Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 3309 under consideration.

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

Today, we are here to consider H.R. 3309, the Innovation Act. The enactment of this bill is something I consider central to U.S. competitiveness, job creation, and our Nation's future economic security. The bill takes meaningful steps to address the abusive practices that have damaged our patent system and resulted in significant economic harm to our Nation.

During the last Congress, we passed the America Invents Act. Many view the AIA as the most comprehensive overhaul to our patent system since the 1836 Patent Act. However, the AIA was, in many respects, a prospective bill. The problems that the Innovation Act will solve are more immediate and go to the heart of current abusive patent litigation practices.

This bill builds on our efforts over the past decade. It can be said that this bill is the product of years of work. We have worked with Members of both parties in both the Senate and the House, with stakeholders from all areas of our economy, and with the administration and the courts.

To ensure an open, deliberative, and thoughtful process, we held several hearings and issued two public discussion drafts in May and September of this year, which led to the formal introduction of the Innovation Act in October. I strongly believe that the Innovation Act takes the necessary steps to address abusive patent litigation.

Abusive patent litigation is a drag on our economy. Everyone from independent inventors to start-ups to mid-and large-sized businesses face this constant threat. The tens of billions of dollars spent on settlements and litigation expenses associated with abusive patent suits represent truly wasted capital--wasted capital that could have been used to create new jobs, fund R&D, and create new innovations and technologies that ``promote the progress of science and useful arts.''

And that is what innovation is really about, isn't it? If you are able to create something, invent something new and unique, then you should be allowed to sell your product, grow your business, hire more workers, and live the American Dream.

The Innovation Act puts forward reasonable policies that allow for more transparency and brings fundamental fairness to the patent system and the courts.

The Innovation Act is designed to deal with systemic issues surrounding abusive patent litigation as a whole, and includes a number of provisions designed to ameliorate this significant problem.

Within the past couple of years, we have seen an exponential increase in the use of weak or poorly granted patents against American businesses with the hopes of securing a quick payday. Many of these abusive practices are focused not just on larger companies but against small and medium-sized businesses as well. These suits target a settlement just under what it would cost for litigation, knowing that these businesses will want to avoid costly litigation and probably pay up. The patent system was never intended to be a playground for litigation extortion and frivolous claims.

The Innovation Act contains needed reforms to address the issues that businesses of all sizes and industries face from patent troll-type behavior, while keeping in mind several key principles, including targeting abusive behavior rather than specific entities, preserving valid patent enforcement tools, preserving patent rights, promoting invention by independents and small businesses, and strengthening the overall patent system.

Congress, the Federal courts, and the PTO must take the necessary steps to ensure that the patent system lives up to its constitutional underpinnings, and let me be clear about Congress' constitutional authority in this area. The Constitution grants Congress the power to create the Federal courts, and the Supreme Court has long recognized that the prescription of court procedure falls within the legislative function.

To that end, the Innovation Act includes heightened pleading standards and transparency provisions. Requiring parties to do a bit of due diligence up front before filing an infringement suit is just plain common sense. It not only reduces litigation expenses, but saves

the courts' time and resources. Greater transparency and information make our patent system stronger.

The Innovation Act also provides for more clarity surrounding initial discovery, case management, fee shifting, joinder, the common law doctrine of customer stays, and protecting IP licenses in bankruptcy. Further, the bill's provisions are designed to work hand-in-hand with the procedures and practices of the Judicial Conference, including the Rules Enabling Act and the courts, providing them with clear policy guidance while ensuring we are not predetermining outcomes and that the final rules and the implementation in the courts will be both deliberative and effective.

Today, we are taking a pivotal step toward eliminating the abuses of our patent system, discouraging frivolous patent litigation, and keeping laws up to date. The Innovation Act will help fuel the engine of American innovation and creativity, help create new jobs, and grow our economy.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, it is now my pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Holding), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

Madam Chairman, I am pleased to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Farenthold), who is a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

Madam Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington State (Ms. DelBene), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

Madam Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino), the vice chairman of the Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet Subcommittee.

Madam Chairman, may I ask how much time is remaining on both sides?

At this time, Madam Chairman, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cardenas).

Madam Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to affirm what we have said from the outset: this bill is designed for the little guy, both the innovator, the inventor, and the end-user small business that are getting subjected to these trolling attacks.

No innovator, no inventor, no one who brings a lawsuit to perfect their claim should fear this legislation unless their claim has no reasonable basis in law or fact. It is only then that they would be disadvantaged. In fact, most of the provisions in this bill are designed to lower the cost of litigation.

The big guys can pay all they need to for litigation. The little guys can't afford to. By lowering the cost of litigation, we are going to create greater opportunity, both for the innovators to pursue their good claims and for the little guys on the receiving end who get these outrageous demand letters on the other side who are having to pay outrageous costs or simply pay money.

At this time, Madam Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Issa), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

Madam Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) for the purpose of engaging in a colloquy with the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz) and myself.

Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Nebraska and the Energy and Commerce Committee for their good work on this issue. He has my commitment to work on this important issue, and we must continue to work to rein in the abuses of these demand letters.

I also look forward to working with Mr. Chaffetz and Chairman Upton of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and I know that we can produce a good product to further address this issue within that committee's jurisdiction.

Madam Chair, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond.

The very provision the gentleman from California references, section 145, is used by these very patent trolls to bypass the process. That is why, working in conjunction with the America Invents Act that has already been passed and this legislation, we will have an effective tool for those legitimate inventors, and we will stop the trolls from getting out from under the bridge.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

Madam Chair, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

Madam Chairman, it is now my very sincere pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), the lead Democratic cosponsor of this legislation who came to me with his ideas at the beginning of this Congress and has worked with me throughout this Congress on this legislation.

Madam Chair, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining on each side.

Madam Chair, it is now my pleasure to yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Polis).

Madam Chairwoman, it is my pleasure to yield 1 additional minute to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Chaffetz).

Madam Chairwoman, I am pleased to yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino), the vice chair of the Intellectual Property Subcommittee.

Madam Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

In closing, Madam Chairman, I want to thank my fellow Judiciary colleagues and their staffs who have devoted much time, energy, and intellect to this project. We have worked together for the common goal of comprehensive patent litigation reform for the past decade.

While some of us still have differences over individual items, I want these Members to know that I appreciate their contributions to the project and I value their friendship.

I also want to particularly thank Representatives Howard Coble, Zoe Lofgren, and Peter DeFazio for serving as lead sponsors of this legislation and, most particularly, Congresswoman Lofgren, who worked so hard with us in the markup process in the Judiciary Committee.

In the Senate, we have worked closely with Senators Leahy, Grassley, Cornyn, Hatch, Lee, and others. I want to thank them and their staffs for their contributions to this effort.

Furthermore, I would like to thank the White House and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for working collaboratively with us and providing important technical assistance.

I also want to thank both my full committee and IP subcommittee staff for all of their hard work on this important legislation, and most particularly, Vishal Amin, counsel to the subcommittee.

This bill is something I consider central to U.S. competitiveness, job creation, and our Nation's future economic security. The Innovation Act is the product of much negotiation and compromise. This bill builds on our efforts over the past decade. It can be said that this bill is the product of years of work. We have worked with Members of both parties in both the Senate and the House, with stakeholders from all areas of our economy, and with the administration and the courts.

To ensure an open, deliberative, and thoughtful process, we held several hearings and issued two public discussion drafts in May and September of this year, which led to the formal introduction of the Innovation Act in October.

The Innovation Act takes meaningful steps to address the abusive practices that have damaged our patent system and resulted in significant economic harm to our Nation. This bill will help grow America's innovation economy.

Madam Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 3309, and I yield back the balance of my time.

[Inventors listed on nearly 200 patents call on Congress to pass

legislation to fix the patent troll problem, Nov. 19, 2013]

Patent Holders Urge Comprehensive Patent Reform

San Francisco.--Fifty inventors, technologists and

entrepreneurs joined Engine

Advocacy and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) today

in requesting that Congress immediately pass meaningful

patent reform legislation to curb the growing patent troll

problem.

The signatories are collectively listed as inventors on

nearly 200 patents, many of which cover software inventions.

They expressed support for patent reform. Congress is

currently pursuing several approaches that have the potential

to curb the chilling effect on innovation posed by trolls and

improve patent quality.

``Broad, vague patents covering software-type inventions--

some of which we ourselves are listed as inventors on--are a

malfunctioning component of America's inventive machinery,''

the inventors write.

``This is particularly the case when those patents end up

in the hands of non-practicing patent trolls.'' The inventors

believe that ``software patents are doing more harm than

good,'' and they urge Congress to pass legislation that would

curb patent troll abuses, which pose an immediate threat to

innovation and the promise of technology.

``It's time to force these trolls to take responsibility

for the damage they cause with their dangerous claims,'' said

inventor Derek Parham, who helped organize the letter. ``We

need legislation that will put a stop to the patent troll

business model once and for all.''

In addition to Derek, many prominent engineers and

entrepreneurs signed the letter, including Twitter cofounder

Evan Williams; Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz; former

Principal Engineer at Qualcomm Ranganathan Krishnan; and

Quantcast's co-founder Paul Sutter.

``The time for meaningful reform is now,'' said Julie

Samuels, EFF Senior Staff Attorney and the Mark Cuban Chair

to Eliminate Stupid Patents. ``We hope Congress will hear

these engineers and inventors and so many others and pass

legislation that ends the patent troll problem once and for

all.''

For the full open letter: https://www.eff.org/ documentinventorslettersupport

patentreform

Contacts:

Julie Samuels, Staff Attorney and The Mark Cuban Chair to

Eliminate Stupid Patents, Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Eva Arevuo; Engine.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk made in order under the rule.

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

The manager's amendment was developed based on discussions with a cross-range of industry stakeholders, the input of Members from the House and Senate, the courts, and the administration, including the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

My amendment consists of technical edits and a few modifications that improve the bill. The manager's amendment includes clarifications and edits to the limitations on discovery prior to a Markman or a claim construction hearing. They ensure that the provision works effectively and can be complied with, providing additional discretion for the courts to ensure the provision does not result in reverse gamesmanship.

The amendment also makes clarifications to the bankruptcy provisions so that they work properly, ensuring that U.S. law is followed and not foreign law. Further, it includes modifications to the deadlines for various studies to provide the agencies enough time to prepare and develop their reports. The manager's amendment makes additional clarifications and modifications that, on the whole, make necessary and positive improvements to our patent system.

The Innovation Act targets abusive patent litigation, protects the patent system, increases transparency, prevents extortion, and provides greater clarity.

Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

It is unusual for a party in opposition to oppose a manager's amendment because they don't disagree with the provisions in the amendment but, rather, say that they don't make enough changes. So, even though it is acknowledged that this improves the bill, that still causes opposition.

But I want to address what the gentleman says he wants in the manager's amendment. Section 365(n) of title XI prevents a bankruptcy trustee from terminating licenses to patents and other intellectual property of the debtor. When Congress enacted Section 365(n) in 1989, it recognized that allowing patent and other IP licenses to be revoked in bankruptcy would be extremely disruptive to the economy and damaging both to patent owners and to licensing manufacturers.

Manufacturers often invest billions of dollars in reliance on their right to practice a technology pursuant to a license. Allowing the license to be eliminated in bankruptcy would create commercial uncertainty and would undermine manufacturing investment.

In recent years, some bankruptcy trustees have tried to subvert the protections of section 365(n) for U.S. intellectual property by filing bankruptcy in a foreign country and demanding that U.S. courts extend comity to termination of licenses to U.S. intellectual property in the foreign proceeding.

The provision that the gentleman wants would eliminate important provisions that would eliminate--the underlying bill provisions eliminate this uncertainty and would guarantee that licenses to U.S. patents and other IP will always be protected in U.S. courts. The gentleman wants something that would undermine that.

Failing to include this provision, a manufacturer deciding where to build a new fabrication plant would face a powerful incentive to invest his resources in a foreign country that protects IP licenses instead of in the United States. The gentleman's provision that he would like to see in the manager's amendment would encourage offshoring of U.S. manufacturing.

So I strongly support the language in the manager's amendment and object to the suggestion that his provision that is not in this amendment, which we will also address later in the amendment debate, would enhance the manager's amendment. It would not. It would have the opposite effect. I strongly urge my colleagues to support the manager's amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, the provision that the gentleman from Michigan complains of is supported by the Intellectual Property Owners Association, the 21st Century Coalition, which is a group of manufacturers, the Semiconductor Industry Association. They very strongly support the provision in the bill that is enhanced in the manager's amendment because, otherwise, we would be allowing a foreign trustee, a foreign bankruptcy trustee to liquidate licenses and create great uncertainty in the free market. That is definitely not what is intended by this legislation, and it would create a giant loophole that would create incentives to locate businesses, manufacturing businesses outside the United States rather than inside the United States. The language is very definitely needed, and I urge my colleagues to support the manager's amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Chairman, this amendment includes language that we believe is already implicit in the Innovation Act's fee-shifting provision section 3.

The gentleman's amendment adds language that allows a judge to reduce an award in certain circumstances. This amendment is redundant with the provisions in the bill and does not appear to add anything new but, rather, adds extraneous language that simply adds clutter to the section.

The Judiciary Committee considered and rejected this amendment during its markup of the bill. The fee-shifting language in the bill is a carefully crafted compromise that we negotiated on a bipartisan basis in the committee. Mr. Jeffries offered an amendment at the committee that was adopted and included in the bill that modified the fee- shifting language. With that amendment, all but five committee Democrats joined with all voting Republicans of the committee and reported the bill by a vote of 33-5. This amendment upsets that balance and should be rejected.

I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

I believe it is both, and it causes confusion in the legislation, and, therefore, I oppose the amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

Madam Chairman, I reiterate my opposition to the amendment and yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for his amendment, and I support it.

Contrary to what the previous speaker said, this amendment does exactly that--it helps to determine more fairly and more quickly whether or not there is a valid patent claim. It requires parties sending demand letters who wish to pursue treble damages to disclose their ultimate parent entity.

This amendment improves the provision offered by Mr. Chaffetz and Mr. Deutch in committee, and I support its inclusion in the bill.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

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

This amendment strikes a key provision of the bill for retailers, restaurants, and grocery stores, among others. This provision is the product of years of discussion with stakeholders and the Patent Office.

This section codifies and provides for the enforcement of the common law doctrine that infringement suits against a customer, retailer, or user of an infringing product should be stayed in favor of an action against the manufacturer of the allegedly infringing product.

Customers and retailers typically are ill-suited to defend against an infringement suit. They often are not familiar with the inner workings of the product and usually have no reason to know whether or not the product infringes a valid patent. Suits against such parties are inherently coercive and have become a tactic employed by patent trolls.

As an infamous recent example, one troll has begun suing cafes, restaurants, and shops that provide wireless Internet access to their customers via routers that they bought off the shelf. These small shops have no idea how the routers work or why they infringe, and they have often paid as little as $40 for them. Now they are being sued for using allegedly infringing products and are being asked to pay thousands of dollars.

The troll could have sued the manufacturer but chose not to because the manufacturer would have vigorously defended against the suit. Coffee shops and other small businesses, however, are more likely to settle for a few thousand dollars rather than the hundreds of thousands it would cost to fight an infringement suit over technology that the coffee shop did not design or develop, and we see the same situation repeated over and over again.

Another troll has sued small businesses, charities, and others just because they use scanners and photocopiers. Again, the troll chose not to sue the manufacturer because the manufacturer understands the technology and would be able to defend against the suit. These types of lawsuits are a little more than a shakedown of small, medium, and large businesses that simply bought technology and are not the true sources of any infringement.

This provision is designed to stay actions against customers when the manufacturer, who is the true source of any infringement, is a party to a co-pending action. The provision effectively pushes infringement claims up the supply chain to the true source of infringement. The provision thereby prevents harassment and the abuse of customers when it is unnecessary for the plaintiff to sue customers.

Despite the Federal circuit precedent of recognizing the customer suit exception, district courts continue to deny stays of customer suits in a wide array of circumstances in which a stay would be appropriate. The stay under section 5 is voluntary. No stay would be entered unless the customer and manufacturer agreed that the manufacturer most appropriately bore the burden of defending against the infringement litigation.

This is a good provision. It is a key provision. It is an essential part of the bill to protect customers and retailers against abusive suits over technology that they did not design or develop. It is for these and many other reasons that I strongly oppose the amendment offered by the gentleman from Kentucky to strike section 5.

I would also point out that former Director Kappos, speaking pre- manager's amendment version of the bill, indicated a concern that has been addressed in the manager's amendment, and we made important improvements to this section in coordination with Senators Leahy and Lee. I think that this provision in the bill is very good and that this amendment is not well-founded, and I oppose it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask how much time is remaining on both sides.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble), the chairman of the Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet Subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment will considerably harm this bill and the hundreds of organizations and businesses that have supported this bill because they know how important it is that the common law customer stay be applied fairly in jurisdictions across the country.

Concerns have been voiced that an injunction could not be obtained because of this provision against a party that is the supplier of the infringing product. However, the bill expressly requires that all parties, both customers and manufacturers, agree to be bound by any issues decided in the suit against the manufacturer. In other words, if the patent is found valid and infringed, an injunction could also be obtained against any supplier of the product because of this requirement.

I believe that this amendment should be strongly opposed.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment offers a reformulation of section 5 of the bill. The provision, however, is the product of years of discussions with stakeholders and the Patent Office. This amendment unduly restricts the protections offered by section 5 to customers.

The amendment has been presented as protecting small business, but the

underlying provision already applies to small businesses. What this amendment does is deny protection to larger grocery stores, charities, hospitals, universities, and restaurant chains that are sued on account of technology that they have purchased from others and did not design or develop.

This provision would prevent many customers from benefiting from the important protections of section 5. Customer suits against a party that neither manufactures nor develops the product, accused of infringement, are frequent tactics used by trolls because they know that most customers are not sophisticated in patent laws and, thus, are more vulnerable to extortion. This amendment would eliminate a tool the bill provides to customers to protect themselves from truly abusive patent litigation.

It is for these and many other reasons that I strongly oppose the amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino).

Mr. Chairman, let's use a little common sense here. We have a provision in the common law called ``customer stay,'' which says that a customer can ask to join the manufacturer of the product that it is alleged is infringing because that manufacturer knows a lot more about how the product was manufactured, what licenses and patents were used to do that, and is best able to defend a claim by a patent troll or by a legitimate inventor that a claim is valid or not valid.

What the gentlewoman from Texas does is she says that any small business above $25 million--say the local hospital, the local university, the restaurant chain of, say, 15 or 20 restaurants, the same thing for a retail store, a grocery store chain--they can't avail themselves. So what happens? The patent troll knows that there are certain jurisdictions in this country where the court will not issue the customer stay, notwithstanding the long historic common law doctrine of customer stay.

What we simply say in this bill is that if the customer, regardless of the size, and the manufacturer, regardless of the size, both agree, then the customer stay provision will apply; the manufacturer can come in and defend the case. It is eminently fair to every party involved to get at the core of whether or not the patent is a good patent and a valid patent. And who knows best? The manufacturer.

So this provision in the bill is very important and this amendment is harmful to the interest of small businesses, and I urge my colleagues to oppose it.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I would just say to the gentlewoman there is a wide array of organizations. We have 4 pages with hundreds of organizations, including Americans for Prosperity, Americans for Tax Reform, Public Knowledge. It crosses the spectrum.

Small business innovators like Engine Advocacy that the gentlewoman from California put in their statement, a lengthy statement, listing a whole host of companies that support this legislation. One of the key reasons they support it is because it protects small businesses, both the innovators and the people who are the recipients of these demand letters.

I oppose the amendment and urge my colleagues to join me in doing so.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, although I am not opposed to the amendment, I ask unanimous consent to control the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment provides for a study that the USPTO would conduct to examine the impact of the changes in sections 3, 4, and 5 of the bill on individuals and small businesses owned by women, veterans, and minorities.

The Innovation Act will benefit all businesses, both large and small, regardless of who owns them, including women, veterans, and minorities. This bill has received strong support from independent inventors, small businesses, start-ups, manufacturers, retailers, Realtors, travel agents, hotels, and even a delicatessen.

By bringing transparency and curbing litigation abuses, the Innovation Act will reduce litigation costs for innovators and innovative companies from all across this great land. This will reduce the leverage patent litigation opportunists possess to extort money from legitimate businesses and individuals.

This bill not only lines up with our constitutional authority, but our constitutional duty and will help grow our economy, create jobs, and promote the engine of American ingenuity for decades to come.

I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for her amendment and urge my colleagues to support the underlying bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment and claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I strongly oppose the gentleman's amendment to strike the bill's provisions regarding section 145. The bill's provisions are strongly supported by the Patent Office.

The amendment would strike one of the bill's most important reforms for preventing patent trolls from obtaining low-quality patents and bringing extortionate lawsuits. The bill's provisions are necessary because of the Supreme Court's recent decision in Kappos v. Hyatt which construed section 145 to allow an applicant to evade substantive patent examination in the Patent Office and to instead present his evidence of patentability for the first time in Federal district court. A district judge would then be required to make de novo findings of patentability.

Section 145 is outdated and unnecessary. Today, applicants have administrative routes for offering new evidence. Even after a board decision affirming the examiner's rejection, an applicant can file a continuation application and can introduce new evidence of patentability in that continuation.

Ever since 1836, the United States has required that all patent applications be reviewed by patent examiners with a scientific education, people who understand the technology that the patent covers. This helps to ensure that patents are not issued for inventions that are already in the public domain or that would be obvious to a person skilled in the technology.

Under the gentleman from California's amendment, however, an applicant could short-circuit the entire application process and present his evidence of patentability for the first time in district court. Now, I have known many district judges who are expert lawyers, but very few of them have degrees in biotechnology. Very few of them have degrees in electrical engineering; yet under this amendment, these judges would be making the initial determination whether, for example, a purported computer invention is novel and nonobvious and whether it has been properly enabled.

I would ask my colleagues, is there anyone here who believes the United States will issue higher-quality patents if the applications are never, never, never reviewed by an examiner with a

scientific background? Does anyone believe that we will have better semiconductor patents if they are never examined by an electrical engineer? Will we really have better drug patents if they are never reviewed by someone with a degree in chemistry?

I would submit that the gentleman's amendment is nothing more than a recipe book for patent trolls to obtain low-quality patents claiming technology that is already in widespread use.

Finally, we cannot ignore the evidence of who is actually using these section 145 actions. These lawsuits, which seek to obtain a patent without review by technically trained examiners, are heavily used by infamous patent trolls who are trying to obtain patents on computer technology from the 1980s and 1990s. These trolls are still pursuing patent applications that were filed before 1995 when patent terms ran 17 years from when the patent was issued. The most infamous user of section 145 still has hundreds of these applications pending and is trying to obtain patents on computer technology that literally predate Windows and Apple Macintosh. A vote for this amendment is nothing more than a vote to advance that patent troll agenda and allow abuse of the U.S. patent system. I strongly urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I would just say to the gentleman, the Supreme Court doesn't disagree with my position. The Supreme Court is interpreting the current law on the books, a law which has been on the books for a long time, and is superseded by new provisions that have been added into the patent law that give inventors additional ways to have their patents reviewed if they are denied by the Patent Office. So the Supreme Court is interpreting the current law.

What this bill does is it changes the current law because it recognizes that, based on that decision, it enables patent trolls to do some of the most outrageous things and cripples the ability of the Patent Office to actually look at the patent in the form that the law intends, and that is by engineers and scientists, chemists, biologists, people who have training in the field and can identify whether something is indeed a novel idea or not. That is what the amendment would lop off.

The amendment would continue a pathway around the Patent Office that would allow patent trolls to get low-quality patents because they would not be properly examined and continue the problem that we face with patent trolls. So I strongly oppose the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment and seek the time in opposition.

Mr. Chairman, I must strongly oppose this substitute amendment. It is quite simply a poison bill that is designed to kill the Innovation Act. Although the substitute cuts and pastes a few provisions from the current bill, it includes additional provisions that create serious problems and excludes whole sections of the Innovation Act that are vital for America's job creators and innovators.

This substitute does not even include all of the provisions of the Leahy-Lee bill. It omits provisions that are important to our Senate colleagues.

The amendment's transparency provision would require a patent owner to ``disclose to the court and all adverse parties any person known by the patentee to have a financial interest of any kind in a party to the proceeding.''

The bill then defines financial interest in the context of the judicial recusal provision in the law. Under this definition, ``financial interest'' means ``ownership of a legal or equitable interest however small.'' This would clearly appear to include ownership of a single share of stock in a company.

Moreover, this disclosure is required not just to be made with respect to the patentee but, by the terms of the bill, with respect to ``a party to the proceeding.'' This would mean that a patentee would have to disclose all known shareholders of even the defendant or any other party in the lawsuit. This is obviously an absurd requirement. I assume that the sponsors did not intend to require this, but this is what their language requires. Clearly, the substitute needs more work.

Indeed, the substitute's cosponsors have, themselves, admitted that the substitute needs more work and could have serious, unintended consequences.

This substitute's changes to the bill's pleading requirements would also allow patent trolls to hide their identity, denying defendants the right to know who is suing them.

This substitute denies the defendant the right to know what they are being sued on in the first place.

This substitute also denies the defendant the right to know why they are being dragged into Federal court.

This substitute enables patent trolls to create an elaborate web of shell companies that can engage in frivolous litigation, allowing the patent trolls to hide behind them.

This substitute would allow a patent troll to engage in abusive and extortionate patent litigation without any accountability for the costs imposed on defendants.

This substitute would allow trolls to engage in submarine patenting by delaying prosecution and unreasonably extending patent terms far beyond the 20-year term. This substitute would force U.S. courts to follow foreign law and terminate IP licenses for U.S. manufacturers. This substitute would also encourage courts to delay case dispositive motions and prolong litigation. This substitute also allows the issuance of low-quality patents by permitting them to issue without review by technically trained patent examiners. This substitute amendment is a poison pill that will kill any chance at meaningful patent reform in this Congress.

By contrast, the Innovation Act helps to address the issues that businesses of all sizes and industries face from patent troll-type behavior and aims to correct the current asymmetries surrounding abusive patent litigation. Our bill keeps in mind several key principles.

First, we are targeting abusive patent litigation behavior and not specific entities or attempting to eliminate valid patent litigation. When we use the term ``patent troll,'' it is as an adjective describing behavior rather than as a noun. Our goal is to prevent individuals from taking advantage of gaps in the system to engage in litigation extortion.

Second, our bill does not diminish or devalue patent rights. The patent system is integral to U.S. competitiveness, and we have ensured that our legislation strengthens the overall patent system, aligns with our international treaty obligations, and comports with the Constitution.

Third, this bill strikes the right balance of pushing for robust legal reform measures while protecting property rights, promoting invention by independent inventors and small businesses, and strengthening the overall patent system.

Supporters of this bill understand that if America's inventors are forced to waste time with frivolous litigation, they won't have time for innovation. We can no longer allow our economy and job creators to be held hostage to legal maneuvers and the judicial lottery.

American inventors have led the world for centuries in new innovations, from Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison to the Wright brothers and Henry Ford. But if we want to continue as leaders in the global economy, we must encourage the innovators of

today to develop the technologies of tomorrow.

This bill holds true to the Constitution, our Founders, and our promise to future generations that America will continue to lead the world as a fountain for discovery, innovation, and economic growth.

I stand in strong opposition to this substitute, and I urge my colleagues to support the underlying bill. Oppose the substitute.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren), who has been a great person to work with on the Judiciary Committee and here on the floor of the House on this legislation.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino), the vice chairman of the Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet Subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Yes, there is some problem with patent trolls, tens of billions of dollars a year in problems with patent trolls. Fifty-five percent of all the demand letters that are sent by these patent trolls go to small businesses.

There are serious problems that require real patent litigation reform, and I am proud that this bipartisan bill, supported by many Members on both sides of the aisle, supported by the administration, and supported by hundreds of organizations that are listed right here-- come by the desk and you can see the huge list of organizations, conservatives, all across the political spectrum support this legislation.

American inventors have led the world for centuries. This bill holds true to the Constitution, our Founders, and our promise to future generations that America will continue to lead the world as a fountain for discovery, innovation, economic growth, and job creation.

I stand in strong opposition to this substitute amendment, and I urge my colleagues to vote for the underlying bill.

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

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 403, I call up the bill (H.R. 2655) to amend rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure to improve attorney accountability, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration.

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 H.R. 2655, currently under consideration.

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

H.R. 2655, the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act, would restore mandatory sanctions for frivolous lawsuits filed in Federal Court.

Many Americans may not realize it, but today, under what is called rule 11 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, there is no requirement that those who file frivolous lawsuits pay for the unjustified legal costs they impose on their victims. As a result, the current rule 11 goes largely unenforced. When there is no guarantee of compensation, the victims of frivolous lawsuits have little incentive to spend even more money to pursue additional litigation to have the case declared frivolous.

H.R. 2655 would finally provide light at the end of the tunnel for the victims of frivolous lawsuits by requiring sanctions against those who file them, sanctions that include paying their victims the full cost of their reasonable expenses incurred as a direct result of the rule 11 violation, including attorneys' fees.

The bill also strikes the current provision in rule 11 that allows lawyers to avoid sanctions by making frivolous claims and demands by simply withdrawing them within 21 days. This change eliminates the ``free pass'' lawyers now have to file frivolous lawsuits in Federal Court.

To be clear, under rule 11, a lawsuit is frivolous if it is presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation if it is not warranted by existing law or if the factual contentions have no evidentiary support. In other words, a lawsuit will only be found frivolous if it has no basis in law or fact.

Yet the current lack of mandatory sanctions leads to the regular filing of lawsuits that are clearly baseless. For example, in just the last year, a small business owner was sued for violations of Federal regulations in a parking lot that he doesn't own or lease. A woman had her car repossessed and then filed a $5 million Federal lawsuit for the half tank of gas she had left in the car.

A high school teacher sued a school district claiming it discriminated against her because she has a phobia--a fear of young children. Her case was dismissed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, but that didn't prevent her from filing a Federal lawsuit.

These real yet absurd cases have real-life consequences for their victims who have to shell out thousands of dollars just to respond to frivolous pleadings, endure sleepless nights, and spend time away from their family, work, and customers. Let's not forget that the victims of frivolous lawsuits are real victims.

Do any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle claim that judges should have the discretion to deny damage awards to victims of legal wrongs proved in court? If not, why should judges have the discretion to deny damage awards to victims of frivolous lawsuits who prove in court that the case against them was frivolous?

It is difficult to see how a vote against the bill before us today could be interpreted as anything other than a denial that victims of frivolous lawsuits are indeed real victims. But indeed they are real victims, and they deserve to be guaranteed compensation when they prove the claims against them are frivolous in court.

Let's also remember that the victims of lawsuit abuse are not just those who are actually sued. Rather, we all suffer under a system in which innocent Americans everywhere live under the constant fear of a potentially bankrupting frivolous lawsuit.

As the former chairman of The Home Depot Company has written:

An unpredictable legal system casts a shadow over every

plan and investment. It is devastating for start-ups. The

cost of even one ill-timed abusive lawsuit can bankrupt a

growing company and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs.

The prevalence of frivolous lawsuits is reflected in the absurd warning labels companies must place on their products to limit their liability. A 5-inch brass fishing lure with three hooks is labeled, ``Harmful if swallowed.'' A vanishing fabric marker with disappearing ink warns it should not be used as a writing instrument for signing checks or any legal documents. A label on a Scooter says, ``Warning: This product moves when used.'' A household iron contains the warning, ``Never iron clothes while they are being worn.'' And a cardboard sun shield that keeps sun off the dashboard warns, ``Do not drive with sun shade up.''

The potential for frivolous lawsuits are behind all these absurd warning labels which, while humorous in their own way, serve as a warning to us about what the world will increasingly look like if we don't make the rules more fair.

Today, absurd lawsuits can sometimes bring sanctions against those

who filed them; but even when they do, the current rules result in far too little compensation for the victims of the frivolous lawsuit.

In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama said:

I'm willing to look at other ideas to rein in frivolous

lawsuits.

Well, I hope the President has time to read this one-page bill and lend his support to a proposal that would significantly reduce the burden of frivolous litigation on innocent Americans.

I thank the former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Lamar Smith, for introducing this simple, commonsense legislation that would do so much to prevent lawsuit abuse and restore Americans' confidence in the legal system.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks), the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice.

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith), the former chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and the chief sponsor of this legislation.

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

Madam Speaker, I did not think that, when I came down here today to debate this 1-page bill for Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act, it would somehow get linked with the more than 2,000-page monstrosity popularly known, or unpopularly known, as ObamaCare, and told that somehow the promise that was made over and over and over again, that if you like the health insurance you have, you can keep it, was not the fault of the legislation itself, and the people making that promise, but was, rather, the fault of the insurance companies who have to deal with this more than 2,000-page monstrosity, and the more than 20,000 pages of regulations that have been written, and have to rewrite virtually every insurance policy for health care in America because of the mandates and the regulations that are in that legislation; and somehow, the more than 4 million Americans, almost all of whom are the little guys, as I have just heard referenced, that somehow this is the fault of the insurance companies who are doing what they have been required to do under the law, and that is to make changes in the law that necessitates changing all of their policies, that necessitates making sure that things that are mandated by the law are included in their coverage, whether the people who had the policies that they liked could afford these new changes or not.

So many, many Americans are forced, by this legislation, to seek new health insurance, in some cases, far more expensive, and they can't afford it. But somehow that is made out to be the fault of the insurance companies, not the people who wrote the law, voted for the law, and then are implementing the law in spite of promises that were made that cannot be kept, not by insurance companies who are abiding by the law, but by others.

Now, to compare that to this legislation, which is a 1-page modest bill, to ensure that people who are the victims of frivolous lawsuits and fraudulent lawsuits cannot have justice in our Federal judicial system, I think, is just plain wrong.

And the chart that has just been displayed regarding rule 11 filings during the 1983-1993 period, when there was an increase in the number of hearings related to rule 11, that is a spike for justice. That is a spike for the increased opportunity for people who have been subjected to some of the most outrageous lawsuits that were described by the gentleman from Texas, that were described in my opening remarks, and that is their opportunity to seek real justice.

That is what this bill is all about, reinstating a spike for justice for the little guy, for the small business person, the individual who finds himself subject to a lawsuit under some of the most ridiculous circumstances you can imagine and saying, you know what, my life has been turned upside down by this lawsuit. I am not getting sleep at night. I am having to spend thousands or tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars on attorneys. I am having to do things to change the way I live my life, and it is all because of something that was frivolous and fraudulent, and now I am seeking to have some redress, some redress for that wrong that was done.

That is the very basic principle of the American jurisprudence system, that people, when they are harmed, have the right to go to court and seek redress of their grievances. And that is exactly what this provision in this law does under rule 11. It says that if the court finds that the lawsuit is frivolous, then there is a mandatory requirement that the individual who is the victim of that frivolous lawsuit should recover losses.

That is, indeed, what this legislation is all about, and I am proud to support it.

I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Reclaiming my time, if that were the case, then I don't think the President would have unilaterally delayed for 1 year the employer mandate where the vast majority of Americans are.

Imagine if this bill had taken effect as originally planned, and all of the employers in America, looking at their insurance policies for their employees, were also having to tell their employees that they could no longer afford to provide insurance or they are going to provide a different plan, or the employee had to pay more money, or the employee was being put into the exchanges, all of those things would be significant, serious problems.

But we digress from the importance of this legislation right here, which is something that we can join together, in a bipartisan way, to see that we have justice in our judicial system when people are unfairly sued, unfairly subject to frivolous or fraudulent lawsuits.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

I would ask the gentleman from Pennsylvania, what other sorts of legal claims should a victim be able to prove in court but be denied damages by the judge?

Well, you are in court. You have got a frivolous lawsuit. The court finds it is a frivolous lawsuit. You prove that you are the victim of that legal claim and you prove it in court, yet you can be denied damages by the judge.

What other legal remedy, what other legal claim would the gentleman cite other than frivolous lawsuits where that would be the case? Are there any others?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute, and I would be happy to yield to the gentleman to respond.

Well, I thank the gentleman for his comment.

And I would just point out that I practiced law during the time that the mandatory sanctions were in place in Federal court and found that it was a very good environment to do so. I was then elected to Congress and got here and found that, lo and behold, a small panel of judges changed that rule without looking at the evidence of a survey of Federal judges where 751 Federal judges found that an overwhelming majority believed--

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

Federal judges found that an overwhelming majority of Federal judges believed, based on their experience under both a weaker and stronger rule 11, that a stronger rule 11 did not impede development of the law, 95 percent; the benefits of the rule outweighed any additional requirement of judicial time, 71.9 percent; the stronger version of rule 11 had a positive effect on litigation in the Federal courts, 81 percent; and the rule should be retained in its then current form. What we are attempting to reinstate into the law, 80.4 percent supported retaining the then-current mandatory sanctions under the law.

Mr. Speaker, this is about seeking real justice, and the fact of the matter is that, just like a judge could not deny well-founded damages in a lawsuit brought by an individual under a valid legal claim of any other kind, they should not be able to have the discretion to deny any damages when a frivolous lawsuit is proven and the expenses of having to undertake the defense of that frivolous lawsuit are made. And

yet time after time after time today, people do not even bother to do it anymore because of the low, low, low record of granting damages in findings of frivolous lawsuits since it was made discretionary, and the mandatory provision should be reinstated in the law.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I will continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the remainder of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that my friend and colleague from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, raised the important issue of civil rights. It is absolutely important. And I share his concern that individuals who believe that their civil rights have been infringed in any way have the opportunity to bring actions in Federal court as long as those actions are not frivolous or based upon fraud. In fact, looking back during the time when we had mandatory sanctions from 1983 to 1993, the Federal Judicial Center, in its study, found that the imposition rate of sanctions in civil rights cases was not out of line with that in any other type of case.

Now, we have not rested there. When the committee marked up this legislation, the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) offered a bipartisan amendment which was added to the bill at the very end. I said it was a one-page bill. I am actually slightly mistaken. It is a one-and-a-third-page bill. And the one-third page that was added reads this way:

Rule of Construction--Nothing in this Act or an amendment

made by this Act shall be construed to bar or impede the

assertion or development of new claims, defenses, or remedies

under Federal, State, or local laws, including civil rights

laws, or under the Constitution of the United States.

So this measure is carefully crafted to make sure that we are not harming people's rights to seek legitimate redress of grievances in our courts. What it is designed to do is to eliminate frivolous and fraudulent lawsuits. And from the evidence of the survey of Federal judges who worked for 10 years under the rule that we would instate again with the passage of this legislation, the overwhelming majority of them said they would not change the rule, and it is unfortunate that a small committee chose to move forward to make that change notwithstanding.

I would add, too, that those who claim that this is not about the little guy are overlooking the fact that small businesses are affected by frivolous lawsuits all the time. And the National Federation of Independent Business, which bills itself as ``the voice of small business'' and which represents hundreds of thousands of small businesses all across America, endorses this legislation. In fact, they wrote to us and said that 84 percent of National Federation of Independent Business members agree that attorneys should face mandatory sanctions if they bring forth a frivolous lawsuit. The NFIB urges you to support final passage of H.R. 2655 and will consider it an NFIB key vote in the 113th Congress.

So in terms of the little guy--both the small business person and the individual--this legislation is designed to protect individuals against frivolous or fraudulent lawsuits. And, as I pointed out in my dialogue with another Member a little while ago, I don't believe anybody can come forward and give me any other example where a legal claim is validly brought in court and the victim is able to prove that wrong was perpetrated and prove that there are damages resulting from that wrong and yet be denied those damages by the judge. I challenge anybody to come forward and show me that.

So why, if you have a process that says under rule 11--which it did say at one time and would say again with the passage of this legislation--that you have a right to a process to show and establish that a lawsuit is frivolous, why after you have done that wouldn't it be mandatory that the process take one step further and assess the appropriate amount of damages that would be due and owing that victim of that abusive lawsuit that suffers in all the same ways that other people suffer when they are the victim of abusive actions of other kinds that result in actions being brought in court?

So I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this motion because the base bill makes sanctions for filing frivolous lawsuits in Federal court mandatory.

Under rule 11, a lawsuit is frivolous if it is presented for any improper purpose, such as to harass, cause unnecessary delay, or needlessly increase the cost of litigation, if it is not warranted by existing law, or if the factual contentions have no evidentiary support. In other words, a lawsuit will only be found frivolous if it has no basis in law or fact. As soon as the judge finds that any claim of any kind is founded in law or fact, then no claim for damages because of a frivolous lawsuit would lie.

Who here thinks that lawyers should be able to avoid any penalty when the lawsuit they file is found by a Federal judge to have been simply filed to harass, to cause unnecessary delay, or to needlessly increase the cost of litigation? Or, when the Federal judge finds that the lawsuit is not warranted by existing law or to have no evidentiary support?

If you think lawyers should be able to get off scot-free when they file those sorts of frivolous lawsuits, vote for this motion to recommit. If you agree with me that the victims of frivolous lawsuits are real victims and that they have to shell out thousands of dollars, endure sleepless nights, and spend time away from their family, work, and customers just to respond to frivolous pleadings, then you must oppose this motion to recommit.

When Business Week wrote an extensive article on what the most effective legal reforms would be, it stated what is needed are ``penalties that sting.'' As Business Week recommended:

Give judges stronger tools to punish renegade lawyers.

Before 1993, it was mandatory for judges to impose sanctions

such as public censures, fines, or orders to pay for the

other side's legal expenses on lawyers who filed frivolous

lawsuits. Then the Civil Rules Advisory Committee, an obscure

branch of the courts, made penalties optional. This needs to

be reversed . . . by Congress.

H.R. 2655, the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act, would do just that.

The specific language of the motion to recommit means that it literally immunizes from sanctions frivolous civil rights claims. That doesn't further civil rights; that sets them back, because the only claims that sanctions could be issued on would be claims for which there is no basis in law or fact.

That does not advance the cause.

I would add that the language in the motion to recommit adds, ``shall not apply in the case of any action brought under, one, civil rights laws, and two, the Constitution.'' That second provision, the Constitution, means that the motion to recommit covers every single lawsuit brought in any United States court in the land and any Federal court, and so it goes well beyond what is the stated intent of the motion to recommit.

A better way to look at this is to look at what the Federal Judicial Center found in its study when it looked at the imposition of the mandatory sanctions under rule 11 that existed from 1983 to 1993. It found that the imposition rate of sanctions in civil rights cases was not out of line with that in any other type of cases.

Furthermore, when this bill was drafted for this Congress--a very narrowly drafted bill, just 1\1/3\ pages long--we added a rule of construction for specific protection for valid, legitimate civil rights lawsuits that are based in law or fact.

It says in the rule of construction, as I said earlier:

Nothing in this act or an amendment made by this act shall

be construed to bar or impede the assertion or development of

new claims, defenses, or remedies under Federal, State, or

local laws, including civil rights laws or under the

Constitution of the United States.

That is the proper way to protect civil rights litigation. Meritorious civil

litigation founded in law or in fact. That indeed is what the legislation does, and that is why the House should reject the motion to recommit and pass the Lawsuit Abuse Reduction Act.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. 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 H.R. 982, currently under consideration.

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

I rise today in support of a bill that will help those asbestos victims that must look to the bankruptcy process to seek redress for their or their loved ones' injuries. Unfortunately, on too frequent an occasion, by the time asbestos victims assert their claims for compensation, the bankruptcy trusts formed for their benefit have been diluted by fraudulent claims, leaving these victims without their entitled recovery.

The reason that fraud is allowed to exist within the asbestos trust system is the excessive lack of transparency created by plaintiffs' firms. Due to a provision in the Bankruptcy Code, plaintiffs' firms are essentially granted a statutory veto right over a debtor's chapter 11 plan that seeks to restructure asbestos liabilities. Plaintiffs' firms have exploited this leverage to prevent information contained within the asbestos trusts from seeing the light of day.

The predictable result from this reduced transparency has been a growing wave of claims and reports of fraud. The increase in claims has caused many asbestos trusts to reduce the recoveries paid to asbestos victims who emerge following the formation of the trusts. For example, the T.H. Agriculture and Nutrition asbestos trust cut its recovery rate from 100 percent to 70 percent, and the Owens Corning trust sliced its recovery rate from 40 percent to 10 percent.

In addition, instances of fraud within the asbestos trust system have been documented in news reports, State court cases, and testimony before the Judiciary Committee. The Wall Street Journal conducted an investigation into asbestos trusts where it found, among other things, that hundreds of plaintiffs filed claims against asbestos trusts asserting one injury while simultaneously asserting a completely different injury before the State courts.

Reports directly from many State courts are uncovering similar conduct. For example, in Ohio, one judge described a plaintiff's case as ``lies upon lies upon lies'' after discovering that the plaintiff received hundreds of thousands of dollars from various asbestos bankruptcy trusts while alleging in court that a single product caused his illness. In Virginia, a judge stated that a similar case over which he presided was the ``worst deception'' he had seen in his 22-year career.

The FACT Act, introduced by Congressman Farenthold, will combat this fraud by introducing long-needed transparency into the asbestos bankruptcy trust system. The FACT Act increases transparency through two simple measures. First, it requires the asbestos trusts to file quarterly reports on their public bankruptcy dockets. These reports will contain very basic information about demands to the trusts and payments made by the trusts to claimants. Second, the FACT Act requires asbestos trusts to respond to information requests about claims asserted against and payments made by the asbestos trusts.

These measures were carefully designed to increase transparency while providing claimants with sufficient privacy protection. To accomplish this goal, the bill leverages the privacy protections contained in the Bankruptcy Code and includes additional safeguards to preserve claimants' privacy.

A State court judge with 29 years of bench experience described the privacy protections within the FACT Act as far stronger than those afforded in State court, where asbestos plaintiffs often pursue parallel claims. The FACT Act also was deliberately structured to minimize the administrative impact on asbestos trusts. Indeed, according to testimony before the Judiciary Committee from an expert on asbestos litigation and the asbestos trusts, preparing the quarterly disclosure requirements would be ``very simple'' and would ``take minutes.''

The FACT Act strikes the appropriate balance between achieving the transparency necessary to reduce fraud in an efficient manner and providing claimants with sufficient privacy protections. We cannot allow fraud to continue reducing recoveries for future asbestos victims. The FACT Act is a simple, narrow measure that will shed much- needed sunshine on a shadowy system.

I thank Mr. Farenthold for introducing this legislation and urge all of my colleagues to vote for the FACT Act.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus), the chairman of the Regulatory Reform Subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Farenthold), the author of the legislation.

Mr. Chairman, may I ask how much time is remaining on both sides.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond to the mischaracterization of this legislation as it is somehow imposing burdens on the victims of asbestos. In fact, it is quite the opposite.

First of all, the information disclosed under the FACT Act is very basic and is less information than would be disclosed during the normal course of a State court lawsuit, in which many asbestos bankruptcy claimants pursue simultaneous claims, but they don't tell the bankruptcy courts about that, so these trusts need to tell them that.

Secondly, the FACT Act includes strong privacy protections, including prohibiting the disclosure of confidential medical records and full Social Security numbers. To be clear, the FACT Act does not require asbestos trusts to require or to disclose asbestos victims' Social Security numbers.

The FACT Act also leverages existing privacy protections in the Bankruptcy Code to give the presiding bankruptcy judge broad discretion to prevent the disclosure of information that would result in identity theft or in any other unlawful activity. Indeed, a judge with 29 years of bench experience testified before the Judiciary Committee that the FACT Act provides more protection in terms of the confidentiality of asbestos claimants' records than the legal system is able to do.

By requiring the disclosure of basic information regarding claims submitted to the asbestos trusts, the FACT Act will facilitate a reduction in fraud that will allow future asbestos victims to maximize their recovery, but they will not be able to do that if we continue to have money taken from these trusts for duplicative claims, fraudulent claims, and claims without merit.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Farenthold).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond to the mischaracterization of the process followed in the Judiciary Committee.

The FACT Act and the problems it addresses have been the subject of three separate hearings: one before the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution on September 9, 2011, on the issue generally, and two legislative hearings before the Judiciary Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law--one during the 112th Congress and another this year on March 13.

The minority used these opportunities to call witnesses who were representatives from the asbestos plaintiffs' trial bar to voice their concerns with the bill. In fact, the minority called the same witness for two out of the three hearings. Now they claim that asbestos victims were never provided an opportunity to testify. The Judiciary Committee provided ample opportunities to include asbestos victims' views on the legislation on the record, and there are many letters and statements from asbestos victims in the record as a result. Additionally, the committee offered a special procedure to asbestos victims in order to provide an occasion for the victims to personally inform Members and staff of their views, which they refused.

It has become necessary to act with expediency and move this important legislation forward. Each day that passes is a day on which fraudulent claims can be prosecuted against the asbestos trusts, thereby reducing the recovery to legitimate asbestos victims. This legislation will benefit victims by reducing fraudulent claims and by ensuring that asbestos trusts provide the maximum recovery to future asbestos claimants.

I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee.

In reclaiming my time, that is not accurate. The claimants were offered a process by which they could come and speak to the members of the committee.

Mr. Chairman, I have the time.

The minority had the opportunity to have an asbestos victim testify if they wished to do so and chose instead to have a plaintiff's attorney who had already testified in a previous hearing do so.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to myself to respond to the allegation that fraud has not been documented.

Fraud has been documented in news reports, State court cases, and testimony before the Judiciary Committee. The Wall Street Journal conducted an investigation that found thousands of disparately filed claims. Court documents in many States, including Delaware, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Virginia, attest to widespread fraud.

Additionally, the Judiciary Committee heard testimony over the course of three hearings during which witnesses repeatedly testified that fraud existed within the asbestos trust bankruptcy system. Keep in mind that the fraud reported to date has been in spite of the lack of disclosure that currently pervades this system. The increased transparency the FACT Act introduces will go a long way in uncovering previously undetected fraud and preserving assets for future asbestos victims.

Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

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

Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, we are prepared to close. If the gentleman from Michigan is prepared to close as well, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, a lot of assertions have been made by the other side of the aisle with regard to the FACT Act. Let's make clear what we are talking about here.

This is a bill that in its totality doesn't cover two full pages of double-spaced type in legislative language. It simply requires that trusts that have been established to preserve the assets of companies that have gone bankrupt and have paid funds into these trusts, that future claims, future real, legitimate claims, will have resources available to them when it is a known fact and established by testimony before the Judiciary Committee and by investigations in a number of publications, including The Wall Street Journal, and by reports from various State courts in more than a half-dozen States, of fraud, duplicative claims.

These are what we are concerned about, and this is simply good legislative reform for protection of these assets for future availability. Otherwise, these trusts, which are already reducing the amount that they can pay to legitimate asbestos victims, will run out of money altogether before all of the legitimate claims have been addressed.

That's what the purpose of this legislation is. The opponents of the FACT Act have offered creative and far-ranging allegations against a measure that only seeks to introduce a modest amount of transparency into an opaque system. We know these allegations to be unfounded. The allegation that it hurts asbestos victims is unfounded. We know this because by increasing transparency and deterring fraud, the FACT Act helps asbestos victims by protecting trust funds for future claimants.

The allegation there is no widespread fraud is unfounded. We know this because there has been fraud documented in news reports, State court cases, and before the Judiciary Committee.

I urge my colleagues to reject the unfounded allegations offered today by critics of the FACT Act, and vote in support of this simple transparency measure.

I might add, this does not in any way delay the claim of anyone with a legitimate claim, either in State courts or in the bankruptcy courts. What it will do is it will root out those who are making duplicative claims, who are trying to double dip at the same time there are people with legitimate claims that will not have any money available to them because, as we know, and as was mentioned by many of the speakers here today, asbestos is a problem that has affected many, many Americans, and it is something that can be latent for a long period of time. We want to make sure that those victims who come along at the end of this process, who discover late in their lives that they also suffer from mesothelioma and related cancers, and other diseases caused by asbestos, have the opportunity to recover, not just those who want to abuse this system by hiding their claims and not allowing proper discovery of duplicative claims and fraudulent claims.

I urge my colleagues to support this well founded, good legal reform.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would exclude asbestos trusts that have in place internal audit systems from the requirements of the FACT Act.

There has not been any evidence presented to establish that trusts with internal reporting systems are free from fraud. On the contrary, a GAO report found that trust audit processes are designed to ensure compliance with internal trust procedures, not to remedy the fraud that the bill seeks to address. Simply put, internal audits will not be able to detect whether disparate claims are filed among several asbestos trusts or in the State courts.

Excluding certain asbestos trusts from the FACT Act would eliminate critical sources of information that can facilitate the reduction of fraud. Furthermore, the amendment would not address the problem presented by plaintiffs who assert inconsistent allegations between the State court tort system and the asbestos trusts. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Farenthold), the chief sponsor of the legislation.

Mr. Chairman, I simply would reiterate that the fact of the matter is that when you don't know who future victims are going to be and you make a claim that somehow this is going to enrich businesses when, in fact, the businesses are bankrupt and they paid their money into a fund, that this is in the interest of determining what people who have not yet made claims have and in the interest of justice in making sure that people who have false claims or duplicative claims and are making claims to more than one trust for different claims about the same illness or claims in State court, as well as in the bankruptcy court, need to be uncovered. That is what this seeks to do. If some victims are doing that, that is not a defense to this legislation, to say we shouldn't have transparency in the providing of benefits to people who have truly been harmed.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment and support the underlying bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, one of the principal issues discussed over the course of three separate hearings before the Judiciary Committee was the existing impediments to information contained in the asbestos trusts.

In particular, these impediments include obstacles that asbestos trusts institute against the prosecution of valid State court subpoenas for trust information.

The FACT Act addresses these issues by requiring affirmative, minimal disclosures from asbestos trusts and allowing for access to additional information at the cost of the requesting party. The amendment does not address these underlying problems and instead places broad additional burdens on defendants seeking to prosecute discovery requests in State courts. Specifically, it requires defendants potentially to comply with a host of unrelated requests from unknown parties. These defendants include small businesses that played a very minor role, if any, in asbestos manufacturing, but are the last wave of companies in the plaintiffs' firms never-ending search for a solvent defendant.

The burden this amendment imposes on a defendant is highly atypical, unnecessary, and would unduly impair a party's ability to assert a defense. The FACT Act, by contrast, provides transparency where previously it did not and provides defendants with the same access to information as plaintiffs. The legislation merely levels the playing field so all parties, including other asbestos trusts and State court judges, have access to the same information.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

The FACT Act does not impose burdens on the victims of asbestos. It imposes a minimal disclosure requirement upon the trust, a disclosure requirement that will benefit both plaintiffs and defendants in various courts litigating asbestos claims.

Therefore, these new burdens that would be imposed by the defendant, which are substantial and onerous burdens, not the minimal informational disclosure that would help to identify duplicative claims in various courts, is a massive additional burden added to this legislation.

For that reason, I oppose the legislation, oppose the amendment, and urge my colleagues to join me opposing the amendment and supporting the underlying legislation.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the FACT Act addresses a number of issues, including State court litigants' inability to obtain information from federally-supervised asbestos trusts and the general lack of disclosure that is allowing fraud to be committed against these trusts. The FACT Act addresses these problems by introducing transparency into the asbestos bankruptcy trust system.

The amendment dramatically undercuts the transparency provided under the bill by completely eliminating the quarterly reporting requirements. This removes an important and efficient disclosure component provided by the FACT Act and would eliminate sister asbestos trusts' access to information that is critical for the defense against fraudulent claims. Additionally, the amendment would place disclosure requirements on the State court party requesting information from the asbestos trusts. These disclosure requirements are unnecessary, unusual, and would severely constrain a party's availability to defend itself in State court litigation.

Plaintiffs and plaintiffs' firms already have the ability to gain access to the defendant's information through the traditional discovery process; however, it is the defendant's inability to gain access to information submitted to the asbestos trusts that has created an environment that is conducive to fraud. The FACT Act merely levels the playing field so all parties, including other asbestos trusts, State court litigants, and State court judges have access to this information and the same information.

I would point out that, when one brings a lawsuit seeking damages from another entity that they make a party to that lawsuit, they are not entitled to anonymity in doing so. The purpose of the complaint, the initial pleading filed in the lawsuit, is to disclose who it is that is seeking the damages and what damages they are seeking.

All we are asking for in this legislation is that trusts that have been entrusted with funds that are to be made available for the exclusive purpose of helping the victims of asbestos problems have the opportunity to have information that they would have if it were a normal plaintiff's filing in a lawsuit. That is what we seek to have disclosed.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment and to support the underlying bill.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of the time in opposition to the amendment.

I just have to say that this amendment goes well beyond the scope of this legislation in terms of what it would do in terms of discovery in State courts and gathering various types of information that is already readily and easily discoverable in those proceedings, including, if necessary, in the bankruptcy court.

What it doesn't get at, and the FACT Act does, is information that is not otherwise available to all of the parties to all of those proceedings to determine whether there are duplicative claims, whether there are fraudulent claims, whether there are claims where one party is claiming to have the same disease caused by two different places of employment or having claimed the same disease caused by two different instrumentalities in two different places. That is what we need to know. That is why the FACT Act is necessary.

I oppose the amendment, urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, the FACT Act is a simple measure to address an obvious problem. The lack of transparency that exists in the asbestos bankruptcy trust system cannot be allowed to continue. Fraudulent claims are diluting the ability of too many trusts to provide for the recoveries of future asbestos victims, including our Nation's veterans, who must often rely solely on the bankruptcy process to obtain a recovery for their asbestos injury.

The FACT Act will help preserve the finite amount of trust resources available for all future victims by increasing transparency in the asbestos bankruptcy trust system, thereby facilitating a reduction in fraud. The FACT Act achieves transparency through a measured approach, carefully crafted to provide strong privacy protections and respect states' rights, and strong privacy protections for veterans and all other victims.

This will not delay compensation to asbestos victims but will ensure that the true victims, including victims who will be identified in the future as suffering from asbestos injuries, are not kept from having compensation. These trusts are being used up as a result of fraudulent claims. The asbestos bankruptcy trusts need additional transparency so they can root out fraud and protect recoveries for future asbestos victims. The FACT Act provides this vital sunshine in a simple, efficient manner. It is a 2-page bill.

I commend my colleagues, Mr. Farenthold of Texas and Mr. Matheson of Utah, for bringing forward this bipartisan legal reform. I urge my colleagues to vote against this motion to recommit and to support the FACT Act.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to share news of the efforts that the Safe Surfin' Foundation in Bedford County, Virginia recently made in support of the wounded warriors participating in the H.E.R.O. (Human Exploitation Rescue Operatives) Child Rescue Corps. I want to express my thanks to the Safe Surfin' Foundation and Bedford County Sheriff Mike Brown for stepping forward to go above and beyond to serve in a special time of need.

Sheriff Brown enlisted the Safe Surfin' Foundation to work with Moose International to supply computers and monitors for the military veterans selected to participate in the H.E.R.O. Child Rescue Corps training at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Thanks to such generosity, these special men and women who served with distinction in our military will be able to continue serving our country by protecting our most innocent citizens--our children--from criminals on the Internet. Their introduction to the highly specialized training required to do their work would not have been possible if not for Sheriff Brown's timely action and the collaborative help of the Safe Surfin' Foundation and Moose International on the IT front.

The Safe Surfin' Foundation has dutifully earned an international reputation as a leader in prosecuting child predators. It is fitting that the organization stepped forward to offer assistance to the H.E.R.O. Child Rescue Corps as it joins the worldwide drive to fight child exploitation, child abuse, and human trafficking. The brave wounded warriors who will be trained will be the latest heroes in the prosecution and imprisonment of individuals who would dare commit heinous crimes against children.

I highly commend the selfless work of Sheriff Brown, who is my constituent and friend, and the Safe Surfin' Foundation for their support of the newest line of law enforcement officers fighting crime on the Internet.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 568 I was unavoidably detained.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from further consideration of the bill (H.R. 3190) to provide for the continued performance of the functions of the United States Parole Commission, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the gentleman from Pennsylvania and the gentleman from Illinois for their leadership on this issue.

A few months ago, we offered a reform amendment to the House farm bill that would have saved taxpayers money, kept American jobs at home, and ended special treatment to one farm commodity at the expense of all others.

This farm bill makes major policy changes that leave no commodity untouched, except one. The farm bill makes absolutely no change to the sugar program. In fact, the sugar program wasn't even given the scrutiny of a hearing as the Ag Committee was constructing the current farm bill.

Since 2008, manufacturers across the country have been struggling to run their operations due to the uncertainty created by the sugar program. In fact, for every job that proponents of this horrendous policy claim is maintained by the current sugar program, the Commerce Department estimates that the sugar program eliminated three jobs in food manufacturing.

Although I wish we could be here debating even greater reform, what we are debating today is quite modest.

This motion to instruct simply restores to the Secretary of Agriculture the flexibility to manage sugar imports, an authority the Secretary had prior to the 2008 farm bill. To be clear, this language will not allow a pound--a pound--more sugar to enter the U.S. unless the Secretary authorizes that it can come in upon a finding that is needed.

Many of you may be wondering why we are discussing sugar again. Since the House last debated the farm bill, the negative effects of the sugar program have only gotten worse. While proponents of the current sugar program claim it is ``no cost,'' nothing could be further from the truth. The sugar program has cost American taxpayers more than $250 million since July.

To put this in perspective, in less than 3 months this broken policy has cost American taxpayers $250 million, which is almost as much as the amount of money available for an entire year for The Emergency Food Assistance Program, TEFAP, the USDA program that purchases commodities for food banks. It is nearly $50 million more than the Commodity Supplemental Food Program for our Nation's senior citizens.

I urge my colleagues to support this motion.

Comedian Jay Leno recently joked--``The Department of Agriculture wants to use our tax money to buy 400,000 tons of sugar to limit supply and boost prices so sugar producers can pay back government loans that they could default on. You follow me here on this? We loaned them money and now we're giving them more money so they can pay back our loan. You still wonder why we're 16 trillion dollars in debt?''

Sadly, this is no longer a joke. This is the reality of the sugar program and it is the American taxpayer who is saddled with the cost of this program.

Since this government shutdown began we have been intensely debating the spending priorities for our country. I don't know how we can justify this horrendous program at all!

While I wish we were able to go further in reforming the sugar program, today we have the opportunity to return a small bit of sanity to the program

Please join me in supporting the Pitts sugar reform resolution to restore common sense to America's sugar policy.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committees on the Judiciary and Foreign Affairs be discharged from further consideration of the bill (H.R. 3233) to extend the period during which Iraqis who were employed by the United States Government in Iraq may be granted special immigrant status and to temporarily increase the fee or surcharge for processing machine-readable nonimmigrant visas, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials on H.R. 3233.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, on the floor of this House in 2011, the President of the United States promised the American people that ``to reduce barriers to growth and investment

. . . when we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them.''

That very month, the President issued an executive order that said ``our regulatory system . . . must promote economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation.'' He said our regulatory system ``must identify and use the . . . least burdensome tools for achieving regulatory ends.'' He said our regulatory system ``must take into account benefits and costs.''

He was right. When our regulatory system doesn't do these things, it kills jobs, suppresses growth, and locks us ever further into economic stagnation. But, Mr. Speaker, those were just the President's words. His actions have been starkly different.

Since 2011--indeed, throughout the President's administration--a flood of new major regulations have been burying America's job creators and households at record levels. As a result, economic growth is down; America's competitiveness is down; job creation is down. Regulatory costs are up.

The President isn't reducing barriers to growth and investment. He isn't fixing unnecessary burdens on business. He's piling them on. To make matters worse, when Congress now declines to legislate the President's misguided policies for him, he increasingly is resorting to unilateral regulatory actions to legislate by executive fiat.

Mr. Speaker, the time is right to pass the REINS Act. The REINS Act, in one fell swoop, assures that Congress--the body to which the Constitution assigns the power to legislate--will at last stand accountable for the most significant legislative decisions imposed on the American people through regulation. And in that same fell swoop, the REINS Act puts an end to Presidential end runs around Congress through legislation cloaked as regulation.

Instead of helping REINS Act supporters to seize this moment for the benefit of Main Street families and small businesses, opponents of the bill offer this motion to recommit.

But the motion seeks only to distract from the need to reform our regulatory system and reduce unnecessary burdens on the public.

Worse, it seeks to distract from the need for Members of Congress to stand accountable for the regulatory actions committed in its name. I ask my colleagues: Why should any Member of Congress be afraid to stand accountable for the most costly legislative decisions that the government imposes on the American people?

This motion to recommit represents the politics of diversion and division. It takes virtually every major legislative area off the table from the REINS Act. It weakens the country. The politics of courage and accountability is what is needed to build this country up.

I want to commend the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Young) for sponsoring this legislation. I urge all of my colleagues to support this bill, reject this motion to recommit, and show America that Congress can act for the good of job creators and Main Street Americans who desperately want and need jobs.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I regret that a meeting at the Whtie House caused me to miss the first vote series on August 1, 2013. Had I been present, my intention was to vote as follows on the amendments to H.R. 1582, the Energy Consumers Relief Act: ``no'' on the Waxman Amendment, ``no'' on the Connolly Amendment, and ``yes'' on the Murphy (PA) Amendment. I would have voted ``no'' on the Motion to Recommit H.R. 1582 and ``yes'' on Passage on H.R. 1582. Further I would have voted ``yes'' on the previous question, ``yes'' on the combined rule for the REINS Act, Keep IRS Off Health Care Act, and the Stop Government Abuse Act. Finally, I would have voted ``yes'' on the passage of H.R. 1897, the Vietnam Human Rights Act.

Mr. 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 H.R. 367.

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

Earlier this month, President Obama announced that he would, once again, pivot to the economy. The bottom line of his speech, after 4\1/ 2\ years of the Obama administration: ``We're not there yet.''

The President is right: we're not there yet. Economic growth is the key to job creation and recovery, but America's growth rate is historically anemic. From 2010 through 2012, it averaged barely 2 percent. In the fourth quarter of 2012, growth was just four-tenths of one percent.

In the first two quarters of this year, growth averaged only 1.4 percent according to the most recent estimates. These dismal figures translate into deep economic pain for America's workers and families.

The June 2013 jobs report showed an increase of 240,000 in the number of discouraged workers, those who have simply quit looking for a job out of frustration or despair.

The number of people working part-time, but who really want full-time work, passed 8.2 million. That represents a jump of 322,000 in just 1 month.

Worst of all, the truest measure of unemployment, the rate that includes both discouraged workers and those who cannot find a full-time job, continues to exceed 20 million Americans. That rate rose from 13.8 percent back to 14.3 in June.

America's labor force participation rate has fallen to levels not seen since the Carter administration. Median real household income, meanwhile, is 5 percent lower than in June of 2009, when the recession officially ended.

Median incomes are supposed to rise during economic recoveries, not fall. The Obama administration, however, has managed to buck the historical trend. Worse, median incomes remain 9 percent below the peak they reached in January 2008, before the financial crisis. The President is indeed right: we're not there yet. But what the President missed in his speech is that it is his administration's policies that are responsible for America still remaining so deep in this economic hole. To see how true that is one only has to look at the historical record.

The current recovery is the weakest on record in the post-World War II era. The contrast with the recovery Ronald Reagan achieved is particularly stark. Four-and-a-half years after the recession began in 1981, the Reagan administration, through policies opposite to the Obama administration, had achieved a recovery that created 7.9 million more jobs than when the recession began. Real per capita gross domestic product rose by $3,091. Real median household income rose by 7.7 percent.

Surely, the administration knows this. But instead of fixing the problem by changing its policies, the Obama administration knows only one response: double down, increase taxes, increase spending, and increase regulation.

The number of new major regulations the Obama administration has issued and plans to issue--generally, regulations with more than $100 million in impacts--is without modern precedent. Testimony before the Judiciary Committee this term and during the 112th Congress has plainly shown the connection between skyrocketing levels of regulation and declining levels of jobs and growth.

To make matters worse, it is increasingly the case that, when Congress refuses to enable the administration's flawed policies through legislation, the administration unilaterally issues new regulations to achieve an end run around Congress.

The REINS Act is one of the most powerful measures we can adopt to put an end to regulation that wrongheadedly imposes the administration's flawed policies on the American people. It achieves that result in the simplest and clearest ways--by requiring an up-or- down vote by the people's representatives in Congress before any new major regulation can be imposed on our economy.

Some say the REINS Act will mean an end to new major regulation, even when regulation is needed. But the REINS Act does not prohibit new major regulation. It simply establishes the principle: no major regulation without representation.

By restoring to Members of Congress, who are accountable to the American people, the responsibility for America's costliest regulatory decisions, the REINS Act provides Congress and, ultimately, the people with a much-needed tool to check the one-way cost ratchet turned by the Obama administration and Washington's regulatory bureaucrats.

I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Young) for introducing this legislation, and I urge my colleagues to vote for the REINS Act.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, at this time it is my pleasure to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Young), the sponsor of the legislation.

Mr. Chairman, at this time it's my pleasure to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 additional minute to the gentleman from Alabama.

Mr. Chairman, at this time, it's my pleasure to yield 2 minutes on this job-creating legislation to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Smith), a great new member of the House Judiciary Committee,

Mr. Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Rothfus).

Mr. Chairman, may I ask how much time is remaining on each side?

Mr. Chairman, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Rokita).

I yield myself 30 seconds.

Mr. Chairman, since 1996, the disapproval process described by the gentlewoman from Texas has succeeded just one time. During that time, tens of thousands of regulations have been passed; and if people think that all but one of them were just fine, I would suggest it's just the opposite. It's the process right now--the inability of the Congress to rein in regulations that are out of control--which is lacking, and that's why we need the REINS Act, so that regulations that cost more than $100 million come back to the Congress for approval.

It is now my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Farenthold), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee and the vice chairman of the Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law.

It is my pleasure to yield an additional minute to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Scalise).

Mr. Chairman, I believe all of the speakers on our side have spoken. I reserve the right to close, and at this time, I await the gentleman's actions. Then I will be happy to close.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

A year and a half ago, the President of the United States came to give his State of the Union address here in the House Chamber and stood at the podium just below where you're standing right now. He had a long list of legislative items he wanted the Congress to pass. At the conclusion of it he said, If you don't do it, I will. I'm paraphrasing, of course. The question that many of us had was: By what authority in the United States Constitution does the President of the United States have the ability to do something that he has come to the Congress to ask to be passed legislatively and to tell us, if we don't do it, he's going to do it himself in the executive branch?

Well, the way he does it, when he's not stopped by lawsuits and other means, is he simply has regulations passed to accomplish those objectives. You know what? Thousands of regulations are passed every Congress compared to a few hundred laws that are passed. All we're asking here today is that for those regulations that cost the American people $100 million or more, that they have to come back here and be approved by the Congress rather than have executive fiat control that.

This is the representative democracy here in the House of Representatives and in the United States Senate. This is the people's House. We have the authority to pass laws, and we definitely are concerned about the welfare and well-being of our American people. But when we add trillions of dollars in costs to the expenses of American families, $11,000 per family, that's a stunning thing to think about what money could have been spent on other things. Yes, of course, some of those regulations are necessary, but many of them are not. Many of them needlessly add cost and create an ever-growing bureaucracy in the executive branch. We need to have ways to rein that in.

The most effective way to do that is to start with the largest regulation. Many people would say, well, we should do it for all regulations. That ought to be our objective, to make it very clear that we do not want to see regulations passed that are ineffective, that are needless, that add costs. Starting with those that cost more than $100 million, it is absolutely appropriate for the elected representatives of the people to have the final say on whether those

regulations are, indeed, what the Congress intended when they passed the underlying laws upon which those regulations are based. That's all we ask in this legislation. It is reasonable. The American people want it. This Congress should pass it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

This is a good amendment to a good bill, and I support it.

By requiring all new major regulations to be submitted to Congress for approval, the REINS Act provides a powerful check on overreaching executive action. This check could not come sooner. The Obama administration increasingly, and increasingly openly, is pursuing unilateral regulatory action to thwart Congress' decision not to pass legislation the administration desires. This includes legislation that would impose a carbon tax as part of the administration's climate agenda.

The amendment guarantees that no carbon tax can be imposed unless Congress consents to it, no matter how much the Obama administration would like to impose such a dramatic tax by executive fiat. This is the people's House. This is where new public policy should be established, and this amendment is a good one to assure that this is where policy related to carbon taxes is made, not in the administration.

I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois for offering this amendment. It is another good amendment.

I also want to say to my good friend from Tennessee that I was a little older when Richard Nixon was in office. We are not minimizing what he did; we are going to maximize the amount of attention that Congress pays to the EPA when they get it wrong, particularly when the Secretary of Agriculture determines that any regulation issued by the EPA will have a significant impact on a substantial number of agricultural entities. We ought to take a look at that. As a result, it subjects such regulations to congressional approval before they can become effective.

This is an important step to rein in what is often regarded as the most overreaching of all Federal regulatory agencies. The EPA's actions and proposals have been particularly problematic for America's farmers, including small farmers. This includes, for example, the EPA actions aimed at farm dust.

The Secretary of Agriculture has a greater incentive than EPA to ensure that potential adverse impacts on agricultural entities have been adequately and accurately assessed. The amendment guarantees that regulation that should be characterized as major due to their impacts on agricultural entities will be so characterized and submitted to Congress for approval.

I urge my colleagues to support this very worthy amendment.

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I commend him and support this important amendment.

The REINS Act restores to Congress the accountability for regulatory decisions that impose major burdens on our economy. This amendment strengthens congressional accountability for regulations under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. You know, ObamaCare? That legislation that has 400 new authorities, 400 new ways for the Secretary of Health and Human Services and other bureaucrats to regulate the American people, businesses, large and small, local governments, State governments, health care providers?

Yeah, that one. Imposed over the will of the American people, implementation of ObamaCare has demonstrated that the act imposes a detrimental and unworkable reform of the Nation's health care system. And one after another, promises made to the American people by the act's supporters when the law was passed have been broken.

Moreover, the Obama administration's own actions to waive or suspend ObamaCare requirements have made clear that regulatory actions to implement the act form a ``seamless web.''

Too often, actions to avoid one adverse effect of the act's implementation send ripple effects of unfairness or other harmful consequences throughout the ObamaCare web, requiring adjustments to other aspects of implementation.

This, too, justifies the amendment's requirement that Congress approve any new regulation promulgated under the act, and I urge my colleagues to support this excellent amendment.

I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa for yielding, and I support his amendment.

Mr. Chairman, interrelated Federal regulations are a common feature of the modern regulatory landscape. Numerous major regulations form part of a web of regulations agencies develop to implement one statutory division or one statutory goal.

In addition, numerous regulatory statutes entrust rulemaking authority over a given problem to more than one agency. This is the case, for example, with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' joint authority over wetlands. It is also the case with the EPA's and the Department of Transportation's joint authority over fuel economy standards.

The amendment requires that agencies, when they submit new major regulations to Congress for approval, provide a list of related regulatory actions that the submitting agency or other agencies have taken or will take to implement the same statutory provision or regulatory objective. Seems pretty reasonable to me to have to find out what other regulations are impacting the same objective.

This helpful amendment will provide Congress with more complete information on the extent of regulations agencies have taken or plan to take to implement an authorizing statute or achieve a regulatory goal. That information will better enable Congress to determine whether to approve or disapprove the submitted regulation.

This can only improve congressional accountability and the regulatory process, and I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, the amendment carves out of the REINS Act Congressional Approval Procedures all regulations that pertain to nuclear reactor safety standards. REINS Act supporters believe in nuclear safety. We want to guarantee that regulatory decisions that pertain to nuclear reactor safety are the best decisions that can be made. That is precisely why I oppose the amendment.

By its terms, the amendment shields from the REINS Act Congressional Approval Procedures not only major regulations that would raise nuclear reactor safety standards, but also regulations that would lower them. All major regulations pertaining to nuclear reactor safety standards, whether they raise or lower standards, should fall within the REINS Act. That way, agencies with authority over nuclear reactor safety will know that Congress must approve their major regulations

before they go into effect. That provides a powerful incentive for the agencies to write the best possible regulations, ones that Congress can easily approve. It is a solution that everyone should support because it makes Congress more accountable and assures agencies will write better rules. All Americans will be safer for it.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, the fact of the matter is that, when it comes to regulatory safety, the gentleman cites the Congressional Review Act. I'll remind the House that, as I noted earlier, since 1996, it's been used one time for ergonomic furniture. That is not a very good track record when tens of thousands of regulations have been passed during that time that should be reviewed by this Congress. This legislation only asks that those regulations that cost more than $100 million should be reviewed. But it's especially true of the most important regulations related to, for example, the nuclear power industry where safety is a very important standard, as is efficiency and making sure that the American people have the electric power generation that they need. So the Congress has great incentive to reach quick agreement on regulations like that, and it's very important that we have that jurisdiction.

But many regulations are not needed; they cost jobs in our economy. I know those on the other side of the aisle have been citing academics who claim that that's not the case. But I want to call attention to one more academic who wrote just on January 18, 2011. He said:

Sometimes, those rules have gotten out of balance, placing

unreasonable burdens on business--burdens that have stifled

innovation and have had a chilling effect on growth and jobs.

That academic's name is Barack Obama, and he is currently the President of the United States.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the amendment carves out of the REINS Act Congressional Approval Procedures regulations that the Office of Management and Budget determined will lead to net job creation.

The danger in the amendment is the strong incentive it gives OMB to manipulate its analysis of a major regulations job impact. Far too often, OMB may be tempted to shave the analysis to skirt the bill's congressional approval requirement. In addition, regulations alleged to create new jobs often do so by destroying real existing jobs and creating new hoped-for jobs associated with regulatory compliance.

For example, some Environmental Protection Agency Clean Air Act rules will shut down existing power plants. EPA and OMB may attempt to justify that with claims that more new green jobs will be created as a result. In the end, that is just another way in which government picks the jobs winners and the jobs losers. And there's no guarantee that all of the new green jobs will ever actually exist. And I would cite Solyndra as perhaps the best evidence of promised jobs that don't exist and cost the taxpayers half a billion dollars.

The REINS Act is not intended to force any particular outcome. It does not choose between clean air and dirty air. It does not choose between new jobs and old jobs. Instead, the REINS Act chooses between two ways of making laws. It chooses the way the Framers intended, in which accountability for laws with major economic impacts rests with Congress. It rejects the way Washington has operated for far too long, where there is no accountability because decisions are made by unelected agency officials.

The amendment would undermine that fundamental choice. Let me give you a few examples of this:

Regulatory agencies routinely estimate the benefits and costs of regulatory changes under the assumption that any individuals that become unemployed are instantly and constantly reemployed in nearly identical jobs. But the EPA's employment impact analysis is frequently flawed because it fails to account for the cascading employment effects of regulation across interconnected industries and markets.

Using the proper full economy model, NERA Economic Consulting found that the EPA's Utility MACT Rule would have a negative impact equivalent to 180,000 to 215,000 lost jobs in 2015, versus the EPA's claim of 8,000 net new jobs, and which, therefore, wouldn't come to the Congress, even though private consultants say it would lose over 200,000 jobs. EPA claims it would create 8,000 jobs.

The EPA's Cross-State Air Pollution Rule would have had an economic impact equivalent to the annual--annual--loss of 34,300 jobs from 2013 through 2037 versus the EPA's claimed 700 jobs gained annually.

Finally, the EPA's industrial Boiler Maximum Achievable Control Technology--or MACT--Rule would have a negative impact equivalent to 27,585 jobs per year on average from 2013 through 2037, compared with the EPA's claim of 2,200 per year claim.

All of this goes to show that this would be a shell game allowing the executive branch to claim job increases when actually there are massive job losses and, therefore, avoid the scrutiny of the people's House and the entire United States Congress where these massive regulations should come back for review and approval before they're implemented, and before they cost those kind of jobs to Americans.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I would say to the gentlewoman from Texas that the bill prohibits a filibuster in the Senate from being used to block consideration of regulations that come before the Congress.

We are making every effort to have that bipartisan collegiality that she suggests, but I don't think this amendment accomplishes that. The amendment seeks to shield the Department of Homeland Security from Congress' authority to approve regulations under the REINS Act. That shield should be denied.

For example, take the Department's rule to extend compliance deadlines for States to issue secure driver's licenses under the REAL ID Act. More than a decade after 9/11 hijackers used fraudulent licenses to board airplanes used to murder 3,000 innocent Americans, DHS continues to keep this extension in place.

This is the kind of decisionmaking that takes place at the Department of Homeland Security. Congress should use every tool it can to reassert its authority over the legislative rulemaking functions it has delegated to DHS, and the REINS Act is available to do that.

I would urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment and to support the underlying bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I just want to point out to the House that the assertion that this does not prevent a filibuster in the Senate is incorrect. If Members would examine pages 12 through 14 of the bill, they will see multiple ways in which procedural motions and substantive motions in the Senate are barred from undertaking a filibuster, and they must proceed through those points of order and other objections that might be raised to a final vote on this regulation under the REINS Act.

This is a good thing because it will allow for expeditious consideration by the Congress of regulations. Whether they are needed or not needed, they ought to be considered by the Congress, especially if they cost more than $100 million to the American economy.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time, and would just say in opposition to this amendment again, Members only need to look to the bill itself to see that the process in the Senate will not tolerate filibusters at any point in the process from start to finish.

Let me also point out that the American people care very much about how disasters are handled, and so do elected representatives of the American people. But we are talking about regulations written by the agency that cost more than $100 million.

Those regulations, if they are written wrong--and many people would suggest that the Department of Homeland Security has gotten it wrong many times with regulations from the TSA, for example--those regulations should come back to this Congress for review. The American people have the first and foremost place to look for leadership on these issues in the Congress of the United States, the people's House, and the United States Senate, and not to government regulatory agencies.

Yes, they need to write regulations, but they shouldn't have the final say, particularly on the most expensive regulations affecting our economy.

Money that is diverted--money that is diverted--to pay for unnecessary regulations is money that can't be spent to address other problems that we have in this country or to pay down our national debt. That's what is important, and that's why this amendment should be defeated.

We need to have common sense brought to our regulatory process. The REINS Act does it. The REINS Act reins in unnecessary burdensome regulations, it helps protect American jobs, and it ought to be protected, and that includes protected from unnecessary or burdensome regulations in the Department of Homeland Security.

I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I want to thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I support the amendment. I share in my colleague's desire to bring more congressional scrutiny to regulations with high economic impacts, and I know that recent major regulations have hit West Virginia and the gentleman's constituents particularly hard.

The Environmental Protection Agency's regulations that affect energy sources and power production are among the most troubling. The $100 million threshold for major regulations in the bill is consistent with definitions that have been used by Presidential administrations of both parties since at least the 1990s. However, regulations with a $50 million impact in today's economy will hit America's job creators and families too hard. This is particularly true of small businesses and the families that depend on them on Main Streets throughout the Nation. As a result, the amendment would make sure that Congress is accountable for regulatory decisions of this magnitude, which impose harm on an economy that can ill afford it.

Therefore, I support the gentleman's amendment, and I urge my colleagues to join me in doing so.

I thank the gentleman from Florida for yielding, and I'm going to support his amendment.

I share my colleagues's desire to curb the abuse of agency guidance documents and other agency directives, statements, and actions that too often have escaped adequate congressional scrutiny.

The amendment brings within the scope of the Congressional Review Act and the REINS Act rules of agency practice, procedure, and management that could be abused but otherwise would escape a congressional check and balance. It is a measured first step in reining in agency excess, and I look forward to working with the gentleman in the future to see if we can identify additional ways to rein in abusive agency practices and guidance.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to claim time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the statistics about the delays in poor performance at the Department of Veterans Affairs with regard to veterans' claims are reasons to oppose the gentlewoman's amendment. The amendment carves out of the REINS act congressional approval procedures all regulations that affect veterans and Veterans Affairs.

We want to guarantee that the regulatory decisions that affect them are the best decisions. That's why major regulations that affect veterans and Veterans Affairs, like all other major regulations, should fall within the REINS Act. Under the legislation, agencies with authority over veterans' issues will know that Congress must approve their major regulations before they go into effect.

That provides a powerful incentive for the agencies to write the best possible regulations, ones that Congress can easily approve. Congress will have every incentive to approve good regulations and every incentive to disapprove regulations that have led to the kind of delays and uncertainty that veterans face today.

That's a solution that everyone should be able to support. Congress will be more accountable, agencies will write better rules, and veterans and all Americans will reap the benefit.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

I say to the gentlewoman, my colleague from Wisconsin, that this House is very proud of the fact that we worked in a bipartisan fashion to pass all of those bills. I have absolutely no doubt that if, after we pass those bills, the Department of Veterans Affairs and other agencies affecting veterans didn't do the work properly and didn't get it done right that this Congress would again work in a very bipartisan fashion to say, No, you didn't get it right. Get it right.

That's what this is all about. That's why the REINS Act is important. It's not just for every other American, but also for veterans. This is something that will improve the regulatory process.

There is another study that talks about the creation of jobs, which are important to our veterans who have returned and are looking for employment in this country. This is a study by the Phoenix Center, and it's entitled, ``Regulatory Expenditures, Economic Growth and Jobs: An Empirical Study.'' It was performed by three Ph.D.'s and a lawyer. What could be better than that? I want to read from part of the abstract. It says:

Even a small 5 percent reduction in the regulatory budget,

about $2.8 billion, is estimated to result in about $75

billion in expanded private sector GDP each year with an

increase in employment by 1.2 million jobs annually. On

average, eliminating the job of a single regulator grows the

American economy by $6.2 million and nearly 100 private

sector jobs annually. Conversely, each million-dollar

increase in the regulatory budget costs the economy 420

private sector jobs.

This is a study that shows conclusively that we're right when we say that the REINS Act will help to create jobs in this country and the current regulatory morass that we're facing in this country is costing American jobs. I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment and to support the underlying bill.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, I, along with House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. and Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations Ranking Member Robert C. ``Bobby'' Scott, would like to take this opportunity to thank Bobby Vassar for his work with the House Committee on the Judiciary and Congressman Scott's Congressional office for the past 19 and \1/2\ years.

Bobby came to Representative Scott's Congressional office on February 1, 1994 to serve as Senior Counsel and Legislative Director. He joined the staff of the Crime Subcommittee of the House Committee on the Judiciary in March of 1999 as Minority Chief Counsel. From January 2007 to January 2012, Bobby served as Majority Chief Counsel for the Subcommittee.

Prior to joining Representative Scott's office in 1994, he worked for three Virginia governors, starting as Chairman of the Virginia Parole Board in 1982 and ending as Acting Secretary of Health and Human Resources in 1994. Prior to 1982, he worked as Executive Director of the Peninsula Legal Aid Center in Hampton, Virginia, for which Congressman Scott served as Chairman of the Board. He also held positions previously as Assistant Vice Chancellor for Administration at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as a staff attorney with the Laborer's Pre-paid Legal Services Plan of Washington, D.C. and Vicinity, and as a Reginald Heber Smith Community Lawyer Fellow at the Roanoke Virginia legal Aid Society. Bobby is a graduate of Norfolk State University and the University of Virginia School of Law.

Bobby's ability to work well with his colleagues, especially across the aisle and across the Capitol, made him a valuable staff asset to passing many key pieces of legislation. He had the lead staff responsibility in the House for several significant bipartisan bills that were enacted into law including the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment, and Crime Reduction Act of 2008 (Public Law 110-416); the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 (Public Law 111-220); the Deaths in Custody Reporting Act of 2000 (Public Law 106-297); the Juvenile Accountability Block Grant Program (Public Law 107-273); the Second Chance Act of 2007 (Public Law 110-199); along with dozens of other bills enacted into law over the years. He also led the development of the Youth Prison Reduction through Opportunities, Mentoring, Intervention, Support and Education (PROMISE) Act which was introduced in the 110th Congress and has been reintroduced every subsequent Congress; H.R. 1695, the Justice Safety Valve Act of 2013; H.R. 2656, the Public Safety Enhancement Act of 2013; and many promising bipartisan bills pending in the House and Senate.

We are deeply appreciative of the service and contributions Bobby has provided the Crime Subcommittee, the Judiciary Committee and the Congress over the past two decades. Throughout that time, many people both on and off Capitol Hill have been fortunate to call him a colleague and friend. He will be missed. We wish him the best of fortunes and fulfillment in his future endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I acknowledge the great work of the gentleman from Georgia on this issue and thank him.

Mr. Speaker, all across the country, Americans are asking one question: Why wasn't the mandate on them delayed? If the systems aren't in place for businesses to abide by this law by the deadline, why does the administration think that the systems will be in place for the individual mandate? If a delay is good for businesses, why isn't it good for the families in the 6th District of Virginia and across the Nation?

When Members refer to ObamaCare as a train wreck, they only quote one of its chief architects. This announcement proves even the administration knows ObamaCare is headed towards devastation. Let's get businesses, as well as American families, off this train headed towards disaster. We need to delay the employer mandate, we also need to delay the individual mandate, but most importantly, the American people need a full repeal of this train wreck legislation.