Bob Goodlatte

Mr. GOODLATTE

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The Mobile Workforce State Income Tax Simplification Act provides a clear, uniform framework for when States may tax nonresident employees who travel to the taxing State to perform work. In particular, this bill prevents States from imposing income tax compliance burdens on nonresidents who work in a foreign State for fewer than 30 days in a year. The State tax laws that determine when a nonresident must pay a foreign State's income tax and when employers must withhold this tax are numerous and varied. Some States tax income earned within their borders by nonresidents even if the employee only works in the State for just 1 day. These complicated rules impact everyone who travels for work and many industries. As just one example, the Judiciary Committee heard testimony in 2015 that the patchwork of State laws resulted in a manufacturing company issuing 50 W-2s to a single employee for a single year. The company executive also noted, regarding the compliance burden: many of our affected employees make less than $50,000 per year and have limited resources to seek professional advice. States generally allow a credit for income taxes paid to another State. However, it is not always dollar for dollar when local taxes are factored in. Credits also do not relieve workers of substantial paperwork burdens. There are substantial burdens on employers as well. The committee heard testimony in 2014 that businesses, including small businesses, that operate interstate are subject to significant regulatory burdens with regard to compliance with nonresident State income tax withholding laws. These burdens distract from productive activity and job creation. Nevertheless, some object that the States will lose revenue if the bill is enacted. However, an analysis from Ernst & Young found that the bill's revenue impact is minimal. There is little motive for fraud and gaming because the amount of money at issue--taxes on less than 30 days' wages--is minimal. Also, the income tax generally has to be paid; the question is merely to whom. I commend the bill's lead sponsors, Representatives Bishop and Johnson, and thank all of the bill's cosponsors. I urge the bill's passage. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time, and I ask unanimous consent to yield control of my time to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Bishop).

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2315) to limit the authority of States to tax certain income of employees for employment duties performed in other States.

Mr. GOODLATTE

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Washington's regulatory system is one that virtually every day places new obstacles in the path of American jobs and economic growth. The biggest obstacles of all are new regulations that impose more than $1 billion per year in costs on the American economy. Struggling workers, families, and small business owners have every right to ask why regulations that cost this much are ever promulgated at all. Surely, there are less costly measures that are effective and should be adopted instead. Those less costly measures would allow many more resources to be devoted to job creation and productive investment. But billion-dollar rules are promulgated, and there are more and more as the Obama administration grinds to an end. This is one of the reasons our economy has faced so much difficulty in achieving a full recovery under the Obama administration's misguided policies. Making matters worse, when billion-dollar rules are challenged in court, regulated entities must often sink billions of dollars into compliance while litigation is pending even if that litigation ultimately will be successful. Such was the case in Michigan v. EPA, for example, in which an Environmental Protection Agency rule for utilities imposed about $10 billion in costs to achieve just $4 million to $6 million in benefits. That is, at best, about $1,600 in costs for every $1 of benefit. This is money for job creation and economic recovery we simply cannot afford to waste. But EPA and the courts allowed it to be wasted for years during successful litigation challenging the rule, because neither the EPA nor the courts stayed the rule. The REVIEW Act, introduced by Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law Chairman Marino, is a commonsense measure that responds to this problem with a simple, bright-line test. Under the bill, if a new regulation imposes $1 billion or more in annual cost, it will not go into effect until after litigation challenging it is resolved. Of course, if the regulation is not challenged, it may go into effect as normal. This is a balanced approach, and it provides a healthy incentive for agencies to promulgate effective, but lower-cost regulations that are more legally sound to begin with. I want to thank Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law Chairman Tom Marino for his work on this important legislation. I urge all of my colleagues to support the bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino), the chief sponsor of the legislation and the chairman of the Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentleman from Michigan makes reference to the administration's Statement of Administration Policy on H.R. 3438. The administration opposes this bill precisely because it would be effective. It would help to halt their regulatory overreach. The administration claims that this bill is unnecessary because rulemaking procedures already exist to ensure that new rules are as least burdensome as possible and produce a net benefit, and courts already can issue judicial stays. But the whole reason for this legislation is that the administration is ignoring such procedures. The courts rarely issue judicial stays, and by the time the courts finally strike down illegal rules, it is too late. For example, the administration lost in Michigan v. EPA because it failed to consider the costs and benefits of the rule which imposed about $10 billion in costs to achieve just $4- to $6 million in benefits. By the time the Court issued the ruling, huge sums had already been spent on compliance. These are resources that otherwise could have gone into productive jobs and investment rather than complying with an illegal rule. Our economy cannot afford this waste. Do not be fooled by the administration's fear-mongering about delaying rules addressing public safety emergencies. It is difficult to imagine a public safety emergency requiring a billion-dollar rule to solve. Indeed, we reviewed a list of billion-dollar rules issued since 2000, and not one responds to an immediate public safety emergency. Even if there were such a case, imposing costs of that magnitude for whatever reason should be made by elected representatives accountable to the people, not agency bureaucrats. Instead of recommending a veto of this bill, the President's senior advisers should recommend agencies faithfully follow rulemaking procedures so Congress does not have to shorten the leash even further. Billion-dollar rules are a fast-growing plague inflicted by Washington's out-of-control regulators on small businesses and ordinary citizens throughout the land. According to a 2014 report by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, over 30 billion-dollar rules since the year 2000 are imposing roughly $100 billion a year in costs on our struggling economy. The American Action Forum reports that the Obama administration plans to impose at least another $113 billion in regulatory costs before it leaves office, and this is on top of the estimated $2 trillion-plus in total costs from Washington regulators that are crushing our economy and strangling economic recovery. It is time for measures that shout, ``Stop,'' to Washington's regulators and force them to find a better way. That is exactly what this bill does. It imposes automatic stays when new billion-dollar rules are challenged in court so small businesses and hardworking Americans don't have to bear the crushing cost of illegal rules while they pursue their rights in court. It creates a powerful incentive for agencies tempted to zoom past the billion-dollar mark to stop, turn around, and find a less costly way to achieve the same benefits for the American people. Hopefully, once this bill becomes law, we will stop seeing needless billion-dollar rules. And if we ever do need a billion-dollar-a-year solution, this bill will help make sure regulators leave it to the accountable Members of Congress to make such monumental policy decisions by statute. I urge all of my colleagues to support the bill. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Missouri (Mrs. Hartzler).

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

Mr. GOODLATTE

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (S. 2040) to deter terrorism, provide justice for victims, and for other purposes.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Lance).

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee, and welcome him back.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act has been introduced over several successive Congresses and has twice passed the Senate. Over the years that this legislation has been considered, I have worked with its sponsors to make the bill's language more precise in order to ensure that any unintended consequences are kept to a minimum. In particular, I have worked to make sure that JASTA's extension of secondary liability under the Anti-Terrorism Act closely tracks the common law standard for aiding and abetting liability and is limited to State Department-designated foreign terrorist organizations. Secondary liability should only attach to persons who have actual knowledge that they are directly providing substantial assistance to a designated foreign terrorist organization in connection with the commission of an act of international terrorism. JASTA, as revised in the Senate Judiciary Committee, ensures that aiding and abetting liability is limited in this manner. In addition to the Anti-Terrorism Act, JASTA amends the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to waive the sovereign immunity of any country that sponsors an act of international terrorism that causes physical injury on U.S. soil. JASTA makes this change because, under current law, a foreign nation can provide financing and other substantial assistance for a terrorist attack in our country and escape liability so long as the support is provided overseas. For example, under current law, if the intelligence agency of a foreign government handed a terrorist a bag of money in New York City to support an attack on U.S. soil, the country would be liable under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act's tort exception right now. However, if we change the fact pattern slightly so that, rather than giving a terrorist money in New York City, the money is provided in Paris, the foreign state will not be subject to liability in U.S. courts. This is a troubling loophole in our antiterrorism laws to say that a terrorist attack occurring in the United States, a tort occurring in the United States on U.S. citizens, would not allow U.S. citizens access to their own courts for a tort that occurred in their own country. When Congress enacted the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act in 1976, it put in place a broad set of exceptions to sovereign immunity, including an exception for tort claims involving injuries occurring in the United States. However, the courts have not consistently interpreted those exceptions in such a manner that they cover the sponsoring of a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. JASTA addresses this inconsistency with a concrete rule that is consistent with the nine, longstanding exceptions to foreign sovereign immunity already provided for under U.S. law. JASTA ensures that those, including foreign governments, who sponsor terrorist attacks on U.S. soil are held fully accountable for their actions. We can no longer allow those who injure and kill Americans to hide behind legal loopholes, denying justice to the victims of terrorism. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this legislation. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials to S. 2040, under current consideration.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, at this time, it is my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. King), the chief sponsor of this legislation.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Donovan).

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to say, first of all, thank you very much to the ranking member of the committee, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) for working with us on this legislation. I want to congratulate the chief sponsors of the legislation, particularly Congressman King of New York who has, as many have said here, been tenacious at pursuing justice. I urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith).

Mr. GOODLATTE

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Two years ago, the House Judiciary Committee commenced a pattern or practice investigation into the Justice Department's mortgage lending settlements. We found that the Department of Justice is systematically subverting Congress' spending power by requiring settling parties to donate money to activist groups. In just the last 2 years, the Department of Justice has directed nearly $1 billion to third parties entirely outside of Congress' spending and oversight authorities. Of that, over half a billion has already been disbursed or is committed to being disbursed. In some cases, these mandatory donation provisions reinstate funding Congress specifically cut. The spending power is one of Congress' most effective tools in reining in the executive branch. This is true no matter which party is in the White House. A Democrat-led Congress passed the Cooper-Church amendment to end the Vietnam War. More recently, bipartisan funding restrictions blocked lavish salary and conference spending by Federal agencies and grantees. This policy control is lost if the executive gains authority over spending. Serious people on both sides of the aisle understand this. A former Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel in the Clinton administration warned in 2009 that the Department of Justice has ``the ability to use settlements to circumvent the appropriations authority of Congress.'' In 2008, a top Republican Department of Justice official restricted mandatory donation provisions because they ``can create actual or perceived conflicts of interest and/or other ethical issues.'' Any objections to this bill would be unfounded. Whether the beneficiaries of these donations are worthy entities is entirely beside the point. The Constitution grants Congress the power to decide how money is spent, not the Department of Justice. This is not some esoteric point. It goes to the heart of the Constitution's separation of powers and Congress' ability to rein in executive overreach in practice. Nor does the bill restrict prosecutorial discretion. That discretion pertains to the decision to prosecute. Setting penalties and remedial policy is the proper purview of Congress. Opponents' central concern is that there may be cases of generalized harm to communities that cannot be addressed by restitution, but this misses the fundamental point. The Department of Justice has authority to obtain redress for victims. Federal law defines victims to be those ``directly and proximately harmed'' by a defendant's acts. Once those victims have been compensated, deciding what to do with additional funds extracted from defendants becomes a policy question properly decided by elected Representatives in Congress, not agency bureaucrats or prosecutors. It is not that DOJ officials will always be funding bad projects. It is that, outside of compensating actual victims, it is not their decision to make. Rather than suspend the practice of mandatory donations in response to these bipartisan concerns, the Department of Justice has doubled down. In April 2016, a major DOJ bank settlement required $240 million in financing and/or donations toward affordable housing. DOJ's June 2016 settlement with Volkswagen requires a $2 billion payment to fund the administration's green energy agenda. This payment cannot be justified as remedial because the settlement states explicitly that a separate $2.7 billion payment is intended to fully mitigate the harm caused. It is time for Congress to end this abuse. The Stop Settlement Slush Funds Act of 2016 bars mandatory donation terms in DOJ settlements. It is a bipartisan bill. It makes clear that payments to provide restitution for actual harm directly caused, including harm to the environment, are permitted. Do not be fooled by opponents' scare tactics. They claim that the legislation could prohibit conduct remedies used in settlements covering workplace discrimination, harassment, and consumer privacy. The bill does not preclude such remedies. Nothing bars DOJ from requiring a defendant to implement workplace training and monitoring programs. The ban on third-party payments merely ensures that the defendant remains responsible for performing these remedies itself, and is not required to outsource such set sums for the work to third parties who might be friendly with a given administration. This bill addresses an institutional issue. That is one reason similar language passed the House last year by voice vote. I thank all of the bill's cosponsors, and I urge the bill's passage. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 5063.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond to the gentleman from Georgia and say that no one gets off the hook; not Wall Street, not anybody in this legislation. All we are saying is that if money goes, as a fine, it should either be paid into the general Treasury, as required by the law, or to actual victims of the wrongdoing by the parties. And if it is paid into the general Treasury, the Constitution requires that it be paid, that it be appropriated by this Congress, not by bureaucrats and prosecutors at the Department of Justice. At this time, it is my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling), the chairman of the Financial Services Committee and a great leader on this issue.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First, I say to my friend, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), of course, the National Council of La Raza would not like this legislation because the National Council of La Raza is the largest beneficiary of what the Justice Department is doing. They are getting the money. They are one of the largest recipients. So I am not at all surprised to hear that they wouldn't like us to stop this cozy relationship in which they go to the Justice Department and say, ``Hey, we need more money,'' and the Justice Department says, ``Okay. In the next settlement we do, we will send some of that money over to you.'' This is an abuse. It is clearly a slush fund, and it needs to be stopped. I prefer to focus on institutional concerns with mandatory donations rather than on the nature of the recipients. However, there is no ignoring the troubling May 19, 2016, testimony to the Financial Services Committee that the donation beneficiaries were ``Democrat special interests.'' These include the Neighborhood Assistance Corporation of America, whose director calls himself a ``bank terrorist.'' Documents show that the groups that benefited from mandatory donation provisions actively lobbied the DOJ to include them. The bill's opponents have proffered a series of specious arguments. The principal ones I refuted earlier. The others I will address now. We are told that required donations represent just a fraction of the overall settlement amounts. That is true, but irrelevant. In absolute terms, there is a tremendous amount of money--nearly $1 billion-- flowing to activist groups at the unilateral discretion of the executive just in these financial service industry settlements and another $2 billion more for the Volkswagon settlement. In any event, the $1 billion is over twice the annual Congressional appropriation for the Legal Services Corporation and is a huge windfall to the recipient organizations. An analysis of 80 beneficiaries of the Bank of America settlement revealed that, on average, the DOJ required donations accounted for more than 10 percent of their 2015 budgets. Such largesse should not be conferred unilaterally. Critics contend that there is insufficient evidence that the DOJ structured the settlements to direct funds to activist groups. This is disingenuous. The opposition knows that the DOJ refuses to let the committee make the most troubling documents it found public. Opponents also argued that mandatory donations are plainly lawful; but the House Financial Services Committee heard from three experts that mandatory donations are an unconstitutional subversion of Congress' spending power. That view is echoed by former President Clinton's own head of the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel. Yet, even if these payments were not unlawful, they are definitely bad policy, which is precisely why legislation should prohibit them. Another unfounded objection is that it is unrealistic for Congress to legislate redress every time a violation occurs that causes generalized harm. In the banking settlements, the housing groups that received donations were in categories that were already specifically receiving grants from Congress. This shows that the infrastructure to direct funding to community projects is already in place. The Department of Justice could also recommend to Congress, for example, as part of the President's budget, projects to fund that address generalized harm. Finally, as the renowned liberal legal scholar and former D.C. circuit judge, Abner Mikva, has explained, on this point, efficiency is outweighed by the principles of representative government. The Founders knew the spending power was ``the most far-reaching and effectual,'' and they wanted to ``ensure Congress would act as the first branch of government.'' Accordingly, they understood Congress ``would less efficiently and less coherently devise fiscal policy than would a single `treasurer' or `fiscal czar.' Yet they chose, for good reason, to suffer this cost and bear its risks.'' This bipartisan legislation is a critical opportunity to marry oversight with action and to effectuate the Founders' vision of Congress' spending power as key to reining in the executive branch. This is a commonsense bill, the objections to which are unfounded; so I urge all of my colleagues to support this bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 1 minute to respond to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), who would not yield but who continues to claim that this legislation helps these major financial institutions while he defends the Justice Department, which enters into agreements with these financial institutions that owe hundreds of millions of dollars--in many instances, billions of dollars--to the Treasury in fines as a result of these settlements, but say if you give money to our preferred third-party group that wasn't even injured as a part of this process, if you give the money to them instead of to the government, instead of to the taxpayers, instead of to the general Treasury, we will give you $2 off for every $1 you give them, $2 off the fine for every $1 you give them, $2 million off the fine for every $1 million you give them. It adds up pretty quickly, but the taxpayers are the ones taking a bath here. Guess who benefits. Those big banks that he says we are protecting? No. The Justice Department is protecting them, and this is why we need this legislation. It is the Congress that appropriates funds, not the bureaucrats and prosecutors in the Department of Justice. Mr. Chairman, it is my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Marino), the chairman of the Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law Subcommittee.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), who is a valued member of the Judiciary Committee, and we do work on bipartisan issues. I will say that this issue is bipartisan as well, and she should take note of the fact that it is also bicameral. The United States Senate is, indeed, interested in this issue. The bill that we are considering in the House has also been introduced in the Senate by Senator Lankford from Oklahoma. Also very, very importantly, it is important to understand that when the Congress appropriates funds, it is the duty of the executive branch to carry out the appropriations made by the Congress, not to go out and change those decisions. The gentlewoman talks about housing counseling. Well, the Congress appropriates funds for housing counseling, has and will continue to do so, I am sure. When we cut back on some of those funds--it is still a lot of funds. When we cut back on some, I guess there were some people, some bureaucrats in the Justice Department who felt that that was not the right thing to do. Or maybe it was the organizations that receive these funds that couldn't get them from the Congress, so instead they went over to the Justice Department and said: Well, when you get settlements from these big banks, make sure that you give some of those funds to us. Well, that actually subverts the direct intent of the Congress in terms of how much money to spend. The funds are owed to the Treasury of the United States and to the people who are directly the victims of wrongdoing. They should definitely be compensated. If they are compensated as a part of a settlement that any Justice Department prosecutor enters into, they should benefit from that. People who are not victims need to go through the appropriations process, come to the Congress for funding. If the Congress doesn't give them the funding they want, they shouldn't have other places to go in the Federal Government to get that money by simply going around the Congress and going to the Justice Department, having them take money that is supposed to go into the Treasury and then be appropriated by the Congress, and say: No, no, we will beef you back up in terms of the amount of money for housing counseling and put that money, instead, to you directly here without it going through the appropriations process in the people's House. That is what we are trying to fix here. It is a very, very important thing that we fix and a very important principle that we protect in our Constitution. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. GOODLATTE. Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition, even though I do not oppose the amendment.