Floor Statements

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

Madam Speaker, I think the reason it was ruled germane by the Parliamentarian is the cartels control the drug trade in the United States. While most States have made some legal form for marijuana, the cartels still dominate the market.

Part of the reason is the cash is in the black market. Legal operations in many states cannot be banked. People that work there can't get mortgages. They don't have access to the banking system. The reality is the financial industry is being pushed by regulators to kind of back-door and make something illegal.

This has been done on any number of fronts, whether firearms are disfavored in some states, well, you know, you have reputational risk if you are going to bank these people. For too long in America we have had a standard that said, ``Well, you are not going to bank these people, are you?'' Who ``these people'' are has changed.

This is preventing us from stopping the cartels. It is germane, and I urge everyone to support the amendment.

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Madam Speaker, this amendment requires the discharge of private education loans in the event the borrower dies or becomes permanently and totally disabled. Republicans are very sympathetic to both situations.

Private education lenders already provide relief to the estates of deceased student borrowers and the student loan borrowers who become permanently and totally disabled, if requested.

Furthermore, in a competitive market, student loan seekers are free to choose between lenders who observe similar practices and those who do not.

Congress should not attempt to legislate the terms of agreement to which the parties have already agreed.

This amendment imposes a new condition on private education lenders in contracts that haven't been negotiated or discussed between the lender and borrower.

If this amendment becomes law, this clause would be automatic, increasing compliance costs for lenders, diminishing the market value of existing loans, and having the downstream effect of making credit more expensive for consumers.

Therefore, I believe this amendment is a solution in search of a problem. It would insert Congress into a process that is already being utilized by lenders.

And while I understand the gentlewoman's concerns that led to drafting this amendment, I cannot support it in its current form. In fact, I would personally be happy to work with the gentlewoman to solve the problem in a different way.

I do oppose this amendment in its current form, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

Madam Speaker, I would just reiterate that private student lenders already work with borrowers for these unplanned situations clearly in death and in disabilities alike.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Madam Speaker, I claim the time in opposition, and I am opposed to this amendment.

Madam Speaker, this amendment delays the collection of servicemembers' medical debt for 2 years. It outright bans the reporting of a servicemembers' medically necessary procedures to a credit reporting agency ever, and it restricts the reporting of a servicemember's debt obligations to a credit reporting agency for 1 year.

Republicans have supported removing paid medical debt from a consumer's credit report that was unpredictable and unavoidable. However, this amendment would remove all information related to medically necessary procedures for servicemembers. Frankly, it exploits servicemembers to advance a cause my colleague has previously advocated for which is to eliminate medical reporting altogether to credit reporting agencies.

Debt, including medically necessary debt, is important criteria to assess a borrower's creditworthiness and ability to repay and should appear on credit reports of consumers, including servicemembers. It can improve their credit scores if they pay their debts. Removing predictive information from a

credit report has the potential to increase the cost of credit, particularly for those borrowers who have limited credit history.

Requiring the expedited removal of debt from such reports will undermine the safety and soundness of financial institutions and the financial system more broadly. It will further damage healthcare. Additionally, recouping a loss is a basic tenet of a credit-based economy.

This amendment would be disastrous on an already broken healthcare system. It would increase the cost of medical care and limit access to the care for all.

For these reasons, Madam Speaker, I oppose this amendment, I encourage my colleagues to oppose it as well, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, in closing, I would just reiterate that recouping a loss is a basic tenet of our credit-based economy. This amendment would further limit credit options for all Americans, hurting those who buy care from any place who can't collect debts, and it would therefore hurt those who need this the most.

Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to oppose the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

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

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

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

Madam Speaker, the bill before us rightly commemorates June 19, 1865, the day Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, announcing the end of the Civil War, and the formal end of slavery. It is effectively freedom day for the last enslaved Americans.

Of course, that was only in law. In practice, America failed to secure the blessings of liberty for those formerly enslaved Americans. Instead, when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, the assassin effectively muted reconstruction.

Leaders, like Pennsylvania Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, rightly called for a much more aggressive reconstruction, but he failed to persuade his colleagues. The long struggle in defense of freedom is part of America's history.

At our founding, in the Declaration of Independence, our Founders eloquently stated that all people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among them are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Winning the revolution offered the potential for leaders like John Adams to rightly persuade their colleagues to end slavery, but they failed. Their failure set the stage for the Civil War, and the failure to complete reconstruction meant 100 years of Jim Crow, and separate but equal, that continued into my dad's lifetime.

America's failure to rightly recognize our painful and often unjust history has meant ongoing division, open wounds that continue to fester.

So, today, let us not fail to persuade our colleagues. Let us recognize this holiday. I mean, it should, however, be known as Freedom Day or simply Juneteenth, not National Independence Day, which recognizes the Declaration, not freedom, but the Declaration of Independence. I hope we can correct that in the future, but let's not allow perfect to become the enemy of this good bill, and I urge its passage.

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague and the whole group of the Republican Study Committee for working on this budget proposal because, frankly, this is an incredible threat to our Nation's security. It is a threat to the U.S. dollar as our global reserve currency, and as the Fed continues to accommodate it, we are destroying the value of our dollar.

This is an essential duty of our body here in the House of Representatives, and so it is an incredible honor to have three of the bills that I have drafted be included in the proposal. One is the CBO Show Your Work Act. Frankly, the Congressional Budget Office is our accounting office.

Now, imagine if you worked at a firm and you were on the board, and you simply said, I want to see the books. And the accounting department said, no, we are not going to show it to you. They won't even show it to regular Members sometimes. They should show it to the whole public. They are doing the work on behalf of the public. It is not a trade secret. It is not proprietary. They model our economy, their scores have incredible consequences, and they need to show their work.

Another one is the Global Trade Accountability Act. President Trump rightly put a lot of attention on trade, and it is right that Congress would reclaim some of its authority. Because when Congress doesn't enact a law, it doesn't endure, it pivots from administration to administration. It pulls the authority back to Congress where it lies in the Constitution, and it puts the President on a shot clock. And, frankly, not the President so much as the people we initiate against; either come to the table and negotiate something within 90 days, or the authority goes away, and you have to change something. 90 more days. And, in general, until you agree, it is going to keep getting worse.

Lastly, we have the fair representation amendment, and that would say that when we apportion congressional districts, we apportion them based on the number of U.S. citizens.

Frankly, rural America is being disenfranchised by counting noncitizens when we apportion Representatives. Ohio is losing yet another Representative.

That is not a partisan issue. It doesn't break on party lines. Frankly, Texas and California benefit by counting noncitizens, but it is hurting a lot of our country by counting them.

There are factors in terms of how we allocate dollars. Instead of dollars per citizen, we are allocating dollars per capita, and that sends more dollars to urban districts and fewer dollars to rural districts.

It is important work. I thank the committee, and I thank, particularly, Mr. Hern for his work leading it.

Madam Speaker, financial inclusion is very important, and I appreciate the bipartisan spirit that this bill was worked through in our committee.

Frankly, not all things have moved through Congress in a bipartisan fashion this year. Frankly, it has been a little more rare than normal. And, frankly, a lot of things in our committee, they haven't been as bipartisan as we would like. This is something that has moved through our committee in that fashion.

I appreciate the work my colleagues on both sides of the aisle have put into this, and I look forward to the work that comes out of it at the CFPB.

I think, as we approach fintech today, we have the opportunity to improve financial inclusion for more people, particularly the unbanked and underbanked. But its characteristics have to be permissionless.

In the same way cash is so vital for the unbanked and underbanked, as we apply technology, it has to be where people aren't dependent upon a third party to be able to get permission to move the money that they have earned between parties. There are people who want to use the power of central bank digital currencies or other means of control in our financial system to essentially say: You are not going to bank those people, are you?

Sadly, our Nation has a history of this. So, I look forward to the work that comes as a result of this. I encourage all of my colleagues to support this bill.

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

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

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the surface-level intentions of those who support this bill, things like checking the abuse of the Federal Government's power. But this comprehensive package would leave both consumers and creditors worse off than they are today.

Certainly, there are elements that I do support, notably, language from the Fair Debt Collection Practices for Servicemembers Act. I was proud to cosponsor that particular bill when introduced by Ms. Dean from Pennsylvania, which passed the House last month. The Fair Debt Collection Practices for Servicemembers Act would ensure that debt collectors won't be able to threaten military servicemembers with a reduction in rank or have their security clearances revoked. Frankly, that keeps our military focused on fighting and winning our wars, instead of being co-opted into debt collection.

But this is a truly partisan bill as packaged together, and it exemplifies what good work we can do when we work together in a bipartisan fashion, to see some of the components of it, and what can be done to undermine that work when it is all put together in the final package that we have before us here today.

Once I took a look and saw the rest of this bill, the excitement I had for the components that I do support quickly dissipated. Taken as a whole, this overwhelmingly partisan bill amounts to a direct attack on creditors and an indirect attack on consumers.

This bill would distort credit histories by removing predictive information from credit reports, including medical debt. While I recognize the implications that such information has on credit history, we must understand that removing predictive information only increases the cost of credit. When uncertainty is higher, it is priced into the cost, for individuals as well as all consumers with low or moderate income.

Furthermore, this bill restricts the ability of debt collectors to collect on unpaid debt. It does this by forbidding debt collectors from contacting consumers via simple communications, as my colleague, Mr. McHenry, was highlighting. While I think we can all agree that debt collectors should be forbidden from carrying out abusive practices, we should certainly not forbid them from using traditional communication tools that are likely to succeed in contacting the person that owes the debt.

Additionally, in October of 2020, the CFPB issued a rule to modernize debt collection practices, and this rule reflects the technical precision needed to ensure that both consumers and debt collectors are protected. Rather than tying the hands of debt collectors, like this bill does, we should push for consistency with that CFPB rule from last fall.

In closing, I believe we should be clear on something. Consumers who owe a debt and businesses that are unable to collect the debt are both at a disadvantage when debt collectors are prohibited from contacting consumers.

Madam Speaker, I urge opposition to this bill.

Madam Speaker, I include in the Record the following letters of endorsement for H.R. 1996, the SAFE Banking Act of 2021.

Law Enforcement

Action Partnership,

Medford, MA, March 17, 2021.

RE SAFE Banking Act--Position: Support.

Hon. Ed Perlmutter,

Member of Congress,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Nydia M. Velazquez,

Member of Congress

Washington, DC.

Hon. Steve Stivers,

Member of Congress,

Washington, DC.

Hon. Warren Davidson,

Member of Congress,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representatives Perlmutter, Velazquez, Stivers, and Davidson: Thank you for the opportunity to once again participate in this historic discussion of the SAFE Banking Act. LEAP's previous executive director, Major Neill Franklin (Ret.), was honored to have testified in the subcommittee hearing in 2019 and we would like to affirm our ongoing support of this important bill.

I spent 21 years in law enforcement, and upon leaving, I continued to serve the public. My mission has always been, and will always be, to promote safety and justice. As the executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP), a nonpartisan, nonprofit of police prosecutors, judges and other criminal justice professionals, I've helped ensure our mission is to mobilize the voice of law enforcement in support of policies that will make us all safer.

At a time when more than a dozen states have voted to regulate and control marijuana, and dozens more have implemented programs for medical marijuana, it is beyond time for the federal government to update the banking system to support these democratic choices.

When my predecessor testified in 2019, he told the story of a dispensary owner from Orange County, California, who was kidnapped, tortured, permanently mutilated, and left for dead. By the grace of God, he survived this despicable act of violence, but the conditions under which marijuana industry workers risk similar victimization persist.

The conditions persist because one of the fastest growing markets in the country has nowhere to legally put its money. When thieves know a business is operating in cash, it becomes a fairly simple matter to target the owners and employees. Suddenly, something as mundane as making a tax payment becomes a potentially lethal situation.

This lack of regulatory framework is precisely why voters have made the drug legal in some parts of the country. Underground markets enrich criminals at the expense of everyone's safety. We cannot simply acknowledge marijuana is now legal in some states or look the other way while it happens; we have to build a model for how to keep people safe while voters decide to move the industry above-ground.

Police agencies can access financial records more easily when the transactions are documented in secure banking records. Banks can assist with investigations by flagging suspicious activity and alerting authorities to businesses that may be involved in organized crime. Financial records are used to locate people, estimate the size of an organization, and build cases against hardened criminals. A well-known example is Al Capone, who, after a lifetime of notoriety, was finally arrested for tax-evasion. When marijuana businesses have to work with cash, banks have limited ability to flag suspicious activity--and otherwise legal businesses are more likely to be overrun by cartels in the absence of a paper trail.

I'm not one for fear mongering--what I testify to is rooted in experience and research. Any police officer who has worked the street or investigated enough robberies will testify to the same regarding any business forced to handle large amounts of cash.

The SAFE Banking Act presents us with an opportunity to help stabilize the marijuana industry and enhance public safety. I believe it is my responsibility as a lifelong public servant to stay involved in this legislation to the very end.

Thank you for your time and for bringing the SAFE Banking Act to a vote.

Respectfully,

Lieutenant Diane

Goldstein (Ret.),

Executive Director,

Law Enforcement Action Partnership (LEAP).

Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the life and memory of David Kern.

David recently passed away at the age of 79, following a long fight with cancer. I am particularly extending my condolences to his beloved wife, Katy; his 4 children and 11 grandchildren.

David was a veteran of the United States Army, a volunteer firefighter, a small business owner. He served as Liberty Township Trustee for 32 years, and he was chairman of the Butler County Republican Party. He was an avid hunter, fisherman, and conservationist.

More than all that, however, he was a friend and someone who gave me sound advice and used his influence as a mentor.

David Kern was a very good man, and his presence will be sorely missed by his family, our community, and all who knew and loved him.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record the following letters of endorsement for H.R. 1996, the SAFE Banking Act of 2021.

Arizona Dispensaries Association,

17 March 2021.

Hon. Ed Perlmutter,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC.

Dear Representative Perlmutter: The Arizona Dispensaries

Association would like to thank you for your leadership as

you move forward with the reintroduction of the Secure and

Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act. With an eye to economics

and public safety, we consider this legislation to be

essential to the businesses we represent.

Cannabis businesses transact solely in cash, amounting to

billions of dollars in cash transactions each year, which

poses significant public safety concerns. The Arizona

cannabis program alone, which is the fourth top cannabis

paradigm within the United States, garnered over $1 billion

in sales in 2020. Within the first ten days of recreational

cannabis sales, Arizona businesses garnered at least $2.9

million. With over $1 billion in sales in 2020, received

almost exclusively in cash payments, and an expanding

recreational cannabis market, Arizona businesses must then

use this cash to pay employees and taxes. Arizona cannabis

businesses paid $500,00 in excise taxes from the $2.9 million

earned from those first ten days of recreational operations

in January. With an influx of cash to cannabis operators,

obtained in an extremely short period of time, businesses can

face difficulty in transporting taxation payments to local

tax offices. This example underscores the immense challenges

cannabis operators undergo due to cash only transactions.

The reliance on cash transactions causes reason for safety

concerns of not only industry employees, but also the

communities which they serve. As cannabis businesses operate

using cash transactions, it is necessary to keep large

amounts of cash on the premises. Aware of this fact, criminal

actors targeted cannabis businesses for burglaries across the

country in the spring of 2020. Members of the Arizona

Dispensaries Association were targeted for these break-ins,

resulting in significant financial losses not only due to

theft, but also as a result of the accompanying property

damage. SAFE Banking would enhance the safety of industry

employees and the communities in which cannabis businesses

operate by allowing businesses to drastically reduce the

amount of cash on hand, lessening the chances of cannabis

businesses being targeted for this type of criminal activity.

Additionally, with the ability to process payments

electronically, there is a more detailed and accurate

accounting of business activity, increasing the potential for

increased tax revenue over the long term.

Nationwide, the cannabis industry's four-year job growth

rate is an astounding 161%. The Arizona cannabis industry

alone employs 20,000 individuals, with over 5,000 of those

opportunities being created within 2020, which is especially

noteworthy considering the far-reaching impacts of the COVID

pandemic. As the SAFE Banking Act creates a safe harbor for

financial institutions to bank the proceeds of state-legal

cannabis businesses, its enactment is critical not only for

Arizona's cannabis industry to continue to grow at an

exponential rate, but to also contribute to the State of

Arizona's economic recovery during the aftershocks of the

pandemic.

SAFE Banking addresses many concerns ranging from economic

viability to public safety, not only with bipartisan support,

but with a neutral impact on the budget. Arizona Dispensaries

association is prepared to work together to advance this

legislation into law in the 117th Congress.

Best regards,

Sam Richard,

Executive Director,

Arizona Dispensaries Association.

Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill.

It purports to solve an important problem for our country's ag workforce, for our ag community, and for food security for our country, but it exploits a bigger problem and a real emergency by creating a gaping hole in our broken immigration system. Rather than address the root issue with our immigration laws, it exploits them.

Frankly, I don't know how many noncitizens some of my colleagues represent. I came here to represent American citizens. This bill disadvantages American citizens, and it disadvantages people who follow our admittedly broken immigration laws and come here legally, and it rewards people who come here illegally.

It is going to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis we see at the border instead of cure it. It is not a remedy; it is a harm. It is a harm to American citizenship, which should be treasured. We do welcome new Americans. We are unequaled in the world. No country welcomes more new citizens per year than the United States of America.

We will continue to be the land of opportunity, but we can only do that if we protect the cherished value of American citizenship. Citizenship matters. We cannot destroy it by adopting these policies. I plead that people oppose it.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to call up H.R. 682, the Reopen Schools Act, to get our kids out from behind screens and back in the classroom.