Elijah Cummings

Mr. CUMMINGS

Mr. CUMMINGS. Madam Chair, I support the amendment offered by Mr. Connolly. The congressional waiver provision in this underlying bill is a farce. It requires the President to ask Congress its permission to issue a regulation and then wait for both Houses of Congress to approve the waiver. Give me a break. That could take months in the best case, but the more likely scenario is that it would never happen at all--and everybody knows that. By adopting this amendment, we can ensure that the President can truly issue regulations when needed. Under this amendment, the waiver provision in the underlying bill will be changed so that if Congress doesn't act within 7 days on a waiver request submitted to it by the President, the waiver would be granted. Let me be clear: under this amendment, Congress would still have the opportunity to object to a regulation when necessary. This amendment simply ensures that Congress' failure to act doesn't prevent the President from issuing needed regulations. The majority claims that the congressional waiver provision in the underlying bill will ensure that the President can still issue important regulations. If the majority really intends to give the President that flexibility, they will adopt this amendment. I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this amendment.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I yield myself such time as I may consume. I strongly oppose the amendment offered by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Schweikert), which would make an already ambiguous bill even harder to implement. The amendment proposes to define the term ``annual cost to the economy'' as including ``any expected change in revenue of businesses'' caused by such regulation, including any change in revenue as a result of preparing for the implementation of the regulation. Imagine the consequences of this amendment. If it would cost a business any additional funds to ensure that baby formula does not contain toxic substances, that business could block a regulation requiring those safety measures. Is that really how we want to run our country? The truth is that businesses routinely blame regulations for costs they already incur. For example, power companies routinely blame the EPA for the fact that high-cost coal plants struggle to compete in today's market with lower-cost natural gas plants. Despite the fact that many of these coal plants are shut down because they are uncompetitive, some repeatedly blame EPA regulations for forcing their closings. The intention of this amendment appears to be to give businesses a veto over any regulation they oppose just by claiming that it's implementation somehow affects their bottom line. Since it would be virtually impossibility for OMB to confirm or deny such claims, they would be irrefutable. Now, I do believe that the cost of regulations imposed on industry should be one of many factors considered when we compare the overall costs and benefits of a rule. But these costs should not be the overriding factor to be considered, as this amendment would require. The amendment is just another example of the misguided effort to put business' profits before the health and safety of the American people. Therefore, I urge Members to oppose this unworkable and harmful amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I yield myself such time as I may consume. I strongly oppose the amendment offered by the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. McKinley), which would make a very dangerous bill even more devastating to the American people. If implemented, this amendment would broaden the scope of this legislation to impede the issuance of even more rules than are impeded by the underlying bill itself. By lowering the threshold at which a ``significant regulatory action'' is measured from rules that have an annual cost to the economy of $100 million or more to just $50 million or more, the legislation would prevent the implementation of important rules whose benefits far outweigh their costs. One of the things that we do not zero in on with regard to this legislation overall--and we saw it in our committee--is the cost- benefit analysis. I think it's very, very significant, when you think about the fact that there are certain regs which save lives, many which protect our constituents with regard to their pocketbooks, all kinds of things. Sometimes when you just look at the cost of a business coming in and complaining, as opposed to balancing it with regard to benefits, sometimes I think things get out of balance. The amendment clearly illustrates why Cass Sunstein believes a moratorium on the issuance of regulations is such a bad idea. As he stated at an Oversight Committee hearing last September, he said: A moratorium would not be a scalpel or a machete, it would be more like a nuclear bomb, in the sense that it would prevent regulations that cost very little, and have very significant economic or public health benefits. This amendment only increases the size of the bomb we are dropping. Just one example of a pending regulation that would be halted by this amendment is the Securities and Exchange Commission's proposed rule implementing a section of the Dodd-Frank Act to reduce the purchase of ``conflict minerals''--minerals whose sale by combatants in the Democrat Republic of Congo is known to fund the human rights abuses perpetrated by these combatants. Dodd-Frank requires the SEC to issue a rule directing publicly held companies to disclose whether any of four metals--gold, tantalum, tungsten or tin--used in the products they produce came from Central Africa, where trade in these commodities has funded years of civil war. The SEC issued a proposed rule in December 2010, but has delayed finalizing the rule in response to fierce business opposition and business lobbying. This proposed rule is estimated to cost industry $71 million per year. The benefits of this rule cannot be quantified, simply cannot. By ensuring that publicly traded companies in the United States track the supply chain of minerals and disclose whether their purchases are financing armed groups responsible for committing atrocities--killing people, rapes, hurting people--this proposed rule will save lives and help prevent sexual and gender-based violence. Adopting this amendment would prohibit the issuance of this regulation intended to help quell international violence and help end a humanitarian crisis. We simply cannot put financial profit, as I said a few minutes ago, above our moral obligation to protect the most vulnerable among us. So, ladies and gentlemen, I urge Members to oppose this incredibly dangerous amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CUMMINGS

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

Mr. CUMMINGS. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay).

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

Mr. CUMMINGS. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time we have.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Watt).

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 459, which passed out of the Oversight Committee without even a single hearing and without testimony from any Federal Reserve officials. Let me be clear: the Government Accountability Office has had the authority to audit the Federal Reserve's books for three decades. In 2010, the Dodd-Frank Act expanded the types of audits GAO conducts of the Federal Reserve, as well as the data the Fed must disclose to the public. For example, Dodd-Frank required the GAO to audit the emergency financial assistance provided during the financial crisis. The act also opens discount window operations and open market operations to audit so GAO can assess the operational integrity, collateral policies, fairness, and use of third-party contractors. And Dodd-Frank requires the Federal Reserve to release information regarding borrowers and counterparties participating in discount- lending programs and open market operations. Mr. Speaker, as a conferee who helped craft the final Dodd-Frank legislation, I supported all of these provisions. I believe other areas of the Federal Reserve's operations are also ripe for audit. During the committee's consideration of this legislation, I offered an amendment that would require GAO to perform an audit of the independent foreclosure reviews currently being conducted by the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Fourteen mortgage servicers have been required to establish a process under which borrowers can request an independent review of their loan histories. But at the end of May, only 200,000 out of about 4.4 million eligible borrowers had requested an independent review of their foreclosure cases. We need to understand whether the design of the program has limited the number of borrowers who have sought reviews of their cases. Further, it is unclear how the types and amounts of remediation are being determined. This is precisely the type of issue that should be reviewed by the GAO. Certainly, the public has a right and the Congress has a responsibility to know and understand the transactions and enforcement actions undertaken by the Nation's central bank. However, when Congress established the Fed in 1913, it understood that independence from political interference was critical to the bank's ability to fulfill its monetary policy responsibilities. The Dodd-Frank Act was carefully crafted to expand transparency while preserving the protections that ensure the independence of the Federal Reserve's internal deliberations on monetary policy matters. The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve must be able to pursue the policies it considers most responsive to our Nation's current economic conditions and most likely to fulfill its dual mandate of promoting maximum employment and stable prices. We should not allow GAO examinations to be the back door through which politics intrude on monetary policy--which is what this legislation would allow. Opening the Federal Reserve's internal policy deliberations to GAO review could influence how such deliberations are conducted and potentially the policies that are chosen, thus degrading the Fed's independence. Last week, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Mr. Bernanke, described the potential impact of this bill to the Financial Services Committee. He said: The nightmare scenario I have is one in which some future Fed Chairman would decide and say to raise the Federal funds rate to 25 basis points and somebody would say, I don't like that decision. I want the GAO to go in and get all the records, get all the transcripts, get all the preparatory materials and give us an independent opinion whether or not that was the right decision. I share Chairman Bernanke's concern. For that reason, during the markup of this legislation in the Oversight Committee, I offered an amendment that would have retained the protections for the Board of Governors' internal monetary policy deliberations to ensure that the audit required by this legislation did not intrude on the Federal Reserve's independence. I continue to believe this provision is needed to ensure this bill does not prohibit the ability of the Federal Reserve to implement monetary policies to strengthen our Nation's economy as it has done repeatedly throughout the recent financial crisis. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Mr. CUMMINGS. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Mr. CUMMINGS. I yield the gentleman 1 additional minute.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).

Mr. CUMMINGS. I yield 4 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee.

Mr. CUMMINGS. I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. CUMMINGS

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, the Resolution holding Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. in contempt of Congress and the accompanying report approved by the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have significant flaws. Although some are simply misleading, others are significant legal deficiencies and factual errors that may call into the question the validity of the Resolution itself. These flaws are described in detail in a document available at http://go.usa.gov/vSU and are hereby incorporated for the record into these remarks. For example, the Resolution and report would hold the Attorney General in contempt for not producing documents that were never demanded by the Committee's subpoena. The Committee's subpoena was issued on October 11, 2011, and it explicitly demanded documents up to the date it was issued. Documents created after October 11, 2011, clearly fall outside of the scope of the subpoena. Yet, the Resolution and report would hold the Attorney General in contempt for not producing documents created between October 11, 2011, and December 2, 2011. The Resolution states, ``That Eric H. Holder, Jr., Attorney General of the United States, shall be found to be in contempt of Congress for failure to comply with a congressional subpoena.'' The report explicitly covers documents from the date the Department sent a letter to Senator Charles Grassley on February 4, 2011, to the date it formally withdrew that letter on December 2, 2011. The report states that the Attorney General should be held in contempt for not producing documents regarding ``why it took so long for the Department to withdraw the letter.'' Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa reiterated his demand for documents covering this time period before an ``emergency meeting'' of the Rules Committee. When asked about this deficiency, the interpretation he provided of his own subpoena was incorrect. He stated: ``. . . [runs to the end of this Congress].'' In contrast, the text of the subpoena itself states: ``With the exception of paragraphs 4 and 5, the time period covered by this subpoena is from August 1, 2009 to the present, unless otherwise specified.'' Since the subpoena was issued on October 11, 2011, it clearly covered documents only until October 11, 2011. Under the Chairman's interpretation, the subpoena's reference to ``the present'' actually would mean ``the future.'' The Committee's full subpoena is available for review at http:// go.usa.gov/wuD and is hereby incorporated for the record into these remarks. It should come as no surprise that the Resolution and Committee report contain such obvious deficiencies because Republican House leaders rushed to schedule the Floor vote only one week after the Committee voted on a strictly party-line basis to approve them.

Mr. CUMMINGS

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you, Ranking Member Rahall, and thank you for your leadership. I also thank Chairman Mica and all of my colleagues. This bill provides certainty for our States, but overall funding for highways is reduced relative to fiscal year 2011. To ensure our Nation's mobility, we need expanded investments in all modes. Critically, this bill finds that discrimination and related barriers continue to pose obstacles for minority and women-owned business in the transportation industry. My colleagues and I have considered the extensive evidence provided to us in testimony in the Transportation Committee and detailed disparity studies documenting ongoing discrimination in transportation contracting. We've concluded there is a compelling national interest in reauthorizing our DBE programs. I thank Senator Boxer for her leadership on this issue. That said, I'm disappointed that House Democrats' participation in the conference was so limited. And as I have had the chance to review the final report, several of its provisions deeply concern me--perhaps none more so than section 100124, which would reduce by one-third the percent of food aid shipped on U.S. vessels. There are fewer than 100 U.S.-flagged vessels in the foreign trade now, and they carry less than 2 percent of U.S. cargos. Without the MSP and cargo preference programs, we would have no domestic merchant marine, leaving our military, and indeed, our economy, completely dependent on foreign vessels. The effect of section 100124 will be to speed the continuing decline of our fleet. It should never have been included in this bill, and it should be immediately repealed. With that, I am going to support the bill and urge my colleagues to support it.

Mr. CUMMINGS

Mr. CUMMINGS. I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay) 2 minutes, a member of the committee.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Quigley).

Mr. CUMMINGS. I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney).

Mr. CUMMINGS. Does the gentleman have any further requests for time?

Mr. CUMMINGS

Mr. CUMMINGS. I reserve the balance of my time.