Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, the American people expect and deserve to know that their elected officials are working for them, not lining their own pockets.

When Members of Congress trade individual stocks while in office, it fuels distrust, undermines public confidence, and casts a shadow over the work of this institution. Even the perception of impropriety weakens the bond between the government and the governed.

Members of Congress have unparalleled access to market-moving information and the ability to shape laws and regulations that can impact entire industries. That power must never be used to enrich ourselves or our families.

There is simply no legitimate reason for Members of Congress, their spouses, or their dependent children to be trading individual stocks, period. This bipartisan legislation would close that dangerous loophole once and for all. It would require lawmakers to place certain investments into qualified blind trusts, prevent conflicts of interest, and restore accountability where it is so desperately needed.

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to cosponsor the TRUST in Congress Act, and I thank Representatives Magaziner and Roy for their leadership on this critical bipartisan legislation. It is a long overdue, commonsense step toward restoring integrity in public service and rebuilding the trust of the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues in both Chambers to join us in passing this essential reform.

Mr. Speaker, I hereby remove my name as cosponsor of H. Res. 353.

Mr. Speaker, the Trump administration is the most lawless in American history. That is why so many of his policies are being blocked through nationwide injunctions.

Republicans see this as evidence of some liberal plot among the judiciary, but the judges who have ruled against him, some appointed by such noted liberals as George Bush and Ronald Reagan, are not part of some grand conspiracy to stop the Trump agenda. They are following the law and the facts wherever they lead them. In case after case, the law and the facts are squarely against Donald Trump and his administration.

Whether it be his efforts to rewrite the 14th Amendment to eliminate birthright citizenship or his scheme to deport immigrants without even the barest hint of due process, the courts have properly acted as a check on his power.

How do Republicans respond? They respond not by urging the administration to stay on the right side of the law and the Constitution. No, they simply want to make it harder for anyone to hold this lawless administration accountable.

This bill would prohibit district courts from issuing nationwide injunctions even when the policies they find unlawful or unconstitutional have nationwide effects. That would be as if Brown v. Board of Education applied only to Brown. To do so would mean that no one could ever effectively check any administration's power, and no administration could ever be held accountable. The President would be a real, not a would-be, dictator.

This bill is a dangerous threat to the rule of law. This bill is not intended to curtail rogue judges from issuing rogue rulings. It is intended to enable a rogue administration to continue to violate the law.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, it is with a heavy heart that I rise today, alongside my colleagues in the New York delegation and many of our other cherished colleagues, to mourn the loss of a giant of the House and a trailblazer for women in public service, Chairwoman Nita Lowey.

For more than three decades, she represented her constituents in Westchester and Rockland Counties with unwavering dedication, fierce advocacy, and an unbreakable spirit.

As the first woman to serve as chair of the Appropriations Committee, Nita shattered glass ceilings with dignity and determination.

As the former dean of the New York delegation, Nita fought tirelessly to secure resources for the Empire State, leading the charge after September 11, Superstorm Sandy, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nita's commitment to global security and education also left an indelible mark beyond our borders. As the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations, she championed critical global health and education initiatives.

Mr. Speaker, Nita was more than a colleague. She was a mentor and a friend to many of us. She was a voice of compassion and reason. She believed in the power of government to do good, and her legacy will endure through the lives she touched and the barriers she broke. May her memory be a blessing.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Lawler), my colleague.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Congressman Lawler for those kind words.

Mr. Speaker, I now ask that all Members and staff throughout the Capitol rise for a moment of silence in remembrance of Chairwoman Nita Lowey. May her memory be a blessing.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 77, the so-called Midnight Rules Relief Act. Despite the bill's title, this legislation is not really intended to address midnight rules at all. Instead, it is nothing more than an effort by the Republican majority to advance their antigovernment, deregulatory agenda under cover of darkness.

Republicans know that taking a series of votes making it easier for corporations to undermine our health, safety, and economic well-being would be deeply unpopular. My colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't want the public to know that Republicans care more about corporations than consumers, so they want to package as many rules as possible into a single resolution that would eliminate these rules all at once, reducing transparency and obscuring the consequences.

This legislation would allow the majority to put dozens of critical regulations issued by the Biden administration on the chopping block. Republicans will talk all about the costs of these regulations, but the majority will never talk about the benefits, like healthier children, safer drinking water, and stronger consumer protections.

If my Republican colleagues really want to roll back regulations that ensure the safety of bath seats for infants or create dust, lead, and lead pipe safety standards, or update certain emergency braking standards, fine. Let's have that debate out in the open. We can let our constituents judge whether we took the right vote. Don't hide behind a giant omnibus bill that obscures the consequences of the majority's actions.

If we are truly concerned about so-called midnight rules, we have other options to check them. For example, at the end of President George W. Bush's administration, I authored a bill that would delay implementation of rules issued near the end of a President's term, giving his or her successor the chance to review such rules and to determine if they should go forward.

I believe there are ways that we could work together in a bipartisan manner to address this issue.

Where past efforts tried using a scalpel to address the problems associated with midnight rulemaking, today's Republicans want to instead use a machete, hacking away at the Biden administration's regulatory agenda, putting all of the rules together in one vote, and furthering their ideological goal of radically transforming our government.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to oppose this legislation.

Madam Speaker, I strongly oppose this legislation, which is not rooted in medical realities.

Physicians do not abort babies after birth, period. Healthcare providers have always been legally required to provide appropriate care. Patients and providers must be free to make health decisions based on their circumstances without political interference.

I will tell you what this bill would do. It will cause more pain and suffering for families who are already facing an extraordinarily heartbreaking situation. In many cases, it may be safer and healthier to treat a baby at the birth location rather than wasting precious time traveling to a hospital. This bill would take that medical judgment away from doctors and give it to politicians, putting infants' lives at greater risk. That is outrageous.

This bill is not about protecting children. It is about controlling women's lives. Republicans campaigned on the promise that they would not ban abortion, yet here we are in the first month of the new Congress and the GOP has already brought this cruel bill to the floor in an effort to advance a dangerous agenda to ban abortion nationwide, although this bill really will ban no abortions at all but rather threaten the lives of some newborns. It is shameful.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject this bill.

Mr. Speaker, let's be very clear. Sexual offenses and domestic violence are serious crimes and are already grounds for deportability and inadmissibility, as they should be.

Unfortunately, this bill is so poorly drafted that it would result in extremely harsh and unintended consequences, including the removal of survivors of domestic violence.

This bill attempts to significantly expand the definition of domestic violence to include the Violence Against Women Act definition that is used for grants and funding. This is a much broader definition that was never meant to be used in criminal law. We know that because the definition explicitly says it covers conduct ``that may or may not constitute criminal behavior.''

The definition for domestic violence under Federal criminal law focuses on physical force. This broader VAWA-based definition sweeps in a wider range of behaviors that domestic violence organizations say will implicate survivors who have used violence in self-defense or who were accused by their abusers and were either unable to defend themselves or pled guilty to avoid having to go through the court process.

This bill would also make it less likely that immigrant communities will report incidents of domestic violence. We recently celebrated the 30th anniversary of the passage of VAWA, and we should continue our work to combat domestic violence, but this legislation would actually set back our efforts to protect survivors.

That is why over 200 national and local groups, as part of the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence, the experts in the field, oppose this legislation. I think we ought to listen to them. We need to work together to solve our immigration problems, but this bill takes us in the wrong direction.

The Republican majority has chosen to begin this year with a series of bills intended to fearmonger and demonize immigrants.

The Republican majority has chosen to begin this year with a series of bills intended to fearmonger and demonize immigrants. This legislation not only perpetuates that effort, but it would also have serious consequences for survivors of domestic violence.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this misguided bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose this hateful bill. This bill is a cruel attack on transgender children, already among the most vulnerable in our society, facing high risks of suicide, violence, and bullying.

Let's be clear. This bill isn't about fairness. The NCAA stated last month there are fewer than 10 transgender athletes in collegiate sports out of 510,000, less than 0.002 of 1 percent of athletes. The rare cases Republicans cite are outliers, not evidence of a systemic issue.

To deal with this 0.002 of 1 percent, the bill opens the door to invasive scrutiny of all girls' bodies, violating their privacy and dignity. Little girls will be forced to have their biological sex verified through humiliating physical examinations of their genitals by strangers and forced to present documentation about their anatomy.

In States with similar bans, even cisgender girls deemed not feminine enough have faced harassment, humiliation, and have been forced to undergo genital examination. This isn't fairness. It is cruelty.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject this hateful bill and focus on real issues affecting our schools and communities.

Mr. Speaker, had I been present on Roll Call No. 7 of the 119th Congress, which was H.R. 23, Illegitimate Court Counteraction Act, I would have voted NO. I strongly oppose the International Criminal Court's recent actions regarding Israel, including my belief that the ICC does not have jurisdiction in this matter and that its actions are unhelpful in peacefully resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Yet, H.R. 23's overly broad scope and rushed sanctions and visa restrictions are counterproductive. Imposing such sanctions and restrictions on any foreign person--and their close family members--who is deemed to have aided, materially assisted, or provided financial support to the ICC in any way, undermines the Court's investigates into important matters on which it does have jurisdiction, would have a deleterious impact on American allies and partners around the world, and could create an opportunity for American adversaries to gain prominence in sensitive international fora. Domestically, H.R. 23 also raises serious First Amendment concerns and has the potential to undermine American rule of law. For all these reasons, I would have voted NO on H.R. 23.

Mr. Speaker, due to a personal matter, I was not in Washington D.C. today. Had I been present, I would have voted NAY on Roll Call No. 7.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to H.R. 29.

I start by expressing my deepest condolences to Laken Riley's family. Her death was a tragedy, and we all mourn her loss. May her memory be a blessing.

I wish that we were considering legislation that was worthy of her name. Instead, the Republican majority is beginning this new Congress right where

they left off in the last one, with legislation that targets and scapegoats immigrants, but does nothing to address the real problems in our broken immigration system, all while ignoring basic due process and constitutional principles.

Among other things, this legislation would subject to mandatory detention any undocumented immigrants who are merely charged with committing an act of theft or shoplifting, even if they are innocent.

This means if someone is merely accused of shoplifting, someone who might be innocent, who might be the victim of mistaken identity, and who has not had the opportunity to clear his name, would be subject to mandatory detention.

This bill is so broad that it would lead to the detention of people who have committed no crime and have no intention of harming anyone. That flies in the face of all notions of basic due process and reason. It is both pernicious and absurd.

Where will the Federal Government get the resources to detain all these people? Congress has never appropriated, and no administration has ever requested, sufficient resources to detain all noncitizens who fall under the mandatory detention categories. Even President Trump, during his first term, never tried to detain all migrants subject to mandatory detention. It was far too costly, even for him.

Since this bill is so sweeping, even Dreamers and people living here on temporary protected status, people who may have lived in this country for decades and shortly after their birth, could be subject to the bill's harsh provisions.

If that weren't bad enough, the bill also declares that States have standing to sue over certain immigration provisions so long as the State or its residents suffer even the most trivial financial harm. This appears to be a ham-handed attempt to circumvent recent Supreme Court rulings limiting States' standing to sue the Federal Government over immigration enforcement matters.

Merely declaring that the States have standing to sue does not make it so. This provision is almost certainly unconstitutional. Unfortunately, the lack of attention that Republicans pay to such matters perfectly sums up their entire approach to immigration.

Instead of working toward serious solutions to serious problems, they are content to simply play politics and consider it a job well done. I urge my colleagues to oppose this legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, despite the bill's title, H.R. 115 is not really intended to address midnight rules, but rather is an effort by our Republican colleagues to advance their antigovernment, deregulatory agenda under cover of darkness.

This legislation may appear to be a modest change to the Congressional Review Act, but do not be fooled. It would enable the Republican-controlled 119th Congress to use a turbocharged CRA to nullify every rule issued by public agencies under the Biden administration for the entire year of 2024 in a single party-line vote.

Under the CRA, if a rule is overturned, agencies are forever prohibited from considering, without new congressional authorization, a ``substantially similar'' rule, an unreviewable, vague, and harmful standard that would undermine agencies' statutory missions.

Doing away with dozens of rules at once, as the Republicans intend with this bill, would substantially weaken agencies' ability to protect the public long into the future.

While historically the CRA has been used sparingly, after Donald Trump's first inauguration in 2017, the Republican-controlled Congress used the CRA to repeal 16 rules issued by the Obama administration, an all-time high. Critical rules on teacher training, internet privacy protection, and the prevention of water pollution from coal mines, among many others, were all repealed over a few short weeks.

It seems that Republicans have even bigger ambitions for the next deregulatory spree as they pursue their unabashedly antigovernment agenda.

Rather than consider agency rules on their individual merits, they want to package as many rules as possible into a single resolution to eliminate them

all at once with little debate or deliberation over the merits of each individual rule. The results of this single vote could be catastrophic.

Right now, there are dozens of regulations at risk of summary execution, including rules that ensure the safety of bath seats for infants, implement the National Suicide Hotline Act, create dust-lead and lead pipe safety standards, update chemicals listed under the Toxic Substances Control Act, update heavy vehicle automatic emergency braking standards, and ensure all cell phones are hearing aid compatible, among others.

Why do Republicans feel they even need this power? Maybe it is because they realize that many of the agency rules that they constantly rail against are actually popular with the American people.

Taking a series of votes making it easier for corporations to pollute the environment or take advantage of the most vulnerable would likely not be well received. Better to overturn as many rules as possible in a single vote, reducing transparency and obscuring the consequences.

Make no mistake, whether those votes are held individually or en bloc, the American people will be the ones to bear the consequences. With Republicans in charge of the House, Senate, and White House, it is likely that every rule the Biden administration has issued in the last year will be on the chopping block, along with the protections those rules provide to our constituents' health, safety, and economic well- being.

In addition, striking down a bundle of rules at once means not only that each rule will not be considered on its own merits but also that months and years of agency time and taxpayer dollars, along with the expert analysis and public comments from industry, nonprofit groups, and individual Americans, all will have been wasted.

Members on both sides of the aisle have recognized that midnight rulemaking, if left completely unchecked, can lead to abuses by the executive branch, but true midnight rules are rarely issued, and there is already a lookback period under the CRA to address rules promulgated at the end of any congressional term.

If we are truly concerned about so-called midnight rules, we have other options to check them. For example, at the end of President George W. Bush's administration, I authored a bill that would delay implementation of rules issued near the end of a President's term, giving his or her successors a chance to review such rules and to determine if they should go forward.

I believe there are ways we could work together in a bipartisan manner to address this issue.

Where past efforts tried using a scalpel to address the problems associated with midnight rulemaking, today's Republicans would instead use a machete, hacking away at the Biden administration's regulatory agenda and furthering their ideological goal of radically transforming our government.

None of this should be a surprise. H.R. 115 is a key plank of Project 2025, the blueprint for the incoming Trump administration. Project 2025 calls for ``dismantling'' the administrative state and argues that doing so must be ``a top priority for the next conservative President.'' That is because, according to the document, ``the only real solution is for the national government to do less.''

To be clear, the ``less'' that they want to do refers to the important and expert work undertaken by the country's Federal agencies protecting consumers, workers, and the public from corporations and people that break the law.

We should reject any backdoor efforts that would eviscerate vital regulations, would open rules and protections to even more political interference, and could prevent agencies from ever working on similar issues again, all with just the most cursory examination by Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose the Midnight Rules Relief Act, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Ramirez).

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a letter from more than 250 organizations representing workers, consumers, and the environment opposing H.R. 115.

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Arizona says the Biden administration has enacted rules that will cost $1.4 trillion. Over what period of time, he doesn't tell us, and I don't know whether it is correct or not, but I am sure, in terms of the budget, the Democratic and Republican staffs of the Appropriations Committee are looking at them very carefully every year.

He picked one as an example, $45 million to protect against lead poisoning. Lead poisoning is a real problem. It leads to mental deficiencies in children. If there is a $45 million rule to deal with this, that sounds fine to me.

The real question is, maybe we ought to examine that rule. Maybe, as Mr. Biggs said, there is something wrong with that rule. Maybe we ought to repeal that rule, but we have the procedure to do that in the current law.

What this bill seeks to do is to say: Don't look at that law. Take 25 rules and put them together so that you can't examine any one of them, and in one vote, we will get rid of 25 rules. Maybe some of them are good rules, and maybe some of them are bad rules, but no one is going to get a chance to debate them because we have one vote, one bill.

That is what this bill does. This bill says to combine all the CRAs into one CRA vote. CRAs are a proper exercise of congressional power. It helps us control the executive, whether it is Democratic or Republican. Nobody argues against a CRA--well, maybe a particular CRA, but no one argues against the idea of a CRA. A CRA ought to be looked at individually. We ought to look at the merits of the CRA, maybe debate it on the floor. Maybe Republicans support it and Democrats oppose it, or maybe the other way around. Maybe it splits not along partisan lines. Maybe it is very clear that we want to do it, but we ought to look at it.

This bill says take 25 CRAs and have one vote so that we can't look at the merits of the individual CRAs, and with one vote, we may be doing immense damage to the health, safety and welfare of the American people, or not. We have no way of knowing because we can't study the CRAs individually.

This bill is pernicious because it combines everything into one vote and denies us the ability to look at the merits of each. Therefore, it ought to be defeated.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, another rule on the chopping block is to update heavy machinery emergency brakes.

Does my colleague also want to roll back this rule, a rule that will save lives?

If the will of the people is truly that we roll back these lifesaving measures,

my colleagues should have the bravery to vote down each rule individually. Then you can tell your happy constituents that you voted for lead poisoning, and you voted for not implementing a national suicide hotline.

Let me say this: The gentleman from Arizona gets it exactly backward. First of all, he says the cost of all of the regulations is $1.2 trillion.

What are the benefits? Maybe they are far greater than that. We ought to know.

If you find a rule that you think is wrong, if you think the cost of this rule outweighs the benefits, fine, bring a CRA to the floor. That is not what this bill does. This bill says don't bring a CRA to the floor. Bring a combination of 25 or 30 CRAs to the floor so that you can't examine them individually.

Maybe some of them make sense. Maybe, in some cases, the regulation outweighs the benefits, or the cost outweighs the benefits. Maybe in another case, it is a different regulation, the benefits outweigh the costs. We should look at it as an individual CRA. That is why the CRA process was designed.

What this bill does is to upend that process by saying we are not going to look at the individual regulation. We are not going to look at the individual CRA. We are going to put 25 or 30 or 40 or 50 or 100 CRAs together in one vote with presumably an hour of debate on the floor. It is saying you can't look at the merits. That makes no sense.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman wants to criticize the Republican leadership of the House for not bringing to the floor the 12 appropriations bills that they promised they would and that they should, and instead putting them all in one omnibus bill, I join him in that criticism. It is not the way to run the ship of state. I join him in that criticism of the Republican leadership of the House.

Let's go back to the lead paint. It costs $45 million we are told. How much does it save in children not getting lead paint poisoning, in hospital costs? It saves a lot more, presumably.

We have agencies that Congress has established over the last more than a century, since World War I, since the Wilson administration, to make determinations that Congress can't.

How many parts per million of cadmium should be permitted in drinking water? I don't know, but the EPA makes that judgment. Now, if someone in Congress thinks the EPA made the wrong judgment, that it is costing more than it is worth, bring a CRA. That is why we have CRAs. Don't talk about the total cost of all regulations because the total benefit of all regulations is many times greater than that.

Certainly, if you are talking about looking at anything, bring a single CRA. This bill, again, says to Congress, don't look at what the administrative agencies have done. Don't look at whether it makes sense to have this regulation or not. Just take 25 or 35 or 45 CRAs, repeal 35 or 25 or 55 rules without having a chance to really look at any of them because someone in the Republican leadership decided that they should.

If this bill passes, Congress will not have the chance to examine any subject of a CRA. That is why this bill is so pernicious and ought to be defeated.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, this bill does exactly the opposite of what the gentleman from Arizona says. This bill does not give us the chance to look at a regulation and decide whether it makes sense.

This bill puts all the regulations together so that we can't look at them. We can't look at any one of them in particular because they are all together in one vote with one hour of debate on the floor.

Let me give you an example of a rule that is on the chopping block. You have a rule ensuring that all cell phones--it is a new rule--that all cell phones are hearing aid compatible, a rule that requires cell phone makers to update their tech.

Does my colleague want to roll this back? What is the cost that my colleague would stomach to ensure our seniors can call and hear their family members and friends? That is just one regulation.

Maybe you think it costs too much money for the tech companies to satisfy grandma and grandpa, that they

shouldn't be able to talk to their grandkids or their family members by phone because it costs the tech companies too much money. All right. Make that case on the floor with a CRA. I will debate it because I think the opposite, but make that case on the floor with a CRA.

This bill says don't make that case on the floor with a CRA. Put all the CRAs together so you can't debate the merits of any one of them.

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

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

We are going around in circles, but let me just add one thing. We call this the Midnight Rules Relief Act, but it is a big midnight. It extends the entire year, the last year of any President's administration. A whole year, that is hardly a midnight rule.

Again, if you want to look at the merits of a rule--and the gentleman says we have only like 20, 25 a year maybe or maybe we will have 250 next year, who knows. It depends on the politics. Debate the bill.

When a bill comes to the floor, there is 1 hour of debate. We are supposed to debate 25 CRAs in an hour. Some of them may be good, and some of them may be bad. Each CRA deserves its own consideration by those who support it and by those who oppose it.

This bill says, no, all together in one bill, so you can't really oppose or support any particular one of them. Take it or leave it on all of them, and you have no time for debate.

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

Mr. Speaker, as we have both said, we are going around in circles, so I will say what everybody has been waiting to hear: I am prepared to close, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Arizona just said that the greatest number of CRAs that we have had in a given Congress is 17. Okay, I will take him at his word. Why not have 17 votes? Why not debate each for up to an hour so we know what we are doing? This bill says put them all together so we don't know what we are doing.

Mr. Speaker, this legislation is just the latest Republican effort to undermine the regulatory process. It would allow Donald Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress to wipe away dozens of lifesaving regulations and consumer protections in one single party-line vote under cover of darkness.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose this dangerous legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are here today because of a broken promise.

Last year, I proudly joined my colleagues, Courts Subcommittee Chairman Issa and Ranking Member Johnson, in introducing the JUDGES Act. For decades, Congress has been at an impasse on the question of how to create new judgeships while not knowingly giving new appointees to the other party. This bipartisan, bicameral bill would have broken that logjam by having both sides agree to take a chance on their own party winning the White House.

Under this legislation, we all promised to give the next three, unknown, Presidents a certain number of judgeships. Because no one can tell the future, we were all at an equal disadvantage.

Nevertheless, for this deal to work, the bill had to be passed before election day. On November 6, we would all know who the next President would be, and the deal would be broken.

The Senate did its part and passed the bill over the summer, but the House Republican leadership was unwilling to take a chance on their own candidate, and they refused to bring the bill to the floor before the election. Thus, the agreement central to the JUDGES Act, that the opportunity to appoint new judges is given to an unknown future President, is now broken. However, that is not stopping our Republican colleagues from taking advantage of all of the Senators and House Members who took a chance on bipartisanship.

Unfortunately, we are back where we have always been every time a bill to create new judgeships comes before Congress, with one party seeking a tactical advantage over the other.

Since we know that Donald Trump sees the Federal courts as nothing more than an extension of his political operation, and during his first term he stacked them with dangerously unqualified and ideological appointees, giving him more power to appoint additional judges would be irresponsible.

Under the allocation set forth in the JUDGES Act, he would get 25 judgeship nominations on top of the 100-plus spots on the judicial bench expected to open up over the next 4 years. Donald Trump has made clear that he intends to expand the powers of the Presidency, and giving him 25 new judges to appoint gives him one more tool at his disposal to do just that.

Many of the people elevated by Donald Trump to the Federal bench were not just conservative-leaning judges. They have proven to be ultraconservative ideologues who have perverted the law to benefit Donald Trump and conservative causes.

They have also repeatedly been criticized for their lack of understanding of the law, for their inability to provide speedy decisionmaking, and for their repeated errors in judgment. We should not compound this problem by giving him yet more nominations to fill.

I have long argued for more Federal judges. Twenty years ago we were already overdue, and the problem has only gotten worse. However, Republicans and Democrats, quite reasonably, have never wanted to give an opposing party's President more power. Presidential administration after Presidential administration went by with no new judgeships created. The JUDGES Act would have broken that impasse if it had been passed before the Presidential election this year.

The genius behind the JUDGES Act and the deal to pass it was that it was devoid of the politics that have plagued the Federal judgeship creation process.

We took recommendations made by the nonpartisan Judicial Conference of the United States. The nominees were spread out over three Presidential administrations and six Congresses. The judge allotments would begin with a future, unknown, next President.

In August, Senators from both sides of the aisle joined together and unanimously passed the JUDGES Act. We could have done the same thing here. We should have done the same thing here. If Republican leadership had brought the bill to the House floor in September, then we could have passed it on suspension in no time. Back then, the President would still have been unknown, and the underlying promise of the bill was still present.

Nevertheless, when S. 4199 arrived in the House, Republican leadership refused to touch it. As the days counted down before the election, my colleagues and I begged them to take it up. We explained the stakes. They knew that bipartisan support for creating desperately new judgeships would only exist if the bill was passed into law before November 5, but they refused.

Republican leadership was uninterested in taking the chance that their candidate might not win in November. It was a fair fight, and they wanted no part in it. Now they are here today during the narrow widow when the central promise behind the JUDGES Act is broken, trying to force this bill through the House on a partisan basis.

What we are seeing today is a tragic breakdown in what should have been a bipartisan process. I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who fought for this bill over the summer and in September. Our work together reminds me that there can be opportunities for collegiality and collaboration across the aisle.

This good, honest work is even more striking when juxtaposed with the political gamesmanship we are seeing today, as the majority takes a nonpartisan bill and perverts it toward their own ends.

Mr. Speaker, 1 month and 8 days from now will be January 20, 2025. On Inauguration Day we will no longer know who the next President will be, and I would be happy to take up the promise behind the JUDGES Act that day and to give the additional judicial appointments to Presidents yet to come.

Until then, I must urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on S. 4199, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), the distinguished gentleman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet.

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

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), the chairman of the committee, says we don't like what the American people did. Well, obviously we don't. We lost the election.

Relevant to this bill is we don't like what Mr. Jordan did. We don't like what the Republican leadership did in refusing to bring the Senate bill to a vote before the election.

We begged them to. Darrell Issa begged them and begged Mr. Jordan. I did. Hank Johnson did. We said to bring it to the floor before the election. It will pass unanimously, and we will have the judges that we need because if it is not brought to the floor until after the election, one party or the other is going to oppose it.

Mr. Speaker, we are objecting to this bill not because we object to what the American people did but because we object to what Mr. Jordan and the Republican leadership did.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Ivey).

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time for closing.

Mr. Speaker, had the Republican leadership taken this bill up in September, we could have been celebrating a true bipartisan victory right now.

There is no question that it is necessary to authorize new Federal judgeships for the growing caseload in the Federal courts. That is why I fought to take up this bill earlier this year when the next President was unknown. That is why the Senate passed the bill in August. That is why Mr. Issa and I and others urged Mr. Jordan and the Republican leadership to take up the bill before the election, when the central arrangement of the bill they were setting up, 66 new judges across three unknown Presidential administrations and six unknown congressional majorities, would have been there. Now, it is too late for that.

Now we can wait for the new Congress in January and pass the bill, but it will have to be delayed 4 years. Why? Because the Republican leadership refused to take up the bill when it should have, when it would have gotten a unanimous vote here as it got a unanimous vote in the Senate.

I will continue to fight for more Federal judges, but we must do it at a time when the identity of the next President is not known. That is the fundamental bargain that is fair to both parties. Until then, we should reject this bill as nothing more than partisan gamesmanship.

Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to oppose the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 7198, the Prove It Act, represents the latest effort by Republicans to dismantle the regulatory process, giving well- resourced special interests a powerful new cudgel to wield against regulations, while causing harm to the very small entities the bill purports to help.

This legislation would vest enormous and unreviewable authority over agency rules to the chief counsel of the Office of Advocacy within the Small Business Administration, a chronically underfunded office that has not even had a Senate-confirmed leader since 2017.

It authorizes the chief counsel, unilaterally and without review, to exempt large parts of the business community from proposed rules if he or she determines that an agency did not properly consider how a proposed rule would affect small entities.

Not only would this broad and vaguely defined authority apply to proposed regulations, but the bill would also charge the chief counsel with tracking agencies' completion of mandatory reviews of existing rules every 10 years. If they find that an agency failed to conduct the required review of the rule, they can simply suspend operation of the rule.

I note that, while this legislation would impose significant new burdens on the SBA, it would provide no additional funding to carry out these duties, putting a further strain on the agency's ability to assist small businesses.

Our public agencies are responsible for writing rules that protect our community from harm. They make sure that the toys our children play with are safe. They make sure that the vehicles we drive and the buildings we live in are up to code. They make sure that the legislation we pass in Congress for tackling issues like climate change and public health are implemented as we intend.

The Prove It Act would grind all of this to a halt. Rules that would ban toxic chemicals or take contaminated food out of the market would hang in limbo while petitions mount before this single official to complete his or her reviews, if he or she can ever complete them at all.

This bill is not about lessening the burden on small businesses. By law, agencies already must take small businesses into account. These small entities already have power through the Office of Advocacy to champion their concerns, so the bill is entirely unnecessary if that was truly the purpose of the bill.

In reality, this bill is about giving big businesses the ability to shut down the regulatory process. Any group that merely purports to represent small businesses, no matter how large or well-resourced they may be, could petition this one official to block a pending rule they do not like. There would be no limit to how many times they do this. This is a recipe for chaos and dysfunction. That, of course, is the point.

Republicans do not want to empower the agencies that ensure the drugs we take are safe, that ensure child car seats protect the most vulnerable among us, and that enforce our competition laws to ensure that small businesses have a chance to thrive. They want to throw sand in the gears of these agencies to ensure that they never issue the regulations we depend on to keep us safe.

This bill would do little to help small businesses, but it could prove to be a windfall for powerful companies and special interests. It is no surprise, therefore, that this legislation is right out of the Project 2025 playbook, which calls for ``supercharging'' the Office of Advocacy at the SBA so the entity can ``dismantle extreme regulatory policies and advance limited-government reforms.''

Republicans are so determined to carry out this dismantling of the regulatory process that they are even willing to violate their own House rules against legislation that will increase mandatory spending, ignoring a CBO estimate that the bill would add millions of dollars to the deficit.

We all want to ensure that small businesses can thrive, but this bill would not help them. Instead, it would create uncertainty and chaos while giving big businesses a new tool to dismantle the regulatory process that protects public health and safety and that protects consumers from rising costs.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Mrs. Lee Carter), the newest Member of the Judiciary Committee, proudly carrying on her mother's legacy.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. Caraveo).

Mr. Speaker, over 200 labor, consumer protection, and environmental organizations oppose H.R. 7198, the Prove It Act.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record letters of opposition from the Coalition

for Sensible Safeguards, Earthjustice, and Public Citizen.

Coalition for

Sensible Safeguards,

December 4, 2024.

Representative Mike Johnson,

Speaker, House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Representative Hakeem Jeffries,

Democratic Leader, House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Speaker Johnson and Democratic Leader Jeffries: The

Coalition for Sensible Safeguards (CSS), an alliance of over

200 labor, scientific, research, good government, faith,

community, health, environmental, and public interest groups,

is writing regarding the House of Representatives'

consideration of the Prove It Act of 2024, H.R. 7198 which

CSS strongly opposes.

The Prove It Act would expand the authority of the Small

Business Administration's Office of Advocacy while failing to

address fundamental flaws of the Regulatory Flexibility Act.

This bill would slow down the regulatory process and empower

an office that has been neither appropriately focused on

small business concerns nor adequately transparent in how it

conducts its actions.

The ostensible purpose of the Regulatory Flexibility Act is

to ensure that small businesses continue to play a role in

the U.S. economy. In practice, though, the implementation of

the Regulatory Flexibility Act has failed to achieve this

basic purpose, as it has instead been wielded as a blunt

weapon to weaken regulatory requirements for firms of all

sizes, often at the behest of large corporations and the

trade associations they dominate.

The result is that protections of public health, safety,

and the environment have been sacrificed without

substantially improving the competitive position of small

businesses in their respective industrial sectors relative to

that of larger firms. These flaws are most apparent in the

Regulatory Flexibility Act's burdensome analytical

requirements, which are designed to weaken regulatory

safeguards rather than promote small business

competitiveness. H.R. 7198 does not fix this basic problem,

however. Instead, it would expand those analytical

requirements and make them more onerous.

The Prove It Act would enhance the authority of the Small

Business Administration's Office of Advocacy in harmful ways.

H.R. 7198, in Section 2(a)(3), would allow for endless

petitions from ``Any small entity, group of small entities,

or organization representing the interests of small

entities'' that challenge a rulemaking agency's certification

that its rule would not have a significant economic impact on

a substantial number of small entities. In many cases, these

petitions would trigger burdensome hearings conducted by the

Chief Counsel for the Office of Advocacy, after which the

Chief Counsel could then force the rulemaking agency to

retract the certification and instead perform the full suite

of burdensome analyses mandated by the Regulatory Flexibility

Act. The bill also provides for expanded judicial review

opportunities against agency certifications, which would

further tie up rulemakings in wasteful and time-consuming

litigation.

We urge members of the House of Representatives to consider

reforms that would instead place greater constraints on the

Office of Advocacy to ensure that it is actually helping,

rather than harming, small businesses. A scathing 2014 report

by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found

significant deficiencies in the Small Business

Administration's Office of Advocacy's compliance with its own

internal procedures when it intervenes in regulatory actions

or engages in commissioning research on regulatory costs to

small businesses. Of greatest relevance, GAO found that: (1)

the Office had no policies dictating when individual staff

should intervene in individual rulemakings, making it

susceptible to improper industry influence; and (2) the

Office repeatedly cited small business input in its

regulatory comments but could provide no evidence or

documentation supporting this input.

Evidence has also demonstrated the extent to which the

Office of Advocacy has been captured by regulated industry.

The Office has often worked with large trade associations to

weaken rules in ways that benefit large businesses, at the

expense of small ones. These interventions have the effect of

harming small businesses, contrary to the Office's statutory

mission. Nevertheless, this bill would give the Small

Business Administration's Office of Advocacy even greater

authority to intervene in and block agency rules.

Additionally, the Prove It Act would further delay needed

regulatory actions--causing real harm to public health and

safety and the environment--without improving the quality of

agency decision-making. Numerous studies have demonstrated

how existing regulatory analyses, and procedural requirements

contribute to extensive delays of agency rulemaking. These

studies confirm that existing Regulatory Flexibility Act

requirements are among the biggest contributors to these

delays. By creating new analytical and procedural

requirements, this bill would only worsen those delays. These

additional delays are unjustifiable because they do not

result in better regulatory decisions.

Finally, the bill would empower the federal judiciary to

block regulations by making agency compliance with its new

analytical and procedural requirements judicially reviewable.

This would provide judges with an additional new tool for

blocking needed public protections.

Providing the Small Business Administration's Office of

Advocacy with more authority to block, delay, or weaken new

regulatory safeguards, without enacting the significant

reforms recommended by GAO and others, will leave the public

even more at risk to health, safety, and economic security

threats. The numerous petitions, time-consuming hearings, and

expanded judicial review that this legislation would allow

will thwart needed protections while failing to help small

businesses with better designed regulations.

CSS urges the House of Representatives to oppose the Prove

It Act and encourages the Committee to evaluate proposals

that offer real and meaningful reforms to strengthen the

regulatory process, such as H.R. 1507, the Stop Corporate

Capture Act.

We hope to work with the House of Representatives to ensure

that our regulatory process is working effectively and

efficiently to protect the American public.

We strongly urge opposition to the Prove It Act of 2024,

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Landsman).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Small Business.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

Mr. Speaker, the Prove It Act is just the latest in a long line of Republican bills meant to undermine or block agency rulemaking. If this legislation is enacted, every single rule--past, present, and future-- would be funneled for review through a single official in a chronically underfunded office within the Small Business Administration. This one person would be granted unreviewable and unilateral power to block or suspend lifesaving regulations that ensure that we have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and safe food to eat.

I urge Members to oppose this dangerous legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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