Sean Casten

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I rise to praise this body for passing H.R. 9, the Climate Action Now Act, of which I am a proud cosponsor. Climate change is the greatest existential threat to our species. It is also an unequivocal economic opportunity. Replacing the need to extract and burn fossil fuels with renewable and clean energy saves money. This White House is failing to seize this domestic opportunity while simultaneously walking away from our international partners and competitors that are committed to this challenge. Of all the misguided decisions of this administration, few have been as reckless as announcing our withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement. It is environmentally foolish; it is economically naive; and it cedes leadership to China and others on the defining challenge of our time. That is foolhardy. H.R. 9 is a reclamation of that mantle. It is a demonstration that Americans are determined to lead, even if the White House is refusing to do so. I am proud to be a part of this effort, not because it is enough, but because it is the kind of leadership into the breach that has long defined true American greatness.

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of H. Res. 328. I thank Representative Rose for working on this resolution with me in a bipartisan manner, as well as Chair Waters and her staff for their commitment to seniors and financial literacy. H. Res. 328 supports the security of seniors through the promotion of financial literacy. This resolution supports the critical public- private partnerships that enable collaboration among law enforcement, financial institutions, and regulatory agencies to expand financial literacy and to detect fraud and scams against seniors. America's seniors have worked hard to raise families, pay their taxes, protect our country, and build our communities. They have scraped and saved to ensure their financial futures. Ten thousand baby boomers are turning 65 every day and, by 2030, the number of Americans aged 65 and older will more than double to 71 million, or about 20 percent of the United States population. These older Americans, who have given so much, are increasingly being targeted for financial exploitation. And in this digital age, with personal information so easily procured, the scams are only getting more complex and harder to detect. We cannot stand by and let our parents and grandparents continue to be ripped off by increasingly savvy con artists. What would this resolution do? It would support the goals of Financial Literacy Month to raise public awareness about the importance of personal financial education in the United States; It would acknowledge that raising awareness of threats to personal finances, especially for populations like older adults and their relatives and caregivers, is only one part of financial literacy; It would recognize that to combat elder financial exploitation, it is also necessary to encourage continued collaboration among law enforcement, financial institutions, regulatory agencies, and private sector organizations to allow the detection, prevention, reporting, and investigation of those crimes; It would support work being done by FinCEN, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, and its partners to educate the stakeholders that serve and protect America's elder community; It would urge continued public-private partnership and appropriate information sharing to prevent, detect, report, and investigate elder financial exploitation; and Finally, it would urge action to assist with remediation and reporting, as well as prevention and detection to have the best possible data, feedback, and incident response. The path to economic security begins with basic money management. But in an increasingly complex financial landscape, we cannot limit our focus on financial literacy only at the level of individuals and caregivers. We must also include financial institutions, law enforcement, and regulatory agencies so that they can work together to understand and detect these frauds and scams. Financial exploitation can be devastating. Studies have shown that seniors who suffer from abuse, neglect, or exploitation are three times more likely to die than their counterparts. Adding to this devastation--and this is painful, but we have to admit it--is the exploitation is often committed by family members, by trusted friends, or by caregivers. Financial abuse often occurs with the implied acknowledgement and/or consent of the elder person and therefore can be much more difficult to detect or to prove. Employees within the financial services industry may often be the first to detect those changes in the behaviors of customers with whom they have regular contact. That frontline relationship places institutions in a unique position to assist to protect customers, upholding the inherent trust relationship with their clients. In acknowledging this role, FinCEN issued an advisory to financial institutions on filing suspicious activity reports regarding elder financial exploitation that would provide red flag indicators and instructions on how to report elder financial exploitation through suspicious activity reports. Timely reporting of suspicious elder financial exploitation activity is critical to engaging entities that may have complementary information on the victim or the perpetrator and may be well positioned to collaborate or investigations. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H. Res. 328, supporting efforts to combat elder financial exploitation.

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer amendment No. 36 to H.R. 1585, the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act. My amendment would ensure that campus faculty are trained to recognize victims of sexual and domestic violence. Specifically, this legislation amends the bill to include ``appropriate campus faculty, such as academic advisors or professionals who deal with students on a daily basis'' for grant training programs to recognize and respond to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking. This would include training health providers on how to provide universal education to all members of the campus community on the impacts of violence on health and unhealthy relationships and how providers can support ongoing outreach efforts. Now, going off to school can be a wonderful opportunity for our children. But sexual and domestic violence on college campuses is horrific and must be addressed. We know that of undergraduate students, 23.1 percent of females and 5.4 percent of males experience rape or sexual assault during their time on campus. But all too often, those students do not report to law enforcement. Only 20 percent of female student victims report their experience. Some don't report because they fear reprisal, others don't think it was important enough, and some don't even believe that police could or would do anything to help. We cannot eradicate sexual violence on campus if we can't even reach the students who are being impacted. We are failing them. That is why this amendment to include campus faculty in training programs to help them identify signs of sexual and domestic violence is so necessary. If students feel that they cannot report these crimes, then we must have knowledgeable and trained faculty in place to provide help if it is needed. Recently I went to a panel at Benedictine University in Illinois, and I got to hear directly from campus faculty about this specific issue and from students on the unique needs on college campuses. There are really specific challenges, as Congresswoman Underwood was mentioning. We have limited but flawed procedures in place for people who need shelter when they are victims of domestic violence. That is really hard on a college campus. What do you do for someone when they are in a dorm room and everybody knows where the dorms are on campus? What do you do to change their schedule if there is only one section of the class they need to take? What can schools do when a survivor doesn't feel safe to go to class? I was honored at the time to speak with Bernadette Muloski, Benedictine's Violence Against Women Act Grant Coordinator. She pointed out that when schools provide more information and resources for reporting and speaking openly about these issues, then it often leads to higher numbers of reports--not because violence is happening more often, but because people finally feel safe to come forward. Now, it is so important for the first person that a student confides in to have an appropriate reaction, because that disclosure often has a huge impact on the survivor's healing. It is also impactful on how the student decides to move forward, either in reporting or seeking additional assistance such as counseling and support. So if the first person does not respond with empathy and gives an indication that they don't care or maybe doesn't know what to do and doesn't know where the resources are on campus, the student may never tell another person or may struggle with that, and the perpetrator may go on to commit more violence. On college campuses students often develop mentor relationships with faculty or staff beyond the health department that they are working with, and it is more likely that a survivor will disclose their experience to someone they know as opposed to a stranger. That is why we have to get this right. This amendment would provide the resources to train all of those faculty who interact with students, and by providing resources to schools so that they can individualize their response to sexual and domestic violence, we will enable them to better meet the unique challenges of those students. This is particularly true for underserved communities. Coordinated, comprehensive responses allow college communities to develop sustainable strategies to address these crimes. For colleges and universities to curb sexual violence on campus, we must create the safe, respectful, collegiate learning and teaching environment that every student and employee deserves. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support my amendment which will not only provide resources for college and university faculty, but also the support that students need and deserve. Mr. Chairman, I thank Representative Bass for authoring this bill, and I thank all the tireless advocates who have worked to bring us to this day. Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, please support this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, just last week we passed H.R. 1, the For the People Act, with its worthy aim: to ensure that this government represents the voices of all Americans and not just the privileged and powerful. Now, among the many reforms in H.R. 1, one would require that candidates for President and Vice President must disclose their tax returns. Giving voters personal tax information has been a tradition of Presidents since 1973, when Richard Nixon, of all people, released his returns and said: ``People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook.'' On that issue, I agree with Mr. Nixon. Now, that seems to be the thinking of my home State legislature, too, which has been working on legislation that would require any Presidential or Vice Presidential candidate who wants to be on the ballot in Illinois to release their tax returns. They think that the people have the right to know the true character of the person who will sit in the White House. Mr. Speaker, we have got to know if our President is a crook. I would like to see the Senate take up this bill. And if they are unable to follow in the great leadership of this House, I hope that other States will follow the great leadership of the State of Illinois.

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois. Madam Speaker, I missed Roll Call vote number 121. Had I been present, I would have voted as follows: H. Res. 156, Calling for accountability and justice for the assassination of Boris Nemtsov--Yes.

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois. Madam Speaker, we just voted on H.R. 8. It is the first gun control measure we have taken up in years. It is progress, but we still have so far to go. There are so many lives that have been taken from too many communities. On February 15 in Aurora, Illinois, on the edge of my district, that was the community where a man with a gun took five innocent lives: Trevor Wehner, Clayton Parks, Vicente Juarez, Russell Beyer, and Josh Pinkard. They were fathers, brothers, sons, uncles, friends, and they joined a long line of Americans who have been going about their daily lives and got killed. Here is what is really sickening: Most of the Members of this body don't even know their names. A week from now, you are going to forget their names, and you are going to replace them with another set of names, not because they don't deserve to be remembered, but because every day in America, 100 people get shot. Can we remember all their names? I can't. And shame on us for allowing that to happen. Occasionally, one of those shootings captures our attention, and we offer some thoughts and prayers. Leave that to families. Leave that to people of faith. We are lawmakers. Our job is to write the laws, fix the laws. If we took 100 million guns off the street tomorrow, we would still have more guns than any other country. We need to do more.

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, the very survival of humankind is in peril, and there is no greater threat to our continued existence than climate change. From the inaction of this administration, you would never guess the seriousness of the risk confronting us. For the sake of our very survival, I urge my colleagues to put aside their concerns about how our party leaders or how our base will judge us. All that truly matters is how our grandchildren will judge us. There are those who claim they don't believe in climate change. Those doubters deserve no more of our time or attention than those who don't believe in gravity. Science doesn't care. There are those who claim we can't make progress until we have a new occupant of the White House and a Democratic majority in the Senate. To those I say, We have no time to wait. Two years of inaction is 2 years we can never get back. We in this body need to begin tackling climate change now, and we need to start by talking about it differently, not as an unproven scientific theory, not as a political inconvenience and not as a job killer. It is an economic opportunity. Action on climate change can be the path to making the U.S. more globally competitive. I don't speak on this floor today as a theorist. From 2000 to 2016, I built multiple companies with missions to profitably reduce greenhouse gas emissions. My colleagues and I made U.S. manufacturers more competitive by reducing their energy expenses. We built more than 80 projects and $300 million of capital investment, and I can now say three things with certainty: One, there are no thermodynamic barriers to drastically lowering CO2 emissions; and two, there are no economic barriers to businesses pursuing profits. That leads me to three, that there are a lot of legal barriers to profitably reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This gives us an opportunity, because while we can't change the laws of thermodynamics, and we can't change the laws of economics, we can change the laws of the United States. We don't need to reinvent the wheel. Switzerland, Germany, and Denmark all use half as much energy as we do per dollar of GDP. Those countries have the same access to talent, the same access to capital and technology as we do, but they use half as much energy. If all we did was copy them, we could cut CO2 emissions by 50 percent. I think we could do better. Consider this: in 2007, over a decade ago, Congress tried and failed to pass the Lieberman-Warner climate bill which was seen by some as being too ambitious because it sought to cut U.S. electric sector emissions by 17 percent. It didn't pass, and there was a powerful Senator who said at the time that the bill would drastically increase energy costs and cost millions of American jobs, all for no environmental gain. As Warner Wolf says, ``Let's go to the videotape.'' CO2 emissions since then in the electric sector are down by nearly 25 percent per megawatt hour and real power prices are down by 4 percent over the last decade. Just imagine what we could have done if we tried. So why did emissions fall? Because of economics. We have gradually been building more efficient, cleaner, and cheaper power plants, and once those plants are built, they always run more than the older, less efficient plants, because here is the little secret: businesses like to make money, and you make more money if you spend less on fuel. Mr. Speaker, if my colleagues take nothing else away from this speech, I hope they will understand that point. Everything we do to make our economy less dependent on expensive fossil fuel lowers CO2 emissions and makes our businesses more profitable. That protects American jobs and makes our citizens wealthier. So let me take this opportunity to speak to those who don't believe the science and to those who believe the science but think a warmer world is a good thing: Keep your beliefs. Hold on to them. All I am asking is that you be greedy. Greedy for America, as our President has boasted. Because if you are greedy, you will work with me to see CO2 reduction as an opportunity for cost reduction and profit maximization. I mentioned at the start of my remarks that the primary barrier to meaningful CO2 reductions are U.S. laws. That is not to say that those laws have been written with bad intent. To the contrary, many of those well-intentioned laws have had unintentional, negative consequences. Well-intentioned aspects of our Tax Code often cause capital to flow to the least economic technologies. Well-intentioned portions of the Clean Air Act discourage energy efficiency. Well- intentioned social policies obscure the true cost of fossil fuels, distorting capital markets away from cheaper alternatives. But that is great news because we can fix all of those things. So let's make U.S. manufacturers more competitive. Let's help them cut energy costs. Let's protect U.S. jobs. Let's make our energy system more resilient. And let's lower CO2 emissions. I think that is pretty bipartisan. And as I go to work on the Select Committee on Climate Crisis, I will be working toward writing and introducing legislation, and I look forward to hearing all the great ideas from my colleagues in this body. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I know that we do. But for goodness' sake, let's not wait.

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairwoman Waters and Ranking Member McHenry for working in a bipartisan manner to craft H.R. 624, a bill to help the Securities and Exchange Commission better protect hardworking Americans from financial fraud. As a new member on the Financial Services Committee, I look forward to working together with both the chairwoman and the ranking member on similar commonsense pieces of legislation. However, we cannot forget that the most recent shutdown all but caused the SEC to shut its doors. If people wanted to manipulate and defraud financial markets that was the perfect time to get away with it. Now that the shutdown has ended, we have to work together to ensure that the government stays open to protect consumers and focus on proactive measures like H.R. 624 that will strengthen our markets. Mr. Speaker, I support H.R. 624, and I thank the chairwoman for her leadership.

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois. Mr. Chair, I will vote today in support of H.R. 268, the Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2019. Americans have a long history of helping each other in times of emergency and this bill, in that American spirit, provides needed funding to help families and businesses recover from natural disasters. That said, I am concerned that the bill, in many respects, is a stop- gap measure that defers action on bigger problems. Our disaster funding protocols have historically been predicated on the idea that, when American citizens' face a loss of property due to a rare and unpredictable event, we have a moral obligation to help them rebuild. That is a noble and righteous goal and consistent with this bill. However, we must also begin to face up to the fact that climate change is creating a situation where disasters are no longer rare, nor unpredictable. We know with certainty where flood risk is intensifying in low-lying coastal regions. We know with certainty where the risks of wildfires are growing. A review by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of $1-billion-plus weather and climate disasters proves the point--such disasters are increasing in frequency and concentrated in very specific regions of the country. To continue to provide federal funds to encourage rebuilding in those areas is ultimately unsustainable. At some point, those funds will have to be diverted to development on less disaster-prone grounds. That is scary and unfortunate, but we cannot ignore that reality. It is my hope that, as a body, we can begin to develop the strategies to redirect those funds on our terms rather than being compelled to do so by fiscal or natural events.

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois

Mr. CASTEN of Illinois. Madam Speaker, today I will cast my vote in favor of H.R. 136, The Federal Intern Protection Act of 2019. But I will do so with the concern that it does not go far enough. This bill, for all of the improved protections it does afford, fails to provide to Federal interns with the basic safeguards against harassment that are common to their counterparts in corporate America. Having spent 16 years as a CEO of companies ranging from 10-200 employees, I know this subject well. In my private-sector workplaces, our harassment policies protected paid and unpaid employees from harassment as this bill does. But those policies did not stop there. We also prohibited harassment against any contractors or suppliers who were on our premises or who were working with our staff in environments that were reasonably considered to be work related--for example, at an off-site dinner meeting. We then went further still and required that any contractors or suppliers who required access to our facilities also agree to be bound by those policies. We did not do this out of legal obligation, but because it made our workplaces and employees safer and more productive. I respectfully submit that we should do the same in this body. To be sure, it may be difficult for us to obligate anyone in our offices to be fully bound by our policies. But surely we can provide a safer workspace not only for our paid and unpaid employees but also for committee staff, and staff from other Members' offices, as well as visitors.