizens, but it would be a pointless and costly exercise.

When Senator McCarthy pursued a similar case, the judge dismissed it. The Supreme Court has said that a witness does not waive her rights by professing her innocence.

In addition, more than 30 independent experts have now come forward to conclude that Chairman Issa botched the contempt procedure by not giving Ms. Lerner the proper warnings at the March 5 hearing, when he rushed to cut off my microphone and adjourn the hearing before any Democrat had the chance to utter a syllable.

For instance, Stan Brand, who served as the House Counsel from 1976 to 1983, concluded that Chairman Issa's actions were ``fatal to any subsequent prosecution.''

The experts who came forward are from all across the country and all across the political spectrum. J. Richard Broughton, a member of the Republican National Lawyers Association and a law professor, concluded that Ms. Lerner ``would likely have a defense to any ensuing criminal prosecution for contempt pursuant to the existing Supreme Court precedent.''

I didn't say that. The Republican National Lawyers Association member said that.

Rather than squandering our valuable resources, pursuing a contempt vote that more than 30 independent experts have concluded will fail in court, we should release the nearly 40 transcripts, in their entirety, that have not yet been made public and allow all Americans to read the unvarnished facts for themselves.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman, as Professor Green of Fordham University has said, it is explicit that a person does not waive a Fifth Amendment right by answering questions outside of a formal setting or by making statements that were not under oath, when he referred to the issue of her making statements to the Justice Department.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlelady from California (Ms. Speier), a member of our committee.

I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Lynch).

Mr. Speaker, with all due respect to the gentleman who just spoke, even the IG found that Lois Lerner did not learn about these inappropriate terms until about a year afterwards, the IG that was appointed by a Republican President.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Connolly), a distinguished member of our committee.

Mr. Speaker, I would say to the gentleman that we are talking about the constitutional rights of a United States citizen, and we do not have the right to remain silent, as Members of Congress, if those rights are being trampled on.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished leader.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time each side has remaining?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis), a member of the committee.

I would say to the gentleman that is leaving the floor now who just spoke: the arguments do matter. This is still the United States of America. We still have constitutional rights, which we declare we will uphold every 2 years.

I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton).

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

As I close, I want to remind all of my colleagues, several references have been made to the oath that we take every 2 years in this Chamber. Every 2 years we stand in this Chamber and we say:

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the

Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

It is the first words we say.

It is interesting that at the beginning of that swearing in is that we will defend the Constitution of the United States of America. Yesterday we had a very interesting argument in rules when one of the members of the Rules Committee questioned whether when one becomes a public employee, whether they then lose their rights as an American citizen. It is clear that those rights do stand, no matter whether you are a public servant or whether you are a janitor at some coffee shop.

We are in a situation today where we need to be very clear what is happening. Not since McCarthy has this been tried, that is the stripping away of an American citizen's constitutional right not to incriminate themselves and then holding them in contempt criminally. McCarthy. We are better than that. We are so much better.

The idea that somebody can come in after their lawyer has sent a letter in saying they are going to take the Fifth, then the lawyer comes in, sits behind them while they take the Fifth, then the person says they are taking the Fifth, and then suddenly when they say, ``I declare my innocence,'' we say, ``Gotcha.''

The Supreme Court has said this is not a gotcha moment. It is not about that. The Supreme Court has said these rights, no matter how much we may not like the person who we are talking about, no matter how much we may think they are hiding, they have rights. That is what this is all about.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to make sure that they vote against this, because this is about generations yet unborn, how they will view us during our watch.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman from California, Chairman Issa, for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this resolution to hold Ms. Lois Lerner in contempt. The substance of this resolution should not be taken lightly. The contempt of the U.S. House of Representatives is a serious matter and one that must be taken only when duly warranted. There is no doubt in my mind the conditions have been met for today's action.

Mr. Speaker, there are few government abuses more serious than using the IRS to punish American citizens for their political beliefs. The very idea of the IRS being used to intimidate and silence critics of a certain political philosophy is egregious. It is so egregious that it has practically been a cliche of government corruption in works of fiction for decades, ever since President Nixon's administration.

Yet, Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, in this instance, under Ms. Lerner's watch, this corruption became all too real. Conservatives were routinely targeted and silenced by the IRS leading up to the 2012 election, unjustly and with malice. Those targeted were deprived of their civil right to an unbiased administration of the law. These citizens, these moms and dads simply trying to play within the rules and make their voices heard, were left waiting without answers until Election Day had come and gone.

Liberal groups were not targeted, as my colleagues across the aisle like to claim. Only conservative groups were deliberately singled out because of their political beliefs, and they were subjected to delays, inappropriate questions, and unjust denials.

Mr. Speaker, the American people are owed a government that they can

trust, not a government that they fear. The only way to rebuild this trust is to investigate exactly how these abuses occurred and to ensure that they never happen again. Whether you are a conservative or a liberal, a Republican or a Democrat or hold any other political or philosophical position, your rights must be protected from this administration and all those that come after it.

For nearly a full year, Lois Lerner has refused to testify before this House about the singling out and targeting of conservative organizations. She spoke up and gave a detailed assertion of her innocence and then refused to answer questions. She later spoke with DOJ attorneys for hours but still refused to answer a lawful subpoena and testify to the American public. As a public servant, she decided to forgo cooperation, to forgo truth and transparency.

In 2013, Ms. Lerner joked in one uncovered email that perhaps she could get a job with Organizing for America, President Obama's political arm. This is no surprise. Our committees have found that Ms. Lerner used her position to unfairly deny conservative groups equal protection under the law. Ms. Lerner impeded official investigations. She risked exposing, and actually may have exposed, confidential taxpayer information in the process. Day after day, action after action, Ms. Lerner exposed herself as a servant to her political philosophy, rather than a servant to the American people.

This, Mr. Speaker, is why the House has taken the extraordinary action of referring Ms. Lerner to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution and is why we will request a special counsel to investigate this case.

Not only has the President asserted that there is ``not even a smidgeon of corruption'' at the IRS, but leaks from the Department of Justice have indicated that no one will be prosecuted. That is not surprising, as a top donor to the President's campaign is playing a key role in their investigation, potentially compromising any semblance of independence and justice. An independent, nonpartisan special prosecutor is needed to ensure a fair investigation that all Americans can trust.

Mr. Speaker, the American people deserve to know the full context of why these actions were taken. As early as 2010, leading Democratic leaders were urging the IRS to take action against conservative groups. How and why was the decision made to take action against them?

The American people, Ms. Lerner's employers, deserve answers. They deserve accountability. They deserve to know that this will never happen again, no matter what your political persuasion. The American people deserve better.

Because of Ms. Lerner's actions, because of her unwillingness to fully testify, and because she has refused to legally cooperate with this investigation, I urge my colleagues in the House to hold Ms. Lerner in contempt.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion and seek recognition in opposition.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan).

Mr. Speaker, can I inquire as to whether the minority is prepared to close?

I am prepared to close.

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

I will close in the calmest possible way that I can. For more than 3\1/2\ years, I have tried to get cooperation from the minority. For more than 3 years, I have tried to get the cooperation of the minority, and I haven't gotten it.

I get it on things which don't lead to the President or to a Cabinet officer or to an administrative branch. This leads to an administrative branch under the Secretary of the Treasury.

When the minority says that if you would just refer this back and we just have an opinion, quite frankly, they produced these opinions. They sought out 30 people to rubberstamp the same basic opinion again and again, many of whom provided nothing other than we agree. I didn't say anything about that during debate. That is their right.

The ranking member says if we will just release those 39 documents-- if he wants to destroy this investigation, he can release them. If he wants to show a roadmap, he can release them. These are not documents that are exclusive. They are documents that either one of us could choose to release.

Good practice is, as we continue investigating--and the questions and the answers from witnesses not be in their entirety released to create a roadmap, that is practice of good counsel, and the ranking member himself said he would have done the same thing in some cases.

We only learned, a matter of days ago, that people working in the office of the President had withheld, until a court ordered them to release the documents, showing that they invented, out of thin air, a false narrative as to what happened at Benghazi and why, asserting a video that, in fact, was not supported by the facts; and for a long time, since September 11, 2012, we had been misled.

In an ongoing investigation, one in which they would have you believe that Lois Lerner would have testified if she just had a week more, they have had months to see if they could get Lois Lerner back to testify. Of course, they can't. She never intended to testify.

This has all been a game of catch me if you can; I say I will, I say I won't.

Our evidence, as the ranking member said, does not lead to the Oval Office. At this point, it leads to Lois Lerner. At this point, Lois Lerner attempted to assert the President's position as to Citizens United, using her power to stop these 501(c)(4)'s from their free speech.

At this point, the indication is that Lois Lerner says one thing to the Justice Department and a different thing to Congress.

So as we consider the simple issue of did she waive her rights or not and get it, as the gentleman from Vermont suggested, before a judge, that is all that is before us today. And the idea that we would release, in their entirety, those thousands of pages in order to give a road map to those yet to be deposed is wrong and inappropriate, and the gentleman knows it or he would have released them himself, which he has every right to do. But it would be irresponsible.

So I ask people to vote for contempt because it takes to an impartial Federal judge that question, a question already decided by our committee that had a vote, a question that will be voted the same way by the ranking member no matter how many experts are listened to. Go ahead and have the vote. Send it to a judge. Let a judge decide.

In the meantime, let's continue with the investigations as to the IRS' targeting of conservative groups, something that has been documented to have been inappropriate if you were conservative and not so much if you were moderate or liberal.

We have an individual who is at the center of it all. I have never alleged that it goes to the President. I have said that the Tea Party would clearly and fairly be described as enemies of or adverse to the President's policies, and I think that is pretty comfortable to understand. And they were targeted by somebody who politics with the President and who, quite frankly, was trying to overturn the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United in support of the President's position using her power.

And with that, I urge support and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I rise in support of the motion to refer this matter back to committee.

Sixty years ago, the Supreme Court of the United States announced that the waiver of Fifth Amendment rights is ``not lightly to be inferred.''

That is exactly what happened when the Oversight Committee held a party line vote finding that Lois Lerner waived her Fifth Amendment privilege without holding even one hearing with one legal expert.

Experts who have reviewed the record before the committee conclude that Ms. Lerner did not waive her Fifth Amendment rights by declaring her innocence.

Now, more than 30 independent legal experts have also come forward to conclude that the chairman, Chairman Issa, botched the contempt procedure when he abruptly ended our committee hearing and cut off my microphone before any Democratic members had a chance to utter a single syllable.

In other words, these experts say a judge will likely throw this case out of court.

Let me be clear that I am not defending Lois Lerner's mismanagement at the IRS; but as a Member of Congress, I have sworn, like my colleagues, to protect every citizen's rights under the Constitution of the United States of America, and I do not take that obligation lightly.

I believe that it is irresponsible to move forward today without ever having held a single hearing to hear from a single legal expert on this constitutional question.

I asked for this hearing more than 9 months ago, but my request was rejected, so this motion would require the Oversight Committee to do what it should have done a long time ago.

This motion also would direct the committee to release publicly the full transcripts from all the interviews of the IRS and Treasury employees that our committee staff conducted during the investigation.

These 39 transcripts show that there is no evidence of any White House involvement or any political motivation in the IRS' review of these tax-exempt applicants.

I remind the Speaker that these 39 witnesses are witnesses that were called by the majority. They are the ones who sat down with a bipartisan group of employees from the majority and the minority and went through the questioning.

Instead, these interviews show exactly how the employees in Cincinnati first developed the inappropriate criteria. They tell the story. They tell the story. They show how Lois Lerner failed to discover these criteria for more than a year and that, when she learned of them, she immediately ordered them to stop being used.

In June of last year, Chairman Issa promised on national television that, at some point, he would release all of the transcripts. That needs to be done sooner, rather than later; but the chairman has repeatedly blocked my efforts to do so, even with his own redactions.

You may hear him say that he does not want to release transcripts now because they would provide a roadmap to our questions to future witnesses. I can understand that. I have made the same arguments myself on many occasions.

With all due respect, he crossed that bridge a long, long, long time ago. He has released selected excerpts from these transcripts on more than a dozen occasions, and he has allowed reporters to come into his committee offices to review some transcripts in their entirety.

It is time to put out the whole story, so the American people can read the facts for themselves, instead of just cherry-picking pieces leaked to further a political narrative.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the motion.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Yes, we are.

Mr. Speaker, about how much time do I have?

I am prepared to close.

Again, Mr. Speaker, there is nothing to hide. We need to release the transcripts, and just as significantly, we need to hear from the experts.

This is a very, very serious issue, and I think that Members of Congress deserve to have the expertise presented before them, so that they can make a judgment. A lot of our Members are laypersons, and I think that it is only appropriate, under these circumstances, that they be given this opportunity.

I would ask the Members to vote in favor of my motion.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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