Floor Statements

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Perry) for yielding.

The gentleman is right. You can't help but notice and perhaps be distracted in an unseemly way by the stream of insidious attacks on the institution of the United States Supreme Court. It began with ideas about packing the Court, the well-known threat by the majority leader in the Senate that, ``You won't know what hit you'' to the Justices of the Supreme Court, followed by that unprecedented leak--unprecedented in the history of the United States Supreme Court for a draft opinion to leak to the public.

But we weren't done then, because in the ensuing two weeks, there was the online publishing of information about the residences of the Justices of the Supreme Court and the appearance of mobs outside their houses to intimidate them.

And we were not done then. Last night, in the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives, there were the most unseemly attacks on the institution of the Court.

We can look forward and we are still not done, because that committee, the Democratic majority of that committee, has scheduled for next week a hearing on the Dobbs case as it pends for decision on the calendar of the Court, another unprecedented trampling of institutional norms by a majority who reminds us constantly of their desire to protect democracy.

But as I say, all of that threatens to cover over what should be a hopeful moment for this Nation in which we may, for the first time in 49 years, set aside a regime that has resulted in the loss of 61 million innocents.

We may soon see in this Nation that no longer will tiny babies at the instant of their formation and their first weeks of growth when their formative heart begins to beat and they can sense pain, be forcibly ripped, limb from limb, as they are extracted from their mother's womb by an abortionist.

We can aspire now, given the hope that emerges from what was intended for evil, but God may use for good, this opinion that says no longer will the deficient logic and willful action of a Supreme Court majority in 1973 dictate the course of this Nation and commit us to a continuing abomination against the most innocent.

The aspiration that it may come to pass that the abomination of Roe v. Wade will join Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson and Korematsu on the ash heap of history, a stain upon the history of the United States, to be sure, but one that the Nation and those who have the good fortune to live within her confines may yet live to see redeemed.

Aspiration, hope, faith that this Nation may yet indeed see the living out of its creed. That is what I aspire to tonight.

Madam Speaker, today, I rise to pay tribute to WBT Radio on the 100th anniversary of its founding. For over a century, WBT has helped inform and entertain residents of the City of Charlotte--my hometown. Charles Kuralt, Billy Graham, Rush Limbaugh, and Charlotte's John Hancock are just some of the voices that have come through WBT's airwaves in the past, and that tradition continues in the broadcasts of names like Bo Thompson, Vince Coakley, and Pete Kaliner.

WBT traces its origins from early broadcasts by radio amateurs who set up a transmitter in an abandoned chicken coop. These sporadic transmissions later expanded into playing phonograph records over the air, and then into the broadcasts we know and love today. The U.S. Department of Commerce officially granted WBT a broadcast license on April 10, 1922. At the time, it was only the third licensed radio station in the United States and the first in the entire Southeast.

I am proud to honor WBT Radio on their 100th anniversary. Here's to 100 more years of radio excellence from the station heard ``from Maine to Miami.''

Madam Speaker, I request unanimous consent to call up H.R. 471, the PAUSE Act, to protect all Americans from Biden's border crisis.

Mr. Speaker, behold the nonpartisan nature of the January 6th Committee. It puzzles me why it would have been so different had the allegedly bipartisan commission been approved.

In fact, in the January 6th Committee's markup on the contempt resolutions, the grand inquisitor said, in opening: ``I can say confidently that the many involved in the run-up to January 6, an oath, a statement of fidelity to our democracy, was nothing more to them than meaningless words. I fear what happens if those people are again given the reins of power.'' This sums up the purpose of the January 6 inquisition in a way that is both cogent and terrifying.

What the January 6th Committee lacks in bona fide legislative purpose, not patina of legislative purpose but bona fide legislative purpose, it makes up for in pure political vendetta. This investigation isn't about truth or democracy; it is a pure political power play.

The immediate target is President Trump, but the ultimate target is those people--namely, the millions of Americans--who voted for President Trump.

Why is there no dissent from this objective on this committee? Well, because the only Members nominally representative of the minority, chosen by the majority Speaker over the objection of the minority, share the political objectives of the grand inquisitor.

Accordingly, Liz Cheney said during the January 6th Committee markup of these contempt resolutions: ``Our committee will continue to litigate to obtain the testimony we need.'' What need? To inform what legislative purpose does the committee need to obtain the RNC's contributor data and information, to discover who opened its emails and clicked through to donation pages?

On the other hand, it could serve her purpose to demonize her political opponents, especially those who donate to President Trump.

Mr. Speaker, it is common for the zealot to lose the capacity for irony. Hence, Chairman Thompson says that laws prohibit doing politics on the clock: ``It is important that taxpayer dollars don't support political activity.''

Ms. Cheney waves the Constitution even while she poses as the designee of the minority, imposed on the minority in a historically unprecedented trampling of the institutional norms. This is a kangaroo court, a court of the star chamber.

They continue to trample the concepts and the institutional norms of the Congress, and I am certain that the American people will have an answer for it very soon.

Madam Speaker, to Mr. Jordan's point, we are beset with problems.

Two of the most significant are that the Producer Price Index is at 10 percent. We face a cost environment that is unsustainable, and that affects every American's livelihood every time they visit a gas pump or go to the store. We face an employment environment where Americans have been disincentivized to work.

Every time I speak to people in my district--well, it may be different in the last couple of weeks and the latest catastrophes we have seen. But certainly, until then, the leading concern is the availability of people who are inclined to work in order to fulfill job opportunities.

The Judiciary Committee's report on this legislation points out that I and Representative Cliff Bentz from Oregon raised a question about this legislation in the markup, that it may prevent employers from regulating hairstyles for workplace safety reasons.

One of the cases involved, I believe, was about long dreadlocks that could become ensnared in machinery on a workplace floor.

Let me tell you what the Judiciary Committee's report by the majority says is the answer to that problem. They say that concern is misplaced because under the longstanding burden-shifting scheme applied by courts in title VII cases, an employer may defeat a discrimination claim by asserting that workplace safety was a legitimate, nondiscriminatory reason for

taking an adverse employment action against an employee, with the burden then shifting to the employee to prove that the asserted reason was a pretext for discrimination.

Assuming the employee cannot demonstrate that the employer's assertion of workplace safety was pretextual, the employer would prevail against an employment discrimination claim. How extraordinarily comforting.

So, if an employee wants to wear dreadlocks, and an employer is legitimately concerned for the health and safety of the employee, that his scalp might be ripped off by a machine, then the employer can enter into the litigation.

It certainly couldn't be arbitrated. We took care of that yesterday right on the floor of the House. We have to have litigation. We will have expensive lawyers.

We will start, get the complaint filed, the answer filed. Maybe there will be a motion to dismiss that will be denied. We will get into the discovery process. We will send out the interrogatories and the document requests. We will ask for the other occasions where somebody has been fired, examine the processes and the practices of the employer for the last decade.

We will get some experts in. We have got to have some experts to come in and testify to the likelihood that long dreadlocks are going to get caught in the machinery. We will have conflicting experts on each side. They will disagree. Then the court will receive a motion for summary judgment, say if there is enough evidence to submit the case to trial, and the judge will have a 130-page opinion that will examine the burden-shifting scheme and the initial burden, and then the response burden, and the burden shifts to the employee to show pretext.

And the inflation rate creeps higher, and the folks willing to enter into jobs seem to be less and less, and the catastrophes keep coming. But this is the top priority.

I don't think we need to drive lawsuits between Americans. I think, in the main, Americans well understand the rules of the road. As the Judiciary Committee itself reports, courts have generally even recognized that hairstyle, to the extent it is associated with race, as a basis for decisions on employment or the like, is already unlawful. The EEOC's own manual says that discriminating on the basis of, for example, Afros is unlawful.

This bill is another solution to a problem that doesn't exist in any significant scope in this country, and the result being inflation that gets higher, more supply constriction that drives inflation higher, more animosity and obstacles between employees and employers, between merchants and customers to drive more lawsuits to pay more lawyers to make the quality of life in America so much better. That is where we are. That is where we are today on the floor of the House.

Madam Speaker, to the point just made by Mr. Jordan, it does strike me that what is being described, by the majority leader or by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, is that some courts in the hundreds of Federal courts that we have--I am not even sure they are all Federal they are describing, but I assume so-- have decided that this is not an issue that is covered under one or more of these laws.

But you know what usually happens is, the Congress waits for the court system to work this out to the United States Supreme Court; and when there is a decision there, if the decision is contrary to the intent of Congress, Congress responds.

So again, in terms of picking up something that is unnecessary, that is what the majority is doing. It is not Republicans who bring the bill to the floor. It is not Republicans who pick a fight over something that most wouldn't even disagree about except in circumstances of safety, and then the question becomes one of the degree of burden imposed on employers, whether you want to drive lawsuits.

I was thinking maybe, as Mr. Jordan was speaking, that it would be nice to bring, since the minority can get issues to the floor--I didn't know that. I have been here just since 2019, and we have been in the minority the whole time. I can think of a lot of things we should bring to the floor. We should bring a bill to unleash American energy independence. We really need that right now. Not just a bill cutting off imports from Russia, not just a bill driving prices higher so that Americans will not only be paying $4 and $5, thanks to Joe Biden, at the pump, but they will soon be paying $6, $7, $8 at the pump.

If the minority could bring a bill to the floor, we could bring a bill to the floor that would say let's open up the ability to drill, let's encourage the energy industry in America to produce the energy that the world needs so that prices will be low and that Americans across the board, not just a few who have these extraneous handful of cases out of the whole Federal court system in which the result has not turned out the way we would like it to have turned out, let's worry about the millions and millions of Americans who will soon have to pay $7 or $8 at the pump every day, while it is $4 or $5 now. That is what I would do if the minority could bring something to the floor.

Will the gentleman yield?

Let me just ask, do you think anyone has ever discriminated against you because you are bald?

Did you bring a lawsuit?

It is not a question of avoidance. It is a question of priority.

Here is a priority. In 2020, homicides across America increased 30 percent, from 16,500, roughly, to 21,500, an additional 5,000 homicides.

And even if you want to view it through a racial lens, since that seems to be the subject, 55 percent of homicides are suffered by Black Americans, even though they make up 13 percent

of the population. Of the increase I just described, Black Americans suffer 65 percent.

So we could have--if the minority were capable of bringing a bill to the floor, we could bring a bill that would address the rising crime in America, the historically exceptional, historically unprecedented, I believe, at least I saw something since maybe 1900 or 1902--I don't know what the circumstances were then. But since then, the most, the highest increase of homicides in a single year in the history of the United States, grossly disproportionately borne by Black Americans. Driven by rhetoric about defunding police. We could prioritize that. That wouldn't be avoidance. And yet, we do not because, indeed, we are in the minority and the priorities are being set not by the minority but the majority.

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

I rise in opposition to H.R. 963. There is nothing fair about the FAIR Act. The bill would undermine Americans' freedom to contract; burden the judicial system, both Federal and in all States in the country; and restrict access to justice.

This bill would ban arbitration agreements across nearly all contracts. It outlaws arbitration agreements in employment disputes, consumer disputes, antitrust disputes, and civil rights disputes. It outlaws arbitration agreements with respect to not only big, huge corporations but the most humble businesses and parties in the country, those that I served in my law practice.

Democrats propose that arbitration is bad for Americans, but it has been a fixture of our legal landscape for almost 100 years. They claim that arbitration is forced. Both of their claims are wrong.

Arbitration has many benefits. It is more efficient and faster than going to court. The rules are not nearly as arcane. Injured parties get their relief sooner, and they spend less money along the way.

Plaintiffs in employment and consumer disputes, according to studies, actually win more in arbitration than they do in court. They get more money in arbitration. They win more often in arbitration.

Democrats know that arbitration has plenty of benefits. How do you know this? Because in this very bill, Democrats have carved out their union friends from the mandates of this bill.

In other words, if the bill becomes law, powerful unions, and no one else, can still use these valuable agreements vis-a-vis individuals.

This carve-out also tells us that Democrats know there is no such thing as forced arbitration. Agreements that are truly forced are already illegal under existing law in every State in the country.

People are no more forced to agree to an arbitration provision than they are to agree to any other provision of a contract. The bill, instead, bans private parties from knowingly and willingly agreeing on a process to resolve future disputes. It tells Americans, no matter how informed or sophisticated they may be, that they can't be trusted to manage their own relationships by agreeing in advance to the means of resolution to be used in the event of a dispute.

Our Democrat colleagues seem to believe that Americans can't be trusted to think for themselves. Big Government needs to tell them what to do. Their freedom to contract should be restricted by the wisdom from Washington.

Democrats argue that this bill is no big deal because parties can still decide to use arbitration after a dispute arises, but that never happens in practice for much the same reason that many disputes go to court and are resolved outside of a jury. About 1 to 2 percent actually go all the way.

The decision to get into a lawsuit is not always purely rational, taken from all points of view, and is often affected by tempers that are different once the dispute has arisen than when the parties are considering a position of cool judgment in advance.

Their incentives change after a dispute has arisen, and people will pick a strategy to resolve that dispute at that time. They won't necessarily be looking for a process, then, that is good for both parties for many reasons.

When you are immersed in a dispute, there is also a greater chance that a lawyer that you may have retained would have an incentive to direct you in the direction of litigation rather than arbitration, and those incentives certainly won't necessarily be consistent with a faster and cheaper alternative.

Rather than helping the little guy stand up to big companies, this bill would take the option to arbitrate off the table for everybody and put more money in the pockets of trial lawyers, most especially plaintiffs' class action trial lawyers.

The bill would force more people into court. They will pay more and possibly recover less. But it would also force some people out of the justice system altogether.

Some people will be unable to pay for an expensive lawsuit, or they may have a claim so small that it is only practicable for them to bring it themselves, which arbitration facilitates.

Let's be clear, too. The surge in new lawsuits hurts employment. It hurts businesses and keeps them from being able to afford to hire more people. It will raise their costs at the worst possible time, when they are already dealing with supply chain problems and record inflation caused by failed Democrat policies, and not only by prohibiting the use of arbitration going forward but by retroactively eliminating it, rendering it null and void in millions of contracts already outstanding right now, at this point in the life of our Nation, when we have 8 percent inflation, another constraint on the supply chain imposed by Democrat policies.

Everyone should be sounding the alarm on this blatant overreach. At the end of the day, this bill curries favor with the plaintiffs' bar and union bosses, and it does so at the expense of hardworking Americans and small businesses, especially.

For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to oppose H.R. 963, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

The distinguished chairman of the committee offered to correct me by saying that the bill only prohibits forced arbitration, said that was a correction, as if I misspoke as to facts.

Let me read from the language of the bill: ``Notwithstanding any other provision of this title, no predispute arbitration agreement or predispute joint-action waiver shall be valid or enforceable with respect to an employment dispute, consumer dispute, antitrust dispute, or civil rights dispute.''

The word ``forced'' was not in that language, Madam Speaker. It prohibits all predispute arbitration agreements and post-joint action waivers.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Gaetz).

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

I thank the gentleman from Florida, and as I suggested earlier, if the bill were a matter only of big businesses, it would be a very different bill, but just as there is no limitation to forced arbitration agreements in the language of the bill, there is no limitation to arbitration agreements entered into between little guys and big companies.

The very first appeal I ever took in a 30-year law practice in 1992 was in a case called Bennish v. North Carolina Dance Theater, in which I represented a fledgling, very-hard-pressed economically arts group in my hometown that had an employment dispute with a dancer who wanted to litigate. They had an arbitration agreement. It would have destroyed that organization financially to have to engage in extended and expensive litigation. This bill would have made the enforcement of that arbitration agreement unlawful, and it has nothing to do with big business.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

We still haven't heard an explanation for why this legislation deems it appropriate to eliminate arbitration for parties of all sizes. We keep hearing about the little guy versus the massive corporation.

Even in that circumstance, of course, what we may be talking about is like the case from 2011, AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion, where the issue was people in California had bought cell phones, they had been offered a free cell phone, but it wasn't made clear that they would have to pay the sales tax. So

there was a $5 claim per purchaser, and wealthy plaintiffs' class- action lawyers wanted to bring a big lawsuit. With tens of thousands of them, they might get a $5 coupon, but the lawyers would buy a new jet.

That may be in some circumstances, even the dispute with the big guy. But leave that aside. We still don't hear any explanation for why you are wiping out arbitration as a means that parties choose, even if they are on equal bargaining power.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Tiffany).

Madam Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

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

The distinguished gentleman from Georgia suggests that this bill is about whether or not we are preserving the right to jury trial in the Constitution. But I submit, that is not really what is at stake.

The question is whether you resolve a dispute through arbitration or you go to the court system. If you go to the court system, there are innumerable paths within the court system that lead to not having your case decided by a jury.

In fact, only about 1 to 2 percent of cases end up proceeding to a determination by a jury. That means 99 or 98

out of 100 cases do not. They might be dismissed on a motion for summary judgment. They might be dismissed for failure to state a claim. There may be settlement processes that come to fruition during the course of the case.

But it is almost never true--think about that--that a case in court goes to a jury. So this notion that this bill, by eliminating the choice of arbitration, somehow preserves everybody's jury trial magically is a false choice.

And more to that point, the gentleman from Georgia, and also the chairman, in the inception, noted that we have just had a bill signing of a bill that excepts from enforceable arbitration agreements the category of sexual assault, sexual harassment. The majority of Republicans supported that.

The majority of Republicans will not support this bill because it represents the throwing out of the entire mechanism of arbitration, which has been, as I indicated, a feature of the legal landscape used with great utility and utilized throughout the last hundred years almost, since 1925.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Bentz).

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

On the other side of the aisle, we hear repeated references to defending the Constitution and the American way. I would remind the Chamber that our economy, the American economy, is built on contracts; which contracts, under the rule of law, are not forced, but enforced when someone refuses to abide by his or her agreement. That is not forced. That is where a contract is enforced.

We, our courts, our judicial system, and, yes, arbitration is the means by which we call people to live by their bargains, and that has been the key to the most successful economy in the history of the world. It has certainly been the state of affairs, as I said, for almost 100 years.

Throwing that out, dispensing with a major component of that on the premise that you are pursuing the American system is contrary to fact. It is, as Democrats often seek to do, it is transformational. It seeks to transform America, not to reinforce and persist it.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. McClintock).

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California for his remarks.

It causes me to remark, as the gentleman from Tennessee said a moment ago, that it is Democrats who look out for the interests of the little guy and look out for the interests of the people. I wonder why it is that looking out for the interests of the people invariably involves restricting their freedom in some way. What a remarkable notion.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, one of the things that we have heard repeated a number of times, as the gentleman from Rhode Island suggested and the gentlewoman from Washington just said, is that if you go to arbitration, the company picks the arbitrators, and that is it. That is not, in fact, correct.

Courts police the fundamental fairness of the arbitration process. If there is a process that is fundamentally unfair, the courts will modify it until it is fair. So, that is a misconception.

Furthermore, it has also been suggested that it is by the whim of the arbitrator what the result is. That is exactly what Mr. Cicilline, I believe, said. That also is erroneous.

If an arbitrator writes a decision that manifests a disregard of the governing law, like the soldier who had been in arbitration for 8 years that he suggested, the courts will vacate, strike down, that arbitration award.

It is important to know those premises before you decide what to do on this bill.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Fitzgerald).

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I was intrigued by the situation we just had on the floor, the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania, I think she said she represented big corporations. Yet, she spoke to the fundamental unfairness of arbitration. It is ironic perhaps.

I spent almost 30 years--29 years in the practice of law as a litigator representing people in court and in arbitration equally. I represented plaintiffs and defendants both, frequently individuals, often businesses, always small to medium-sized businesses, and occasionally a local government or two, never a big company.

I have had clients who didn't want to have arbitration agreements enforced and sometimes I could defeat them or have them modified or change the results of them because the arbitrator had manifested disregard for the law. Sometimes I had clients who wanted to enforce those agreements. It depends on the circumstances.

But I can tell you it is not a tool that is uniformly bad. Although I have voted for accepting enforceable arbitration agreements, arbitration clauses involving sexual harassment and sexual assault cases, I don't believe that throwing the baby out with the bath water is a good idea. It is a terrible idea.

Let me let America in on the inside scoop. Here is what this is about. For the past, roughly, decade there have been a series of cases in the United States Supreme Court in which, through various efforts and methods, plaintiffs' class action lawyers, lawyers for big class litigation where they make millions and millions in fees, have tried various approaches to get the United States Supreme Court to allow class actions to be pursued through arbitration, and they have failed. That is why this bill is here.

The bill is to reverse the result of that decade of litigation in the Supreme Court in order for class action lawyers to be able to have a field day and to make a lot of money. This bill protects and seeks the fortune of plaintiffs' class action lawyers, and of course, it protects the patronage of big unions both at the same time. That is what the bill is about.

Madam Speaker, for that reason, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased with this amendment by the gentleman from Colorado. It has my full support in the Judiciary Committee.

I also appreciate the chairman's non-opposition to the amendment. I believe it makes the bill better, and it makes the bill one that I am going to be eager and pleased to support.

The problem before was that the bill possibly made unenforceable arbitration agreements going well beyond sexual harassment disputes. But for sexual harassment disputes, I am in full agreement that the victim in every case should have the opportunity not to arbitrate, notwithstanding an arbitration agreement.

Therefore, this amendment succeeds. I am going to be glad to support the bill in full, and I am sure many others will as well.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

In the lengthy oration of the 1 minute from the majority leader, I agreed with one word, that this is a radical bill. And the majority leader's argument is a ``throwing the baby out with the bathwater'' argument.

The States in this country remain a bulwark of democracy. The rhetoric from Democrats is that democracy itself won't survive without their elections bill. Well, nothing speaks of preserving our democracy like a late-night gut and replace in the Rules Committee. A bill about NASA gets 700-plus pages added and a floor vote within 18 hours.

Nothing speaks of preserving our democracy like giving Washington control of voter ID laws when 35 elected State legislatures have adopted them and 74 percent of the people favor them. People in my State voted to put it in our State constitution. Most believe elections should be made more secure.

Nothing speaks more of preserving our democracy than shifting the power to set election law from 50 decentralized States, where legislatures controlled by different parties have predominantly held and exercised that power for all 233 years of our experience under the Constitution, and centralizing that power in a single agency, the Department of Justice, at any time controlled by one party.

Nothing speaks of preserving our democracy like abandoning historic parliamentary norms to accomplish this radical transformation with bare majorities in both Houses of Congress without one vote from the minority party.

Democrats may continue gerrymandering in Illinois and Maryland with abandon, but they assure you that if you just put all control of elections into their hands in Washington, they will save democracy for you. It calls to mind the iconic Vietnam-era phrase: ``We had to burn the village to save it.''

America, that is Democrats' message to you. They will burn your democracy to the ground in order to save it. And they can't let anything stop them from getting it done before they face your verdict this November.