Floor Statements

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 2812, the middle market IPO underwriting study act, sponsored by the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes), and I commend him for his work in bringing this bill to the floor and authoring it.

This bill passed our committee by a voice vote. I don't think there was a dissenting voice in the room.

As the gentlewoman from Missouri points out, the process of going public and filing a registration statement is expensive. Due to that expense, companies may choose not to go public and not raise the money they need to expand their businesses and provide additional employment to aid our economy. Therefore, it is in all of our interests to see whether that cost can be reduced.

Companies in this process usually engage an underwriter or broker- dealer to help them sell the shares to prospective investors. Underwriters are typically compensated for their services through fees such as underwriting spreads and underwriting fees.

The underwriting spread is the difference between the price at which the underwriter buys the security from the issuer and the price at which those securities are sold to the public in the public offering.

The underwriting fee, which often constitutes the largest share of the cost of doing an IPO, or initial public offering, is typically a percentage of the gross proceeds of the sale of the securities. The exact amount varies and can be negotiated between the issuer and the underwriter. Large companies have, in recent years, been able to negotiate lower percentages for this process, which reduces their overall fee. At the same time, smaller companies have continued to pay the same historic percentage for this service, which is often 7 percent of the transaction.

Higher underwriting fees essentially increase the cost of raising capital, allowing middlemen to pocket profits that would otherwise be available to grow the company.

Despite technological advancements, such as digital platforms which now allow for a quicker and wider distribution of securities, underwriting costs for small-and medium-sized companies have remained stagnant and uncompetitive.

The gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes) has brought forward a bill to direct a study of this problem and offer concrete solutions. It will focus on the underwriting fee. It will also look at the auditing fee, as well.

I support this bill, which will shed light on how much small- and medium-sized companies are paying chiefly for underwriting services when they go public. I hope this will get the SEC to address this behavior on Wall Street.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Himes), the author of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman from Connecticut said it well: Costs should be coming down because technology is available, yet they seem exactly stuck at a noncompetitive 7 percent. Our investors in companies need more robust competition and fairer underwriting practices. This bill would shed light on these practices and help us strengthen competition in underwriting services for our smaller and medium-sized companies.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, which passed, I believe, on a voice vote in our committee. I know of no opposition.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will address an issue that will not affect us until the second half of this century, an issue that I first addressed 23 years ago; the first year of this century.

It is the issue of engineered intelligence. The race that the engineers don't know that they are in. A race between the bioengineers and DNA and the computer engineers and artificial intelligence, AI, to create a new level of intelligence on this planet; in effect, to develop our successor species.

AI will have dramatic effects in the short-term. It will have benefits because it is a powerful tool. It will be used by evil men and women because it is a powerful tool.

They will use it to accomplish their goals, and sometimes they will make mistakes. They will invade privacy. They will deny loans to people who should get them for wrongful reasons.

These are issues that we have faced in the last hundred years wherein this or that technology has invaded our privacy or discriminated against people in this or that financial transaction.

My focus is the second half of this century when we will face issues far beyond that.

As to artificial intelligence, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak and others have asked for a 6-month delay, but we will not see a 6-month delay in our research.

Frankly, a 6-month delay wouldn't accomplish much because the issues surrounding AI are intractable, and we have squandered at least 23 years in failing to deal with them. Another 6 months will do us little good.

I commend the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and I don't commend Kevin McCarthy all that often,

for bringing the entire House together 2 days ago to focus on the artificial intelligence issue and to hear from Professors Torralba and Madry of MIT.

The professors showed us that AI clearly has met the Turing Test. The Turing Test was set forward by Professor Turing many, many decades ago.

Professor Turing was the subject of the Imitation Game, one of the most brilliant computer professors we have ever had, that the western world has ever had.

That test was that you would have a text chat with a computer and not be able to tell whether you were talking to a human or to a computer.

At that point, computers would have reached human levels of intelligence. Well, we have clearly gotten to that level. We call it ChatGPT. Chat is right in the name.

Today's computers cheat on the Turing Test. It is no longer a valid test because today's computers have something Professor Turing from the 1940s and 1950s could not have imagined, and that is the internet.

They are able to mimic a human response just by looking at every other human response to a similar statement or question by looking at the entire internet.

As the MIT professors pointed out, it is kind of like a parrot; able to say something that under some circumstances might be the right response without understanding the words.

AI will not, therefore, probably be intelligent the way I would view it for decades. We will need a new test, not the Turing Test.

For now, AI is a tool. It is a great tool, as was writing and fire and jet travel and the internet. We will be able to deal with that tool.

The second half of this century will see an AI that is intelligent, that has--or might very well see this. It may very well be self-aware, aware that it exists and that it exists on a planet that can be affected things outside of its own existence.

AI may have volition; will. It may have ambition, the desire to survive, perhaps the desire to propagate, and in any case, the desire to affect the world so as to achieve its own survival. AI is a powerful tool.

China is not going to stop developing it for the next 6 months. American corporations see big profits. They are not going to stop developing it.

The private sector isn't going to spend much of its money making sure that AI is trustworthy. They are going to try to make sure that AI is profitable.

We need to be concerned about an AI that is self-aware and ambitious. Such an AI will have risks that are beyond the apocalypse to the human race.

Therefore, I propose that 10 percent of all the money we spend on AI research be used to prevent and monitor for self-awareness, volition, and ambition. Perhaps also to monitor for AI's awareness that we are monitoring it for those purposes.

If someone, some futurist is describing what the second half of this century will look like, and they paint a picture that seems to be a science fiction movie, they might be wrong. They might be right.

If a futurist paints a picture of the future that doesn't look like a science fiction movie, you know they are wrong. Our children will be living in a science fiction movie; we just don't know which one.

Let us not build Skynet. If you remember the Terminator movies, you will remember that Skynet destroyed most of the human race just seconds before it thought correctly that it was going to be unplugged.

Terminator was a great movie to watch, a terrible movie to live in, and I don't know if we can count on Sarah Connor.

There are two advantages that the human race has in preventing self- aware and ambitious AI. First, we are designing the AI, and we may understand what we are doing while we are doing it. We might.

Second, the machines are inherently, from our experience, not volitional, not ambitious. Go to the largest computer and say to the computer, I am planning to unplug you, break you up, and sell you for parts, and that computer will help you calculate how much money you can get for the parts.

Now let's look at genetic engineering, bioengineering. While the largest computer seems fine with being unplugged, the smallest insect does not.

Try stepping on a cockroach and see whether it is okay with being unplugged. The DNA, which didn't care whether it survived, didn't care to propagate, didn't, and isn't with us.

We may see genetic engineers, DNA engineers, start with human DNA and create a 1,000-pound mammal with a 100-pound brain that is going to beat your kids on the law school admissions test. That mammal, like every other mammal, will probably have a survival instinct.

Today's big headlines are about ChatGPT and artificial intelligence. Last year's big headline was about CRISPR, a new technology for the DNA engineers to use, and those headlines may turn out to be more important.

It will be hard to limit genetic engineering because initially, it will help deal with human tragedy. We will use genetic engineering to help cure disease.

Genetic engineering will help the impaired human, will help to decrease disease or syndromes. First, we will see us create the non- impaired human, the repaired human, and only then will we go forward to the transhuman.

There is a second issue, kind of something off to the side, and that is some world leaders--and I am looking at you Kim Jong-un--will seek to create submissive or subservient humans genetically.

Third, also off to the side, there are animal rights advocates who have argued that animals have reached a point where they deserve constitutional rights. Well, when genetic engineers create a pet dog or a working dog with near human intelligence, those animal rights advocates may have a point.

Let us return to the great race to create transhuman intelligence that is self-aware and ambitious. We need rules regarding genetic engineering that make it plain that while it is okay to seek to prevent intellectual disability, it is not okay to use genetic engineering to create intelligence beyond that of the average human.

Of course, we need to prevent the use of genetic engineering to create animals of greater intelligence than that animal species or humans of impaired will or impaired intelligence.

We do know one thing: Intelligence is the most powerful thing on the planet. It is intelligence that gave us fire. It is intelligence that gave us nuclear fusion. It is intelligence that gives us an unending supply of cat videos on our phone.

The last time a new level of intelligence arose on this planet it was when our ancestors said hello to a Neanderthal. It didn't work out for the Neanderthal.

There is a race between the computer engineers and AI and the bioengineers and DNA to develop the next level of intelligence, perhaps to create our successor species.

Will the next dominant species on this planet be carbon-based or silicon-based, the product of genetic engineering or the product of computer engineering?

Artificial intelligence is in the lead, creating an incredible level of intelligence that is useful to us now and is progressing at the speed of computing. Genetic engineering starts with the raw material that has a survival instinct and ambition.

I don't know who will win this race. I am old-fashioned. I am rooting for team human, which may not even be in the race.

Recent Events in Pakistan

Mr. Speaker, I would like to address recent events in Pakistan. In evaluating those events, some would say that America should root for whichever political leader styles themselves as more pro-American and has been easier for us to deal with on this or that bilateral issue.

I would say--and I think the State Department agrees--that what comes first is our dedication to democracy and the rule of law. Imran Khan was difficult for us to deal with; Prime Minister Sharif is somewhat easier. The question is democracy and the rule of law.

The Supreme Court of Pakistan has ruled that there should be provincial elections in Punjab and later on in another province. That is the rule of law.

I believe that supreme court has ruled that its initial ruling is final and unappealable, and the supreme court has ordered that the funds be released as are necessary to hold those provincial elections.

America stands not with this policy or that policy or a government that will agree with us on this issue or that issue. America stands for democracy and the rule of law. America also stands for human rights and the right of free speech and the right to express one's opinions. I, of course, have been concerned about some of the terrible disappearances, some of the abuses of human rights, some of the substantial evidence of torture.

We need human rights and democracy in Pakistan. We need the rule of law. America stands not with its short-term bilateral concerns but with our dedication to democracy and human rights.

Most important of all, Pakistan has national elections set forth in October, and nothing is more important for Pakistan than that those elections be timely, legitimate, fair, and that whoever wins the elections be allowed to govern.

War in Ethiopia, Tigray

Mr. Speaker, I will turn my attention to an issue that too many in Washington didn't pay attention to, as over 600,000 people died, and now some are not paying attention to the theory that the problem is over. I speak of northern Ethiopia, Tigray.

While the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement was signed in November, the Tigrayan people continue to face ethnic violence and discrimination. Earlier this month, the AP reported that Amhara forces have renewed their campaign of ethnic cleansing against Tigrayan civilians and have uprooted roughly 47,000 Tigrayans from areas in southern Tigray just since March. The Amhara forces are carrying out this campaign of ethnic cleansing through forced evictions, harassment, and murder.

Throughout all history, ethnic cleansing and genocide have gone together. This is not a standalone event, but rather, follows a horrific campaign of ethnic cleansing of Tigrayan civilians by Amhara regional forces that began in the year 2020.

Last year, Secretary Blinken publicly recognized that ``Members of the Amhara forces also committed the crime against humanity of deportation or forcible transfer and committed ethnic cleansing in western Tigray,'' in addition to ``war crimes'' and ``crimes against humanity, including murder, rape and other forms of sexual violence and persecution.'' This is on top of the involvement of Eritrean forces in Tigray. Eritrea is a separate country. It has no business having its troops anywhere in Ethiopia.

The determination made by our State Department on what is happening in Tigray follows extensive reporting by Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International in April of 2022, which documented: `` . . . Ethiopian federal forces, systematically expelled several hundred thousand Tigrayan civilians from their homes using threats, unlawful killings, sexual violence, mass arbitrary detention, pillage, forcible transfer, and the denial of humanitarian assistance.''

We have many things going on in the world. I know that most of our foreign policy or a very large chunk of it is focused on events in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, but Washington cannot turn away from this issue, nor can we assume that the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement solves the problem.

The people of Tigray deserve our attention and the engagement of the United States and the entire international community. Our leaders in Washington need to focus on what has been the most deadly event of the last several years.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Arrington).

Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of Texas Tech

Mr. Speaker, seeing no one else who wishes me to yield them time, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, we seem to have escaped the critical stage of this bank meltdown. We have not escaped without cost.

The FDIC announced today that they--and this is a vague estimate-- will have to spend $20 billion with regard to Silicon Valley Bank. That money will then be collected by fees that are on banks--basically, on depositors--in coming years.

More importantly, our economy has faced a huge shock. Business loans that would have been made were not made in the last month and probably will not be made in months to come.

The only silver lining there is the Fed was looking to slow down the economy, but this is one hell of a way to do it.

We have a fundamentally undemocratic system for regulating banks.

First, for the regional banks, the district Reserve banks, their Boards of Governors are not selected through a process of democracy. Elections are supposed to have consequences, but neither Congress nor the President has any role in selecting most of these directors. Instead, they are selected by the banks. In what way should we have governmental power vested that way?

Then, we have the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which claims not to even be part of the government and, therefore, doesn't claim to be responsible to the voters of this country. Yet, it collects taxes and writes, in effect, accounting laws.

Finally, we have a forum-shopping system that allows a bank to have a holding company, not have a holding company, be State regulated, be Federal regulated, and pit one regulatory group up against another.

Many countries have had, for long periods of their history, zombie banks, where the government thinks it is best to hide the losses of the bank, and somehow, the economy can go on. It works for a while some of the time.

Unfortunately, we have a similar system here. We have a system where losses on bonds are not recognized by the bank and often not even looked at adequately by the regulators, but losses on Main Street loans are recognized before they occur, even if they do not occur, on an anticipated basis.

A bank whose bonds have gone up in value can classify those bonds as available for sale and recognize a profit. If the bonds have gone down in value, they just classify them as not available for sale but to be held to maturity, a mere bookkeeping entry, and they don't have to recognize the losses.

Our banking system has $600 billion, at least, of unrecognized losses where we are hiding the losses in the footnotes. Our regulators don't regularly look at this.

We have had stress tests where they looked for a number of stresses, but not the stress that interest rates will go up and bonds will go down in market value. That is like having a stress test on a building where you test it for a flood and don't bother to test it for an earthquake.

We need stress tests that look at the most obvious stress that banks will always have. Interest rates can go up; interest rates can go down. Regulators know that. They have chosen to hide it from themselves.

The FDIC insures deposits only up to $250,000. That is a major increase from where it was 15 years ago. We might want to go higher, but if we do, we should limit that additional insurance to non- interest-bearing accounts.

When businesses are using the bank as a payment system, as a utility, when businesses instead want to invest $1 million, $2 million, $3 million of their money, they have a responsibility for finding an investment vehicle, whether it be a bank or otherwise, that is sound.

We have to prohibit the exclusive banking relationships where companies were told by Silicon Valley Bank: ``You must have all your spare cash in our bank, which means we, the bank, take a risk on you, but you have to bet your whole company that our bank will survive.'' We need companies to diversify their deposits.

Finally, cryptocurrency should not be listed on the balance sheets of any bank. It is simply way too speculative.

I look forward to working for a better banking system. My fear is that, like the losses on bonds, we will simply put under the carpet the losses and problems, go on saying we will patch it together, and not tell the American people that there are fundamental problems that should be addressed.

Mr. Speaker, China says it reserves the right to retaliate against America for the temerity of shooting down their spy balloon over our territory. This arrogance should not surprise us. It is the fruit of decades of China successfully pushing us around and getting away with murder. The balloon is just the latest, and I think the smallest, invasion of our sovereignty.

China denies access to American companies to its market, thus creating the most lopsided trading relationship in the history of trading relationships, with all the macroeconomic effects that has.

But it also has an effect on our sovereignty, because it then allows access to their markets to selected American companies, handing out that access like dog training treats. And lo and behold, our corporations, they roll over, they sit down, they play dead. Morgan Stanley has to tell its American customers to invest--advises them to invest 15 percent of their money in China; and if it fails to do so, Morgan Stanley won't be able to do business in China.

God forbid anybody from the NBA mentions Hong Kong or the Uyghurs. They are bounced out of the league.

And Hollywood is told they can only get 40 movies into China every year, which means if they make a movie about Tibet, it will not be shown in China. Hell, if they make a movie about Tibet, none of their movies will ever be shown in China. As a result, we are not going to see a movie about Tibet or the Uyghurs. China controls what we see on our screens.

And then a little problem with COVID, where China's obfuscation and lack of cooperation led to hundreds of thousands of deaths around the world.

But most significantly are the millions of jobs that we have lost as we have seen our industry hollowed out. The result is a decline in real wages over the last 30 years of Americans without college degrees and the fentanyl crisis as well.

All of these offenses deserve a major response, and we cannot limit that response to just this balloon. Like a balloon, we cannot allow this to all blow over.

I have five modest proposals.

First, we should sell identified weapon systems to Taiwan, including the helicopters.

Second, we should provide that China automatically loses its most- favored-nation status if they invade or blockade Taiwan.

Third, all major American corporations should report to their shareholders how they would be affected by a rupture in the U.S.-China trade relationship, because that is a genuine risk factor. It might happen. But that will encourage the companies to disengage from China and to build resiliency to compete for capital by showing shareholders that they are ready and that they have disengaged. And if our companies are resilient, our economy is resilient.

Fourth, we need a fund to compensate American companies that choose not to bow down to China and, therefore, suffer losses. This needs to be funded from a tariff on Chinese goods.

And, fifth, we need tough responses to China in tariffs if they retaliate for any of the four things I just identified.

We have a lot to do. This balloon has woken up the American people, and it should wake us up to the far greater things that China has done.

In the meantime, let's pass this resolution.

Madam Speaker, the Chinese Communist Party obviously believes that they can invade America's airspace deliberately, notoriously, and without serious consequences. They even believe--and this shows their hubris and their gall--that they can announce that they reserve the right to retaliate against America for shooting down their spy balloon.

Do you know what, Madam Speaker?

After 26 years in this House, I would say that the Chinese Communist Party is probably right. They did it. They hit us, and they can probably get away with it because the two parties will compete about who can scream the greatest invective toward Beijing, and then the two parties will attack each other saying: Well, what did President Trump do? And what did President Biden do?

In the end, we will have nothing but bruised, partisan vocal cords.

I have seen for 26 years the Beijing-Wall Street axis control our policy toward China.

Now this is just a balloon, but it is on top of two enormous problems with China. One is the lopsided trade relationship where they prohibit us from exporting to them and impose higher tariffs on us than we impose on them.

The second was the obfuscation and lack of cooperation of China when COVID arose on their territory.

But we probably will not have meaningful retaliation for those great harms and the most recent one because Wall Street has been in control of this House since the day in the year 2000 when we granted most- favored-nation status to Beijing and let them into the World Trade Organization. Before that, China was an annoyance and a slumbering giant. Since then, the Chinese Communist Party has done untold damage to our people, to their people, and, of course, to our economy and national security.

There are two things Wall Street will not let us do and two things China would actually try to avoid, and that is dealing with Taiwan and trade.

So I have three proposals. I will look forward to working with anyone on either side of the aisle to turn this into good legislation.

First, Congress should provide that we automatically allow Taiwan to buy certain defense items and that we act expeditiously at the congressional level without waiting for the administration to allow the Seahawk helicopters and other necessary defense items to go to Taiwan.

Second--and this arises from my years as chairman of the Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets Subcommittee--we need to require all major corporations to disclose, as a risk factor to their investors, how they would be affected by an end of the U.S.-China economic relationship or major impediment to it.

Investors deserve the information, and we need corporations to compete for capital by showing that they have made themselves more resilient. If our companies are more resilient, then our economy is more resilient.

Third, we need to provide that we immediately end most-favored-nation status to China if they blockade or invade Taiwan. This has to be immediate, certain, and known in Beijing before they launch their invasion, and it is not immediate and it is certain unless we provide no executive branch waiver.

Finally, a fourth proposal, and that is we need to provide an immediate 20 percent tariff on all Chinese goods if they retaliate against us for implementing any of those first three proposals. If they retaliate against that retaliation, then we have to be ready to go beyond that.

We can act. We can act with regard to Taiwan, we can act with regard to trade, and we can act with regard to a country that has built the most lopsided trading relationship in the history of international trade and whose actions have turned the industrial Midwest into what we now refer to as the Rust Belt which has led to a decline in real wages for those without a college education for over 25 years leading to fentanyl and a host of other problems.

So we can act.

The question is: Can we overcome the Wall Street-Beijing axis?

Can we deal with the partisanship here, or will this balloon just go over our heads and lead, once again, to partisan vituperation?

Mr. Speaker, imagine an antisocialist resolution so poorly drafted that the cochair of the CPA Caucus finds it necessary to come here and denounce it. But this resolution equates Willy Brandt with Kim Jong-un, Medicare with the Great Leap Forward, and European Socialist Allies of America and NATO, with the worst murderers in history.

Democracy calls for every country to decide what blend of government regulation of business, what blend of government programs to have, and that is a decision for each country to make. Instead, we have a resolution that provides a misleading and sophomoric description of history.

We are told that all socialism is equal, and that Marxist-Leninism is the same as the European Socialists. When communism stood over Europe and could have conquered the Western world, we organized NATO.

Here are the NATO leaders who were all socialists:

Harold Wilson, Willy Brandt, Francois Mitterand, and so many others, as shown on the chart.

Without them, Stalinism may well have prevailed. Yet, this resolution condemns them.

Then we are told, Oh, well, then the anti-communists must be great people.

Yes, like Francisco Franco and the rest of those identified on this chart.

Later today, the Republican leadership wants to take someone off her committee because they say they are dedicated to fighting anti- Semitism.

Yet, on this same day, they bring a resolution to this floor that equates some of the greatest leaders of Israel with some of the greatest mass murderers of history.

Look at the history of Israel. The founder of Israel, Ben-Gurion, a socialist; Golda Meir, a member of the Socialist International; and Shimon Peres, President of Israel and President of the Socialist International.

Yet, they say they are against anti-Semitism.

Mr. Speaker, 73 percent of the American people believe Republican leadership is ignoring the problems facing America, per a CNN poll. And we could dismiss this resolution as just a stupid waste of time consistent with that ignoring.

Can I get another 30 seconds?

Mr. Speaker, they are intent on using the debt limit to attack Social Security, which was attacked by Republicans as socialist at the time, the 1930s, and by Paul Ryan, more recently.

They are here to attack Medicare as socialist as was done by Ronald Reagan on a whole LP album denouncing Medicare as socialism.

They are here with this resolution to say that any social program can be equated with the greatest mass murderers in history.

This resolution is not just a waste of time. It is a pernicious attack on the programs that American people support.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chair, American gas prices are too high. The pressure is on this Congress to do something about it. President Biden has done something about it by releasing oil at a strategic time from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and gas prices are down from their peak.

But Americans want more. They want real action, and instead, they get what is nothing more than a 2-day fraud on this House floor: a bill that would do absolutely nothing to reduce oil prices or gas prices.

Yet, by spending 2 days on the floor and by making this the bill of the week, we fool the American people into thinking that Congress is doing something.

Now, how utterly meaningless is this bill?

It would do nothing to increase oil production in the United States for it calls only for a plan to be created but not necessarily implemented. It implies that it would do something to increase oil production but not for well more than a year after the crisis began any spike in oil prices. Finally, even if more oil is produced in the United States, it will be exported and will lower the world price perhaps by a penny.

This is a messaging bill. Its message is to attack President Biden, who is the only one who has actually done something to reduce oil prices.

So let's look at what this bill does. It calls for a plan. If the administration wants to give us a plan, then give us a plan. Washington is filled with plans. The American Petroleum Institute has a plan. Everybody has a plan. So we draft another plan.

What does that do?

Now, it forces the administration to write a plan about leasing more land for oil drilling. They are free to list parcels where everybody knows there is no oil and nobody wants to bid. If they don't want to do a plan, then that is the plan they will give us.

But let's say they give us the plan that the majority seems to want. They can write the plan, accompany it with a letter explaining that they think it won't reduce oil prices and that it is bad for the environment, and therefore they are not going to implement it. So now we have a plan that is similar to what they want and a letter saying why it won't be implemented.

This is what we offer the American people?

If we are going to have a bill that requires a plan, then we ought to adopt this amendment that offers the administration a chance to create a different kind of plan, a plan to prohibit or limit exports.

The illustration of how important this is can be seen just north of our border. Canada produces twice as much oil as they consume, and their consumers are paying $2 a gallon more than we are paying. So producing more oil inside your country doesn't seem to lower oil prices for those living to the north of the United States.

Why?

Because the oil is simply exported at the world price. Now, that guarantees--if we actually produced more oil in the United States and exported it--more profits for oil companies but not a penny of reduction at the pump.

If instead we had a plan to limit or prohibit exports, then we would lower certainly the price of natural gas, and I believe that under many circumstances we would reduce the price of oil and gasoline paid for by the American people.

So the majority comes to this floor with a bill requiring a plan to be added to the hundreds of existing plans that already exist that requires the administration to create a plan that the majority tells us the administration doesn't want to create, allows the administration to create a plan that they wouldn't like, allows the administration to create a plan that they would like and then refuse to implement it, and then tells the American people that they are doing something to lower the price of gasoline now.

Let's point out that we are going to produce more oil in this country in 2023 than any other year in our history. So this is a message bill that is sending a false message. We are going to produce more oil in 2023 than any other year. But even if we did lease more land, and even if they did drill on it, that is a response that might affect us in 2025.

Why don't we have something that will lower gas prices now?

So if we want to engage in this process of telling the American people that we are doing something or that we would do something but it is the other party's fault, then for God's sakes, bring forward a bill that if enacted--which, of course, won't happen--but if enacted, that would actually do something. This bill will not increase oil production in the United States, and oil production in the United States, if exported, will do nothing to help the American consumer.

Mr. Chairman, vote for my amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, for 46 days, the Government of Azerbaijan

has forcibly cut off 120,000 ethnic Armenians in the Republic of Artsakh. They are cut off from the outside world. Food has become scarce. They have to ration even basic items. Diapers and medicine supplies have become so low that Facebook pages are opening where residents are trying to find these items from their neighbors. Residents are separated from their families on the other side of the border in Armenia, including children who have been attending school or visiting families.

Azerbaijan has even gone so far as to cut off natural gas during the depth of winter. A humanitarian crisis is brewing, and we should act to prevent it.

Let's be clear about what this attempt is. It is an attempt by Azerbaijan to force Artsakh's ethnic Armenian population out of their homes by making life in Artsakh impossible. The tactic is blockade. The effect is civilian deprivation. The object is ethnic cleansing.

But don't take my word for it. Listen to Azerbaijani dictator Aliyev who made his intentions clear when this blockade unfolded by saying, ``Whoever does not want to become our citizen . . . can leave.'' What does he mean? The ethnic Armenians are citizens. They are citizens of the Republic of Artsakh, but Aliyev doesn't recognize that citizenship and instead uses it as an excuse to say that he wants to ethnically cleanse these 120,000 people.

I am glad that Secretary Blinken earlier this week called on President Aliyev to end this blockade, but we know that dictators don't often respond to calls for justice. I urge the administration to put real weight behind these calls by making clear that there will be consequences to Azerbaijan by plunging the people of Artsakh into this humanitarian disaster, including sanctions if necessary.

The administration should enforce section 907 to stop all military assistance to Azerbaijan and to provide critical humanitarian aid to the people of Artsakh, actions that are long overdue.

Ever since I came to Congress almost 27 years ago, I have introduced and fought for a resolution to recognize the Armenian genocide, the first genocide of the 20th century. Back then it was not uncommon for Members of this body to minimize or even deny the systematic ethnic cleansing and murder of 1\1/2\ million Armenians, Greeks, or Syrians and others by the Ottoman Empire, but Armenian Americans and their allies did not give up. For decades, they spoke truth to power and turned the political tide until the Armenian genocide was recognized by this House and then by President Biden. It may have taken longer, but we got there.

This is a painful moment for the Armenian community. I am confident that the Armenian people will rise in strength. Armenians have outlived those who said there was no Armenian genocide, and they will outlive those who say there is no Artsakh.

I urge the Biden administration and all Members of this body to take a forceful stance against Azerbaijan's shameful attempts at ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population of Artsakh through this deadly blockade.

Debt Limit Crisis

Mr. Speaker, we have already hit the debt limit. Republicans say they want to negotiate. We negotiate about spending all the time. What they really mean is that they want additional leverage by threatening this country with a default on our debt, which would cost us, according to Moody's Analytics, 6 million jobs, a 9 percent unemployment rate, $15 trillion lost in our investment markets.

Already they are dillydallying with this debt limit. Their playing Russian roulette with our economy has already hurt our economy. As the chief Democrat on the Capital Markets Subcommittee, I am here to tell you that the cost of capital is higher and projects are not going forward because of the actions they have taken so far.

They want to negotiate? They want to negotiate going backward. They want to negotiate reducing Social Security benefits. They want spending cuts, but they won't specify what they want. If we are going to negotiate, let's negotiate going forward. Let's talk about increases in Social Security benefits, let's negotiate getting rid of the $2 trillion of unjustified Trump tax cuts that went chiefly to corporations and the wealthy.

You want to negotiate? Fine, we will negotiate going forward, but ultimately we will end up with a clean debt limit. You can't just love your country when your guy is in the White House. You can't play Russian roulette just because you don't like the President and you think that President will take the political hit. We need to show the world that our governance in America is sound and that our economy is worthy of investment.

Offered By: Mr. Sherman

Amendment No. 88: Page 3, line 9, strike the closed

quotation mark and the final period.

Page 3, after line 9, insert the following:

``(4) Exception.--Paragraph (1) shall not apply if the

President produces a plan to limit the amount of oil and gas

exported from the United States by the same percentage as the

percentage of petroleum in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve

that is drawn down in each drawdown that occurs after the

date of enactment of this subsection.''.

Mr. Speaker, what political nonsense this bill is. It allows an American oil company to buy oil from the SPR on Monday and sell it to China on Tuesday, which means it is fine for them to see SPR oil going to China as long as an American oil company makes a little money out of it.

And, of course, as the ranking member points out, it allows all the other oil in the country, 98 percent of our exports to China, to go to China unchecked.

If we were serious about lowering prices for the American consumer, we would look at what the Republicans did in 2015 when they ended our ban on exports and insisted that that be added to the spending bill that shut down the government.

I had a bill introduced last month to ban American exports of oil when oil is

selling for over $70 a barrel. We need to ban the exports of natural gas when prices are too high for American consumers.

Finally, this bill tries to attack the Biden administration's use of the SPR to lower gas prices here, where it has been somewhat effective and has made money for the United States Treasury.

Let's legislate seriously to lower oil and natural gas prices for the American consumer, instead of simply insisting that if American SPR oil goes to China, an oil company has to be a middleman and make a little money off of it.

Mr. Speaker, for most of my life, I have been a student of history. As a CPA, a tax lawyer, and a former head of the second largest tax agency in this country, I focused on the fact that if you look at empires, republics, and kingdoms, the ones that succeeded were those that were able to collect taxes. And when they were unable to collect taxes, they fell.

I have seen patriotic anarchists come to this floor. They want America to be

strong, but they want our ability to enforce our financial laws to be weak.

There are those who say correctly that we should not defund the police because we have crime in the streets. But we also have to prevent crime in the suites.

Yet every time a billionaire successfully cheats on his taxes, a member of the Freedom Caucus earns his wings. There are two threats to our ability to collect taxes. Both of them seem to be supported by many on the Republican side.

The first of these is the underfunding of the IRS. For 3 days and 3 long nights, we heard each faction of the Republican Party say how they wanted procedures that would eventually lead to reducing our national debt, and then the first thing they bring to the floor is a bill that increases the national debt by $1.6 trillion according to six bipartisan Secretaries of the Treasury.

Frankly, I think that estimate is way too low because I have seen tax collection from every side; as a legislator, as a tax administrator and auditor, and as an adviser to private businesses.

When you conduct audits, you not only bring in money from that taxpayer, but you create an image in that social circle that tax returns need to be filled out accurately and even conservatively. That will no doubt lead to far more tax collection than the $1.6 trillion that has been estimated.

Keep in mind that working people really can't evade taxes. They get W-2s and 1099s. It is those with complicated tax returns and our large corporations that we are talking about.

Now, with the additional funding the Democrats have provided the IRS, we can finally put ``service'' back into Internal Revenue Service. Hopefully, they will answer the damn phones.

We need to see one IRS employee for every 2,000 tax returns that are filed. As you can see on this chart, that is what Ronald Reagan had back in 1988. Now, we are close to 3,500 tax returns for every IRS employee. That is untenable. That is why Donald Trump could take outrageous positions in his tax returns. He counted on light audits.

Ronald Reagan paid his taxes and staffed the IRS. Stand with Ronald Reagan and stand with adequate funding for the Internal Revenue Service.

There is a second threat to our ability to collect taxes--it is longer term--and that is the possible rise of cryptocurrency. When somebody tells you what they are, believe them. Cryptocurrency tells you what it is or aspires to be in its name. Cryptocurrency literally means hidden money.

Now, I am the only Member of this House to get a grade of F from the only organization dedicated to crypto advancement that rates Members of this House because I have been trying to ban crypto for over 5 years.

No one has helped me more in that effort than Sam Bankman-Fried, but some will view Sam Bankman-Fried as just one big snake in a crypto Garden of Eden. The fact is, crypto is a garden of snakes.

From the outside, it looks like it is just a token, an electronic pet rock, something to bet on, not because it has any value or use but because you might be able to sell it for even more to somebody else. But longer term investors in crypto are investing in it because they hope it becomes a currency.

How does crypto compete with the dollar, the existing U.S. currency? It is right there in the name. Cryptocurrency means hidden money, and the market for cryptocurrency is tax evaders trying to hide their assets from the IRS.

Mr. Speaker, it's appropriate for me to republish my statement of March 11, 2019 on the meaning of cosponsoring legislation. Much of that statement was a republication of my statement of September 29, 2010, as I've maintained a consistent policy on this issue. The following is a republication of my statement of March 11, 2019.

``Madam Speaker, on Wednesday, September 29, 2010 stated for the Record:

`Madam Speaker, I wish to clarify that when I cosponsor a bill, it does not necessarily mean that I agree with every part of it. At a minimum, my cosponsorship indicates that I support moving the bill forward through the legislative process, including being marked up in committee, and if sent to the floor by the relevant committee(s), then subject to consideration and amendment on the floor.'

Let me reiterate that 2010 statement and provide additional background. I believe in the legislative process. I believe bills are improved during committee mark-ups and by consideration of amendments on the floor. The effect of cosponsoring a bill is to signal to the relevant committee chair(s) that I believe the bill should be marked-up in committee, a process that may well improve the bill (and in some cases may make the bill worse). When I decide to cosponsor a bill after it has completed the committee process, I do signal to the Speaker and Rules Committee that I believe the bill should be considered on the floor, and almost always under an open rule.''

Mr. Speaker, for 3 days and 3 long nights, every class of Republican came to this floor to argue about which of them hated the national debt more. Now, as the first thing, they bring forth a bill that will increase the national debt by $1.6 trillion, according to six bipartisan Secretaries of the Treasury.

Working people can't evade taxes. They get W-2s and 1099s.

Republicans support this bill, because every time a billionaire successfully cheats on his taxes, a member of the Freedom Caucus earns his wings.

As co-chair of the bipartisan CPA Caucus, and former head of the second largest tax agency in America, I say we need staff to put the Service back into the Internal Revenue Service.

One employee for every 2,000 tax returns filed, that is the staffing level that Ronald Reagan insisted upon. It is the level Democrats would restore.

Trump took outrageous positions on his returns, and counted on a light audit. Whereas Ronald Reagan paid his taxes and staffed the IRS.

Don't make honest taxpayers feel like suckers. Stand with Ronald Reagan and vote ``No.''

Mr. Speaker, for 5 years, I have been trying to ban American investments in cryptocurrency. I am the only Member of this House to get an F grade from the only crypto-promoting organization that rates Members of Congress.

My fear is that we will view Sam Bankman-Fried as just one big snake in the crypto garden of Eden. The fact is, crypto is a garden of snakes.

Now, from the outside, crypto just looks like a token, an electronic pet rock for the 21st century, something that might be good to invest in--though it has no apparent value--because you might get somebody else to buy it from you for more than you paid for it.

But in reality, crypto aspires to be a currency and compete with the U.S. dollar. It is not a currency yet, but if it has any long-term value, it is because its promoters are successful in turning it into a currency.

Now, the U.S. dollar is an excellent currency. It is a medium of exchange that will be used billions of times today for people to buy this or that. It is a medium of exchange. It is a measure of value.

So how can a cryptocurrency compete with the U.S. dollar and other established currencies?

Whenever you come up with a new product, you find an advantage that you think you have--at least for part of the market--of your product over the incumbent products, and then you name your product after that advantage.

The advantage that crypto hopes to be its ticket to become a currency is right there in the name: Cryptocurrency literally means hidden money.

Well, is there a big market for hidden money? Well, there are the drug dealers, the human traffickers, the sanctions evaders who will find that to be a good feature. As Sam Bankman-Fried would tell you today, there is a hell of a market for those who need a currency that will help them hide assets from the bankruptcy courts. But the true big market for a hidden currency is tax evasion.

Now, I know there are some on the other side who are kind of happy every time the IRS is defeated. It is said that anytime a billionaire successfully cheats on his taxes, a member of the Freedom Caucus earns his wings.

The other announced purpose of cryptocurrency design is not just to be a currency available to those who want hidden money, but to compete with the U.S. dollar as a world reserve currency. This would enrich the crypto oligarchs beyond measure and take thousands of dollars a year of advantage away from every American family because every American benefits from the fact that the U.S. dollar is the established world currency.

Now, Sam Bankman-Fried, or should I say inmate 14372, had one purpose in his efforts in Congress. And he was well known in Congress. The only one wearing shorts walking around. His one purpose was to keep the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, out of the crypto world to provide a patina of regulation, baby regulation by assigning crypto to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, an organization a little laxer and a lot smaller than the SEC.

I have one admonition for my colleagues. Don't trash Sam Bankman- Fried and then pass his bill. I fear this could happen because Sam was not the only crypto oligarch with PACs and lobbyists and all the pressure and all the money coming from the pro-crypto side. There is no PAC in Washington, there is no lobbyist here getting paid millions of dollars to work for efficient law enforcement or investor protection or sanctions enforcement.

Now, I have heard some criticize the SEC, and I will do a little bit of that later in this speech. In July, I chaired a hearing of our subcommittee, the Investor Protection, Entrepreneurship, and Capital Markets Subcommittee, and pushed the SEC's head of enforcement for not doing what should have been done, and that is to go after every crypto exchange because the SEC has taken the position in court that virtually every cryptocurrency is, in fact, an unregistered security. That means that every crypto exchange is an illegal exchange. But the SEC has been unwilling to act on that conclusion because they are under intense pressure from a few in Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter signed by 19 Members of Congress that was designed as a push-back

pitch, if you know baseball, to push the SEC out of enforcement of crypto.

Congress of the United States,

Washington, DC, July 15, 2022.

Hon. Gary Gensler,

Chair, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington,

Now, this letter tells the SEC to back off, and here is the quoted language, from dealing with the ``purported risk of digital assets.''

Well, it is a few months after that letter was written, and there are a lot of people who sent their money to the Bahamas who do not think that the risk of digital assets is merely purported.

I would also include in the Record, there hopefully being no objection, statements from eight members of the Financial Services Committee on the Republican side that were designed to attack the SEC from even trying to get involved in the regulation of cryptocurrency.

Now, the crypto industry knows that their arguments are bad, and the advice given to anyone who has a bad public policy is when you come to Washington, you better bring a lot of money. It is being said that Sam Bankman-Fried showered money on Democrats, but what actually happened is exemplified by his statements just last month. He said he gave equal amounts to Democrats and Republicans. He gave the money to Democrats above the table, and he gave the money to Republicans to dark money organizations, super-secret super-PACs.

He explained his reasoning, and it actually makes sense. He says the press is liberal. I know my colleagues on the Republican side agree with that, and that the press would vilify him if he was giving money to Republicans. So he gave the money to Democrats above the table, to Republicans under the table, and according to him kept it about equal.

But, of course, Sam Bankman-Fried wasn't the only one involved in FTX. We have also his co-CEO of one of the FTX organizations, Ryan Salame, who gave many tens of millions of dollars exclusively to Republicans.

Now, I want to discuss the role that crypto plays in light of our capital markets. Our capital markets are designed to get people with savings to be willing to take risks to use, what economists have called for over a century, animal spirits, and to take the risk and invest as equity capital, sometimes debt capital, in businesses that make America great, that provide jobs, that create products, or invest in municipal bonds and build a school, build a hospital, build a road.

And especially that risk capital, that equity capital, we encourage by spending hundreds of billions of dollars a year through our tax system to provide a capital gains allowance, a much lower tax for those who make money by taking risks and investing their capital.

But what role does crypto play in this? It takes those animal spirits, that limited supply of capital that people are willing to put at risk, and diverts them into betting on crypto tokens, where the investment does nothing to provide jobs or to build plants.

I think, though, I may have overstated because the crypto world does create some jobs: Jobs in crypto mining, which is to say jobs in coal mining. You see, the way you get crypto is you get a whole bank of computers to do literally trillions of calculations, and if you do those calculations, with a little luck you get a bitcoin. And so the big cost is not the computers, believe it or not, it is the electricity. So we have coal miners mining coal to fuel coal plants that were previously mothballed and have been taken out of mothballs to create the electricity to allow people to mine bitcoin.

Now, it has not always done with coal. Iran is subject to our sanctions, as well they should be. In fact, I got involved in looking at crypto by seeing what role crypto might play in undermining our sanctions of Iran, which is working right now to develop a nuclear weapon.

Iran, due to these sanctions, can't export all its oil. What do they do with the oil? They burn it, create electricity, mine crypto, and then they have a hidden currency that they can use to fund Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi, and those are just the terrorist organizations whose names begin with H that are funded by the Government of Iran, which is engaged in crypto mining right now.

So one of the issues is, will crypto succeed? Not if we are successful in imposing the Know Your Customer anti-money laundering laws to the entire crypto ecosphere because if you take the hidden away from the cryptocurrency, it has no advantage over the dollar as a currency.

But we in Washington may fail to act. After all, the money and the power is in the hands of the crypto billionaires. But the bigger threat to crypto is crypto. I will explain that by talking a little bit about the theory of currency.

How is it that any currency acquires value? Well, many millenia ago, our species in various places all decided that gold was valuable. Hire an anthropologist, maybe they can explain why,

but gold has had value as far back as history goes.

The U.S. Government then created a paper dollar tied to gold, redeemable in gold, a fixed amount of gold, and then centuries later, because people were used to the dollar itself being valuable--they had forgotten how tied to gold it was--the currency was valuable in and of itself, and the tie to gold was eliminated.

Now, of course, you don't even deal with paper dollars all that often. It is an electronic representation of a paper dollar that used to be a representation of solid gold.

So some smart guys who knew a lot about computer programming, et cetera, decided, Well, why can't we do that? If the U.S. Government is able to print money, why can't we print money? And since money isn't actually printed on paper, but is electronic, why can't we create electronic money? And so they did.

They argued one thing, that the amount of bitcoin, or whatever cryptocurrency it was, was finite. Only a certain amount could be mined. Now, they assured us there is no back door that would allow the creators to create an unlimited amount of bitcoin and, after all, if you can't trust the people in the crypto industry, who can you trust?

But even if there is a finite amount of this or that cryptocurrency, there is an infinite number of cryptocurrencies. Compare that to fiat currencies, to governmental currencies. There are a couple hundred countries in the world. That is it. Those are the ones that can create governmental currencies. But every day somebody creates a new cryptocurrency, and we have a plethora of coins, so while there is a finite number of each coin, there is an infinite number of coins.

Furthermore, there is no particular reason to think that one cryptocurrency is more valuable than the other. Is bitcoin more valuable than ethereum? Why? Why not? What about dogecoin? What about hamster coin?

I asked this question in a hearing almost a year ago. One of my nice staffers, I was about to say pesky staffers, tapped me on the shoulder and said: Boss, there already is a hamster coin. So I said, well, gee, what about cobra? There is already a cobra coin.

So I went into the next hearing and said there might be a mongoose coin, and think of what a mongoose could do to a cobra. You know mongooses are able to kill any cobras, and of course a mongoose could really devour a hamster. I put that forward as a joke, identified it as a joke, and 4 hours later somebody created mongoose coin, and a few hours after that it allegedly had a value of hundreds of millions of dollars.

This self-mocking competition for some coins by other coins demonstrating there is an infinite number of coins, and any one of those coins could be more valuable than the other coin, ultimately will mean that crypto does not emerge as a currency. Compare that to governmental currencies. I mean, certain cryptocurrencies, including mongoose coin, today could be worth absolutely zero, whereas ethereum could be more valuable than bitcoin or not. Could be zero. Whereas the Uruguayan peso will always have a value because there will always be a Uruguay.

The capitalized value of all outstanding Uruguayan pesos will always be considerably less than the U.S. dollar because the United States will always be more important than Uruguay. So you know what the different currencies are tied to. You know the pecking order. You know the size of the United States economy, you know the size of the Uruguayan economy, and if you make up a country and print a currency, it is going to be worthless. You make up a cryptocurrency, could be as valuable as mongoose coin.

So crypto has no apparent value, and yet one cryptocoin competes with the other. I think this is a house of cards that collapses, but not right away. FTX was not the end of the story.

But let's say you are looking for a crypto exchange, God forbid. If you saw FTX, they had no audit at all, and I speak as I believe the only Democratic CPA returning to the next Congress.

I am an old auditor. No audit. You go to a Binance, which right now has had $3 billion withdrawn in the last 24 hours, and they have no audit, but they did have a proof of reserves done by an auditing firm, but a proof of reserves is not an audit.

Or you could go to Coinbase. They have an audit, but no internal control report on the audit. And if you listen to the testimony of John Ray before the Committee on Financial Services, he is the bankruptcy trustee for what's left of FTX, the focus of his problem or the problem he identified was no internal control.

So you look at the major exchanges, you don't have a true audit with an internal control audit on any of the ones I identified. You have to wonder, why would you want to play in that world.

Now, as I said, the SEC is acting way too slowly. And they need to be aggressive and go after every crypto exchange, if any of the crypto assets being exchanged is a security, and most of them in the opinion of the SEC, is a security.

I wish I could tell you it was cut and dry which cryptocurrencies were securities and which were not. Believe it or not, it all depends upon a statute passed in the 1930s and a court case decided in the 1940s; the Howey case.

And so it is probable but not certain that the vast majority but perhaps not all cryptocurrencies are subject to SEC jurisdiction. That is why Sam Bankman-Fried was here in Washington to try to get us to pass a statute that would reduce or eliminate the likelihood of success that the SEC would have in courts to show that cryptocurrencies are a security, and the crypto exchanges are securities exchanges.

I would hope that emboldened by recent events, that the SEC would shut down these exchanges. They are exchanging unregistered securities.

Now, I would hope that Congress would pass a law at least defining all cryptocurrencies as subject to SEC jurisdiction, but I think given the money and power of people who make money, literally--crypto billionaires, they make money by making money. They have a lot of it.

Now, I know that crypto is down about 60 percent from earlier this year. It is still a lot of money. In every other business, in order to make money, you have to make a product, provide a service. They have made money without doing any of that. It is a very profitable business. And so they will continue to press Congress, I fear successfully, into not passing legislation that undermines the SEC. But for God's sake, I don't think we will be able to pass this legislation making clear that the SEC has jurisdiction. They are going to have to win that one in the courts; I think they will. But for God's sake, let's make sure that we don't pass legislation that undermines the likelihood of the SEC winning in the courts.

Now, I would like to address a cousin of cryptocurrency, stablecoin. Talk about an oxymoron. Some stablecoins have absolutely collapsed. But a well-regulated stablecoin tied to the dollar is really just a money market fund but hipper. Because your grandfather invested in money market funds, coin sounds like cryptocurrency, and your grandfather doesn't understand that. I am not sure anybody understands it.

So stablecoin, if well regulated, is simply a money market fund, but invariably, it is a money market fund tied to crypto investing. If you have an account with a stockbroker, you no doubt have a money market fund where your cash is stored until you decide which stocks to buy, or which bonds to buy. So the money in that money market fund is awaiting deployment in investments that build the American economy.

Stablecoin is just another name for money market fund, but it will be tied to an account with a crypto broker awaiting deployment in dogecoin or mongoose coin or bitcoin, or ethereum, or any one of the cryptocurrencies.

So you can put me down as a skeptic of cryptocurrency. I think I have covered the reasons why it will not succeed, why investment in it is subject to a very substantial risk of theft. And why if, God forbid, and in the unlikely event that it does succeed, it will undermine the power of the U.S. Government to enforce our fiscal and white-collar laws.

I look forward to working with my colleagues to at least make sure that

we do not undercut the possibility of effective regulation of cryptocurrency, that perhaps we provide for the regulation and tough regulation of cryptocurrency with the Know Your Customer and the anti- money laundering statutes and that at least we do no harm.

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

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to remove the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Foster) as cosponsor of H.R. 2374, the Peace and Tolerance in Palestinian Education Act.