Floor Statements

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairwoman, all too often in Washington, we mistake activity for progress, and in many cases we apply that misguided framework onto the States.

There are few better examples of this than Washington's dabbling in our election laws over the last 2 or 3 decades.

The National Voter Registration Act, our last big partisan bill, aimed at increasing turnout, did not actually achieve that aim. It increased voter registration, but as the Congressional Research Service has said:

Its effect on turnout remains unclear. Its cost and

mandates on the States, however, were very clear.

That is exactly what I am talking about in terms of mistaking activity for progress.

The centerpiece of division A's voting section is automatic registration. According to my colleagues on the other side, it covers all sorts of problems: updating the voter rolls, lack of participation, et cetera.

No excuse vote by mail, same-day registration can be important, but is the automatic voter registration section that is hoped for the driver of participation?

This is an aggressive mandate in a bill full of aggressive mandates.

Fifteen States and Washington, D.C., have automatic registration. Only five States do it at every welfare and government agency. Three States require registrants to decline by postcard.

This bill would more or less include all three of these provisions.

This bill would also require the automatic preregistration of 16- year-olds.

If it went into law, it would amount to, at the very least, a top three most aggressive automatic registration program all across the country, but the bill says that if you are in a State where you have already got an automatic registration program on the books, you don't have to comply with all the mandates in the bill.

My amendment would do the same thing, but for outcomes instead of for registration.

The outcome that this bill looks for is turnout.

States that have seen massive increases in turnout should get rewarded, and that is what this amendment does.

It lets States who have achieved increased turnout be rewarded by exemption from the mandates in this bill to continue the success that they have been able to achieve with their own programs.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairwoman, the amendment that I have offered is in keeping with the spirit of the bill. States are balancing the right of everyone to have access to the polls.

Automatic voter registration has allowed so much access to the polls, that it has created challenges for States to be able to comply, even with people who are only supposed to vote legally. They have access to voter registration through Motor Voter and other ways when they are not even residents of the United States, and it puts burdens on States to comply with that.

This would be a one-size-fits-all mandate from the Federal Government that may be needed in some States where access has been challenging and where voter turnout has been low, but in States that have had high voter turnout, that do have effective regimes where you have not just access, but you have participation at levels that have increased by 5 percent or more, to continue on the path of success that they have had without disruption from Federal mandates that would potentially do that.

The Brennan Center says:

Automatic voter registration is gaining momentum across the

country.

Currently, 15 States and D.C. have approved the policy, meaning that over a third of Americans live in a jurisdiction that has either passed or implemented automatic voter registration. This policy is winning at the State level and overall push for turnout is also winning.

My amendment is complementary to this bill's enterprise and it would do nothing to undermine the pushes that are already going on at the State level.

It was Madison who said that States are:

. . . best acquainted with the situation of their people.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairwoman, I want to quote from a speech delivered by a former SEC, Securities and Exchange Commission, chair:

Certain mandates, which invoke the Securities and Exchange

Commission's mandatory disclosure powers, seem more directed

at exerting societal pressure on companies to change

behavior, rather than to disclose financial information that

primarily informs investment decisions.

That is not to say that the goals of such mandates are not

laudable. Indeed, most are. Seeking to improve safety in

mines for workers or to end horrible human rights atrocities

in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are compelling

objectives, which, as a citizen, I wholeheartedly share.

But, as Chair of the SEC, I must question, as a policy

matter, using the Federal securities laws and the SEC's

powers of mandatory disclosure to accomplish these goals.

Those are the words of Mary Jo White, President Obama's SEC Chair. She understood what this body understood when it adopted the rider in the appropriations bill my amendment seeks to protect.

The SEC cannot and should not be used as a tool for social engineering. The disclosure laws cannot be used as a method to compel noneconomic behaviors. The SEC has known this since the 1970s, when it received hundreds of different petitions to add dozens of different disclosure requirements. It stated at the time, ``The Commission's experience over the years in proposing and framing disclosure requirements has not led it to question the basic decision of the Congress that, insofar as investing is concerned, the primary interest of investors is economic. After all, the principal if not the only reason, why people invest their money in securities is to obtain a return. A variety of other motives are probably present in the investment decisions of numerous investors; but the only common thread is the hope for a satisfactory return, and it is to this that a disclosure scheme intended to be useful to all must be primarily addressed.''

Madam Chair, we don't know what each individual investor wants, disclosure requirements have proven very costly, and I urge my colleagues to support the position of the Obama SEC Chair and the SEC since the 1970s, which my amendment seeks to preserve.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairwoman, companies are already going ahead and disclosing political donations. 196 of the Fortune 500 companies have disclosure policies in place, up from 174 in 2015. More companies are deciding this is the right way to approach their political giving.

But I don't have anything to say against their voluntary decision. I do think it is a mistake to force compliance through disclosure laws at a time when public markets are less attractive than ever for going public.

Capital formation in the United States of America could easily be improved and has, in fact, suffered by a heavyhanded regulatory approach.

Corporations are not treated differently than individuals are. There is nothing that compels an individual to disclose every single dollar they donate and to whom. This would go in the other way.

If you decide to go public in the United States, you are treated differently under the law than a private company or a private individual. The reality is, under the law, you should be treated the same way. In some cases, you are allowed to give a donation privately, and in other cases, you are not. Corporations have to comply with that law. The Federal Election Commission administers that law, not the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, may I ask how much time I have remaining.

I wonder, Madam Chairwoman, whether folks opposed to my amendment would be in favor of requiring every single person and corporation to disclose every dollar that they give. That is essentially what you are saying here: We want to treat publicly traded companies differently than we want to treat every other company and every other individual. And we realize that the FEC isn't competent or qualified to do that job, so we want to add another agency to do this.

President Obama's own Chair of the SEC stated: When disclosure gets too complicated or strays from its core purposes, it can lead to information overload, a phenomenon in which ever-increasing amounts of disclosure make it difficult for investors to focus on the information that is material and most relevant to the decisionmaking of investors in the financial markets.

As has been stated, the fiduciary responsibility of the directors of the company, of the shareholders, and of the people making investments is a common denominator. There may be disparate political views in these days--there surely are--and unpopular positions may be at odds with the fiduciary responsibilities of companies.

This should have been debated in a Financial Services Committee--one of the other flaws of this path that we are on today--subrogating all of the authority of the other committees with only a handful of the amount of participation.

Lastly, I would say that a majority of Democrats actually voted for the appropriations bill with the riders that are at the heart of the opposition's objection to my amendment.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chairwoman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chairwoman, my amendment would uphold an appropriations policy rider included in the FY 2019 appropriations package that this body, on a bipartisan basis, just voted on last month. That provision prevents the IRS from the collection of donor information for 501(c)(4) social welfare organizations.

In 2013, when the IRS attempted to issue rules that would clamp down on these organizations, there was bipartisan pushback from groups as disparate as the ACLU and Tea Party Patriots.

The IRS has a poor track record on the handling of donor information of these organizations. The 2013 IRS scandal of targeting conservative groups is the perfect example of this. The IRS asked groups excruciatingly detailed questions, even as far as for the details of the prayer meetings of pro-life organizations. Government agencies investigating the intimate details of an organization's efforts to participate in issue advocacy creates an unconstitutional chilling effect on free speech.

The IRS is a tax collection agency, not an arbiter of the fitness of an organization's political viewpoint. My amendment is about the fundamental First Amendment rights for citizens and groups to participate in public discourse.

Finally, H.R. 1's needless removal of a bipartisan policy rider does not make sense in the context of this bill's inclusion of the DISCLOSE Act. I oppose the First Amendment privacy issues raised by the DISCLOSE Act provisions, like the ACLU opposes the DISCLOSE Act, but duplicative collection of information, especially through a scandal-ridden agency like the IRS, which has scandalously overstepped its bounds and authority and jurisdiction, highlight what this amendment is all about. It is inappropriate for the IRS to collect this sort of information.

It is my hope that we can maintain the well-considered appropriations rider already included in the package passed just last month.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, may I inquire of the amount of time remaining.

Madam Chairwoman, even the scandal-ridden, 2013-era IRS that targeted conservative groups, overstepping its jurisdiction by trying to shape the speech and conduct of organizations rather than collect their taxes, withdrew the rulemaking process at the heart of what is sought in this H.R. 1 bill. It is a chilling effect.

As we talk about one of our rights, access to the ballot box at the Federal level, and we consider that, I think it is important to remember the founding principles that led to the creation of this country, and they are enshrined in the Federalist Papers.

I include in the Record a copy of Federalist Paper No. 59, wherein Madison makes the case that Article I, Section 4 of the Constitution is about the Federal Government's right to defend itself. It is not about Congress being the prime driver of elections.

congress gets to regulate elections

Federalist No. 59:

It is absolute not the first province of the federal

government. This is what Hamilton said in Federalist 59:

They have submitted the regulation of elections for the

federal government, in the first instance, to the local

administrations; which, in ordinary cases, and when no

improper views prevail, may be both more convenient and more

satisfactory; but they have reserved to the national

authority a right to interpose, whenever extraordinary

circumstances might render that interposition necessary to

its safety.

Article 1 section 4 is about the federal government's right

to defend itself. It is not about Congress being the prime

driver of elections.

As we look at this, we have the Federal Election Commission. We have bodies of law that require disclosure, and we have organizations that sometimes violate those disclosure laws, and those companies are prosecuted when they do that.

Here, we want to take and add the IRS responsibility of shaping that disclosure, and only for these types of groups and these types of donations. It is intended to have a chilling effect on the speech, and that is at the core of the objection for groups that don't agree on much.

Between the ACLU and the NRA they don't often agree, but they agree that H.R. 1 is bad, and this goes to the heart of their objection.

Madam Chair, I ask unanimous support for my amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chairwoman, in Alabama v. the NAACP, the courts upheld the right to protect the privacy of donor information.

The right to privacy is fundamental to our Bill of Rights, and it is threatened. It has a chilling effect, as has been enumerated from any number of groups. My colleagues know this.

Just recently, social welfare groups, as defined by 501(c)(4), engaged in social welfare to support infanticide, a bill that could not get a vote to cloture in the Senate.

It would require the IRS, instead of the body of jurisdiction, the Election Commission, to deal with donors.

The IRS should be narrowly focused on collecting tax revenue, not on elections law, and we have seen abuses of their already-limited jurisdiction.

This is the right thing to do. I encourage my colleagues to support this amendment, and I ask for everyone who can find a way to see through the distortion of information that is being presented here to support our Bill of Rights, protect the right to privacy, and vote for this amendment.

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for allowing me time, as I do support H.J. Res. 37. Fundamentally, it is about Article I and the authority of Congress as addressed in Federalist Paper No. 69.

As the President said, great powers don't fight endless wars. I would add nor do they fight or participate in undeclared wars.

The United States is not participating in the Yemen war in the sense that many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have characterized. In fact, I personally asked Secretary Mattis on two occasions to help draft authorization against Iranian proxies.

This is, at best, a half measure in that it stops any active participation in undeclared unauthorized combat. But it also fails to advance the policy of our country, which is to treat Iran as the threat it is, not just to the United States of America, but to its neighbors and our allies in the region.

Mr. Speaker, the Congressional Budget Office is supposed to help Congress evaluate the fiscal costs and benefits of legislation. Given the weight these scores have on the ability of Members of Congress to make policy decisions, it should be a top priority that the CBO standards are of the highest possible quality.

CBO should improve and could improve the accuracy of its projections by adopting a transparent process that would allow independent experts to provide technical contributions and verify their conclusions, as is the standard for all academic journals.

That is why I have introduced the CBO Show Your Work Act, which would require the CBO to publish online all nonproprietary data, models, and processes utilized in the analysis and scoring of legislation.

CBO is the internal accountant for every Member of Congress. Therefore, Members of Congress, and the public they serve, should have access to the data, models, and processes that create the numbers we rely on.

Mr. Speaker, since LBJ launched the War on Poverty, the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line has remained persistently static.

As reform efforts in Congress continue to falter, American's poverty reduction efforts continue to fall short of their objectives. We need a different approach to help millions of Americans escape poverty.

Today, I am introducing the People Centered Assistance Reform Effort Act, or the People CARE Act. This legislation creates a bipartisan commission in order to empower caseworkers to treat each person holistically, rather than simply administer programs; realign the 90- plus, often duplicative, poverty programs; remove benefit cliffs; and more.

It encourages employment, marriage, and education, activities identified by the Brookings Institution and others as effective means to end poverty.

The commission cannot launch new programs, nor directly cut spending. Upon receiving the commission's recommendation, Congress would have to vote to approve or disapprove.

People CARE offers a path for progress in the War on Poverty. Mr. Speaker, I encourage all of my colleagues to cosponsor the People CARE Act.

Mr. Speaker, international trade is essential to America's economy and to American leadership. Today, I introduce the Global Trade Accountability Act, which seeks to establish this principle.

As a private-sector manufacturing business owner, I experienced the harmful effects of bad trade practices firsthand.

On trade, as with many other issues, Congress needs to work with President Trump to restore power to the American people. This bill does that by ensuring that the President has flexibility to change tariffs as needed in negotiations, but if the President wants the tariff to continue beyond 90 days, Congress would need to vote approving that action.

President Trump's commitment to put America first in trade is commendable in fulfilling his promise to American workers; however, the President should not be in this fight alone. Congress needs to join the fight to ensure these efforts are effectively moved forward for the entire country.

The Constitution clearly gives the legislative branch the responsibility to

regulate commerce and lay taxes and duties with foreign nations, yet Congress has surrendered this Article I authority. Mr. Speaker, it is time to restore it.

``No Person shall be a Senator who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty Years, and been nine Years a Citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an Inhabitant of that State for which he shall be chosen.

``The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate, but shall have no Vote, unless they be equally divided.

``The Senate shall chuse their other Officers, and also a President pro tempore, in the Absence of the Vice President, or when he shall exercise the Office of President of the United States.

``The Senate shall have the sole Power to try all Impeachments. When sitting for that Purpose, they shall be on Oath or Affirmation. When the President of the United States is tried, the Chief Justice shall preside: And no Person shall be convicted without the Concurrence of two thirds of the Members present.

``Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.''

Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Smith for yielding.

Today I affirm that pro-life is also pro-science. Advances in science, especially ultrasound technology in medicine, make this clear, not just to parents, but to anyone who will see the live baby human growing inside a mother's womb; that we are talking not about a clump of cells as some like to refer to them, but indeed a baby human. As a result, the country is becoming increasingly pro-life.

Every single life has purpose and dignity. As Pope John Paul, II, stated:

Human life has dignity not because of the work people do,

but because it is imprinted with God's image.

This week, I am proud to welcome pro-life leaders and friends from Ohio's Eighth District traveling to Washington, D.C., for the March for Life.

Today, we look forward to the day when Americans will contritely turn away from abortion, perhaps as vigorously as they have rejected the abhorrent etiology that led to the three-fifth compromise.

Knowing women who have experienced abortion, I also hope that everyone will show kindness and mercy to those who wrestle with the enduring trauma with repentance. May God have mercy on them and on all of us.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for yielding.

Madam Speaker, our bodies should unite to stop the violent cartels and drug lords who have taken advantage of the humanitarian national security crisis on our southern border. Border security is national security, and we need to be doing everything we can to secure our southern border.

For years, our senior Border Patrol officials have made modest requests for tactical barriers. The President's request prioritizes the top 10 of 17 priority areas that Border Patrol wants to secure.

The men and women patrolling our borders put their lives on the line every day to keep us safe from terrorism, drug trafficking, sex trafficking, gunrunning, money laundering, and all sorts of dangerous crimes. They routinely encounter some of the most dangerous criminals and traffickers anywhere in the world.

They seize drugs that would have otherwise made it onto Ohio streets where we are dealing with the tragedy of this opioid crisis that has killed far too many of our friends and neighbors. They have also arrested illegal aliens who were charged and convicted of crimes, including sexual assault, kidnapping, and homicide. A significant percentage of women and girls entering the country illegally are raped.

We should be giving our personnel on the border the resources they need to get the job done. Nevertheless, millions of Americans want to participate in this great cause. They have contributed private funds and would like to give directly to our government.

That is why I introduced the Buy a Brick, Build the Wall Act, which would allow the Treasury Department to help fund this wall and make sure the resources go to the cause that so many people support. We need to unite and secure our border.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to applaud the hard work and great success of the House Financial Services Committee these the past 2 years in the 115th Congress.

Under the leadership of Chairman Jeb Hensarling, the Financial Services Committee became the most productive committee in Congress. Over 44 bills signed into law originated from our committee, including S. 2155. It began as the Financial CHOICE Act, Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers, and Entrepreneurs.

Unfortunately, the whole bill hasn't made it into law, but the core of that bill was dealing with the unintended consequences and, frankly, whether they were intended or not, the harmful consequences of Dodd- Frank.

Under Dodd-Frank, we found that the biggest banks got bigger and the smallest banks became fewer. We found that banks were not too-big-to- fail, but some of them became too-small-to-succeed under the burden of Dodd-Frank's regulatory framework. So much so that even Barney Frank, whose name is part of the Dodd-Frank Act, came to support the reforms for community banking.

I am very proud to have participated in regulatory relief that helped thousands of community financial institutions help lend to their communities. It is making a difference today as we watch the impact in our economy. Indeed, it is, in some measure, fitting that the title began with ``Creating Hope and Opportunity for Investors, Consumers, and Entrepreneurs,'' because that is what is happening in this amazing economy.

There is more good news that is happening in our economy than is probably going to get covered anywhere. Some of it is out there for the C-SPAN viewer to find.

You might not see in the news that we have the strongest sanctions that have been imposed on Russia since it has been Russia. Post-Soviet Union, we have never had a stronger posture toward Russia than we do today.

The Financial Services Committee helps implement those because the Department of the Treasury has an Office of Foreign Asset Control. As part of the Monetary Policy and Trade Subcommittee and as part of the Terrorism and Illicit Finance Subcommittee, we look at how to choke off these sources of funds, whether it is Russian oligarchs, Iranian bad actors, North Koreans, or others.

Frankly, I believe we only have tapped the surface on the potential that sanctions have. Indeed, we may be able to apply sanctions to our trade policy and, very targeted, deal with

bad actors, like those who are dumping steel, rather than just putting a uniform tariff out there. We can be precise. Instead of maximizing collateral damage, we can minimize it.

But that shows that there is plenty of work left to do. What we are here to say is that there are plenty of great things that did, in fact, happen.

With respect to trade, one of the things the Financial Services Committee got to do was take a bipartisan delegation trip to China. We talked with folks in Japan, in Hong Kong, in China, and in South Korea about the importance of trade, not just in a way that draws in our Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, but with all of our trade policy.

The reality is that we were able to send a message to the people in China, to the leadership of China--their Vice President down to their leadership in the trade negotiations--that with respect to China, there is no separation between Congress and President Trump, and with respect to China, there is no separation between Republicans and Democrats on trade.

Our hope is that we can continue to trade, and we can continue to prosper together. As a former Army Ranger, I never thought I would go to China under friendly terms and conditions. I am quite thankful that we were able to do that. I hope that we can continue that peace and prosperity together.

But the days of the American people being taken advantage of, whether it is by China or any other Nation, I hope has long passed. Clearly, today, that is the trend. Not only has the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act, FIRRMA, passed, and that gives us this review, but we have an administration that is aggressively implementing a policy that puts that into effect.

There are plenty of things that did pass our House that haven't yet made it into law. A staggering number is 115. While 44 bills were signed into law, 115 passed our committee and haven't yet been taken up across the building in the Senate. Unfortunately, and often despite overwhelmingly bipartisan support in the House, many of these bills have yet to receive the same attention in the Senate.

One example of this is a bill I introduced, the Market Data Protection Act. This passed the House of Representatives unanimously, and it is yet to receive a vote in the Senate. This deals with the protection of government-controlled data by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In fact, our EDGAR database was hacked. We are simply asking that the SEC do the same thing and certify to Congress in the same way they would expect a publicly traded company to certify to them, that they have dealt with the risk and they now have a secure network.

Just earlier tonight, we passed yet another extension of the Flood Act. This bill has been passed by our committee for a year and a half. It has been over a year since it passed the House with very modest reforms.

One of the sticking points seems to be that the Senate can't live with rebuilding someone's home three times after it has flooding. We will rebuild it not once, not twice, but a third time, and then after that, we are saying, you know, maybe you should move.

But that is too much to ask, apparently, for the Senate. We can't even get a vote on it. It is time for the Senate to act.

Another is JOBS 3.0. This is a bill that provides new 21st century framework for capital formation. You think capital formation, that sounds like Wall Street, that sounds like a big, Republican, stereotypical talking point bill. It passed with more than 400 votes in this body, incredibly bipartisan, very modest reforms, commonsense, for early stage capital formation, and it hasn't yet been voted on in the Senate. There is still time in this Congress, and I sure hope they can deliver on it.

There are a lot of things that we haven't been able to get to. In spite of being the most productive committee in Congress, there are still things that have been left undone. My hope is that we can continue to collaborate in a very bipartisan way as we experience a transition.

As sad as I am to be headed to the minority as a member of the majority party today, I am very sad that Chairman Hensarling is leaving Congress. This week, we were able to see his retirement ceremony where a portrait was unveiled. But the most important thing that happened there is, frankly, I think everyone in that room was inspired.

I think one of the most unfortunate things about Congress is the way it is perceived by the American people. There are more truly good men and women who serve in this body, in both parties, than I would have ever believed before I got here, and one of the very best is Jeb Hensarling. I am thankful to count him as my chairman, as a mentor, and as a friend. I look forward to seeing how God continues to bless this great man and how God continues to bless this body and our great Nation. It is now time for deeds, not words.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize Mr. Douglas Laux of Coldwater, Ohio.

After attending Indiana University, Doug served for 7 years with the Central Intelligence Agency as an operations officer. Unknown to his family and friends, Doug operated undercover in Afghanistan and Syria, fighting America's global war on terror.

Working in Afghanistan, Doug quietly penetrated the ranks of al-Qaida and the Taliban, where he was able to infiltrate and eliminate one of the largest IED manufacturers in the world.

Doug left the CIA in 2013 and now lives quietly in Coldwater, Ohio, his hometown.

While Doug does not seek recognition for his past service, his actions struck a major blow to the enemies of our country, and they deserve commendation.

Mr. Speaker, I ask you to join me in recognizing the bravery of Mr. Laux and to wish him continued success as a private citizen.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to remember the life of Maci Grace Eickman. Maci Grace was born October 1, 2015 with a rare genetic disease, Mucopolysaccharidosis type I (MPS I).

While I never had the opportunity to meet Maci Grace, I know through her parents and those who knew her that she touched many lives in the two years she was here on Earth.

Maci Grace is the daughter of Joshua and Elizabeth Eickman. As a parent, I join them in mourning. Through innocence Marci Grace fought her disease with strength, which stands as an inspiration today. We must continue to search for a cure to help the one in 100,000 children born with this rare disease.

Mr. Speaker, there is no foot so small that it cannot leave an imprint on this world. I ask my colleagues in the House to join me in extending our deepest condolences to Maci's family and friends during this difficult time. Parents should never have to bury their children.

Mr. Speaker, prior to coming to Congress 2 years ago, I spent 15 years building manufacturing companies. I have been personally on the receiving end of bad trade policy and bad trade practices. So, in 2016, when President--then candidate, now President--Trump talked about making America great again by dealing with bad trade deals and bad trade practices, frankly, he energized me and many other people in my industry, in the manufacturing sector, and, indeed, all across the country because America has lived with bad consequences of bad trade deals.

In fact, America has built its history on trade. Truly, economic liberty is as much a part of America's history as religious liberty and other forms of liberty. We were the world's largest trading country. We are a great trading power in every way you can measure it. We do have trade deficits with some countries, but we have to pay attention to the right metrics.

So when we talk about bad trade practices and bad trade policies, we talk about, to use an analogy, watching basketball. Think how the sport would change if there were no fouls called and no one could shoot free throws. These are the kinds of things that happened with the WTO. Eventually, after, sometimes, years of filing a

complaint, the WTO will adjudicate a subsidy practice by China on steel, for example, and then they will say: Hey, you have to stop.

Well, the moment a complaint is filed, the Chinese company just dumps faster because they know that it is going to be turned off. The trouble is there is no consequence for this bad conduct.

So what I had hoped we would be doing is we would be using our great relationships around the world to unite our allies, our best trading partners, frankly, people who are also the victims of these bad trade practices and bad trade policies, to take action against those bad practices so that we can define what is a foul and what is the effective free throw. What are the consequences?

I believe that the President's goals are being poorly served by some of his advisers and I hope that the President will change course, because what we are doing has resulted in failure in every type of war studied, from Sun Tzu through World War II, through more modern wars.

When you multiply your enemies, you are not winning, and we are doing that with the practices that some of the administration is implementing, things that implement uniform tariffs, things that distort the very definition of a national security issue to call German luxury autos a national security issue.

We have tools in the kit bag that could be very effective, tools like sanctions. When we engage in warfare, when we engage with enemies of our country that are strategic enemies, we have sanctions in place against Russia, sanctions in place against Iran, and sanctions in place against North Korea.

The beauty of sanctions is they can be targeted not just as a country or a sector; they can be targeted to companies and even individuals. We can use these things to restrict the flow, and we can define what is illicit finance.

We can use these tools that the world uses already against bad actors and, frankly, some of the worst actors in the world to unite our allies and to define a better way for trade going forward.

So we shouldn't confuse this with a critique of the objective. The objective is, indeed, noble and necessary. Past trade practices, past Presidential policies have left America on the short end. True, as Milton Friedman said:

If countries want to subsidize the cost of a good, let

them. They are just lowering the cost for our consumers.

But we can't simply be a nation of consumers. We need people to put capital at risk in America to thrive, and for our great industries, whether it is agriculture or manufacturing or technology, for the intellectual property to flourish here. We have the best markets for goods, services, intellectual property, capital, and we need to make sure that we defend that.

I applaud President Trump for being passionate about putting America first in these practices, but I do believe that we need to look at the tactics that have been employed by many who have advised him and say, ``Is this multiplying our enemies?'' And, in fact, it is.

I hope we can move forward in a better way and we can serve this great country by restoring trade to its right and proper place as a vibrant part of our economy. Exports drive our economy, but imports can benefit our economy. Trade is exactly that.

Trade is something of value for both parties. Both profit when trade is there. A zero-sum understanding is not the right way to look at trade. We benefit and so do others; and it is okay that they benefit, because then they are able to buy more from us in trade.

The practices that are in place today give us a chance to assess the progress, and I think it is vital that we do that. It is vital that we keep this economy doing the great things that it has under President Trump's leadership, under congressional leadership.

We were told that the new normal was a 1.5 percent growth rate, that we couldn't grow at the high rate. With regulatory relief and tax reform, our economy is growing higher than 3 percent, and we certainly don't want to do anything that would derail that momentum.

I am encouraged by Mr. Hill's dialogue tonight, and I thank the gentleman for the opportunity to speak. I know we have other colleagues who would like to as well.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Hill.

I want to agree with the importance of bringing allies to the table to address those practices.

There are four, and there are several others that we would probably agree on. In a way, I think the thing that our President respects about China is they put China first. They have used all the resources of their nation really since 1989, since Deng Xiaoping transformed China's economy to a more market-oriented economy.

They are not a market-oriented economy. That was one of the things they committed to do as part of joining the World Trade Organization. They are a command-driven economy in many respects. They have made great progress since 1989 to being market oriented. Frankly, since 2008, they have gone the other way in some of their practices.

If you look at the revolutionary idea, though, the idea that lives can be changed by trade and capitalism, China under Deng Xiaoping, at the peak, they were using communism with Communist principles, and he introduced to them communism with Chinese principles, which was essentially capitalism as long as we can stay in charge.

It is a corrupt, subsidized form of capitalism, but at its peak, it was lifting 1 million Chinese people a month out of dollar-a-day poverty.

Trade was a key part of this, inflows of foreign direct investment to reach this massive market. Today General Motors sells more cars in China than they sell in the United States of America.

This is a better path than the one I expected. When I graduated from high school in 1988, Mr. Gorbachev had not torn down the Berlin Wall. By the end of 1989 when I was there, unfortunately bad things had happened in Tiananmen Square in China, but, thankfully, great things happened at the Berlin Wall. I was fortunate to be able to see people there. I met a man who was from East Germany in his first hours of freedom who said: Is it like this everywhere?

We were in the Ku'damm district--kind of like Times Square is in New York--in Berlin. I thought he meant how big the city was. But what he really meant was the stores were open at night, and there is fresh milk, as he said. He was astonished that regular people, even foreigners, could go in, and the shelves had stock.

This is the idea of economic liberty. This has produced abundance wherever it has been tried. Where the other ideas, the redistribution that Mao tried every version of Marxist Communist ideology that he could think of, and they all failed. They produced scarcity, poverty, and depravity. By engaging in the world, China transformed their economy. That is something to respect. I think the President admires the way that they put China first.

But the reality is in putting China first, they have engaged all the resources of the country to where in 2014 we saw that President Obama had to take action against hackers. In fact, they were indicted. But did President Obama cut off all relations and trade with China? He did not. He engaged in diplomacy with China.

I think it is great that we engage with Russia. Perhaps even Russia will see a market-oriented economy. They started out that way in the 1990s. But they also proved that deficits do matter. This is something that the whole West wrestles with, and it is another thing that we could unite in agreeing with.

I hope we can also get to ways we can unite here, because, as Mr. LaHood mentioned, the Global Trade Accountability Act is not an adversarial bill. It doesn't even go retroactive to the actions that have occurred in the past. It does get Congress engaged. It gets Congress engaged because the same benefits of cooperation, the same benefits of multiplying our allies instead of multiplying our enemies, could happen here in Congress where we multiply the people working on the problem.

We want to join our President in taking action against bad actors and in making our trade policy better than it has been even with the Canadians--they have bad trade practices that we can improve. Even with the Europeans; they have bad trade practices that we can improve upon.

Great friends work through problems and I feel like that is the reality that we have with our friends. Here in Congress, the President has great friends. I would consider the three of us some of his great friends, not adversaries, in the goal we are concerned, I think, about the means of getting to that, and the Global Trade Accountability Act would simply say that Congress works with the President who leads the negotiations similar to the REINS Act. Where Congress can come alongside and say we do it, what would that mean? Well, that would mean that the President is more engaged. But it's really the President's advisors. Men like Peter Navarro, instead of refusing to come talk to Ways and Means, would engage with our chairman, would engage with our committee dealing with trade, and would, in fact, develop a plan instead of criticize their own failure to plan after the fact.

How do we know this?

This is an example. We have a uniform tariff policy that probably never should have been implemented, that has got a chance for exclusions. We have over 20,000 companies that want exclusions right now. Commerce is doing them not sector by sector, but company by company; not commodity by commodity, but company by company.

There are only six people working on this massive task. Were there to be required engagement, I believe there would have been a better plan in that collaborative approach, and perhaps a different course of action.

I look forward to seeing other ways that you all might think that we could collaborate and make the great cause of making our trade agreements better and more productive.

Mr. Speaker, I think we have made great progress towards that end in uniting on trying to take a difference course of action. Just recently, we passed updated export controls and CFIUS regulation to try to give more tools to the kit bag.

Who is going to execute this? The executive branch. But the legislative branch passed the law, the House, the Senate. We are working to get the final package to agree on language--not just against China, but anybody who would steal our intellectual property, anybody who would take targeted action to harm our economy or put their citizens in a position to do that harm--and also try to strike the balance.

Here is the thing. We can have perfect security for America's intellectual property by exporting zero of it, but we can't do that. What we have to do is find a balance that says: We want you to innovate in the United States of America; we want the ideas to continue to originate here; we want the capital to be invested here to create those great ideas; but we do want to have some concern.

You mentioned the Clinton administration. One of the first actions Bill Clinton took as President was to move release authority for sensitive information from the Department of Defense into the Department of Commerce.

And what happened?

Swiftly, Hughes worked with China to be able to help send them launch vehicles off of one rocket. One rocket went up into the air, multiple low-Earth orbit satellites went around, precisely positioned in orbit around the Earth. The down side is that is the exact same technology that can be used to send warheads to multiple cities after one launch vehicle penetrates U.S. airspace. This is dangerous technology in the wrong hands.

So we have to find a way to review those things and keep America safe, but we also have to find a way to have the ideas and the intellectual property initiate here.

We can't shut down all these in the name of national security. We certainly don't want to shut down the production of luxury automobiles. But we might want to restrict the trade there.

China is actually targeting our entrepreneurs. We have some of the best education in the world, and the world comes here to become well- educated. Over 50 percent of our graduate and postgraduate students are not native-born Americans.

We allow, frankly, most of the world to come here to get educated. Unfortunately, we don't retain enough of that talent. So we send many of those people out of here with those skills that can be put to work in our marketplace.

But in the process, Chinese capital sometimes and, frankly, other foreign nationals are getting into venture capital. They are on our campuses. They are recruiting our talented people. They also are looking to buy our innovative ideas for dual use, but sometimes only to advance their own technology.

The challenge today is that China has had this mixed blend of aggressive behavior towards us. They have also seen the benefits of trade. They have seen the benefits of the flow of goods, services, capital, and, in some cases, people, and they have brought those to bear to benefit their own economy.

Today, nearly a third of initial public offerings are taking place in China. This is a challenge. And I would say we are better off finding a way to compete in the marketplace than as I thought I would as a soldier, which I never thought I would go to China without body armor and a rucksack full of ammo and night vision goggles and whatnot. I would rather trade with them.

I hope we can stay on friendly terms with them. I hope we can get on friendly terms with Russia, when it is possible. As much as it depends on us, we should live at peace with everyone.

But we do have to trade. We do have to enforce the rules. We do need law and order. We have made many of these commitments, including commitments in the WTO. We should insist that China live up to their obligation and become a market-oriented economy.

Mr. Speaker, prior to being here, I worked in the manufacturing sector. I worked in metal stamping.

One of the challenges, as Mr. Hill highlighted, is the tariffs are only on the commodity. Frankly, they are blunt force. They are all steel, all aluminum.

The reality is some grades of steel, some grades of aluminum are commodity. Beverage cans, for example, are a commodity. We make it in the U.S.; they make it in Canada. Everywhere they consume lots of beverages, there is a significant ability to produce this grade of aluminum.

So the idea that we would target that isn't necessarily changing our market, but where it is, there are things like the grades of rod that your tire manufacturers are or a similar rod for welding wire. Welding wire is highly automated.

So we have got domestic welding wire manufacturers who already weren't the lowest cost provider. China, India, South Korea all heavily subsidize their welding wire manufacturers. Having domestic welding wire manufacturers probably is a national security issue.

We want the base rod to be made in the U.S. Some of those grades aren't. But soon, if we don't get exclusions to our domestic welding wire manufacturers, we won't have the manufacturer of welding wire either.

Meanwhile, their cost for the steel has gone up by 25 percent or more because of the tariffs and they are losing market share. They don't have a year or 2 to wait for the exclusions review. They are losing business now. And the size they are could kill their companies.

Some of these companies are big enough to just shift production offshore, as we have seen other people do, but some of the smaller companies don't have that option. They will live or die on whether or not they can get a government-mandated exclusion to a government- created problem that restricts their ability to buy the aluminum.

So we either have to put tariffs on the secondary goods--so you can see where this goes--and then they will put tariffs on the secondary goods, or we have to find a way where we say it is a national security issue for us to get this capability in the U.S. We want that capability, but we have to go about it the other way.

I believe passionately that it is the sanctions. As you alluded to your own articles in the sixties, you have to take sanctions action.

When you talk about how you deal with transshipments, we already deal with transshipments for national security purposes. And it is targeted.

The sanctions protocol offers a path forward. I hope we can engage on that. I hope we can pass the Global Trade Accountability Act to provide a check, and I hope that more of our colleagues will engage in this sort of discussion. I hope colleagues across the aisle can engage in it, not necessarily to be an attack on our President or our policies, but as a gateway to support economic liberty that has indeed made America the land of opportunity.

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

Mr. Chairman, today, I offer an amendment that is very straightforward. It simply takes an already existing reporting requirement within the section 702 program and adds an additional layer of congressional oversight. This will ensure that the Judiciary Committee and the Intelligence Committee have insight into how the intelligence community enforces its own internal guidelines for handling sensitive data.

Currently, the attorney general provides these committees with semiannual reports about incidents of intelligence community noncompliance with the targeting, minimization, and querying procedures within the 702 program. These are important features that ensure the collection and use of data is solely for targeting dangerous terrorists and does not threaten the Fourth Amendment rights of Americans.

However, this report is lacking because it does not describe what, if any, disciplinary actions are taken by agencies in response to noncompliance. My amendment would simply require that this report include information about disciplinary action.

For example, was a violation simply flagged for agency records? Or was someone given additional training, disciplinary suspension, termination, or, perhaps, even prosecution?

My amendment intends to provide Congress with a high-level look at how agencies address the incidents they are already reporting on.

The privacy safeguards contained in the section 702 program are critical for protecting the constitutional rights of everyday Americans, and, indeed, the high functioning capability of this important program for national security.

Congress has the responsibility to make sure agencies are taking steps to mitigate abuse and enforce statutes, guidelines, and court orders relevant to this powerful surveillance tool.

This is a commonsense amendment that I have drafted in coordination with the House Intelligence Committee, and I urge my colleagues to support its adoption.

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

Mr. Chairman, I think the thing I would emphasize is that it is important for us to understand: A) we should preserve the 702 program; and B) there are some incremental reforms that could make the program high functioning, and also give the American people peace of mind that their Fourth Amendment rights are protected.

It is also important for the intelligence community to know that the programs they have are working, and it can send an important message that there are disciplinary actions for those who don't follow the guidelines.

This will give Congress insight into how well that system is functioning and what disciplinary actions, if any, are taken.

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

Mr. Speaker, I will applaud former Speaker Pelosi for her consistency. She seems to have uniformly supported the executive branch ignoring subpoenas and perhaps destroying evidence in failing to comply with the rule of the House, with a subpoena being issued by the House, with the important precedent of the Constitution.

So this really isn't about the Russia investigation or about the specifics of this case. So, frankly, I find it appalling that Attorney General Sessions would ignore these activities in the Department of Justice. The reality is this is a question of, Shall the executive branch comply with a subpoena from the legislative branch?

We don't know what the contents are because they are redacted and they are being withheld. This has gone on for a long time. And if we are to keep our Republic, the principle has to be resolved to where the legislative branch, being coequal, very much shall have access to this information--and not just a privileged few, not just a few who keep it withheld from the rest of the body, but the whole body.

Since last year, the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has investigated potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the Department of Justice and our intelligence community. Previously, our colleague, Mr. Schiff, was a strong supporter for FISA reform and proposed numerous bills. So that is where our colleagues on the other side of the aisle are not consistent.

FISA has been abused. We have seen one of the most blatant examples of that with the activities and things that have already been made public, which has led to this line of inquiry. Americans should be concerned that the Federal Government may abuse its capacity to gather foreign intelligence by spying on our fellow Americans. Without serious reforms to FISA, the Fourth Amendment will exist as nothing more than a distant memory or a notation with an asterisk ``except in these cases.''

This resolution insists that the Department of Justice fully comply with requests, including subpoenas, of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Judiciary Committees relating to potential violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Unless we support and defend our Constitution, we will not keep our Republic, we will further embolden and empower the executive branch, and we will weaken our country. This bill will help reform FISA and help defend our Constitution.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues for working together on this bipartisan legislation, H.R. 4311, the Foreign Investment Risk Review Modernization Act. It addresses the intersection of national security, intellectual property, and property rights.

We have a responsibility to protect the people of the United States of America from threats abroad, and we also have a responsibility to protect the system that has truly made the United States the world's land of opportunity. We have had free flow of goods, services, capital, ideas, and, indeed, people because we have a high functioning rule of law here in America.

How can the entrepreneur living the American Dream truly thrive in the spirit of enterprise when competing against a foreign state? But that is the very state that he is up against a lot of times in trade as an entrepreneur seeks to grow a corporation backed by a foreign government.

This legislation addresses many of these types of concerns--countries acting as companies that pose threats to our national security--and this legislation has been done in a bipartisan, constructive manner, and I appreciate the input and efforts from Members of both sides of the aisle as well as those in the administration and the private sector who have helped make this meaningful legislation what it is today.