Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and concur in the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 1233) to amend chapter 22 of title 44, United States Code, popularly known as the Presidential Records Act, to establish procedures for the consideration of claims of constitutionally based privilege against disclosure of Presidential records, and for other purposes.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, we are here today to consider the Senate amendment to H.R. 1233, the Presidential and Federal Records Act Amendments of 2014. This bill was introduced by the ranking member, who I see is here today, and was first passed by the House on January 14 of this year. It was passed by a vote of 420-0. Let not a unanimous vote belie the fact that the ranking member worked hard to find consensus within the House and to make sure that this was a well-reasoned and, in fact, tailored piece of legislation.

The Senate, as it often does, did make some changes, but ultimately this bill, H.R. 1233, which would codify existing executive order and allows former Presidents to appeal to incumbent Presidents to keep certain Presidential documents privileged under the Presidential Records Act, is the good work of Mr. Cummings.

This bill would lock into statute a process established by President Reagan in 1989. In 2009, President Obama restored this by executive order. However, like anything that the Congress has observed for a long time that is being done by executive order, the question is: Should it be on the whim of the next President, or should it, in fact, be something which statutorily is part of the Presidential Records Act, which was a statute created by Congress?

I think particularly important is the fact that Mr. Cummings recognizes that past Presidents, including President Clinton and, of course, President George W. Bush, do, in fact, have a number of things that occurred on their watch which remain sensitive today.

Allowing the standing of these individuals and the oversight of the current President is a good middle ground, and it is one that balances the needs of the public, something that Mr. Cummings and I feel strongly about, that transparency and freedom of information and access is important.

At the same time, we recognize that there are times when a secret must remain a secret, an action must remain an action. It doesn't change the fact that Congress may have an interest or the American people might prevail.

This bill does, rightfully so and on a unanimous basis now in the House and the Senate, codify historic Federal recordkeeping. We believe it is good.

I want to take a moment to thank Mr. Cummings personally for his hard work. He not only championed the bill, but he worked well in the Senate to make sure it came back to us today.

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

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

In closing, I just want to hit two points that I think are noteworthy.

Historically, agencies kept their records for 30 years, the presumption they would keep them for 30 years before turning them over to the National Archives.

With the ranking member's assistance, this piece of legislation also eliminates that presumption. We, as a committee, felt very strongly that the sooner an agency turns over its records to the Archivist, the sooner they are broadly available and the better off it is.

In an electronic era, where it is a push of one button to transfer data, this piece of legislation not only eliminates that presumption, but highly encourages data be transferred, rather than mountains of paper or what is called a PDF, a print to file, if you will.

This is a significant improvement and something that minority and majority were able to work on together, along with the Archivist who was personally involved in this.

Lastly, I owe a debt of gratitude to the ranking member. In this bill, the amendment he mentioned is included, but the ranking member also signed on to a letter asking that H.R. 5170 be taken up by the Senate, a more explicit attempt to change the recordkeeping outside of official use within the government.

This has been an area in which multiple different Cabinet positions under multiple Presidents have found themselves with some very embarrassing failure to store and maintain the data.

At the end of the day, I am confident that our committee, under the ranking member and under the chairman that will likely replace me, will continue this effort, make sure that the American people know that if a covered individual is required to keep a record of his or her transactions and emails, that it will, in fact, be in the record and available, not just for Congress, but eventually for the American people to see. We believe that this is an important part of government transparency.

Again, I want to thank the ranking member who personally signed on and will continue, on behalf of the committee, to make sure that the American people get the full benefit of all records that are, in fact, created under any administration.

Mr. Speaker, with that, I urge support for this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to recognize Mary Beth Walker who is leaving the House to take a position with the Office of the Solicitor of the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Ms. Walker served in the House's Office of General Counsel for two and one half years as an Assistant Counsel. We will miss her.

Ms. Walker provided frequent and invaluable legal advice and representation to the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, as well as to Members, officers, and other committees of the House more generally. Our staff came to rely on her expertise and guidance in connection with many of their investigative and oversight activities, as well as in connection with the Committee's interactions with the other branches of the federal government. Over the years, Ms. Walker played a significant role in safeguarding the legal and institutional interests of the House of Representatives.

Ms. Walker served the House with great distinction, and we know she will serve the Patent and Trademark Office with that same level of distinction. We thank her for her service to the House and extend to her our very best wishes for her continued success.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman and Ranking Member Cummings.

Mr. Speaker, the most important function that the Oversight Committee does is, in fact, to expose waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal bureaucracy. To that end, FOIA and whistleblowers are the two most important tools we have. Ultimately, whistleblowers coming forward to let us know something and the Freedom of Information Act, in addition to congressional powers, are the only way that we can wrench the truth out of a bureaucracy that often tends to be closed and, in fact, protecting of mistakes and outright failures, including fraud.

The ranking member, rightfully so and very kindly, mentioned a bipartisan effort that is underway here in the Congress to deal with the crisis in our veterans' hospitals. Only last week, whistleblowers testified under oath of the retaliation that they had seen when they came forward to explain the problems they had. Doctors, health care professionals, and administrators found that even in a caring organization like the Veterans Administration, as their hospital systems should be, if you simply talk about secret lists or failure to provide care, you might very well experience retaliation. And they did.

So I think this is a particularly appropriate time for our committee, under the leadership of our ranking member and this bill, H.R. 4197, to bring this bill to the floor to let people know that we intend on opening up further the protections for whistleblowers, because they are and have been critical to the American people's right to know, both through their Congress and through the public.

Mr. Speaker, I support the legislation, and I want to thank Mr. Cummings for his work on it.

Thank you, Chairman.

Again, thank you, Ranking Member Cummings.

Mr. Speaker, we are the board of directors for the Government of the United States. Our committee oversees the equivalent of an IRA or a 401(k) in the private sector, known as the TSP. It sounds like a lot of initials, perhaps, to people who are hearing this, or it is even, in some cases, confusing to the Federal workforce, but it is really quite simple.

We have through oversight discovered with the Thrift Investment Board that, in fact, we have done a disservice to the Federal workers by putting them into an absolutely, positively safe investment that does not keep up with inflation. Effectively, the dollars they contribute, and matching dollars from the government as an employer, are shrinking every year in constant dollars. Their investments are, in fact, smaller if they stay in that fund.

Now, near the end of people's careers--in those last couple of years--they may want to lock in with absolute certainty the size of their retirement funds to use in some way after they leave government, but in the first days, it is clear that, in the long run, the only way for an investment to grow greater than inflation is to make the kinds of investments that are possible in the other offerings under TSP, which, again, is the equivalent of a 401(k) in the private sector.

This recognition was well thought out by the Board, was well researched, and brought to our committee. It is one of those simple things that should have been done sooner, so I appreciate that the committee marked it up quickly and that we are bringing it to the floor only a short time later. I hope the Senate will hold it at the desk and will quickly allow the President to make it law because, once it is law, Federal workers will, for the first time, have a default that keeps up with or exceeds inflation.

The decision to make it quick is not because we are in a hurry. It is because, every day, Federal workers, by default and through no fault of their own, unwittingly, are finding themselves in inappropriate savings plans in their 401(k)s, known in government as the TSP. I know it is always one of those things where people say: Why are you in a hurry? In this case, we are in a hurry because we realize we should have gotten it right sooner, and we certainly are glad that we got it done now. On behalf of the committee that oversees the Federal workforce, we hope that they will appreciate that they have, if you will, a bit of an apology that we didn't act on this even quicker.

It is important to make sure that the Federal workforce has a good pay and benefits package, and in this case, they have a good retirement package through TSP that was underperforming for many of our Federal workforce. I believe, today, the default will make it perform better while taking away none of their inherent choices, including if they want to remain in the G Fund.

I would inquire if the ranking member is yielding back so that I can close.

Thank you. Then I will close.

Mr. Speaker, the Federal Register Modernization Act does exactly what the title suggests--it modernizes the Federal Register Act.

When you look at a well-intended bill that hasn't been addressed since the 1930s, it comes to mind how easy it is to ask something to go on and to have a Federal bureaucracy actually do a good job. The National Archives and many of the institutions here in Washington do work, but from time to time, you ask the question: At what cost?

The Modernization Act seeks to do two things: one, simply lower the cost for printing, which is no longer necessary in a digital age, and, in fact, to open the door for what I believe is the modernization that goes beyond that.

Since 1994, when the Office of the Federal Register first published its electronic edition of the Federal Register, we have, in fact, had an opening for our government to go digital beyond just any minor amount. Today, many people ask the question--and I am going to ask the question here today--if the IRS has 50 years' worth of your tax returns, why wouldn't we capture the workings of government digitally, hold them and, at the appropriate time, make them available for our children and our grandchildren for whatever purpose they may have in studying the history of what we do here today?

This small modernization is about cost savings, but it is also a recognition that, in this day and age, we can capture everything digitally, that we can store vast amounts of it and that we can make it searchable and valuable to the next generation. For that reason, this is a small recognition that it is time to get off paper, to save money and to have the Federal Register accessible online to offices, homes, and public libraries, and not simply to print paper because, in the 1930s, that is

what we said to do. I believe, when we look at the last decade, in which the annual page count exceeded 75,000 pages, we recognize that those pages were made possible by the same computers--the same automation--that allow us to no longer print paper.

I ask the Conference and the Congress to vote for H.R. 4195 in order to remove these outdated statutory requirements. I urge its passage.

Mr. Chair, I rise in support of Chairman Crenshaw and this bill.

This bill is a first step toward holding the IRS accountable for its targeting of conservative tax-exempt applicants for their political beliefs.

The Oversight and Government Reform Committee is conducting a thorough investigation of the IRS targeting.

This investigation is ongoing. But from what we know so far, it is clear that the IRS is in serious need of reform.

We have found an agency that worked in fall 2010 to target conservative tax-exempt groups in wake of the President's campaign against the Supreme Court case, Citizens United.

We have found an agency that called these conservative groups ``very dangerous'' and put them through an unprecedented ``multi-tier'' review.

We have found an agency that coordinated with the Justice Department in October 2010 about the prosecution of tax-exempt groups for their political speech activities.

We have found an agency that sent a 1.1 million-page registry, including confidential taxpayer information, to the FBI.

We have found an agency that has been politicized by its excessive role in a highly partisan law, ObamaCare.

We have found an agency that mysteriously lost two years of e-mail records and an agency that cautions its employees about what they say in e-mail for fear of congressional oversight.

In short, we have found an agency that has become a arm of the Obama Administration rather than an independent administrator of federal tax law.

This bill takes the first steps toward making the IRS work for the American people.

This bill will ensure that the IRS will never again target tax-exempt applicants for their political beliefs.

This bill will prevent the IRS from finalizing a proposed rule that would make permanent in federal regulations its targeting of conservatives.

This bill will also cut back on the misuse of taxpayer dollars for inappropriate conferences and employee bonuses.

Most importantly, Mr. Chair, this bill will begin the long road toward restoring public trust and accountability in the Obama IRS.

I applaud Chairman Crenshaw for his leadership and I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the military service of Colonel (Col) David Terando on the occasion of his retirement from the United States Marine Corps. I commend Col Terando's career and offer my sincerest thanks for his more than 30 years of dedicated service in protecting our nation.

In 1984, Col Terando was commissioned via the NROTC program at the Illinois Institute of Technology and he began his time in the Marine Corps as a communications officer with Base Communications Center, Camp Pendleton. He has supported our great nation by deploying multiple times throughout his career where he has directly supported both humanitarian and combat operations. He was involved with Operation Restore Hope in Somalia and deployed three separate times in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, as the Liaison Officer to the Kuwait Army, and in critical staff billets for the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force.

Three decades later, Col Terando has come full circle and is retiring from his post as Chief of Staff of the combined Marine Corps Installations West (MCIWEST)-Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton (MCB

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 608) condemning the senseless rampage and mass shooting that took place in Isla Vista, California, on Friday, May 23, 2014, as amended.

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

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

As many of us know, on May 23, 2014, a mass shooting took place in Isla Vista, California, a community adjacent to the University of California, Santa Barbara campus.

The people of the United States will continue to mourn the loss of six innocent victims and students of the University of California, Santa Barbara. Each of these students excelled in school and were looking forward to bright futures.

We will continue to remember the victims: George Chen, 19; Katherine Breann Cooper, 22; Cheng ``James'' Yuan Hong, 20; Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez, 20; Weihan ``David'' Wang, 20; and Veronika Weiss, 19.

Americans everywhere continue to extend their support and sympathy to the victims, their families, and loved ones, and we wish each of the 13 people injured in the shooting a full and speedy recovery.

I would also like to commend the law enforcement officers and other first responders for their courage, bravery, and dedication to service. Their efforts helped to prevent further fatalities and injuries, and we remain extremely grateful to each of them.

I urge support of this measure, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlelady from California (Mrs. Capps), my colleague and the author of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and subject to close, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

The mentally ill have for too long been able to get guns. Individuals who have been seen and exposed as being violent or incarcerated for their mental illnesses have too often become their own victims because we haven't paid enough attention to their possession of deadly weapons. This case is different than some because this violent individual also used knives.

No matter what, I join on a bipartisan basis, urging that, as we look at a national mental health policy, we include the recognition that it is in other people's best interests. Of course, there are victims of these crimes, but too often, the mentally ill kill themselves with a gun. The mentally ill take their lives. As we look at a terrible tragedy of murder, let's bear in mind that the real reform that we have to get to the root of is that of dealing with the mentally ill better in this country, dealing with the need to take weapons out of their hands and also the need to provide them real opportunity for care.

A number of Members of Congress have pieces of legislation that deal with mental health, and although there has been much discussion about gun control, this was really a mental health control question before it was a gun control question.

I urge the passage by all of our Members of this balanced bill that was authored by my friend, the gentlelady from Santa Barbara (Mrs. Capps), because it does speak to both problems: the gun problem, of course--the murder of innocent people--but also the mental health question.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, government should protect our liberties, not violate them. Individuals and businesses alike must be able to trust their government to work for them--not spy on them. The NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records threatens our constitutional liberties.

We have the opportunity to pass legislation that both limits the reach of the NSA and provides the transparency to lawmakers and the American people necessary to prevent abusive practices from happening again. We have the opportunity to begin to restore the trust of the American people.

The original and Committee-passed versions of the USA FREEDOM Act struck a careful balance between our liberty and our security, providing the reforms necessary to restore trust. I was proud to be an original co-sponsor of this bill, and commend Representative Jim Sensenbrenner and Chairman Bob Goodlatte for their work to protect our civil liberties.

Unfortunately, the floor-version of the USA FREEDOM Act falls short of our goal.

This legislation would still allow for the mass collection of information. The Committee-passed legislation required court orders to be based on ``specific-selection terms''--which was defined as a ``person, entity or account.'' The floor version broadens the scope of ``specific-selection term'' by defining it as a ``discrete term.'' This ambiguous legal phrase does not have defined limitations, and could capture millions of individuals' information.

The existing data collection programs that were revealed to the American people within the last year are unacceptable, and we must not only legislate stronger safeguards for intelligence gathering but must vigorously conduct oversight to prevent constitutional intrusions by big government. Of the few transparency requirements left in the bill, significant construction of law made by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) would be reviewed for declassification to the American people. However, the floor version of the bill transfers the authority to conduct declassification to the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper. Last year, Director Clapper lied under oath to Congress when asked about the existence of programs that collect data on millions of Americans. I cannot in good conscious support legislation that would place the responsibility of transparency with a government official who has already violated the trust of the American people.

For these reasons, I will not support the floor version of the USA FREEDOM Act. I hope that my colleagues and I will be able to come together to enact reforms the American people deserve.

Mr. Speaker, as the House's Select Committee on Benghazi stands up and takes ownership of an investigation that has been conducted jointly by standing committees since the fall of 2012, the Oversight and Government Reform Committee has, with your support, one final bit of business scheduled for May 29: subpoenaed testimony from Secretary of State John Kerry about his Department's failure to produce critical documents subject to a lawful subpoena.

On April 17, 2014, the State Department sent a letter informing the Committee that it was producing previously unreleased e-mails subject to prior requests and subpoenas. In this letter the State Department acknowledged that these documents were responsive to a September 20, 2012, request and an August 1, 2013, subpoena. These subpoenaed documents had been willfully withheld from the Committee and were only turned over after a federal judge ruled against the administration's efforts to block a Freedom of Information Act request from the organization Judicial Watch.

One e-mail in this production showed that White House official Ben Rhodes coordinated talking points for then Ambassador Susan Rice, encouraging an emphasis that the attack was ``rooted in an Internet video, and not a failure of policy.'' This exposed false White House claims that inaccurate statements made by then Ambassador Susan Rice on national television were solely the product of bad information from the intelligence community even though the intelligence community talkers made no reference to an Internet video.

Undaunted, earlier this month, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney argued at a White House press briefing that the Internet video reference in the Ben Rhodes' e-mail was the result of a, ``connection between the protests in Cairo and what happened in Benghazi, that's drawn directly from talking points produced by the intelligence community, as testified to by the deputy director of the CIA on multiple occasions.''

New evidence obtained by the Oversight Committee, however, contradicts this explanation. An e-mail sent at 9:11 pm eastern time on September 11, 2012, (3:11 am September 12 in Libya) to the Diplomatic Security Command Center under the subject line ``Update on response actions--Libya'' recounts items discussed in a Secure Video Teleconference attended by senior Administration officials. Among the items noted in this e-mail, one states: ``White House is reaching out to U-Tube to advise ramifications of the posting of the Pastor Jon Video.'' Among descriptions of actions from different agencies, the e- mail says nothing else about what the White House was doing that night. This information is troubling for a number of reasons.

First, it contradicts White Press Secretary Jay Carney's claim this month that White House assertions about an Internet video were ``drawn directly from talking points produced by the intelligence community.'' The intelligence community talking points that were used, in part, to brief Ambassador Rice were not even requested until September 14--three days after the attack and the White House's decision to embrace its storyline.

Second, former Libya Deputy of Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks--who spoke to Ambassador Christopher Stevens on the phone during the attack--indicated that it was immediately clear to him that the assault on the Benghazi diplomatic compound was a terrorist attack and not a protest of a YouTube video gone awry. Retired Brigadier General Robert Lovell, who had served as Deputy Director for Intelligence and Knowledge Development at U.S. Africa Command the night of the attack also testified that the assault on the Benghazi compound was clearly identifiable as a terrorist attack and not a protest gone awry. Former Deputy CIA Director Mike Morrell publicly testified that incorrect conclusions by his agency that there had been a protest were made as a result of analysis that took place after, not during, the attack. In fact, reports and evidence collected during the attack and embraced by some Administration officials specifically pointed to Al Qaeda linked militia Ansar al-Shaira. A State Department draft memo for Secretary Clinton from September 12 about a condolence letter to the mother of slain American Sean Smith actually references both the White House assertion of a YouTube video and the involvement of Ansar al-Sharia.

Third and finally, the e-mail shows the White House had hurried to settle on a false narrative--one at odds with the conclusions reached by those on the ground--before Americans were even out of harm's way or the intelligence community had made an impartial examination of available evidence. According to the e-mail, the White House--at 3:11 am Libya time--had resolved to call YouTube owner Google about an Internet video being responsible for violence more than two hours before Americans Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed by militants at 5:15 am.

Unfortunately Secretary Kerry and the State Department continue to try to keep this information from the public, only turning this document over to Congress last month. While the information I have cited from this e-mail is clearly unclassified, the State Department has attempted to obstruct its disclosure by not providing Congress with an unclassified copy of this document that redacted only classified portions outlining what the Department of Defense and the Secretary of State were doing in response to the attack in Benghazi that night. This tactic prevents the release of the e-mail itself. In advance of Secretary Kerry's testimony, I intend to request that the State Department declassify this e-mail in its entirety. I will also request that a small sample of other documents be declassified and the removal of redactions from other material occur so that the Oversight Committee can have a more meaningful discussion with Secretary Kerry about information that has been inappropriately withheld from Congress.

In conclusion Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your support for this hearing and view it as an appropriate conclusion to the transition the House of Representatives has decided to make to a Select Committee. By discussing these issues with Secretary Kerry in a public forum on May 29 at the Oversight Committee, the Select Committee will benefit from an examination of tactics this Administration has employed to obstruct the investigation into the Benghazi terrorist attacks. Oversight is a constitutional responsibility of Congress, but we can only do our job when the executive branch, one way or another, meets its legal responsibilities.

Madam Chair, this amendment is a modified version of language that was incorporated in the House-passed NDAA authorization bill last year, and that was adopted again by the House earlier this year as a standalone bill, H.R. 1232, the Federal Information Technology Acquisition Reform Act.

The amendment reforms--Government-wide--the process by which federal information technology is acquired and deployed.

It takes a streamlined and precise approach to solving a huge problem in Federal IT--the broken system by which the government procures and deploys critical IT infrastructure.

President Barack Obama, on Nov. 14, 2013, stated ``One of the things [the federal government] does not do well is information technology procurement This is kind of a systematic problem that we have across the board.'' I agree.

I commend the Administrations' recent steps to strengthen IT management by strengthening the eGov office and focusing on duplications via what is called PortfolioStat reviews.

In its annual reports to Congress, GAO has identified duplicative IT investments as a significant problem. Our oversight hearings confirmed that despite spending more than $600 billion over the past decade, too often Federal IT investments run over budget, become behind schedule, or never deliver on the promised solution or functionality.

Indeed, industry experts have estimated that as much as 25 percent of the annual $80 billion spent on IT is attributable to mismanaged or duplicative IT investments.

In terms of potential cost savings, some in the industry have estimated that more than one trillion dollars could be saved over the next ten years if the government adopted the ``proven'' IT best practices currently in use by the private sector.

We need to enhance the best value to the taxpayer by aligning the cumbersome federal acquisition process to major trends in the IT industry.

FITARA accomplishes this by--

1. Creating a clear line of responsibility, authority, and accountability over IT investment and management decisions by empowering agency CIOs;

2. Accelerating the consolidation and optimization of the Federal Government's proliferating data centers;

3. Increasing the accuracy and transparency of IT investment scorecards by requiring 80 percent of Government-wide IT spending be covered by a public website called the IT Dashboard; and

4. Ensuring procurement decisions give due consideration to all technologies--including open source--and that contracts are awarded based on long-term best value proposition.

This is a significant and timely reform that will enhance both defense and non-defense procurement. I urge all members to support this amendment.

Mr. Speaker, the minority is entitled to opinions, but not facts that just aren't so.

Our committee issued an extensive committee report, a staff report as to the targeting of conservatives. The minority offered no response, so the gentleman not on the committee might say something that just isn't so.

The targeting by the IRS was conservative groups. They were the ones that got the special treatment. They were the ones that were asked inappropriate questions. They were the ones that Lois Lerner said she did nothing wrong about, but she did.

Mr. Speaker, again, BOLOs were issued, be on the lookout, if you will, for conservative groups. Conservative groups were systematically denied, for more than 2 years, their approvals. Conservative groups were asked inappropriate and personal questions, things like where do you pray, things like what are your political views, and please show us your donor list, even though that was inappropriate.

The fact that the minority will allude to word searches to see how many of some application was out there is not about the inappropriate targeting and systematically withholding and mistreating of groups. That is what happened. That is what evidence is beginning to show Lois Lerner was at the heart of.

We are here today about contempt for somebody pleading a number of cases of what was right or what they did or didn't do, followed by taking the Fifth, then followed by answering questions having once waived and, thus, essentially waiving her rights.

Now, you can, after the fact, get 39 people to say one thing and somebody else can get 39 to say another. Today, we are trying to move contempt to the court system where an impartial judge can evaluate whether or not Lois Lerner should be ordered back to testify so the American people can know the truth about why she did what she did. What she did was target conservative groups. That is not in doubt. I don't want people using words like ``circus'' in order to confuse people.

Conservatives were targeted; that is clear. Lois Lerner has things to answer. She only answers the part she wants to, including before the Justice

Department but not before the U.S. Congress.

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

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

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

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

She said:

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

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

not provided false information to this or any other

committee.

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

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

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

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

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

Point of Order

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, the facts lead to Lois Lerner.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am prepared to close.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (S. 994) to expand the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006 to increase accountability and transparency in Federal spending, and for other purposes.

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

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

I rise in support of S. 994, the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, or DATA Act.

As chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, I have looked to tackle major problems pervasive in the Federal Government.

Over the past 4 years, our committee, the majority and the minority, has taken up and moved several bills designed to reform the Federal Government.

Majority Leader Cantor has worked with leaders on both sides of the aisle to take most of those reforms and advance them through the full House, often on a unanimous basis.

All Members of the House can be proud of the work we have done to improve the Federal Government. Without a doubt, the most important transparency reform we have pushed over the last 4 years has been the DATA Act. The DATA Act is but a first shot of a technological revolution that will transform the way we govern.

Just 3 weeks ago, the GAO's Comptroller General Gene Dodaro came before our committee and testified that the status of the Federal data programs is abysmal. Agencies have no standardized performance metrics for their programs. Agencies cannot tell us how many programs they have. But most importantly, agencies do not and usually cannot tell us how much taxpayer money has been spent on any given program.

The spending information that is provided is often incomplete, out- of-date, and very often inaccurate. The American people deserve to know if their taxpayer dollars are being wasted or whether they are being spent wisely. Even the meager amount of performance information collected today is useless if it cannot determine how much resources any given program truly consumes.

This information disadvantages not only Congress, but in fact the President's administration. Presidential administrations one after another consist of but a few thousand officials to oversee a workforce of nearly 2 million people and trillions of dollars.

Regardless of political party affiliation, each Congress and every President is frustrated by this large, permanent, unaccountable class of bureaucrats.

Some scholars have even deemed the permanent bureaucracy as the ``fourth branch'' of the Federal Government.

In order to better oversee the Federal Government, Congress, and even the President and his appointees, must better leverage the technology available today. The DATA Act will allow us to do just that.

I introduced the first version of the DATA Act in 2011. Its inspiration came from a relatively small expense in the Obama administration's 2009 stimulus spending bill, a bill that I overall did not approve of but which did have this important accountability standard.

The stimulus temporarily established an entity called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board. The Board was chaired by a respected inspector general, Earl Devaney. Under Chairman Devaney's leadership, the Board established direct reporting requirements for stimulus projects and standardized Federal agency reporting. This allowed inspector generals and other law enforcement agencies to more effectively prosecute fraud and prevent improper payments.

Furthermore, this information was made available to the public online in an easy-to-download, easy-to-manipulate format so that journalists, academics, and government watchdogs could more easily analyze stimulus spending.

I met with Vice President Joe Biden in November of 2010, prior to even becoming the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Despite possible disagreements on some aspects of the stimulus, we found ourselves very much in support of the Recovery Board's successes and knew that it could be replicated across the entire Federal Government.

I want to thank Vice President Biden for his continued public and private support for the kinds of reforms embedded in this legislation today, and particularly for continuing to be a champion of the Recovery Board's work and the transparency it brought.

In order to do what we agreed to back in 2010, the Federal Government would need standardized data and reporting by all Federal agencies and improved recipient reporting. That is the only way that you could accomplish this, and legislative action was needed.

After months of working with leading experts in the field of standardized reporting, I introduced in July of 2011 the first version of the DATA Act, H.R. 2146. Later that year, I joined with Ranking Member Elijah Cummings to refine the legislation and mark it up through our committee.

I want to thank Representatives on both sides of the aisle here today for the bipartisan nature in which we worked on this kind of transparency work. It is technical. It is sometimes hard. Of course, it is a pushback from bureaucrats, but it is what Congress is supposed to do: make the institutional changes that make government more accountable.

In April 2012 we brought it to the floor on a bipartisan basis and passed the first version of the DATA Act unanimously. While a companion version, S. 3600, was introduced by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio that year, the Senate did not act on either it or the House-passed bill.

Last year we reintroduced the DATA Act as H.R. 2061 and approved it unanimously out of our committee. We made significant changes to streamline the bill, but we maintained the focus on its core elements. Simultaneously, Senator Warner and Senator Portman introduced a new Senate companion, S. 994, the bill before us today. The House acted quickly again and approved H.R. 2061 by a vote of 388-1.

Knowing that the legislative calendar was short, House and Senate sponsors worked with Senator Carper and Senator Coburn in a preconference process that ensured the bill would be taken up by the full Senate and which anticipates our passage here today.

We also were able to bring to the table those reformers in the administration--both political appointees and career civil servants--to offer technical improvements to the bill, and they are incorporated in this legislation.

While the bill does not contain all reforms the House advanced in its two previous votes on the DATA Act, the bill before us today does contain the core elements of the two prior versions of the bill and maintains the most important step: common data standards and recipient reporting.

The DATA Act is more than just better tools to fight waste and fraud. It requires agencies to report their financial information in standard formats program by program. The DATA Act also gives policymakers in Congress and in the executive branch better information to make better decisions. More importantly, we give the American people better information to evaluate our performance.

In addition to the strong data standards and requirements for agencies to produce program-by-program information, the House-Senate agreement contains two key provisions from previous versions of the DATA Act.

First, the bill authorizes the Treasury Department to establish a cutting-edge data analysis center modeled specifically after the successful Recovery Operations Center, also known as the ROC. This is the center I spoke earlier about that was established by now-retired but still-distinguished friend of government Earl Devaney as part of the Recovery Board's stimulus transparency efforts.

This new center will build on the innovative technology and ideas of the ROC and expand their use throughout the Federal Government. The DATA Act specifically provides for the transfer of that technology still in place at the ROC.

This new Treasury Department data analysis center will be a vital tool for law enforcement agencies and the IGs in their criminal and other investigations. The new center will also serve agencies who strive to prevent improper payments.

Second, the DATA Act agreement before you today establishes a pilot program to develop consolidated reporting for recipients of Federal funds. And I want to emphasize that, Madam Speaker. Federal recipients, people who get taxpayer money, will now have a transparent and consolidated way to send the information as to how they are spending it so you and the public will know.

Hundreds of billions of Federal taxpayer dollars are spent every year by State, local, tribal governments, universities, and private institutions. These institutions end up inevitably wasting millions of taxpayer dollars complying with duplicative and complicated reporting requirements.

At the end of a 2-year pilot program where some recipients will report to a single entity in a standardized manner, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget will issue guidance to all Federal agencies on how to streamline and consolidate reporting requirements. Just like with stimulus funds, the same data standards that apply to Federal agency reporting will apply to recipient reporting.

The DATA Act will give the American people the ability to track how we spend their tax dollars. Instead of sifting through PDFs--a form of visual, nondata-based standard--posted online that only let's you see a picture of the spending--and many different formats--you now will in fact have all Federal spending information available for bulk download in a single, machine-readable format.

That is a big mouthful, Madam Speaker, but what it really means is that both individuals and entities, large and small, will be able to create tools where, on your iPhone or Android, you will be able to ask a question and get back an answer as successfully as the programs that have previously been made available.

The DATA Act will give lawmakers and public watchdogs powerful tools to identify and root out fraud, waste, and excess spending in the government. It will put at the American people's fingertips today the kind of information that only long and arduous research could unveil.

More importantly, by simply opening up this information, we will enable journalists, academics, and even private sector businesses to use the data to create products that will deliver real value to the American people.

This is just one example:

The National Weather Service some years ago did just what we are proposing by opening up their data, making it freely available to the public some years ago. Today it supports a multibillion-dollar weather analysis industry, and every American with a smartphone or a computer can find out what the weather is and what it is forecasted to be at any location in America. That wouldn't be possible without that open data standard.

I am very proud that it was a start, but there is more to do.

The DATA Act will have the same ability to create jobs, which is why this bill is so important. It is endorsed by dozens of private sector technology companies.

New York University Business School Professor Joel Gurin wrote in a recent book that ``the value of government open data is that it's a long-term, permanent resource that innovators can use for decades, developing new ideas and new companies as technology makes them possible.''

That is a mouthful, but it says what we need to say, which is that this is going to create new industries that are able to leverage the information that today is not available to the American people and not available to the innovators in Silicon Valley and around America.

I ask that my colleagues join with me today in sending this bill to the President for his signature, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, in closing, this last weekend, the Associated Press talked about the waning days of this Congress and expected to have a do-nothing Congress.

That is easy to say, but in this case, today, we are showing, on a bipartisan, bicameral basis, with our friends in the Senate, that there are major pieces of legislation that will save countless billions of dollars and provide better information to the American people and

to the watchdogs who want to root out waste, fraud, and abuse in our government.

So this is not a controversial bill because it has taken years of hard work to get it right. But, in fact, this is a major piece of legislation.

I want to close by thanking Senator Carper, Senator Coburn, Senator Portman, and Senator Warner, the author of the bill today, in addition to Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, and of course, my ranking member, Congressman Cummings.

This has been bipartisan. It is one of the many pieces of bipartisan legislation that take a long time, they hold a lot of hearings, but at the end of the day, the American people can trust that the American people's work does get done, in spite of some of the things we are unable to do. This is a major piece of legislation.

I want to thank, lastly, leadership for bringing this to the floor today in a timely fashion so that we can get it to the President's desk for signing next week.

Madam Speaker, I urge support and yield back the balance of my time.