Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, let me thank the gentlewoman for yielding. I certainly appreciate it. And I want to thank her for taking up this important issue of trade agreements, trade generally and trade promotion authority.

I just want to say that Minnesota has had its experience with trade agreements. According to policy experts, if you look at the North American Free Trade Agreement, which lifted tariffs and other trade barriers between North American countries, it has led to the outsourcing of over 30,000 Minnesota jobs. It also did bring in some jobs; but the net outcome, after you take the lost jobs and the gained jobs together, is a loss of 13,700 jobs.

So the thing is that some people say, well, trade will help. It will help some people. But when you look at everybody, it has not been a job gainer for us, as it was promised to be. And I think that is very important.

I am glad that Congressman Ryan and you and others have been speaking in a local framework. I am glad to hear about New York and Ohio.

I can just tell you from my own State of Minnesota, we are not afraid of trade. We believe we have got the best workers in the world and we can compete with anybody, but only on the basis of a fair trade. We believe we can compete, we can make great products, but when other countries are dumping, when they are manipulating their currency, when all types of crazy things are happening like that, then we are not talking about fair trade. We are talking about free trade, and free trade is free-for-all trade, and free-for-all is not going to be good.

I can assure you that when the trade deal comes that really does support labor standards and environmental standards in the right way, I won't be standing against it. But until then, I have to stand against it.

I just also want to say that there has been a lot of talk recently because of this Trans-Pacific Partnership, this deal that has been negotiated over the last several months, and there is a lot of concern about it. But before people get really worried about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is the new trade deal, the new NAFTA, I think they ought to worry about something called Fast Track or Trade Promotion Authority, because here is the thing.

Whether you like these trade deals or you don't like them, I doubt that you believe that they are perfect as they come out of the hands of the U.S. Trade Representative and all these other countries. I doubt you believe that they couldn't benefit from any negotiation or any amendment, because around here, we have never seen a perfect piece of legislation. Even the best can be improved. Yet, if we grant Trade Promotion Authority, we will only have an up-or-down vote. We will literally abandon our national sovereignty to other countries who will be able to sue American companies for lost profits.

I don't mind dealing in an American court, but I do have a problem being in an international court just because we want to ban smoking, just because we want better environmental regulation, just because we want to take care of our people. We may then be sued for lost profits by some foreign company.

Of course, one of the problems is that we don't know what the Trans- Pacific Partnership really is. People have seen pieces of it here and there, but we don't know because it has been negotiated in secret. And my constituents say, Well, Keith, you send me--Congressman, you send me a copy of that Trans-Pacific Partnership. I want to know what it says.

And I say, Mr. Constituent, I can't send it to you because I don't have it. They haven't let me see it, not in its entirety. They send you pieces of it. You can look at this chapter or that chapter, but you can't look at the whole thing.

So they are going to basically, after they get their Trade Promotion Authority, they are going to give us a few weeks to basically look it over, and then we can only vote it up or down.

Let me thank the gentlewoman.

Again, I just want to point out that President Obama correctly said that income inequality is the defining issue of our time. I think he was right when he said that.

When you look at why do we have the flat and declining wages that the Congressman from New York, Paul Tonko, just mentioned and that you have mentioned--why? What are the components of this?--I can tell you that it is clear that we have not invested in public infrastructure, which would put people to work and improve productivity. It is clear that we have cut the taxes of the wealthiest and the most privileged people in our society, and, literally, we have added them onto people in the middle, and we have failed to educate people properly. Yet one of the components that we can never forget is this trade policy. You cannot intelligently claim that you want to do something about income inequality and pass these trade deals which ship jobs overseas and put downward pressure on wages here.

This is a key part of how we get the American middle and working classes back to getting raises again.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Congressman Paulsen, I appreciate your holding down this Special Order tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is absolutely true that all of us owe a debt of gratitude to people who walked before us even if we never had the pleasure of knowing them and meeting them.

I am one who believes I owe Bill Frenzel even though I never had the opportunity to get to know him. But it doesn't matter, because Bill Frenzel served the people of the State of Minnesota. He got up every day, and he did his best by them. He has a reputation for reading the bills, understanding the issues, and arguing with passion for values that he held in the best interests of the people whom he represented. For that, I always have to take my hat off to a man such as Bill Frenzel.

Bill Frenzel made a good reputation for Members of Congress who would come to Minnesota before I ever got here. Before I ever got here, people like Bill Frenzel made it so that our colleagues would greet us and expect us to be thoughtful and hardworking like he was, because he laid down that path before we ever got here. So I have had the pleasure of reading about Bill Frenzel since he left us for his reward, and I knew well of him before that.

But I will simply say that there are many people in this world whom we owe a great debt of gratitude to, who paved the way and carved a path for us, whom we never had a chance to thank personally. As a man who believes in reality beyond this one, I just hope that Bill Frenzel knows that I am grateful to him, and I thank him for his great service while here.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose The Insurance Capital Standards Clarification Act of 2014 (H.R. 5461). While I support efforts to provide flexibility under the Dodd-Frank Act's Collins amendment by explicitly stating that regulators are not required to apply minimum leverage capital and risk-based capital requirements to firms with state-regulated insurance operations, this bill does more than that. It contains The Mortgage Choice Act of 2013, (H.R. 3211).

Mr. Speaker, as I stated during the hearing and the mark up on The Mortgage Choice Act of 2013 (H.R. 3211), there are serious concerns about steering consumers into buying title insurance with hidden commissions and inflated costs.

I bought two homes in my life. Like most homebuyers, I was asked to sign a bunch of papers with lots of fees such as origination charges, appraisal fees, scoring fees, recording charges, tax service fee and title insurance. Like most consumers, I chose my title insurance provider based on referral: I did not comparison shop.

For most of us, title insurance is the most expensive of the closing cost fees--sometimes running in the thousands of dollars. These fees are poorly understood by homebuyers. This can lead to paying higher fees than is necessary or appropriate.

When Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, we required the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to do a better job at protecting consumers when buying a home.

We know that the housing finance system had too much predatory and discriminatory lending. African Americans and Latinos were frequently charged much higher interest rates than they qualified for. Homeowners were refinanced into high fee and interest rates they could not afford. The result was more than five million foreclosures and a colossal loss of wealth.

In response to the new law, the CFPB wrote rules to protect people buying homes from products which would strip their wealth. One of those rules defined a Qualified Mortgage (QM) standard which was established in Dodd-Frank. As part of that QM standard, the CFPB established a ``points and fees'' bright line limit for mortgages that qualified under the Ability to Repay provision.

The CFPB established a limit on ``points and fees''--which account for a loan's origination costs--that exceed 3 percent of the loan amount--although it can be up to 8 percent for lower cost homes. Because of concerns that the affiliated title insurance system was leading to higher costs for borrowers in a market based on reverse competition, the CFPB wisely chose to require title insurance charges from affiliated title agents be within the points and fees cap.

H.R. 3211 reverses the CFPB's decision.

By excluding affiliated title insurance firms from within the points and fees cap, H.R. 3211 restores an incentive to overcharge homebuyers.

We know how hard it is to get people into homes. Homebuyers need to save thousands of dollars for a downpayment. So why should we make it easier to let them get overcharged as much as a thousand or more dollars on title insurance? Some say that as much as half or more of a title insurance premium goes to the referral agent. Why would we want to preserve this practice of overpricing title insurance to fund referral commissions?

At the Financial Services hearing that included this bill, I requested that we hear from

independent land title agents as well as from groups like the Consumer Federation of America, the Center for Responsible Lending, Americans for Financial Reform and its 100 affiliates and the AFL-CIO.

I requested that the National Association of Independent Land Title Agents be invited to testify. I have heard concerns directly from title agents in my state that some referral sources ask to share ownership of their business. Since title insurance is based on referrals, when realtors, homebuilders and mortgage brokers refuse to provide referrals to a title agent firm, the firm may not be able to survive financially. Unfortunately, these independent unaffiliated title agents were not invited to testify nor was there another hearing on the bill.

Many organizations opposed the bill including the AFL-CIO, Alliance for a Just Society, Americans for Financial Reform, Center for Economic Justice, Center for Responsible Lending, Connecticut Fair Housing Center, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Empire Justice Center, Home Defenders League, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, NAACP, National Association of Consumer Advocates, National Association of Independent Land Title Agents, National Consumer Law Center (on behalf of its low income clients), National Council of La Raza, National Fair Housing Alliance, New Economic Project, Public Citizen, Woodstock Institute and Center for Responsible Lending.

These concerns about hidden referral commissions are not hypothetical. Last month, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) fined RealtySouth, the largest real estate firm in Alabama for violations of the Real Estate Settlement and Practices Act (RESPA). RealtySouth improperly steered consumers to its affiliated firm, TitleSouth LLC. In addition, The CFPB has taken action against Borders & Borders PLC in Kentucky for funneling kickbacks to shell companies. In June, the CFPB fined Stonebridge Title Services in New Jersey for paying illegal kickbacks to referral sources.

Some who support H.R. 3211 say there are some fixed costs in lending that could result in lower valued mortgages to need to pay loans higher than the Qualified Mortgage guideline of points and fees established by smaller loans. However, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau already provided for flexible definitions based upon the amount of a borrower's mortgage:

3 percentage cap on a loan balance at $100,000 or greater, 5 percentage cap on a loan balance from $20,000.00 to $60,000, or 8 percentage cap on loan balances of less than $12,500.

Since the average mortgage origination fees are below one percent according to the Center for Responsible Lending, the caps set by the QM are appropriate. I have not seen any compelling evidence that shows that lenders will not make loans if the title premiums charged by their affiliates are included in the points and fees cap. Lenders are free to make loans outside the ability to repay rules as well.

I have also heard the proponents of H.R. 3211 arguing that the availability of affiliate service providers helps reduce the overall cost of obtaining a mortgage loan. I question their evidence. The 2010 Harris Interactive study paid by the National Association of Realtors is suspect. In that study, more than 70% of buyers ``did not know'' what an affiliate service provider provided or what benefit it allegedly gave.

By contrast, in 2013, The National Association of Independent Land Title Agents (NAILTA) commissioned the first-ever national settlement preference survey of American real estate consumers. More than 900 consumers participated in the nationwide survey. The results include:

93% of American real estate consumers surveyed said it was important that title insurance agents remain a neutral third party in the performance of title insurance-related services.

62% of American real estate consumers surveyed said that a title agency cannot remain objective if it is partially owned by a bank, real estate firm, mortgage company or homebuilder.

Only 1% of American real estate consumers surveyed prefer a ``one stop shop''.

For all the efficiencies that proponents assert existed prior to this new rule that provided a disincentive to refer homebuyers to controlled/affiliated title firms, settlement costs--exclusive of inflation--continue to rise. I believe the CFPB's rule could actually lower title insurance premiums and increase homeownership for Americans.

I have concerns about a market where people assert that half or more the cost of the product is a referral fee unlinked to the product itself Consumers and independent title insurance agents say that title insurance premiums can provide remuneration to the referral source based on the capture rate such as lower desk rental fees, bonuses, gifts or higher commissions. This should not be permitted.

I urge members to stand with homebuyers who want to understand all the fees they are charged.

I urge members to support a market free of pressures for referral commissions.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose The Promoting Job Creation and Reducing Small Business Burdens Act, (H.R. 5405). This bill contains 11 separate bills some of which I support and some I oppose. This legislation contains a number of potentially significant deregulatory measures, many of which are being addressed by regulatory action by the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodities Futures Trading Commission. These bills stop those productive efforts replacing them with sweeping deregulation which I think is worse for investors and the economy.

I specifically wish to draw attention to my concerns with The Small Company Disclosure Simplification Act (H.R. 4164)--Title VII of this bill. This bill would exempt nearly 60 percent of public companies from complying with the EXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) requirement. XBRL is an improvement the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) started in 2009 to enable more efficient investing, especially investing in smaller firms. Instead of investors, the public and regulators

reading and analyzing reams of paper filings, the market would be brought into the 21st Century with a searchable electronic database. Clearly, a searchable electronic database on companies' financial statements is much more efficient than requiring investors read reams and reams of documents.

When this bill came before the Financial Services Committee on March 14, 2014, I voted yes on this bill. I was concerned that the SEC was not paying adequate attention to ensure the accuracy of the XBRL database. Since that vote, the SEC has started enforcing the accuracy of the XBRL data format. The SEC sent out letters in July, 2014, to many firms urging they correct inaccurate reporting. The SEC action and my own research into the need for accessible corporate financial information to grow companies has made me oppose this broad exemption.

Congress should encourage, not discourage the move toward data-based financial reporting. An expansion of structured data enable investors to make better and faster decisions, especially related to smaller firms; strengthens the SEC's oversight ability and makes it easier to discover fraud and simplifies compliance responsibilities for firms.

More progress is still needed at the SEC. The agency still collects the same financial statement from each public company twice--once as a document and again as XBRL data. And last July's letters were only a start. To make disclosures more useful to investors and less burdensome to companies, the agency must continue to improve data quality and must combine the two submissions into one. The Small Company Disclosure Simplification Act would prevent the SEC from ever taking these steps. If the agency is legally required to collect only documents, not XBRL data, from a majority of public companies, it will be unable to continue, and complete, the transformation that it began in 2009.

I submit a blog post from the Data Transparency Coalition detailing the ramifications of H.R. 5405 on data transparency.

[From http://datacoalition.blogspot.com/2014/09/new-proposal-includes- xbrl-exemption.html]

New Proposal Includes XBRL Exemption--and Major Setback for Open Data

(Data Transparency Coalition; September 10, 2014)

The Data Transparency Coalition advocates on behalf of the

private sector and the public interest for the publication of

government information as standardized, machine-readable

data.

UPDATE: On September 16, 2014, H.R. 5405 passed the House of

Representatives by a vote of 320 to 102.

A major setback for open government data may be on the

agenda for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Despite the opposition of the tech industry, Rep Robert

Hurt's proposal to direct the Securities and Exchange

Commission (SEC) to stop collecting financial data from most

public companies has been included as part of a new

legislative package--a new bill introduced on Monday, Sept.

8, by Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick and a number of other Republican

members.

The new bill, H.R. 5405, brings together ten previous bills

into a single one. One of those ten is Rep. Hurt's previous

proposal, included in the new bill verbatim. Judging from the

urgency of the current House schedule, H.R. 5405 could see

action by the House of Representatives as early as next week.

Nine out of the ten bills included in H.R. 5405 have

already been approved, as stand-alone bills, by bipartisan

majorities in either the Financial Services Committee or the

full House. (The Financial Services Committee passed Rep.

Hurt's original bill in March 2014.) So it seems clear that

the backers of H.R. 5405 want to craft a bill that will pass

the House easily, without serious opposition.

H.R. 5405's introduction conveys that the bill is non-

controversial by stating three innocuous purposes:

To make technical corrections to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street

Reform and Consumer Protection Act, to enhance the ability of

small and emerging growth companies to access capital through

public and private markets, to reduce regulatory burdens . .

.

But H.R. 5405, if approved by the House, introduced and

passed in the Senate, and signed into law by President Obama,

will dramatically restrict the availability of searchable

corporate financial data to investors--and to the tech

companies building investment tools.

Supporters of open data in financial regulatory reporting

will remember that the SEC collects an open data version of

each financial statement in the eXtensible Business Reporting

Language (XBRL) structured data format, alongside the old-

fashioned plain-text version, from every public company

registered in the United States. Investors, markets, and the

public can use the XBRL version of each financial statement

to create a fully searchable data set of all U.S. public

company databases. XBRL data supports free tools for

investors like RankandFiled.com. It is also used by

infomediaries like Morningstar and Thomson Reuters to enrich

the information they deliver to paying clients.

Rep. Hurt's proposal, now incorporated into H.R. 5405,

would direct the SEC to exempt all public companies with

revenues below $250 million--a majority of public companies--

from the obligation to file an open data version. Supporters

of the exemption claim that XBRL-formatted financial

statements cost ``tens of thousands of dollars'' to create,

but Financial Executive International found a median annual

cost of $2,000 for small companies (page 19) and some

providers offer XBRL preparation services at even lower

prices.

Supporters of the exemption had one valid point last

spring: at that time, the SEC had not taken any steps to

ensure the quality of the XBRL filings. Without assurance

that the open data versions of financial statements were

reliable, investors were reluctant to use them, and relied on

the plain-text versions instead. But last summer, after a

year of advocacy from open data allies in Congress, the SEC

took its first public steps toward enforcing better data

quality. As quality improves, investors and the tech

companies serving them will make more use of the open data

financial statements.

The companies themselves will benefit, too. Open,

structured data delivers information more efficiently to the

markets, which makes it easier for smaller companies to find

eager investors and brings down their capital costs.

H.R. 5405 would cut off such progress by forcing the SEC to

use documents, not open data, to collect corporate financial

information.

Fans of open data should make their opposition to this

portion of H.R. 5405 known.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Ai-jen Poo to congratulate her on the 2014 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. MacArthur ``Genius'' Fellows show extraordinary dedication and originality in their field, as well as exceptional promise for continuing their creative pursuits in the future. Ms. Poo demonstrated these qualities through her successful organization of domestic workers on a national and international level. She has created better working conditions for women who are often exploited, by establishing fair labor standards which were originally nonexistent.

Ms. Poo started organizing immigrant women workers in 1996. In 2000, she co-founded Domestic Workers United, the organization that has successfully advocated for passage of the state of New York's Domestic Workers' Bill of Rights in 2010. Currently, Ms. Poo is the Executive Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), which arose from the first national domestic workers convention in 2007 that she helped plan. NDWA is a leading organization in building fair labor standards for the 2.5 million domestic workers in the U.S. Recently, Poo was instrumental in the Department of Labor's decision to include caregivers for the elderly and disabled in federal minimum wage and overtime protections.

Ms. Poo is also Co-Director of Caring Across Generations, a campaign that brings together caregivers and the employers into an alliance that supports immigration reform, health care, and labor policies. This confluence of interest results in better labor conditions, and greater quality care for America's aging population.

Aside from being a 2014 MacArthur Foundation fellow, Ms. Poo was previously recognized with numerous other accolades including the World Economic Forum Young Global Leader award in 2013, and the Ms. Foundation Woman of Vision Award. In 2012, she was named one of TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Ms. Poo has exhibited outstanding devotion to a cause that continues to improve countless lives. I appreciate all that she has done to serve our nation, and I congratulate her for her achievement. She is more than deserving of this honor.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Best Buy's extraordinary commitment to electronics recycling, and their leadership in zero-waste initiatives in the retail industry.

Starting with a goal of recycling one billion pounds of electronics by the end of 2014, Best Buy opened collection points for e-waste at all of its 1,300 retail locations through the United States. Through aggressive awareness and marketing campaigns, they increased collections by 20 percent to nearly 100 million pounds in 2012. Every minute they are open, the company collects more than 400 pounds of electronics waste, without regard to the product's initial retailer. As of September 12, 2014 Best Buy has recycled over 966 million pounds of electronics.

I applaud Best Buy's dedication to electronics recycling. Their recycling strategies should serve as a model to other major retailers. On behalf of the residents of the Fifth Congressional District, I commend Best Buy for their commitment to our environment; their e-waste collection sets the bar for other companies and goes beyond any level mandated by government.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney).

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Madam Speaker, I agree with the last speaker, Mr. Dent, that this is a very difficult vote, and I think everybody should approach it with a tremendous amount of trepidation and concern. I am sure that all of us are doing the best we can to come to the very best decision we can on behalf of our constituents.

Today, I plan on voting for the measure. The reason is that the civil war in

Syria has claimed thousands of lives. Thousands more are now living under the deadly rule of ISIL, and 200,000 Syrians have been killed so far as the world, for 4 years, has not done much to protect them.

Now, the fight in Syria and Iraq can, ultimately, only be solved politically, and I believe that the growing humanitarian crisis caused by conflicts in the region warrants an urgent response from the United States. Any military action against ISIL must be led by Iraqis and Syrians. I believe U.S. troops would be a magnet for a group like ISIL, and therefore this fight must be carried forth by the people most affected--Syrians and Iraqis themselves. I believe that a vetted and better armed, moderate rebel group in Syria can fight ISIL in northeast Syria when an Iraqi Army, perhaps, can push them out of their country and into Syria. There cannot be a safe haven in Syria for ISIL.

I also want to note that much has been said about the fractured nature or the weakness of the Free Syrian Army, but I would remind people who are participating in this debate that, for 4 years, the Free Syrian Army has withstood the onslaught of the Assad government, Hezbollah, Iran, Russian weapons, ISIS, and Jabhat al-Nusra. For 4 years, these people who were dismissed as nothing but bankers and bakers and not real soldiers have stood their ground and have stood for their country.

For these reasons, I urge a ``yes'' vote.

I thank the gentlewoman.

Mr. Speaker, no Member of Congress is ever going to come down to the floor and tell you, ``This bill that I'm offering is going to cut jobs, empower the most powerful, and weaken people who are already in precarious economic circumstances.''

Nobody is going to come and offer you the anti-jobs bill. It is not just going to happen. Every Member who comes down here is going to proclaim, ``Jobs, jobs, jobs and, if you do this right now, jobs''-- chicken in every pot kind of talk--but we have a certain way that we do things here, and that is what the suspension calendar is for, noncontroversial legislation.

It is for things that nobody has a real point of opposing. It is not where you bring forth a bill of complicated derivatives legislation and where Members should offer and debate amendments, and there should be an open rule.

This bill actually combines a whole range of very complicated financial information. This is the kind of bill that people decry and why they are angry with Washington, D.C., when they hear that they are passing all types of bills that have sweeping implications for Americans all over this country and people don't even know about it.

The fact is that there are at least 15 separate pieces of legislation contained in what is being offered as, essentially, a noncontroversial bill. This bill is anything but noncontroversial.

I want to hasten to add, Mr. Speaker, that there might be pieces of legislation contained in this megabill that they are offering that have merit. I am not even saying that it is 100 percent bad. I am simply saying that it is highly controversial and it is extremely complicated.

I happen to remember being on the floor when we debated the Affordable Care Act. My colleagues on the other side made a huge point of saying, ``There are 2,000 pages, and there's five stacks.'' They made this case that there was this big, giant, voluminous bill and people didn't know what was in it and they were going to be called upon to pass this huge bill the public wouldn't really understand. They raised a policy point.

My point to them right now is that if passing a bill that is voluminous and that people don't understand is not a good thing, then don't do it. You can hardly put yourself in the position of doing exactly what you accuse your opponents of doing.

We should be taking these bills one by one and having amendments and debating them. I can tell you there are a number of bills in here that I personally am concerned about.

The Inter-Affiliate Swap Clarification Act is a bill that I believe would diminish the protections to the public of derivatives trading. The Customer Protection End User Relief Act may not have merit, but it is a complicated piece of legislation, and anyone who wants to tune in and watch the debate so they can understand what their Congress is doing ought to be able to do so. We shouldn't just package it up and sweep it through on some big vote.

I am urging a very strong ``no'' vote because the process is all wrong. If these bills have merit, let them stand on their own two feet. Please don't run this thing down our throat in the late evening hours or even in the morning.

Let's deal with these bills in a careful way that this country deserves. Let's say to the American people that this complicated financial legislation deserves debate, rebuttal, and amendment, and we need an open rule to do this thing right. There is no need to rush this thing through.

I just want to end the way that I started, Mr. Speaker. Everybody declares they are for jobs. Everybody says, ``Do what I am asking you to do for jobs.'' That will be the case whether it is some sort of big, giant loophole for a huge oil company who is just going to pocket the money, and it is going to be the case if somebody wants to get rid of health and safety regulations. It is going to be the case in nearly any case that we want to talk about here.

But good legislation stands scrutiny, withstands debate, and certainly wouldn't be afraid of standing on its own, which is exactly what this piece of legislation does not offer.

Mr. Speaker, I urge a very strong ``no'' vote for this complicated bill that involves very, very serious financial legislation that really needs to be handled one bill at a time.

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

Mr. Speaker, the bill we took up before this one, on Father Flanagan, that is the kind of bill that we should be doing on suspension calendar. In fact, the heart of this particular bill is noncontroversial, and I think a lot of people would be looking forward to just voting up the Insurance Capital Standards Clarification Act.

I think a lot of people would like to just get this bill up, pass it, and send it right to the President. We could do that. Unfortunately, this bill, even if it does have bipartisan support, has been loaded up with other bills, and the Senate has indicated that they are not going to take it up.

So, to the gentleman's point from Michigan, we are not just here to pass Senate bills--that is a fair point of view to hold--but it is a matter of pragmatic legislative action. This is the bill we could have passed and could be passed into law and signed by the President. So to pack this bill up even with bipartisan legislation slows it up, which delays good outcomes for people who could have them.

In my opinion, that is unwise and ill-advised, and I am very sorry that the President is not going to get the Insurance Capital Standards Clarification Act on his desk because he certainly could if there was a spirit of cooperation.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 478 I was caught in traffic and couldn't reach the floor. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, on July 15, 2014, I mistakenly voted ``no'' on rollcall vote No. 411. I intended to vote ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the 100th birthday of Mrs. Lillian K.

Kurtz. I join her family members and friends who gather on August 2, 2014, in Minneapolis to commemorating this special day. Lillian Kurtz was born August 1, 1914, in Minneapolis, MN. She started life in Northern Minnesota on her father's farm where she attended school in a one-room school house.

Lillian's outlook on life was molded by the Great Depression and World War II. During World War II, she traveled as an officer's wife and lived in many areas around the country. She did volunteer work for the Red Cross. After the war, she and her husband settled in South Minneapolis where she has lived ever since.

She worked as a floral designer for Bachman's in South Minneapolis while raising her family. Her husband of over 62 years, George Kurtz, was a noted attorney, Workers Compensation Judge and Air Force Reserve Colonel. She has two children Kathleen and Michael, seven grandchildren, five great grandchildren and three great-great grandchildren.

She is still living on her own at the Walker Place in South Minneapolis. She continued her volunteer work at the Walker until recently.

Lillian has led an outstanding life, highlighted by her love of family and service to her community. I wish her many more years of health and happiness.

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

Mr. Chairman, based on the debates and discussions we have had in this Chamber, I have come to the conclusion that my friends on the other side of the aisle believe that $7.25 is enough to raise a family on in America. That is the current Federal minimum wage.

Since we haven't had any ability to change it, to move it up, I assume that they assume that it is good enough for people, but I can't imagine that they think $2.13 is enough, but that is the Federal minimum wage for tip workers in America today. That is the Federal minimum wage for tip workers, and it is an appalling condition, and it should be an outrage for all of us.

Mr. Chairman, 3.3 million Americans are trying to make it on $2.13 an hour, plus tips; and 75 percent of those, Mr. Chairman, are women.

What does it translate to? What does it all mean? It means that millions of Americans go to work every day and are forced to interview every time they serve a customer for their money. Every time they meet a new customer and take an order, they have to do a tryout or an interview to see if they are going to get paid. It is wrong, and we shouldn't tolerate it in this society. Tip workers are twice as likely as other workers to fall below the poverty line and three times as likely to rely on food stamps to close the gap between what they are paid and what they have to survive on.

Mr. Chairman, the companies that pay them these tip wages in many cases are relying on us, the Federal Government, through the food stamp program, to make up the wages that they will not pay. At least we should make them pay their own freight for their own workers. People don't want to go to food stamps, but they need to, and the Federal Government helps them by setting food stamps.

What if the employers themselves were required to pay a better wage? Tip workers are likely to experience wage theft. From 2010 to 2012, the Department of Labor conducted investigations of full-service restaurants and found violations in nearly all, including tip violations. A tip violation might be when an employer refuses to ``top up'' the pay to ensure that they are getting at least $7.25 when tips are low. Tip violations could also include making employees do work that doesn't earn tips, like cleaning or cooking, but still paying them $2.13 an hour. It happens, and it shouldn't happen.

If we lifted the minimum wage to $10.10 for all tip workers, 700,000 tip workers would be lifted out of poverty--half of whom would be people of color--and $12.7 billion in more wages would be pumped into the economy.

Mr. Chair, in February, President Obama signed an executive order requiring Federal contractors, including those with contracts to provide concessions like restaurants, to pay $10.10.

No one who works full-time should have to live in poverty. I urge adoption of the amendment, and I urge all Members of this body to at least demand that we don't have to make up wages that are not paid in the form of government supports.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, an increase in the minimum wage is good for jobs. Minimum wage workers are adults who support families, and exorbitant CEO pay actually has been proven to hurt the performance of companies. Three new studies confirm these three points, and I would like to elaborate a little bit.

Minimum wage workers are older than they used to be. Their average age is 35 years old, and 88 percent are at least 20 years old. Most are women. Women make up 48 percent of the workforce; yet 55 percent of the would-be beneficiaries of an increase to the minimum wage are women.

Raising the minimum wage will not cost jobs. That is a myth. Here are the facts: 13 States raised the minimum wage in 2014, and all but one have seen employment gains. Now, that doesn't prove causation, but it does prove that this claim that minimum wage hurts jobs is false.

It is also the case that we are often told that high pay for CEOs is just a reward and that it incentivizes them to work hard. High CEO pay does not increase profitability.

In fact, in June, a study was published that looked at the long-term performance of 1,500 companies. That is a lot of data. They are finding that higher, exorbitant CEO pay hurts companies. Forbes says, ``How could this be? In a word, overconfidence.''

The bottom line is that the myths that we live by are not true. Let's raise the wage and get some accountability at the executive level.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, today I am offering an amendment that is very simple. Basically, it is one of those issues that I think both conservatives and liberals and Republicans and Democrats ought to be able to get together and agree on. And that is, if a hardworking American earns a penny, they ought to get that penny.

So what the amendment does, it says that if there is a Federal contractor who has a demonstrated, recorded, proven history of wage theft, is in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, then they will not be able to participate in this appropriation.

This amendment addresses a very serious problem. I would like to bring to the House's attention that the Economic Policy Institute found that in total, the average low-wage worker loses a stunning $2,634 per year in unpaid wages, representing about 15 percent of their earned income. Another report by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee of the United States Senate revealed that 32 percent of the largest Department of Labor penalties for wage theft were levied against Federal contractors. Similarly, a National Employment Law Project study found that about 21 percent of Federal contract workers were not paid overtime, and 11 percent were forced to work off the clock.

Now, we might debate taxes. We might debate how high the minimum wage should be. But I know this House, this body, as a whole, believes that hardworking people should get the money that they have worked for.

Also, the Federal Government, the government is the largest spender in the world, I think, when you add it all up. And anyone who would want a contract with the Federal Government should be a contractor who is willing to uphold the best, most ethical business standards.

We, as a body, should appropriate our money to those businesses that believe in paying the workers on time, no matter what that agreed amount of money is.

Madam Chair, let me just conclude by saying that I think this is an important amendment. I urge adoption. And as we, as a body, work hard to provide opportunity for all Americans, particularly those who work for Federal contractors. I think one thing we can do is to support this amendment today and send an important signal that a penny worked for is a penny that must be paid.

I yield back the balance of my time.