John Conyers

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the End Racial Profiling Act of 2010, along with additional cosponsors. This legislation represents a comprehensive federal commitment to healing the rift caused by racial profiling and restoring public confidence in the criminal justice system at-large. This legislation is designed to enforce the constitutional right to equal protection of the laws by eliminating racial profiling through changing the policies and procedures underlying the practice. This legislation can be traced back to the data collection efforts of the late 1990's that were designed to determine whether racial profiling was a fact versus an urban legend. Based upon the work around that legislation, by September 11, 2001, there was significant empirical evidence and wide agreement among Americans, including President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft, that racial profiling was a tragic fact of life in the minority community and that the Federal government should take action to end the practice. Moreover, many in the law enforcement community have acknowledged that singling out people for heightened scrutiny based on their race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin had eroded the trust in law enforcement necessary to appropriately serve and protect our communities. At a recent Judiciary Committee hearing on the issue of racial profiling, we approached the issue from the perspective of ``smart policing'' and what makes sense in a time of austerity in the face of the continuing need to protect public safety. I believe that it became clear during the hearing that enough agreement exists to allow us to re-open the bipartisan dialogue on racial profiling commenced by President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft. Despite the fact that the majority of law enforcement officers perform their duties professionally and without bias--and we value their service highly--the specter of racial profiling has contaminated the relationship between the police and minority communities to such a degree that federal action is justified to begin addressing the issue. While the Department of Justice promulgated a series of guidelines in 2003 which were designed to end the practice of racial profiling by federal law enforcement agencies, these measures do not reach the vast majority of racial profiling complaints arising from the routine activities of state and local law enforcement agencies. Further, the guidelines provide no enforcement mechanism or methods for identifying law enforcement agencies not in compliance and, therefore, fail to resolve the racial profiling problem nationwide. In this instance, there is no substitute for comprehensive federal anti-profiling legislation. The End Racial Profiling Act is designed to eliminate racial, ethnic, religious, and national origin profiling that is well documented. First, the bill provides a prohibition on racial profiling, enforceable by declaratory or injunctive relief. Second, the bill mandates that training on racial profiling issues as part of Federal law enforcement training, the collection of data on all routine or spontaneous investigatory activities that is to be submitted through a standardized form to the Department of Justice. Third, the Justice Department is authorized to provide grants for the development and implementation of best policing practices, such as early warning systems, technology integration, and other management protocols that discourage profiling. Finally, the Attorney General is required to provide periodic reports to assess the nature of any ongoing discriminatory profiling practices. Decades ago, with the passage of sweeping civil rights legislation, this country made clear that race should not affect the treatment of individual Americans under the law. However, recent events demonstrate that racial profiling remains a divisive issue that strikes at the very foundation of our democracy. When law-abiding citizens are treated differently by those who enforce the law simply because of their race, ethnicity, religion, or national origin, they are denied the basic respect and equal treatment that is the right of every American. With the cooperation of the Administration, we have the opportunity to develop a comprehensive approach to eliminating the practice of racial profiling through this legislative effort. I hope that we do not miss this historic opportunity to heal the rift caused by racial profiling and restore much of the community's confidence in law enforcement.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. Ladies and gentlemen of the House, H.R. 10 is the mother of all antiregulatory bills. Since the House was in session during 2010 for 116 legislative days, under this bill--and I invite any of my colleagues to make any different analysis--the Congress would be required after 70 days after they receive a rule to act upon it. If you only have 116 days, legislative days a year, it would be literally impossible to handle the number of rules that we would get. Namely, we got 94 rules last year, 116 days. If we were handling every rule--please, use your arithmetic skills, ladies and gentlemen. This bill would be unworkable, and it would be impossible for new regulations to be enacted. But then, maybe that's the whole thrust of the matter. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds. The REINS Act is the mother of all anti-regulatory bills in the Congress. The only problem, I say to the distinguished author, the gentleman from Kentucky, is that it won't work. There are only 116 legislative days. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia, Jim Moran.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia, Steve Cohen, a ranking subcommittee member in Judiciary.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to a valuable member of the Judiciary Committee, the distinguished gentleman from Georgia, Hank Johnson.

Mr. CONYERS. I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, the gentlewoman from Texas, the Honorable Sheila Jackson Lee.

Mr. CONYERS. I yield the gentlewoman an additional 15 seconds.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to a senior member of the Education Committee, the gentleman from New Jersey, Rob Andrews. (Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to a member of the Financial Services Committee, the gentleman from Connecticut, the Honorable Jim Himes.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlelady from Colorado, Diana DeGette, who serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Virginia, a member of the Government Oversight Committee, Mr. Gerry Connolly.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the former chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, the gentleman from California, the Honorable George Miller.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I am honored at this time to recognize the former Speaker of the House, the leader, the gentlewoman from California, the Honorable Nancy Pelosi.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to our final speaker, Representative Lynn Woolsey of California, who is finishing out a brilliant career.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. CONYERS. I want to merely start off by recognizing that somewhere buried in this amendment is the gentleman from Texas' recognition that regulations could or might create jobs. I want to thank him for that. There's no credible evidence that regulations depress job creation. Now, we've talked about this for 2 days. But at our hearing in the Judiciary Committee, one of the anti-regulatory bills that we considered, we had an American Enterprise Institute witness, Christopher DeMuth, from the conservative think tank that AEI is, and he stated in his prepared testimony that focus on jobs can lead to confusion in regulatory debates and that the employment effects of regulation, while important, are indeterminate. I must say to my colleagues that that is exactly the same impression that I came out of my Judiciary Committee hearing with, and it's the same impression that I've come to realize is probably accurate in the debate for the last few days on the floor of the House itself. I'm concerned about this amendment because it would add to the analytical burdens of agencies, the speculative assessment of jobs added or lost, and how many of those jobs would be added or lost in the public and private sectors. For these reasons, I conclude that this amendment would not be helpful, and I am unable to support it. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. I am pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from North Carolina, my friend Mel Watt of the Judiciary Committee. He is the ranking subcommittee member of this part of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield my colleague from North Carolina (Mr. Watt) as much time as he may consume.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte) for his excellent presentation. I agree with him that what probably triggered this bill in 1988 was Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork's video rental history in which his privacy was violated in a very major way. And so I join him and the members of the House Judiciary Committee in supporting the Video Privacy Protection Act, which provides continued consumer protection. H.R. 2471 is very important in this respect because, over the course of the 23 years since this measure has become law, there have been significant changes in the ways and the means by which people view technological content. Movies can now be downloaded to mobile phones; live events can be streamed in real-time to laptops using mobile Internet services. There were so many other things happening in the transformation that go on at all times that could not have been contemplated in 1988. So there was ambiguity about whether the statute applies only to physical goods, such as videocassettes and DVDs. Under this bill, a videotape service provider means anybody engaged in the business, in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, of rental, sale, or delivery or prerecorded videocassette tapes or similar audiovisual materials. It's the phrase ``similar audiovisual materials'' that has created some ambiguity. So what we've done is specified the requirement of informed written consent for disclosure may include consent through electronic means using the Internet. As the bill moved through committee markup, I wanted to make sure that the bill provided the greatest protections for consumer privacy. Accordingly, like the subcommittee chair, I supported the Nadler amendments that required such consent requests be clearly and prominently presented to the consumer. Fortunately, those amendments were accepted. And though I feel that the bill could have gone further--I believe, for example, that the consumer should be asked periodically if their consent should be renewed--it is a good bill. Accordingly, I join in supporting its passage. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield the remainder of my time to a distinguished magistrate from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), now a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I appreciate the excellent description of the chairman, Lamar Smith, on H.R. 1021, the Temporary Bankruptcy Judgeships Extension Act. This is a very bipartisan piece of legislation, extending by 5 years the authorizations for 30 temporary bankruptcy judges in more than 20 judicial districts around the country. I might point out that we're not adding bankruptcy judges; and, Members of the House, that's what we ought to be doing, really, instead of just continuing the same number. We need more. Why? Because bankruptcy judges are needed more than ever. The bankruptcy filings have increased during the worst economic downturn the Nation has experienced since the Great Depression because long-term high unemployment rates and reduced incomes have sent more people into the bankruptcy court, because of the continuing mortgage foreclosure crisis which has affected so many people, and the increasingly onerous credit card obligations, and the sky-high student loans that are being collected on, and the uninsured medical debt. Last year 1.6 million bankruptcy cases were filed, representing a more than 8 percent increase over the prior years. Two of the Nation's largest automobile manufacturers in Detroit, General Motors and Chrysler, filed for bankruptcy relief under chapter 11. These two cases alone involved billions of dollars, tens of thousands of workers, thousands of auto dealers, and thousands of creditors located in all parts of our Nation. Just last month, American Airlines filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy relief, and the national bookstore chain Borders filed last month. A third factor must be kept in mind: that while we maintain the status quo, more needs to be done. Bankruptcy courts have been performing admirably but under critical strain. So while the bankruptcy courts' workload increases, judicial resources are, in fact, diminishing. And that's why we're authorizing new judicial membership in the bankruptcy courts in the coming year, if everything works out as we anticipate. Right now, though, we merely ask the House of Representatives to support the bill that I and Chairman Smith have cosponsored which would maintain the new judges that are on the bench but will not add any more. I urge your support for the additional judgeships. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. I yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia, Mr. Hank Johnson, a member of the committee.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Members of the House, under the Constitution, article I, section 10, clause 3, these kinds of interstate compacts must be ratified by the House of Representatives. Senate Joint Resolution 22 gives congressional approval to an agreement between Missouri and Illinois to amend the interstate compact establishing the Bi-State Development Agency. My colleague on the Judiciary, Judge Gohmert, has expertly described what it is that brings us here, but I would merely add that the congressionally approved interstate compact establishing the Bi-State Development Agency in 1950 serves as the primary provider of the public transportation for the St. Louis metropolitan area. It also develops, maintains, owns, and operates bridges, airports, wharves, docks, grain elevators, industrial parks, parking facilities, refuse and waste handling facilities, as well as fuel, energy, air, water, rail, or commodity storage areas. Also, there is a 40-year maximum maturity period for bonds and other financial instruments which will allow the agency to finance projects for longer periods of time. I congratulate my colleague from St. Louis, William Lacy Clay, a distinguished Member from Missouri whose father was in on the first interstate compact, and now we're proud that he and other of his colleagues from both Missouri and Illinois are supporting this Senate Joint Resolution 22. I urge its favorable consideration. I would like to yield the distinguished gentleman as much time as he may consume.