Floor Statements

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

Madam Speaker, I strongly oppose H.R. 6136. Far from being the moderate and compromise bill that has been advertised, this bill is extreme and unreasonable. This bill eliminates the diversity visa program and cuts off even children and brothers and sisters from reunifying with their families.

The bill even revokes the approval of over 3 million family members who have been waiting for years to reunify with their U.S. citizen brothers, sisters, and parents.

While it claims to end President Trump's cruel family separation policy, nothing in the bill actually prohibits family separation or limits criminal prosecutions. And the bill requires the long-term detention of families and children while actually removing requirements that detention facilities be safe, sanitary, and appropriate for children.

It eliminates important asylum protections and would protect many bona fide asylum seekers from even applying for protection in the first place.

In addition, this legislation spends $23.4 billion to fund Donald Trump's offensive and unnecessary border wall.

Finally and most importantly, this bill fails to provide a certain path to citizenship for the Dreamers.

Donald Trump created havoc when he made the decision to strip legal status from young Americans who were brought to the U.S. as young children and who know only this country as their own. The Republican leadership repeatedly announced that they intended to protect the Dreamers. Now we see their supposed solution, and it is a half measure at best that leaves far too many Dreamers behind.

The bill's stringent eligibility requirements would likely cut off millions of Dreamers from eligibility to the bill's legalization program. To those who would be eligible, the bill establishes a long and difficult road to permanent residence, never mind to citizenship. Because of the limited number of visas made available, it would force applicants to wait for up to 23 years for permanent residence.

Most appalling, if even $1 of border wall funding is ever transferred or rescinded by a future Congress, the long and difficult path to permanent residence would be canceled entirely. This would effectively hold the Dreamers hostage to every future appropriations battle.

Now, we know the Republicans refer to this bill as a compromise, but it is not a compromise when you excluded the Democrats from negotiations.

There is, in fact, a compromise bipartisan bill, the Hurd-Aguilar bill, that actually provides a meaningful path to citizenship for Dreamers and doesn't bog the bill down in different considerations about the wall or about diversity visas or about family legislation.

Those are separate issues and should be debated separately if you want to redeem your promise to the Dreamers.

This bill is hypocritical, because it doesn't redeem the promise to the Dreamers and bogs it down in other issues, which we know will probably result in the bill never going anywhere.

Do not be fooled by this legislation. It is not moderate, it is not a compromise, it does not solve the Dreamer issue. It reflects the Republican majority's decision to keep a real Dreamer bill, the Hurd- Aguilar bill, off the floor.

It is yet one more extreme measure by the Republican majority that fails to solve the real issues plaguing our immigration system and betrays the promise to the Dreamers.

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

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren), the distinguished ranking member of the Immigration Subcommittee.

Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Madam Speaker, the President of the United States and the Speaker of the House promised to solve the problem of the Dreamers and to give them a path to citizenship. This bill does not do that except for 23 years, and it makes them hostage to other things such as the gentleman from Georgia talked about.

We do not agree, many of us, that we should go away from family-based unification. We do not agree on the four pillars. The President agrees with that. Some of the Republicans agree with that. We ought to debate that separately and have a bill that takes care of the Dreamers, as the President and the Speaker promised, instead of holding them hostage to all these other things that we don't agree to and that shouldn't be held hostage. We should have a clean DACA bill like Hurd-Aguilar.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Madam Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Ms. Roybal-Allard).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Costa).

Mr. Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Will the House vote on this measure tonight?

Mr. Speaker, will the House vote tomorrow?

Mr. Speaker, can the Chair advise when the House will vote on the measure?

Mr. Speaker, under the rule, the minority, the Democrats, are entitled the offer one final amendment in the form of a motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, when will we have that opportunity?

Mr. Speaker, we normally have that opportunity during debate.

Mr. Speaker, will we have that opportunity in debate tonight?

Mr. Speaker, I understand that.

Mr. Speaker, will we have the opportunity, as part of that debate, to offer the amendment in the form of a motion to recommit, as is our right during debate?

Mr. Speaker, I take it that we will be able to offer that motion to recommit before we finish debate tonight.

Mr. Speaker, you didn't answer my question, sir.

Mr. Speaker, we are, of course, entertaining debate on the bill now. The motion to recommit is part of that debate, and my question is: Will we be permitted to offer that motion to recommit before we finish debate tonight?

Mr. Speaker, there may be.

Mr. Speaker, if the Chair can't answer, perhaps the chairman of the committee can answer that question about the motion to recommit.

Mr. Chairman?

Mr. Speaker, can the chairman perhaps comment on when the House will vote on this bill?

Mr. Speaker, for what purpose are we debating this bill tonight if we cannot guarantee when or if we will vote?

Let me rephrase the question.

Mr. Speaker, can the Chair guarantee that we will, in fact, vote on this bill at some point?

Mr. Speaker, I am asking the Acting Speaker right now. I think the mace is up, so Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, we are entertaining debate on the bill, obviously, but can the Chair guarantee that we will, in fact, vote on this bill at some point? Otherwise, why are we wasting time?

Mr. Speaker, can the Chair guarantee that we will have the opportunity, as guaranteed under the rules, to offer our motion to recommit, whether or not we ever vote on this bill?

Mr. Speaker, the Chair will not guarantee that the rule will be adhered to and give us the opportunity to offer that motion?

Mr. Speaker, the Chair is being very forthcoming.

Mr. Speaker, I do assume that we will have the opportunity to offer our motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, I further assume that at some point we will vote on this bill, otherwise, everything the majority has said about why it is being offered would be a little less than honest.

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

Mr. Speaker, this supposed compromise bill is a sham. It fails to cover all Dreamers or to provide them with a certain path to citizenship. It fails to end the Trump family separation policy. It revokes critical protections for detained children and families. It eliminates important asylum protections. It makes communities less safe, and it slashes legal family immigration.

At every step of the way, this bill attacks family unity. It attacks immigrant communities, it attacks common decency, and it evades fulfilling the pledge of the Speaker and the President that we will solve the problem and allow a path to citizenship for the Dreamers.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a report by the Cato Institute titled: ``House GOP Bill Cuts Legal Immigration by 1.4 Million Over 20 Years.''

[From CATO at Liberty, June 21, 2018]

House GOP Bill Cuts Legal Immigration by 1.4 Million Over 20 Years

(By David Bier and Stuart Anderson)

The House is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a bill--the

Border Security and Immigration Reform Act, the supposed GOP

compromise bill. The authors claim in their bill summary that

``the overall number of visas issued will not change,'' yet

that is simply incorrect. In fact, the proposal would reduce

legal immigration at least 1.4 million over 20 years.

The bill would reduce the number of legal immigrants in

five ways: 1) eliminating the diversity visa lottery, 2)

ending sponsorship of married adult children of U.S.

citizens, 3) ending sponsorship of siblings of U.S. citizens,

4) restricting asylum claims, and 5) indirectly by

restricting overall immigration, which will lead to fewer

sponsorships of spouses, minor children, and parents of

naturalized citizens years later. The bill partially offsets

these effects by increasing employer-sponsored immigration

and by granting permanent residency to some Dreamers in the

United States, but the net effect is still strongly negative.

Table 1 breaks down the cuts to legal immigration by

category over the 20-year period from 2020 to 2039. The net

effect is a reduction in legal immigration of 1.4 million

including Dreamers or 2.1 million not counting Dreamers

toward the total. This is a cut of 7 percent or 10 percent in

the number of legal immigrants that would have been allowed

to enter under current law.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose the bill.

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

Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2851, the Stop the Importation and Trafficking of Synthetic Analogues Act.

This bill is well intentioned but fatally flawed. I agree with the goal of preventing dangerous synthetic drugs from evading regulation, but this bill circumvents existing procedures for placing synthetic analogues on the existing schedule of the Controlled Substances Act, which reasonably incorporate medical and scientific analysis in favor of a law enforcement-focused approach that would worsen the mass incarceration crisis and could undermine scientific research.

There are already statutory mechanisms in place to provide for the scheduling and regulation of new drugs that may be dangerous if misused. Those mechanisms require an appropriate degree of collaboration at the outset among the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Food and Drug Administration in scheduling synthetic analogues. This is because each of these agencies is equally important to the scheduling process.

By marginalizing the roles of HHS and the FDA in this bill, we would establish a mechanism that does not adequately consider scientific and medical evidence about the substance in question. Such input is critical to a process that may result in the imposition of significant criminal penalties related to these analogue drugs.

Under this bill, not only would the Attorney General hold the sole authority by himself to schedule these substances, but he or she would also have the power to set sentence levels for newly scheduled analogue drugs by establishing equivalencies between each newly scheduled analogue and drugs that are already controlled.

As a result, this legislation would expand penalties for drug offenses, concentrate an overwhelming amount of unchecked power within the Justice Department, overcriminalize certain conduct, and punish individuals without adequate proof of intent.

While the bill was slightly improved during our committee markup by eliminating the new mandatory minimum sentences included in the bill as introduced, the bill, nevertheless, would impose potentially lengthy maximum sentences for offenses involving these analogues.

I am mostly concerned that substances designated as analogues under the procedures instituted by this bill could trigger the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences under other provisions of the Controlled Substances Act. Although we have been told by the majority that this is not the intent of the bill, this ambiguity is another reason to oppose the legislation.

At the very least, the bill would explicitly impose mandatory minimum terms of supervised release, which, as the Judicial Conference of the United States observes, undermines the discretion of judges who are in the best position to make such determinations based on the facts and circumstances of each case.

We can do more to address concerns about emerging and potentially dangerous analogue drugs, but ditching scientific evidence and imposing new mandatory minimums is not the answer.

Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to H.R. 5682, the FIRST STEP Act. On principle, I cannot support legislation which fails to address the larger issue of sentencing reform, and, though this bill makes some modest improvements in areas related to our prisons, actually it does more harm by cementing into our system new areas of racial biases and disadvantage that make worse a criminal justice system desperately in need of reform.

Despite the bill's good intentions, the new incentive system for pre- release custody credits could exacerbate racial biases and, unlike previous criminal justice efforts, is not balanced with the necessary reforms to our Federal sentencing system. As Monday's New York Times editorial observed: ``A partial bill could end up being worse than nothing.''

The bill excludes large categories of inmates, based on convictions for various offenses and on immigration status, from being eligible for the pre-release custody incentives established by the bill.

Second, certain prisoners who are eligible to participate in the incentive system and who successfully participate in recidivism reduction programs would face being denied early entry to pre-release custody if such inmates are judged to have a higher than low recidivism risk under the new system. It would be unfair to deny these prisoners what they have earned, and it is counterproductive for all of us to, in effect, create a disincentive for prisoners who most need recidivism reduction programming from engaging in it.

Third, the combination of these factors, implemented through a problematic risk assessment tool, could operate to exacerbate racial and socioeconomic disparities already present in the criminal justice system. As the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the ACLU, the NAACP, the National Immigration Law Center, and dozens of other advocacy groups warn, ``the exclusions could . . . have a disparate impact on racial minorities.''

I want to acknowledge the tremendous work of my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee--Representatives Jeffries, Richmond, and Bass particularly--for their efforts to improve the legislation. I wholeheartedly support certain provisions in the current version of the bill, such as expanding time credits for good behavior, banning the shackling of women prisoners, and enhanced compassionate relief. But, unfortunately, these good provisions do not outweigh the potentially harmful provisions contained elsewhere in the bill.

Perhaps more importantly, it is clear that prison reform alone will not ameliorate the crisis of mass incarceration unless we address the principal cause of the problem--unjust sentencing laws. As former Attorney General Eric Holder writes in today's Washington Post: ``To reform America's prisons, we must change the laws that send people to them in the first place. Anything less represents a failure of leadership.''

It is unfortunate that after waiting nearly 1\1/2\ years to take up the issue of criminal justice reform, the majority was unwilling to subject H.R. 5682 to a single legislative hearing or even bother to obtain a CBO score so we could understand its impact.

I also do not believe we can simply accept as a reason not to change our sentencing laws opposition to sentencing reform by a Trump administration that changes its legislative positions on a near daily basis and that has already done so much to weaken and undermine the criminal justice system. Nor do I believe more balanced reform is not viable when Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told us: ``For any criminal justice system proposal to win approval in the Senate, it must include . . . sentencing reforms.''

Although I oppose this legislation, I remain fully committed to achieving balanced reform as part of an effort to make our criminal justice system more just and our constituents more safe. But I do not believe that passing this bill today would contribute to that goal. I therefore urge an opposition vote.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Bass), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Richmond), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from

Washington (Ms. Jayapal), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I have one further speaker, and then I will be prepared to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), the distinguished ranking member of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close if the other side is, and I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, in spite of the good intentions of this bill, I believe the restrictions in the incentive system it would create with respect to recidivism reduction programming could compound the injustices that occur at earlier stages of the criminal justice process; that its approval would lessen the odds of achieving sentencing reform; and that, on balance, the negatives outweigh the positives of this bill.

A broad spectrum of dozens of civil rights and other organizations agree and oppose this bill, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the ACLU, the NAACP, the NAACP Legal and Education Defense Fund, the American Federation of Federal Government Employees Council of Prison Locals, the National Immigration Law Center, and Human Rights Watch.

For the reasons I have outlined today, I reluctantly oppose H.R. 5682 and ask that my colleagues do the same.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, the Protect and Serve Act, while rooted in laudable goals, will not strengthen protections for law enforcement officers, and it fails to make meaningful reforms that would improve police- community relations. Although I will not oppose the bill, I believe that its consideration today reflects a wasted opportunity.

This legislation would create a new offense under title 18 of the U.S. Code for the crime of targeting law enforcement officers. Current law, however, at both the Federal and State level already makes it a crime. It is not clear why this bill changes the law in any meaningful way.

No Member of Congress questions the difficulty, danger, and stress associated with being a police officer. A white paper commissioned by the Ruderman Family Foundation reported that, last year, 129 peace officers died in the line of duty--46 from shootings--with an additional 140 reported officer suicides. Since the start of this year, 2018, at least 36 law enforcement officers across the United States have died while on duty, with 24 of the deaths caused by gunfire.

Our hearts go out to the families of those officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty.

As a result of the risk inherent to policing, there is no profession more widely protected under Federal and State law than working in law enforcement. All 50 States have laws that enhance penalties for crimes against peace officers and, in some instances, crimes against the broadly defined category of first responders.

In fact, section 2 of the bill clearly acknowledges that States have primary jurisdictions for attacks on State and local police officers and lays out very narrow circumstances where a Federal nexus would exist. This presents an open question as to whether there would be any instances at all in which the Department of Justice would exercise jurisdiction under this legislation.

I would note that my own State of New York has four separate criminal statutes addressing attacks on law enforcement officers. Moreover, Federal laws already impose a life sentence and, in some circumstances, even the death penalty on persons convicted of killing State and local law enforcement officers or other employees assisting with Federal investigations.

Simply put, the legislation under consideration today does not improve upon this existing legal framework and does not provide any more stringent punishment for anyone under existing law.

I want to be clear about the respect that we have for the difficult work undertaken by our law enforcement professionals. While attacks on law enforcement officials are completely unacceptable, the existing framework for prosecuting these crimes is more than adequate at both the Federal and State level. If it were not, I would be an ardent supporter of this legislation.

Rather than advancing a bill that amounts to an empty gesture during Police Week, the Congress should instead be focusing on real reform measures that would actually protect law enforcement officers and first responders.

We should act on the related problem of well-documented unconstitutional policing practices in communities of color across the United States that have eroded trust between those communities and the law enforcement officials sworn to protect them.

The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department currently has 19 consent agreements with troubled police departments nationwide. Dating back to the mid-1990s, every region of the country has suffered some kind of high-profile incident.

Adding to community concerns are the increasingly well-documented incidents of unjustified deadly force against unarmed victims in police-civilian encounters. More than 50 percent of the unarmed victims in these fatal encounters with police were people of color.

The goal of protecting police officer safety would be well served by working to foster law enforcement reforms aimed at helping local jurisdictions meet their constitutional obligation of fair and unbiased policing and the resulting better trust between the communities and the police in their midst.

As we have debated the Protect and Serve Act, I have been encouraged by the expressed commitment by Chairman Goodlatte and the bill's sponsor, Representative Rutherford, to work with me on bringing the Judiciary Committee's balanced work on law enforcement accountability out into the open with hearings and the introduction of legislation. We should care equally about harms by and against police officers and their impact on local communities.

We should care about the harms on local communities because of that harm and also because of the fact that it undoubtedly leads to distrust, which in turn leads to greater violence against police officers.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), who is the distinguished ranking member of the Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, as I stated at the outset of debate today, I will not oppose this bill, although it merely duplicates existing law. It does not add any protection for the police and does not increase any penalty for someone who assaults a police officer. I am not interested in falling into the trap of opposing what amounts to a messaging bill brought forth during Police Week.

But I want to be clear that I believe H.R. 5698 represents a wasted opportunity and appears tone-deaf to some of the real struggles happening in communities across our Nation. This bill is being contemplated at a time when our country is in the throes of a national policing crisis, with a never-ending stream of police shootings of unarmed African Americans captured on video.

Creating a new, yet superfluous crime for offenses committed against law enforcement is not a great idea because it doesn't do anything. It is particularly not a great idea when we are ignoring the other problem that adds to the danger for police officers, which is the disconnectedness and estrangement of many police forces from the communities they serve.

I hope this Congress will now get back to the difficult work of legislating meaningful solutions. I am encouraged that my Republican colleagues have made a commitment to pursue balanced law enforcement accountability reform with hearings and, hopefully, the introduction of legislation. There is much work to be done.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a letter from various civil rights and civil liberties groups relative to this bill.

U.S. House of Representatives,

Washington, DC, May 15, 2018.

Re Coalition Opposition to H.R. 5698, the Protect and Serve

Act of 2018.

Dear Members of Congress: On behalf of the 28 undersigned

civil rights, civil liberties, faith-based, and government

accountability organizations, we write to urge you to oppose

H.R. 5698, the Protect and Serve Act of 2018, which creates a

new crime for offenses that target law enforcement officers.

First, police already have substantial protections under

federal and state law, rendering this bill superfluous.

Second, this bill signals that there is a ``war on police,''

which is not only untrue, but an unhelpful and dangerous

narrative to uplift. And finally, bills similar to Protect

and Serve that have been introduced in states around the

country--so called ``Blue Lives Matter'' bills--appear to be

a political response to the growing national movement for

police accountability in the face of continued killings and

assaults of unarmed African Americans; therefore, this bill

is divisive and will have a negative impact on the

relationship between law enforcement and the communities they

serve.

i. Federal and state criminal laws already offer ample

protection to police officers.

Federal law already has extremely strong penalties for

people who commit crimes against law enforcement officers and

other public officials. For example, federal laws impose a

life sentence or death penalty on persons convicted of first-

degree murder of federal employees or officers, killing state

and local law enforcement officers or other employees

assisting with federal investigations and killing officers of

the U.S. courts. All fifty states have laws that enhance

penalties for people who commit offenses against law

enforcement officers, including for homicide and assault.

Moreover, there is no record that crimes against law

enforcement go unprosecuted or are otherwise treated

frivolously There is no record to suggest that prosecutors

are unwilling or unable to charge individuals with crimes

against law enforcement. In fact, crimes against police

officers are treated as among the most heinous criminal acts,

given the high degree of culpability and punishment attached

to such crimes.

II. The Protect and Serve Act does not advance any stated

policy goals, because law enforcement is not subject to

increasing or widespread attacks.

There is no doubt that police work is a dangerous

undertaking, but the reality is that there has been a

continuing decline in the number of officers killed or

assaulted in the line of duty over the last several decades.

In the past ten years, the number of officers feloniously

killed has fluctuated, yet not significantly increased or

decreased, as have ambush-style killings of officers. Given

these facts, this bill perpetuates a false narrative that

police are under increasing attack by their communities. Such

a message is unhelpful and unsupported.

Furthermore, the Protect and Serve Act does nothing to

meaningfully improve officer safety and wellness if that is

an intended policy goal. For example, it does not call for

support services, better training, improved safety measures,

increased supervision, or any of the other multiple measures

available to law enforcement that are widely accepted as

promoting officer safety and wellbeing.

III. Protect and Serve Act is polarizing and harms

community-police relations.

This bill is being contemplated at a time when our country

is in the throes of a national policing crisis, with a never-

ending stream of police shootings of unarmed African

Americans captured on video. Creating a new, yet superfluous,

crime for offenses committed against law enforcement is a

particularly disconnected and non-responsive policy choice.

Unfortunately, the Protect and Serve Act is similar to other

``Blue Lives Matter'' type bills that create new criminal

offenses and penalty enhancements for crimes against police.

Collectively, these policy efforts, which have sprung up

amid the national call for police accountability, appear to

be a political response to the powerful activism of

grassroots movements that demand fair and constitutional

policing. Rather than focusing on policies that address

issues of police excessive force, biased policing, and other

police

practices that have failed these communities, the Protect and

Serve Act's aim is to further criminalize. This bill will be

received as yet another attack on these communities and

threatens to exacerbate what is already a discriminatory

system of mass incarceration in this country. Continuing to

undermine police-community relations in this manner sows

seeds of division, which ultimately threatens public safety

and undermines the work of law enforcement.

For the reasons summarized above, we urge you to vote

against the Protect and Serve Act as it comes before the U.S.

House of Representatives. There is no justification for

creating a new crime for offenses committed against law

enforcement. At a time when we need to foster healing between

law enforcement and our communities, we should not be

considering legislation which not only does nothing to

advance the goal of officer safety, but will further erode

the relationship between police and communities.

Thank you for your consideration of this matter. If you

have any questions, please contact Kanya Bennett of the ACLU;

Sakira Cook of The Leadership Conference or Sonia Gill

Hernandez of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,

Inc.

Sincerely,

American Civil Liberties Union; Anti-Defamation League;

Campaign for Youth Justice; Church of Scientology National

Affairs Office; CLASP; The Daniel Initiative; Defending

Rights & Dissent; Friends Committee on National Legislation;

Human Rights Watch; Government Information Watch; Law

Enforcement Action Partnership; The Leadership Conference on

Civil and Human Rights; Muslim Advocates; NAACP.

NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.; National

Action Network; National Association of Criminal Defense

Lawyers; National Association of Social Workers; National Bar

Association; National Center for Transgender Equality; Nation

Council of Jewish Women; The National Council for

Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls;

National Council of Churches; People for the American Way;

PolicyLink; South Asian Americans Leading Together; Southern

Poverty Law Center; StoptheDrugWar.org.

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 5645, the Standard Merger and Acquisition Reviews Through Equal Rules Act. This bill would significantly undermine the Federal Trade Commission's ability to enforce the Nation's antitrust laws, which help protect Americans from anticompetitive behavior in the marketplace. In the guise of harmonization with the Department of Justice, it would eliminate the FTC's administrative litigation enforcement authority with respect to corporate mergers and other transactions. It would also change and potentially increase the burden the FTC must demonstrate in court when seeking a preliminary injunction against the proposed merger.

In doing so, the bill would undercut a critical tool that the FTC relies on to promote competition. It also risks sacrificing the fundamental nature of the FTC as an independent administrative agency, rather than an executive department, subject to the political whims of the President. This blatant attack on the FTC's congressionally mandated independence contravenes more than a century of legislative intent.

In 1914, Congress responded to a wave of mergers and corporate abuses by establishing the FTC as an independent body of experts tasked with developing and advancing competition policy free from political pressure. In doing so, Congress specifically gave the Commission broad enforcement and investigatory authorities, including the power to challenge anticompetitive mergers and other conduct through administrative litigation.

This broad grant of statutory authority was not accidental. Louis Brandeis, a visionary architect of our Nation's competition system, advocated for the embrace of administrative litigation during Congress' consideration of the FTC Act, and President Woodrow Wilson said such authority was critical to the FTC's mission ``to warn where things were going wrong and assist instead of check.''

As former Republican FTC Chairman William Kovacic warned: ``Without a substantial, effective administrative litigation program, the aim of making the Commission an influential competition policy tribunal could not be accomplished.''

Nevertheless, this bill would eliminate this critical tool for promoting competition and, in the process, would erode the Commission's unique qualities and independence.

To further undermine the Commission's independence, the bill would also require the FTC to meet the same standard in court that the Justice Department meets when seeking a preliminary injunction against the proposed merger. But the FTC and the DOJ are two different agencies with different missions and different traditions.

Under current law, the Commission, by statute, must show that a preliminary injunction ``would be in the public interest.'' The Justice Department, on the other hand, has no statutory standard and must simply meet the common law preliminary injunction standard, such as the balance of equities and the risk of irreparable harm.

As our Nation's leading antitrust enforcers have previously testified, there is no practical difference between the standards or evidence that the Commission has abused its authority. So it is entirely unclear what problem the bill is attempting to solve. But in making this change, this bill could cause unnecessary confusion for the courts or could signal a desire to increase the burden on the agency to demonstrate the harms of an anticompetitive merger. That result alone is unacceptable.

But even more fundamentally, this legislation is a step in the wrong direction for our economy and for the prosperity and security of all Americans. The decline of antitrust enforcement over the past several decades has been an economic catastrophe for millions of workers who have lost their jobs or seen their wages lowered. It has resulted in fewer choices and higher prices for consumers, including increased costs for healthcare, prescription drugs, and other essential goods and services.

The importance of robust antitrust enforcement is not simply a question of preventing higher prices for consumers. In the absence of competition, employers have the power to suppress the wages and mobility of American workers through anticompetitive contracting practices, such as noncompete clauses and no-poach agreements.

And when large corporations run amok, locally owned businesses, the economic lifeblood of our communities, wither on the vine. Concentrated economic power is also a serious threat to our vibrant democracy. Large corporations with an outsized role in the policymaking process are able to further entrench their dominance through favorable rules and enforcement decisions.

And when a large corporation with market power has the ability to control the flow of information, it also has the power to shape public opinion in ways that erode democratic values and undermine the voice of the many in favor of the outsized profits of the few.

By further weakening our antitrust laws, H.R. 5645 would accelerate this disturbing trend. Accordingly, I must oppose this legislation and urge my colleagues to vote against this very bad bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline), the distinguished ranking member of the Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law Subcommittee.

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

Mr. Speaker, the nonpartisan Open Markets Institute, in its opposition to H.R. 5645 states: ``Given the severity of the concentration problem in America today, and its economic and political consequences, Congress should be looking to enhance the powers of all of America's antimonopoly agencies.''

I strongly agree: Congress should be strengthening, not weakening, our competition system to protect economic opportunity, innovation, and choice. That is why I have joined several of my Democratic colleagues-- Representatives Joe Crowley, David Cicilline, and Keith Ellison--in introducing a package of bold economic measures to strengthen protections that will help ensure that hardworking Americans have more economic opportunity by ending anticompetitive employment practices.

This package includes H.R. 5642, the Restoring and Improving Merger Enforcement Act, legislation that I introduced to prohibit the consideration of false economic efficiencies--like corporate layoffs, actually costing employment--to justify anticompetitive mergers.

But rather than address these important measures, which would actually

help American workers and consumers, or give the antitrust agencies the resources they need to really promote competition, this bill would do the opposite by undermining the FTC's ability to vigorously enforce antitrust laws under the guise of attempting to solve a problem that does not exist.

I would submit that an economy in which we are down to four major airlines and two major railroads, and going in the same direction in almost every other segment of the economy, we should not be weakening our antitrust laws and our antitrust enforcement, we should be strengthening them. This bill goes in exactly the wrong direction and is guaranteed to further increase the concentration of economic power in our economy, and to further decrease the bargaining power that workers have to get decent wages and working conditions.

Mr. Speaker, this is a deeply anti-employee bill, it is a pro- monopoly bill, and it is a very anti-economic growth bill. I urge my colleagues to oppose this deeply flawed measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the gentleman's amendment.

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

This amendment makes several technical revisions to clarify that the bill does not apply to consummated mergers and other transactions. While this change marginally addresses one concern with the bill, it does nothing to change the most fundamental flaw with the bill, which is that it eliminates the Federal Trade Commission's administrative litigation authority in merger cases.

As we noted during consideration of this bill in the Judiciary Committee last year, and in prior Congresses, the SMARTER Act is overbroad as currently drafted and applies to both unconsummated and consummated transactions.

According to John Jacobson, a leading antitrust attorney, who served as commissioner of the Antitrust Modernization Commission, this bill could easily be ``construed as prohibiting a challenge to the consummation of any merger in administrative proceedings, even a post- merger challenge, notwithstanding the term `proposed.' ''

Technical feedback by senior staff at the FTC, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, confirmed this view.

While the amendment makes the useful clarification that H.R. 5645 would not apply to already consummated transactions, the bill would still eliminate the FTC's ability to use administrative litigation in proposed mergers, striking at the core of the Commission's independence and congressionally mandated design, without any evidence that such a change is warranted or desirable.

As Mr. Jacobson has also noted in his testimony in opposition to a similar

version of this legislation considered by the Senate, eliminating the ``FTC's ability to conduct administrative proceedings in pre- consummation merger challenges is harmful to the sound administration of the antitrust laws.''

At a time when there is an increasing desire across the ideological spectrum to strengthen antitrust enforcement in the face of extreme concentrations of corporate power in industry after industry, the SMARTER Act proposes to go in the opposite direction. Congress was wise to establish an independent agency in 1914 to ensure strong antitrust enforcement, and we would be wise today not to undermine that choice.

Mr. Speaker, this amendment essentially puts lipstick on a pig. It does not change my basic opposition to a bill that is fundamentally flawed in its conception. Therefore, I must oppose this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, as a practical matter, the FTC only challenges a handful of proposed mergers, on average, per year. These transactions present some of the largest, most complex, and potentially most concerning issues. But in most of these cases, the parties either abandon the transaction or negotiate a settlement.

Nonetheless, in those few instances where the FTC does challenge a transaction, it is in a position to answer novel questions of law and, thereby, develop expertise and guidance for future applications. Indeed, that is the whole point of having an FTC, and that is the whole point of administrative adjudication authority.

As the Antitrust Institute has noted in its opposition to the SMARTER Act to this bill, ``the FTC's use of administrative powers should be carefully safeguarded, because it has contributed critically to the effective shaping of U.S. merger policy without detracting from the speed or effectiveness of merger review.''

In addition, Republican FTC Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen's 2016 study on administrative litigation debunks the claim of procedural bias against merging parties. Her study found that the FTC's appellate success and case work ``do not support a narrative that the Commission blindly supports ill-conceived cases because of systemic bias. To the contrary, they show a recent history of solid, well-supported enforcement actions.''

Even where the FTC does not use administrative adjudication, the potential use of this tool is invaluable in the agency's ability to successfully get emerging parties to agree to structural remedies, such as divestitures, to address concerns with a proposed merger.

It is unthinkable to remove the FTC's administrative litigation authority, as this amendment would continue to do, when such authority is only used to protect against the most anticompetitive mergers that are certain to substantially lessen competition, harm consumers, raise prices, and hurt workers.

For these reasons, I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

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

Mr. Speaker, today, as Ranking Member of the Committee on the Judiciary, I join with Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations, in expressing our appreciation for Mauri Gray's work with the Committee over the past two years.

Mauri came to us as a detailee from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, having worked for nearly six years as an Assistant Federal Public Defender in Puerto Rico , representing indigent clients in federal criminal cases. Prior to starting her career as a public defender, Mauri attended the University of Florida and the University of Georgia School of Law.

At the conclusion of her detail to the Committee, she will be resuming her work, moving to the Federal Defender's office in Phoenix, Arizona.

As counsel to the Committee's Democrats, Mauri provided indispensable analysis and advice concerning oversight hearings and a wide range of proposed legislation, including various child protection bills, legislation to .combat opioid abuse, proposals to fight online sex trafficking, legislation concerning arrest authority of federal law enforcement officers, and bills concerning federal benefits for those with criminal records. Often, her counsel helped Members defeat or improve bills intended to inappropriately expand the scope of federal criminal law or to impose unjust penalties.

As the Committee has engaged in the beginnings of an initiative to reform our criminal justice system, Mauri's experience as a federal defender has informed our legislative efforts. She has helped us examine and prepare legislation to improve our sentencing laws as well as legislation to reform various aspects of federal prisons.

We have appreciated and benefited from Mauri's energy, enthusiasm, and insight over the past two years, during which she became an integral part of our team. We will miss her.

We thank Mauri for her selfless service to the Committee, and we wish her the best as she continues her career.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Music Modernization Act. I am proud to partner with Chairman Goodlatte on this comprehensive bill intended to resolve some longstanding inequities and inefficiencies in the music marketplace. We have achieved consensus on this bill, which passed out of the Judiciary Committee by a remarkable vote of 32-0.

The package includes the original Music Modernization Act, H.R. 4706, introduced by Mr. Collins and Mr. Jeffries, which significantly reforms the process for licensing mechanical reproduction royalties under section 115 of the Copyright Act. It also includes a number of provisions to ensure that songwriters and other music creators receive fair market value for their work.

The package includes the CLASSICS Act, H.R. 3301, introduced by Chairman

Issa and me, to resolve the dispute over payment to legacy artists for pre-1972 works played on digital radio platforms.

For too long, many of our Nation's great cultural icons have been unfairly denied compensation. That is why this measure is supported by the NAACP and more than 300 major artists.

The bill includes the AMP Act, H.R. 831, introduced by Mr. Crowley and Mr. Rooney, to simplify the payment of royalties to producers, mixers, and engineers, recognizing in Federal copyright their important contributions to the creation of music.

Several of these measures were included in the Fair Play Fair Pay Act, H.R. 1836, a bipartisan bill I introduced with Representative Marsha Blackburn, Chairman Issa, and Mr. Deutch, to create a uniform system for sound recordings. They, along with Mr. Collins and Mr. Jeffries, deserve a tremendous amount of credit for getting us to this point.

We are at a unique moment in time where virtually all the industry stakeholders have come together in support of a common music policy agenda. The bill is supported by a broad coalition that includes songwriters and artists, publishers and labels, and internet and digital media companies such as Pandora, Spotify, Google, and Amazon.

I want to thank the members of my staff who worked for years to resolve some very complex and sensitive issues to move this legislation forward: Lisette Morton, Jason Everett, and David Greengrass. This is an historic opportunity to accomplish a great deal that hasn't been done in decades.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to support the Music Modernization Act, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries), the Democratic lead sponsor of the original Music Modernization Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch), one of the Democratic lead sponsors of this bill as well as of the Fair Play Fair Pay Act and the CLASSICS Act.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), the ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Bass).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Ted Lieu).

Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining, please?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Judy Chu).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley), the distinguished Democratic Caucus chair and the lead sponsor of the AMP Act, which is included in this package.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I am heartbroken at the loss of Louise Slaughter, who was a dear friend and a beloved colleague. I first met Louise when she was elected to the New York State Assembly in 1982, and Eliot Engel and Louise Slaughter and I sat next to each other on the Assembly floor. She was only with us in the Assembly for 4 years and then she came here. I trailed her by another 6 years.

She always was a champion of upstate New York, which caused people to do a double take when they heard her southern lilt. She was a champion of so many things before their time. She was a champion for women's rights. She was a passionate leader as co-chair of the Pro-Choice Caucus for many years. She protected the freedom of every woman to live, work, and start a family on her own terms.

She was, as you have heard, the chairman at one point, the leading Democrat on the House Rules Committee. She was tough, determined, and compassionate, and she was a fighter. She was a fighter for the vulnerable and those without a voice.

She was a microbiologist before she came into politics. And she left a lasting imprint of that with her Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act when we started to get the ability to deal with the genomics. She understood before anybody else the potentials for good and for bad, and she wrote and eventually got into law the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act so people wouldn't be discriminated against on the basis of their genetic traits.

She wrote the STOCK Act, to prohibit Congress Members from trading on inside knowledge, which not every Member of Congress was thrilled with. But she was more than just her legislative accomplishments. She was a gracious and true friend who brought joy and laughter into every room, and she had a great sense of humor.

When she ran for Congress the first time, she ran against an incumbent who, being in the minority party at that time, was in the habit of voting ``no'' on a lot of things. And she labeled him in the campaign as the ``Abominable No-Man.'' So she had a sense of humor which other people appreciated, and she will long be remembered for her sense of humor, for her decency, her humanity, and her tireless, fearless work for everyone.

The Halls of the Capitol feel diminished without her. And I have realized over the last few weeks how lucky we all were to know her, to work with her, to call her a friend. We will always miss her, and this institution will be diminished by her absence.

Mr. Speaker, like Mr. Westerman, I rise today to recognize the heroic actions taken by 384th Bomb Group ball turret gunner Jack Coleman Cook of Hot Springs, Arkansas, during a World War II mission.

Selflessly, Sergeant Cook gave his life to save the life of his fellow airmen, including my constituent, First Lieutenant Edward Field, a veteran and poet from Brooklyn, New York. On February 3, 1945, in a bombing mission over Berlin, Sergeant Cook showed us what true heroism looks like.

After their B-17 bomber crashed into the North Sea, the crewmembers were forced to inflate two life rafts. Unfortunately, only one raft was able to fully inflate, leaving two men, Lieutenant Field and another crewmember, in the frigid water.

After they had spent about 30 minutes in the water, Sergeant Cook gave up his spot in the raft for Lieutenant Field, who had become numb. Sergeant Cook then swam in the freezing water to the other raft, which was only partially inflated. Unfortunately, he died before a British vessel could come and rescue them.

In his poem, ``World War II,'' Lieutenant Field honored the incredible sacrifice made by Sergeant Cook, recognizing that his survival is entwined with the spirit born from another hero's sacrifice.

It is my distinct honor today to commemorate the American heroes who bravely served our country, in this case, Sergeant Jack Coleman Cook and First Lieutenant Edward Field.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the proposed balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Specifically, the resolution prohibits total outlays from exceeding total receipts for each fiscal year unless a three-fifths supermajority of the whole membership of each House of Congress votes to override the prohibition. The resolution also requires a three-fifths supermajority of each House in order to raise the Federal debt limit.

There are only two conclusions one can reach about this legislation. Either it is fundamentally unserious--a facade designed to pretend that Republicans, on the heels of a massive Republican tax giveaway to corporations and the very rich that will increase the deficit by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade, have a shred of credibility when it comes to claims of fiscal responsibility; or it is deadly serious--the first step toward their ultimate goal of slashing Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, and other critical elements of the social safety net--because you cannot have these enormous tax cuts and balance the budget without slashing spending programs that most Americans depend on.

Understand the context in which we are considering this legislation. White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney recently admitted that the Republican tax windfall for the rich would cost the Federal Government $1.8 trillion in revenue over the next decade.

In the wake of their budget-busting tax scam, House Republicans have the nerve to now seek to have us vote on this balanced budget amendment because they want to maintain the illusion that they care about fiscal responsibility. This is the height of hypocrisy.

But if we assume that Republicans actually intend to pass this legislation, we should recognize the catastrophic consequences it would have on senior citizens or the disabled and on low-income people. That is because it would require radical spending cuts to achieve balance, with the principal targets being social safety net programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid that millions of Americans depend on.

I want to commend Mr. Goodlatte for his honesty. He has spent part of his speech talking about how we have to cut entitlements.

What are the chief entitlements? Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

He talks about the lower percentage of expenditures that went for entitlement programs years ago before Medicare and Medicaid were enacted. Of course, we spend more on entitlements now that we have Medicare and Medicaid.

But what is really causing deficits is not Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. It is the Republican tax cuts. In the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was elected, the total Federal national debt from George Washington through Jimmy Carter was under $800 billion. Then we had the Reagan tax cuts, and when George Bush left office 12 years later, the national debt had skyrocketed from $800 billion to $4.3 trillion. Then we had President Clinton, a Democratic Congress, and Newt Gingrich, who deserves some credit for it too, and we had 3 years of balanced budgets in the late 1990s. In 2000, the projection was for $5.65 trillion Federal surplus over the next 10 years.

Alan Greenspan, testifying in favor of the Bush tax cuts, said that we have to pass these tax cuts because otherwise we will totally pay off the national debt, and that is a bad thing for various reasons. So we passed the Bush tax cuts--the Republicans did--and between that and funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars without a tax increase off the credit card, we greatly increased the national debt again.

So the Democrats have come in and cleaned up the messes that Republicans have left on the national debt by their huge tax cuts for the rich, and now they tell us we can't afford Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid because we must keep these tax cuts for the rich going.

This legislation would also undermine the Federal Government's ability to respond to an economic crisis. When the Nation's economy weakens, incomes of individuals and businesses decrease because of job and business losses because of unemployment increasing, which in turn automatically results in reduced tax revenues.

Meanwhile, spending on programs like unemployment insurance benefits and food stamps automatically increases as more people lack jobs and rely on unemployment benefits and food stamps to stay afloat. These programs also help overcome a downward spiral in the economy as they help stabilize the decline in consumer purchasing power and prevent a recession from turning into a depression.

But by requiring a balanced budget, this constitutional amendment would effectively prohibit the government from drawing on these critical stabilizers.

Although the resolution allows Congress to override the amendment's balanced budget mandate, it requires a nearly insurmountable three- fifths supermajority of the entire membership of the House in both Houses. By the time Congress could react to an economic crisis, it would have greatly delayed the stimulating effect of the stabilizers. This legislation would almost guarantee that a recession would become a depression. Meanwhile, millions of Americans who depend on these vital programs for food, shelter, and rent would go without assistance.

In addition to making it harder to avoid an economic crisis, this resolution could actually help to precipitate one. By requiring a three-fifths supermajority vote of each House of Congress to raise the debt limit, H.J. Res. 2 increases the probability that the government will default on its obligations and cause the Nation to spiral into a financial and economic crisis.

Beyond its devastating economic and social consequences, this resolution is also anti-democratic. To the extent that it requires a supermajority to undertake certain steps, such as waiving the balanced budget requirement or raising the debt limit, it shifts power away from the elected Representatives of a majority of the American people to a determined minority that can thwart the majority's will.

Moreover, this bill inappropriately seeks to enshrine into the Constitution one particular economic view that would bind future generations and future Congresses that they elect.

Whatever anyone may think about economic policy and government financing, those kinds of policies should be enacted as legislation that can be modified, amended, or repealed by future majorities, not enshrined in the Constitution to bind future generations to the opinions of this generation. That is fundamentally undemocratic and tyrannical.

Finally, this resolution suffers from a fundamental flaw to its construction. There is no enforcement mechanism, and it is not clear what would happen if Congress ignored it and passed an unbalanced budget without the required supermajority. Presumably, it would somehow be resolved in the Federal courts. We would see judges ordering tax increases, or cuts in Social Security, or revising the transportation budget, you name it, without any legislative guidance, and on what basis they would make such decisions is anyone's guess.

We should not have judges determining inherently political questions regarding budgetary decisions, upending the principle of separation of powers and generating massive litigation over questions ranging from who has the standing to sue, to what remedies a court can impose if it found a violation.

This legislation is ill-conceived and deeply problematic. As I stated earlier, this resolution is either a farce--just for show and a few well-timed press releases--or it is a Trojan horse--an innocuous looking resolution that is really designed to enable the long-held Republican dream of dismantling Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid,

a goal they could never achieve politically but might achieve with a constitutional amendment on the balanced budget. Either way, this resolution is not worthy of this House.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose H.J. Res. 2, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries).

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Brendan F. Boyle).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Torres).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations and a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Judy Chu).

Mr. Speaker, I would note that most households do not balance their budgets. They borrow to buy the car, they borrow for the mortgage, and if they didn't do that, they wouldn't have a car or a mortgage.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel), the distinguished ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Watson Coleman).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. Speaker, as we speak, thousands of young people from across the country are gathered outside to protest gun violence and to ask, to beseech, to demand that we take action.

Mr. Speaker, we know what to do. We know that we ought to amend the law to provide effective background checks before people can purchase guns--not just background checks when you purchase from a licensed dealer, but background checks when you purchase a gun anyplace.

We know that we ought to eliminate the 3-day limits so that, if they don't finish the background check within 3 days, you can't get your gun.

We know that we should renew the assault weapons ban that was in effect from 1994 to 2004 so you can't buy military killing machines in this country for civilian use.

We know we ought to ban the high-capacity magazines that can convert guns into killing machines for large numbers of people that have no other purpose. You don't hunt a deer with a high-capacity magazine.

We know we ought to ban bump stocks, and we know the other things we ought to do.

But we are, too many of us, cowards. We quell before the National Rifle Association.

We know the fact is that it is guns in the hands of people that kill people. Compared to every other country in the world, every other industrial country in the world, we stand out like a sore thumb.

If you look at other statistics, this country--Great Britain, 75 people killed by guns in a year; another country, 142. No country is in more than three digits except the United States at 33,000.

They tell it is mental health. The American people do not have mental health rates or lack of mental health 1,000 times or 10 times or 20 times or 40 times more than people in Western Europe or Japan or Australia. You cannot explain a difference of 75 or 150 to 33,000 by mental health.

They tell us we should arm teachers, but we know that trained police officers hit their targets about a third of the time when they fire a gun and, in a gunfight, when the adrenaline is running, 13 percent. If we arm the teachers, we will have more teachers and more students killed.

We have a President who has shown cowardice. He criticized Senator Toomey for being afraid of the NRA, and then he, after meeting with the NRA, backed down on everything he said he would do.

Mr. Speaker, as I said, we know what to do. We are the only country in the world with the kind of gun murder rates that we have.

The Republicans have opposed all the measures that we ought to take, but the Republicans have a choice. They can continue to be complicit in their repeated slaughter in our schools, in our churches, in our concert halls, and in our streets by continuing their cowardly subservience to the NRA, or they can act to protect us and our children. They know how to do it. They cannot have it both ways. Let's see what they do.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 4909, the STOP School Violence Act, as amended. But I do so with serious concerns about some of its provisions, and mostly about what the bill fails to do.

H.R. 4909 would authorize $50 million annually for grants administered by the Department of Justice to fund various training and other initiatives intended to enhance school safety. It would authorize another $25 million annually to be used for other related purposes, including physical improvements, such as metal detectors, better locks, and systems for schools to notify law enforcement of emergencies.

The bill is fine as far as it goes, and we should certainly do more to make our schools safer, but it is shameful that we must do so because of our failure to reduce the threat of gun violence to children.

It should be unacceptable to all of us that we must take steps to train staff and students to protect themselves against these types of incidents instead of spending more money on actually educating our young people.

This bill does not include any provisions to strengthen our gun laws or to help keep guns out of the hands of those who should not possess them.

Evidence and experience tell us that we must establish universal background checks instead of the flawed system we now have.

We should encourage States to adopt laws providing for extreme risk protection orders, and we must ban assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines. These steps would help prevent not only school shootings, but would reduce the daily toll of gun violence in our communities.

None of these critical provisions are included in this bill, which was never examined by the Judiciary Committee either through a hearing or a legislative markup session. Had we taken these steps, which we could have done quickly in the exactly 1 month since the tragic Parkland, Florida, shooting, we might have produced a much better bill for floor consideration.

The suspension version of the bill does include an explicit prohibition against the funds being used on firearms or firearms training. Because President Trump and others in the administration have indicated that they believe arming teachers is part of the solution to this problem, it was important to my colleagues and to me that we be assured that this program, at least, will not be used for such a purpose which would actually endanger students, not make them safer.

However, we should have addressed serious concerns that have come to our attention with respect to the anonymous tip reporting systems and threat assessment and intervention teams that would be funded by this bill. We want people to report information about someone who may present a danger to students, but the bill does not include requirements that these systems provide adequate due process protections for students against whom a report is made.

I have longstanding concerns about the increased use of law enforcement in schools. History tells us that, without proper training, use of such policies can have a disproportionate impact on students of color and students with disabilities.

In the decades since Columbine, when the Nation rushed to increase school-based law enforcement efforts, thousands of vulnerable students have entered the school-to-prison pipeline for conduct that should be treated as routine behavior violations.

I fear, therefore, that efforts to increase school-based law enforcement without guardrails to ensure it is done well and based on strong evidence may repeat the risks of the past. My concern is only heightened by the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to remove important tools to ensure States and school districts understand their civil rights obligations when disciplining students.

I urge Secretary DeVos and Attorney General Sessions to maintain current discipline and school resource officer guidance to ensure implementation of this bill does not exacerbate the school-to-prison pipeline.

We should have had the opportunity to address these important issues through consideration in committee, but we did not.

Like the sponsors of this bill, I want Congress to do more to make our schools safer. Therefore, I will support this bill today, not withstanding the serious concerns I have outlined, with the hope that we will address these concerns going forward.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Schneider).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. Esty).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Deutch), who is a sponsor of this legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), the ranking member of the Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from Texas an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

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

Mr. Speaker, today, young people across the country are taking a stand and calling upon this Congress to do something about the scourge of gun violence that has terrorized our schools and streets for too long. This bill fails to do so, and it should not and cannot be our only response to these demands.

We must make schools safer. But the best way to do that is to do more to prevent gun violence from occurring in the first place. Congress must do more to stop gun violence. Congress should pass an assault weapons ban. Congress should pass an effective background check. Congress should ban high-capacity magazines.

Congress should do a lot more. It is not enough to say that staff and students must do more to protect themselves. Mr. Speaker, it is time to take decisive action to stop gun violence in our communities.

You are faced with a simple choice, Mr. Speaker: Will you stand with these young people who are demanding action or will you stand with the NRA and be complicit in the continuing violence in our schools and in our streets?

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may hereafter be considered to be the first sponsor of H. Con. Res. 79, a bill originally introduced by Representative Conyers of Michigan, for the purposes of adding cosponsors and requesting reprintings pursuant to clause 7 of rule XII.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize an exceptional young Australian who is currently interning in my Washington D.C. office. Kristy Baxter came to our office as part of the Uni-Capitol Washington Internship Programme (UCWIP) and has been a valuable contributor to our efforts on behalf of New York's Tenth Congressional District.

UCWIP has worked with congressional offices to foster strong ties and understanding between the United States and Australian governments by bringing the best and the brightest from top Australian universities to intern on Capitol Hill. I am proud to have personally hosted 14 Australians since 2003--each bringing their own unique outlooks on policy and desire to contribute.

Kristy, a student from Deakin University, studying a Bachelor of International Studies, has interned in our office since January and has quickly proved herself to be a highly valuable member of our team. Over the past weeks, it has been a pleasure to see her swiftly develop into an increasingly confident and pro-active individual. Her innate curiosity to learn, matched with her willingness to work hard, saw her tasked with researching Medicare and the healthcare industry, tax havens and financial secrecy as well as attending foreign affairs briefings on difficulties with post-conflict transition in Colombia and the involvement of the U.S. intelligence community in Sudan. Kristy is an exceptionally calm and affable presence in the office and encounters everyone she meets with respect. Through

hard work, dedication and ability to learn from those around her, Kristy became a tremendous asset to our office and the Tenth Congressional District.

My team has learned a great deal about the current political situation in Australia as Kristy's fascination with America continues to grow. She is an absolute pleasure to have in the office and I offer her my thanks for a job well done. I wish her the best of luck in all of her future endeavors.

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

Mr. Chair, before we discuss the bill before us today, I want to address the horrible school shooting in Florida yesterday.

We mourn the deaths of those shot and killed, and we support those who were injured and the families of the victims. But we must also do more to prevent future shootings in our schools and on our streets.

There have been 18 school shootings in this country so far this year, and it is only February. According to a Washington Post analysis, over the last 19 years, more than 150,000 students attending at least 170 primary and secondary schools have experienced a shooting on campus. That does not include violence outside of the classroom.

We cannot allow this to continue. It is long past due for the House to consider legislation on this floor to help prevent gun violence. Our calls for hearings and for action on gun violence prevention legislation have been met

with silence. Congress did nothing after Columbine 20 years ago, and nothing after Sandy Hook 5 years ago. Inaction is unacceptable. Moments of silence are completely inadequate. Our citizens demand that we act without delay.

Mr. Chairman, H.R. 620, the so-called ADA Education and Reform Act of 2017, would undermine the civil rights of Americans with disabilities by significantly weakening the key enforcement tool of the ADA Act of 1990, which is the filing of private lawsuits by discrimination victims.

Congress passed the ADA 28 years ago with the goals of fully integrating persons with disabilities into the mainstream of American life and counteracting discriminatory social attitudes toward the disabled. By making it harder for persons facing such discrimination to vindicate their rights in court, this bill ultimately undermines those goals.

H.R. 620 would, among other things, institute a pre-suit notice and cure regime under the title III of the ADA, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in public accommodations, like hotels, restaurants, private schools, and healthcare providers.

Specifically, the bill would prohibit a disability discrimination victim from filing a lawsuit to enforce his or her rights under title III unless the victim first notifies a business of a title III violation. The victim must then wait up to 180 days to allow the business either to comply with the law or simply to make some undefined level of substantial progress--whatever that means--toward complying with the law.

No Federal civil rights statute imposes such onerous requirements on discrimination victims before they can have the opportunity to enforce their rights in court. Both individually and cumulatively, this bill's notice and cure provisions will have the effect of inappropriately shifting the burden of compliance with the Federal civil rights statute from the alleged wrongdoer onto the discrimination victim and perversely incentivizing businesses not to comply voluntarily with the

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Lewis).

Mr. Chair, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Delaware (Ms. Blunt Rochester).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the minority whip and one of the original authors of the ADA in 1990.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute.

Mr. Chairman, 28 years after the ADA's passage, too many businesses remain inaccessible to persons with disabilities. The last thing Congress should be doing is undermining the civil rights of a discrete and insular minority group by making it virtually impossible to enforce their rights in court.

That is why more than 230 disability rights groups, civil rights groups, labor unions, and veterans organizations strongly oppose H.R. 620, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the AARP, the NAACP, Human Rights Campaign, the AFL-CIO, AFSCME, the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the Paralyzed Veterans of America, the United Spinal Association, the National Federation of the Blind, and the National Disability Rights Network. I urge the House to abide by these groups' concerns with H.R. 620 and reject this deeply problematic legislation.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).

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