Jim Himes

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, in June, a gay nightclub--what is supposed to be a safe place where the LGBT community can gather and be who they are--was targeted by violence and bigotry. That was 47 years ago in New York City. The Stonewall riots are considered the very beginning of the gay rights movement, and that is why we celebrate June as LGBT Pride Month, pride for progress made against fear, against HIV/AIDS, against violence, and against the silence that too often greets bigotry, including in this Chamber. Here we stand today, so much progress, but still so far from true equality. And we see more hatred-fueled violence at a gay gathering place. What do we do? I know only because I have seen the path well worn by my LGBT brothers and sisters, whose resilience in the face of adversity inspires me. We organize, we fight for equality and against prejudice. We change the hearts and minds of those who have yet to embrace the fundamental American principle that all are created equal. This Pride Month we stand up against bigotry and against the silence, and we do it proudly.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, sometime today or tomorrow, this House will hold a moment of silence for 50 massacred Floridians who had their bodies torn apart by a madman with a military-grade weapon. Silence--that is how the leadership of the most powerful country in the world will respond to this week's massacre of its citizens. If this Congress had a single moral fiber, we would force ourselves to get to know the slaughtered innocents. We would get to know Cory James Connell, 21 years old and a student at Valencia College, a child with dreams cut short by a madman with a military rifle and--make no mistake--cut short by this Congress' fetish to repeatedly meet bloody tragedy with silence. Silence--that is what we offer in America that supports many of the things we could do to slow the bloodbath. Silence. Not me. Not anymore. I will no longer stand here absorbing the faux concern, contrived gravity, and tepid smugness of a House complicit in the weekly bloodshed. Sooner or later, the country will hold us accountable for inaction. But as you bow your head and think of what you say to your God, when you are asked what you did to slow the slaughter of innocence, there will be silence.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by thanking the chairman and the ranking member of the committee for the terrific, open, and bipartisan process that led to the adoption of this bill in committee, and urge my colleagues here in this room to support it. I would also like to add my plaudits and thanks to staff on both sides of the aisle without whom this would never have been possible. I support this bill because, most importantly, it well funds the remarkable work of our intelligence community in all that they do against the ongoing and all-too-present threats of terrorism and all that they do in keeping us apprised and keeping our options available to address the many threats that face, or could face, this Nation coming out of places like Russia, North Korea, Iran, and plenty of other locales around the world. At the same time, and critical for my own support, this bill is supportive of the essential activities that the intelligence community and that we must do to preserve and defend the civil liberties that are so important to us and, even more importantly, the values, the values embodied in this country that, at the end of the day, are the qualitative difference between this country and our adversaries. Mr. Speaker, I would note, in particular, some conversation came up, as the ranking member alluded to, with respect to the President's Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. In committee, I stressed that this is one of a couple of groups that provide oversight for these terribly important activities. When you think about it, internally there are the inspector generals and the checks within the executive agency; there are a couple of dozen Members and Senators of Congress who provide some oversight; and then there is this outside group which produces opinions, which have been cited in FISA court opinions, which have been cited by the amicus that was set up as a result of the good work of this body in doing the USA Freedom Act. I will continue to say that it is an important part of the overall intelligence community. Maintaining this balance between our national security, which is critical, and, again, those values, which are the qualitative difference that we have with our adversaries, is important. It is enshrined in this bill, and I am delighted to offer my support.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Chairman, I would like to thank both the chairman of the committee and the ranking member for the opportunity to offer this amendment, which would be a very straightforward amendment, which simply requires the Department of Defense to report to the Congress on the policies, doctrine, procedures, and authorities, as well as the definitions associated with a cyber attack on the United States. This is a small step in a larger very, very important effort that Chairman Westmoreland and I have been working on for some period of time now to try to bring some clarity to what is, today, kind of the Wild West in the cyber realm. In the kinetic realm, we understand very clearly what an act of war is. We understand our doctrine for responding as such. In the cyber realm, we don't know exactly when a crime becomes an act of war, how to deal with an asymmetric actor versus a nation-state. It is terribly important that we begin the process, with other nations around the world, of establishing some clarity on these points. That won't help our adversaries, but it will remove uncertainty from the system in this new and very, very important realm. Again, I thank the leadership of the House Armed Services Committee and hope this amendment will be supported.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, on May 13, 2016, I was unable to be present to cast my vote on roll call No. 190, Motion on Ordering the Previous Question on the Rule (H. Res. 725). Had I been present for roll call No. 190, I would have voted ``NAY.'' I was unable to be present to cast my vote on roll call No. 191, the rule providing for consideration of the House Amendment S. 524-- Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016 (H. Res. 725). Had I been present for roll call No. 191, I would have voted ``NAY.'' I was unable to be present to cast my vote on roll call No. 192, on approving the Journal. Had I been present for roll call No. 192, I would have voted ``AYE.''

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to join my colleague from Connecticut (Ms. Esty) in supporting this motion to instruct because this is an issue that deserves not just the attention and the focus of the House, but it deserves a meaningful commitment of resources to address the problem that is plaguing every town and city in Connecticut and in this country. Mr. Speaker, this year we will see 30,000 fatalities to this opioid crisis. In the 20 years of the Vietnam war, from 1955 to 1975, this Nation suffered just shy of 60,000 fatalities in the entire Vietnam war. In 2 years, the opioid crisis will claim more Americans than died in the Vietnam war; yet, we this week--and I salute the majority for acting on the opioid crisis--decided to make roughly $106 million available to this scourge. For those watching at home, we didn't actually make that money available. In Congress, we authorize--which says, legally, you can spend the money--and we appropriate. Appropriate is actually when we take out the checkbook and write the check. And just to be clear for the American people, we authorized, but we did not appropriate. So, again, I salute the majority and I salute the bipartisan tenor that we have had this week in addressing this very, very serious problem through so many bills, but now is the time to actually put our money where our mouths are. The reason for this is the number I gave you earlier: 30,000 Americans every single year. I spoke earlier this week about a young man from my district named Alex Recupido, a 2010 graduate of Trumbull High School. He was a young man and was on his way to becoming a nurse. He had moved to Florida to pursue that career when, in 2014, he fell prey to a heroin overdose that, like so many of these things, started with the abuse of prescription opioids and moved into a heroin addiction and then, of course, a tragic end, as so many Americans have experienced. There were 415 in my small State of Connecticut. I had the opportunity to speak to Alex's mom this week. Like so many of these cases, there were any number of steps along the way where this horrible outcome could have been prevented. People knew that he had a problem, but nothing happened with treatment and recovery to stop the outcome of this young man dying in Florida in 2014. Thirty thousand is a big and abstract number, but I wish you could have heard Alex Recupido's mom, who has now devoted her life to working and advocating for us to do our jobs to commit the resources we need to commit to address this opioid crisis in this country. I wish you could have heard her. If you had heard her, we would probably be working through the night tonight to make sure that we adequately address this unbelievable problem. This is really about treatment and recovery. It is about training our first responders. And let's face it. We can use a lot of words and we can talk about money, but until we write the checks to help our States and our municipalities and our treatment organizations and recovery organizations to actually make a difference on the ground, we are just talking. I salute that. And I do salute the majority for devoting this week to these really, really important bills. But I also hope that we can do better than talking about $106 million and, through this motion to instruct, actually put the resources that we need on the table to try to stop those 30,000 deaths that are going to occur this year unless we act in a meaningful way. So again I salute the majority for prioritizing this week, and I thank my colleague, Elizabeth Esty, for offering this motion to instruct. I hope we can get behind it and I hope we can actually do something good for an awful lot of tragic outcomes that will happen otherwise.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to tell the story of Alex Recupido, a troubled high school graduate of 2010, an accomplished pianist, a kid who was known for his creativity. He had gotten his nursing license and had moved to Florida when prescription drugs led to a heroin addiction and Alex died in 2014. Sadly, Alex is not alone as 723 people died last year in my small State of Connecticut, and roughly 30,000 Americans will die this year of opioid addiction. By any standard, this is a national emergency. At great long last, this House is acting this week on a series of bills to improve the training, the awareness, and the treatment that we offer to people who are caught in this cycle. I am concerned, though, Mr. Speaker, that the total funds called for by all of these bills-- about $100 million--is completely inadequate for a national emergency. At the end of the day, it is the resources, not the words, that we must offer. I believe we can do better. Our citizens are worth it. For people out there like Alex Recupido, it is a matter of life and death.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, today, I am pleased to congratulate Au Pair in America on its 30th anniversary. Since its inception, Au Pair in America has been a leader in providing trusted live-in cultural care. Au Pair in America is part of the American Institute for Foreign Study (AIFS), based in Stamford, Connecticut. AIFS has maintained an exceptional record of leadership and innovation in the international education community for more than 50 years. In 1986, Au Pair in America was the first program sponsor to be designated by the State Department to administer an au pair program. To date, Au Pair in America has placed more than 90,000 au pairs from nearly 60 countries in Europe, South Africa, the Americas, New Zealand, the Middle East and Asia with American host families in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Au Pair in America has set a high standard for management of the program and its active engagement with both U.S. families and international au pairs. Its initial model--including careful screening, orientation and child safety courses for au pairs upon arrival, and the supervision of local Community Counselors--remains the program standard to this day. The au pair program provides a unique and rewarding experience for U.S. families and au pairs. And both host families and au pairs benefit from the cultural exchange that takes place and the creation of ``global families.'' I commend Au Pair in America for its dedication in providing host families with the most complete and fulfilling childcare and cultural exchange experience available.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, as you know, it has been the custom of the last couple of Congresses to open the Congress with a reading of the entire United States Constitution. I have generally not participated in that because I am not all that comfortable with public displays of piety, and I am a big believer in the notion that what really matters is what you do, not what you say. Never has the spread between what we say and what we do been quite as wide as it is when we consider the approach that my friends on the Republican side have taken with respect to the absolutely essential constitutional duty of appointing a Supreme Court Justice. So I am going to break with my past pattern and read briefly from the Constitution, Article II, section 2, which reads: ``He shall have power''--that is referring to the President--``by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, Judges of the Supreme Court.'' And there it ends. He shall appoint Justices of the Supreme Court. There it ends. There is nothing there about he won't do that in an election year. There is nothing there saying that if there is not enough time, he won't exercise his constitutional authority. There is nothing there that, maybe because then-Senator Biden said something 25 years ago, he won't appoint a Supreme Court Justice. And yet my colleagues on the other side of the Capitol have said they won't even offer the President's nomination the courtesy of a meeting. And let's be very clear. That is a profound abrogation of the constitutional duty that is set out in black and white in the Constitution of the United States. So let's just spend a minute on the three objections that we are hearing from the Republicans on why the President shouldn't appoint and why they shouldn't even extend the courtesy of a meeting to the President's proposed appointment to the Supreme Court. First and foremost, they say that it is an election year. The precedent would dictate that the President not nominate in an election year. Well, that is exactly wrong, and you can look it up. These are historical facts. I will just read quickly from SCOTUSblog, which a lot of people look at, in which Amy Howe, the editor, says: ``The historical record does not reveal any instances since at least 1900 of the President failing to nominate and/or the Senate failing to confirm a nominee in a Presidential election year because of the impending election.'' The historical record does not reveal any instances. And then it goes on to list those that have occurred: President William Taft nominated Mahlon Pitney. Woodrow Wilson made two nominations in 1916--Louis Brandeis and John Clarke. President Herbert Hoover nominated Benjamin Cardozo. President Franklin Roosevelt nominated Frank Murphy. President Ronald Reagan, patron saint of my friends on the other side of the aisle, nominated Justice Anthony Kennedy. So the idea that there is no precedent is exactly wrong. This brings us to the other argument, the second argument, which is that there is not time. I brought this graphic here to show that, for the last several Presidents, the average approval time was something like 2 months. The current President has some 300 days left in his term. Take a look at this one: approval time for Justices Alito, Roberts, Breyer, Ginsburg, and Thomas. If you add all of those individual periods of time together, you still don't get the amount of time that the current President has left in his term. This, of course, brings us to the arguably most laughable argument that we hear lately, which is that some 20-plus years ago, then-Senate Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Joe Biden said something along the lines of perhaps then the President shouldn't make an appointment because it was an election year. I don't need to point out that, as much as I like and respect the Vice President, his words of 25 years ago do not carry constitutional force or the force of law. We shouldn't spend a lot of time on that argument. So what is really going on here? If those are the best arguments against even extending the courtesy of a senatorial meeting to the President's nominee, an unprecedented action, what is really going on? Here is what is really going on. It is a government shutdown. We have seen this before. When the rules we read at the opening of every Congress result in an outcome my friends on the other side of the aisle don't like, they simply shut it down. They did that in October 2013. Between the days of October 1 and October 16, they shut down the Federal Government, an action that Standard & Poor's estimated cost the U.S. economy $24 billion, or fully 0.6 percent of our economic growth is gone because the Republicans wouldn't accept the Affordable Care Act. Look, I get that. They don't like it. But it has been passed in due course in this House, shown to be constitutional by the Supreme Court, and the answer was: No. We don't like it. We are shutting down the government. Let's not shut down the government over the Supreme Court.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, on February 9, 2016, I was unable to be present to cast my vote on the 9/11 Memorial Act (H.R. 3036). Had I been present for roll call No. 64, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, on February 3, 2016, I was unable to be present to cast my vote on the Carolyn B. Maloney of New York amendment to H.R. 1675. Had I been present for rollcall No. 59, I would have voted ``AYE.''

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, the House is scared today. You hear it in the voices of my colleagues, and you hear it because the American people are scared as they come to learn the capabilities of these evil psychopaths at ISIS. But, Mr. Speaker, this House, when we are scared, we do dumb things. We spend time forcing the cafeteria to rename french fries freedom fries. We invade Iraq because we are angry at what comes out of the Middle East. Mr. Speaker, on May 13, 1939, the transatlantic liner, the St. Louis, sailed from Germany with almost 1,000 souls aboard, all Jews seeking to flee the murderous wrath of Adolf Hitler. This ship went to Cuba with the idea that it would come to the United States, but it was denied entry into the United States. The refugees were reported to be Communists and anarchists, and we were scared of them--Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler. The ship was turned back. Nearly a quarter of the 1,000 souls lost their lives in Hitler's Holocaust. It was not a good moment for the United States. It is a moral stain on our history. So let's keep our people safe. We are the greatest country in the world. We can do that while not trading our moral values. Mr. Speaker, we are exceptional because we are good and because we are moral. Let's not lose the moral part of that equation.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, today, I am proud to congratulate the efforts of Diageo to make nutritional and alcohol-content information on alcoholic beverages more accessible to consumers. Diageo is voluntarily taking steps to list this information in a way that is easily understood by most people. For many of us, it is not very useful to know how many calories a drink has per 50 milliliters, or what the alcohol content of one-third of a beer is. That's why Diageo will list this information by typical serving size, so consumers will know how much alcohol and how many calories are in a single can of beer or one mixed drink, for example. While the labeling will begin in Europe right away, it is the company's plan to roll it out to all approved markets as soon as possible. I am supportive of these efforts because I believe that consumers want more access to information about the food and beverages they consume, and want that information presented in a way that is relevant to the consumption decisions they make. I also think that any increase in transparency and labelling in the alcohol industry can help curtail alcohol overconsumption and drunk driving. Diageo has been a longtime and upstanding member of the business community in the 4th Congressional District of Connecticut, and I am once again pleased to see them setting trends in their industry, especially when those trends could lead to a healthier and safer world.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning in some horror and alarm over the so-called Default Prevention Act that this Chamber will be considering. Of all the Orwellian names that the House comes up with for legislation, this one is truly deserving of an award by the Ministry of Truth. For those of you at home who have not been following the swirling, madcap antics around the House of Representatives lately, let me assure you that the Default Prevention Act in no way prevents a default. The Default Prevention Act, in fact, specifies that two categories of people get paid in the event that the Congress does not raise the debt ceiling. It specifies that private bondholders of U.S. Treasuries will get paid interest, and it specifies that Social Security recipients will be held harmless. They will get paid. Now, at some level, maybe that sounds attractive; but everybody else that is expecting a check or a salary or some form of repayment by the United States Government, they are out of luck. 1.4 million Active-Duty troops, they are not in this bill as somebody who gets paid if the government doesn't raise the debt ceiling. Four million disabled veterans are out of luck under this bill. One million doctors who today are providing Medicare services to our senior citizens are out of luck. Sorry. You didn't make it into the Default Prevention Act cooked up by the Republican majority. Mr. Speaker, this is a bill that stunningly and explicitly defines for the world, tells everybody exactly how the U.S. Government intends to be a deadbeat, who we are going to pay and who we are not going to pay, and here is how we are going to be a deadbeat. Why would you do that? What possible sense does that make? There are all kinds of reasons why this is a terrible piece of legislation, but let me just focus on two. Number one, I hear constantly from my friends on the Republican side of the aisle that everything creates winners and losers: the Affordable Care Act, the Ex-Im Bank, you name it. Dodd-Frank creates winners and losers. This bill very explicitly creates winners: Social Security recipients and bondholders. By the way, who are these bondholders? Who holds United States Treasury debt? Do you? I will tell you who holds most of it: China. China does. This is why, on the Democratic side of the aisle, we have called this bill the Pay China First Act, which is actually a much better description of what this act actually does than the Default Prevention Act. More seriously, Mr. Speaker, I worked in the capital markets for a long time. There is no way to gracefully default on your debt, to say, ``Oh, we will pay interest; we will pay Social Security. But we are not going to pay soldiers; we are not going to pay Medicare.'' Once you tell the world that we do not intend to abide by our obligations, the world loses its faith in the United States. Folks, this debt ceiling is a fiction. It is an absurdist fiction. What do we get from it? The debt ceiling has never prevented the accumulation of debt. That happens because this Chamber and the United States Congress chooses to spend more money than it chooses to tax and bring in. There are really only two ways to reduce the deficit and the debt: you can tax more, which nobody likes to do; or you can spend less, which it turns out that nobody really wants to do either because, of course, everybody in this Chamber has the things that they want to spend their money on, but the other guy's stuff, well, that we are going to cut. So we have the ultimate hypocrisy of saying we are going to tax too little and spend too much, create a deficit, but then we are going to vote on this magical thing called the debt ceiling that will allow us to say ``I am not raising the debt ceiling because I oppose spending.'' It is absurd. And you know what? It leads to legislation like this. Mr. Speaker, we have seen this movie before. Pretty soon in the next couple of days, grown men and women in this Chamber are going to talk about maybe the Treasury minting a high-denomination platinum coin to solve this problem, as though we were characters in some kind of ``Harry Potter'' movie instead of responsible legislators. This needs to stop, Mr. Speaker. My constituents are sick and tired of the House of Representatives acting in this fashion: ideological and absurd. My constituents want us to come together to deal with the real problems facing America: of improving the economy, of making education accessible. But, no, we are going to spend some time on this absurdly named Default Prevention Act. I urge my colleagues to vote against this thing and move on to more serious issues.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, on September 25, 2015, I was unable to be present for roll call vote 518, on passage of the Responsibly And Professionally Invigorating Development (RAPID) Act of 2015 (H.R. 348). Had I been present, I would have voted NAY.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I am not generally in the habit of agreeing with my friend from Texas, but I do thank him for posing some really challenging questions about our activities in Syria. I think it is fair to say that the situation in Syria has gotten worse, not better. And only now that the chaos in Syria results in the flow of hundreds of thousands of people into Europe and into surrounding and delicately constructed countries, only now that we are having a conversation about how many Syrian refugees we will take in the United States are we beginning to take notice of the moral tragedy that has been with Syria for many, many years. The civil war in Syria has resulted in the deaths of more than 300,000 people. It has created 4 million refugees and displaced more than 6.5 million people into places like Jordan and Turkey--and now, in Europe and elsewhere around the world. Sadly, it appears that the efforts that we have made, which my friend from Texas referred to, have been ineffectual, to put it mildly, and the situation grows worse. We watch now the Russians introducing military equipment into Syria, something that can only result in more violence, more death, and more refugees. We see, sadly--and I have watched this closely from my perch on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence--ISIS gaining in strength, not losing strength. There are lots of conversations to be had about U.S. efforts to train and equip the so-called Syrian moderates. There are conversations to be had about how we deal with Russian influence in the area. But something we must focus on now, and something that is the subject of a letter that I and 54 of my colleagues have sent to the President of the United States, is that the only real solution in Syria, a solution that should be implemented today, is for the international community, all of the players that have a stake and influence in Syria, to come together today to begin the process of working out an international agreement, the terms of which will undoubtedly be uncomfortable for us, but an agreement that will bring an end to the civil war. This agreement should provide for the exit of Bashar al-Assad. He has lost all credibility as a global leader, but he remains there. Apart from ending the humanitarian and moral crisis in Syria, that conference would allow us to finally align behind an objective that I believe is shared by pretty much everybody in the region, which is the destruction of ISIS. Until we take this step of coming together around a table that, yes, will involve some unsavory characters, that, yes, will not lead to an agreement that we regard as perfect, until we do that, we will simply be managing chaos. And maybe we will manage chaos well, but it will still be managing chaos: hundreds of thousands of refugees and the destabilization that that will cause, more weaponry being introduced, more U.S. taxpayer dollars expended. We can do that. That is what we have been doing. We can do it for more months and more years. Or we can do the obvious thing, which is get around a table--and I do call on the President of the United States to show American leadership in this--and say we don't leave the room until this moral tragedy is stopped. This is what it would mean to be a leader in the world. We can bomb. We can send military equipment. We do that a lot. Real leadership will involve saying we will come together with people we like and people we don't to solve this problem. I call on this House to assist me and others in the effort to make sure that this becomes a national priority so we can finally bring this tragedy in the Middle East to an end.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor today on this fifth anniversary of Dodd-Frank to reflect a little bit on a signal piece of legislation that, to this day, remains controversial. Dodd-Frank, of course, was a response to the worst economic meltdown that we have seen in this country since the Great Depression of the 1930s. I want to reflect back on what led to the need for Dodd-Frank, the impact that that Great Recession, as we have come to call it, had on Americans and American families all over this country and then think a little bit about what Dodd-Frank has and has not done in the 5 years since its passage. It remains a controversial piece of legislation. All you have to do is look at the steady stream of press releases from the majority party on financial services. I have a few here: Dodd-Frank has enshrined too big to fail into law. Obama claimed Dodd-Frank would lift the economy. It has done the opposite, despite the fact that we learned today, of course, we have got one of the lowest jobless rates in a very, very long time. Financial crisis was caused by Washington's dumb regulations. That would come as a surprise to pretty much anybody with economic know-how who saw the long chain of malfeasance and irresponsibility in the mortgage market that actually led to the crisis. Dodd-Frank is setting the stage for the next crisis. ``Dodd-Frank Act leaves America less stable, less prosperous, less free.'' These are truly extravagant claims. So let's back up a little bit and remember January of 2009. That happens to be the month that I was given the privilege of serving in this Chamber. It came after the last quarter of 2008 in which the United States' economy actually shrank at an 8 percent rate on an annualized basis. The economy was very literally melting down. The stock market was half of what it is today. Businesses were closing. Americans saw literally trillions of dollars of value--let's talk for a second about what ``value'' means. ``Value'' means that retirement fund that you were relying on in order to retire. It means the money that you had set aside in a brokerage account to educate your children. It means those savings that you had accumulated over many, many years of foregoing that vacation or scrimping on the budget, those things. All of that, for many Americans, was wiped out or cut in half, devastation. And, by the way, in January of 2009--I remember this--though the bailout had passed this House what was known as the TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and though that had been put into place by the United States Congress and seemed to have stabilized the market, at least temporarily, we worried day in and day out as to whether this-- let's face it--obnoxious measure--I don't think there is anybody who thinks in a free market system there should be bailouts--this obnoxious, politically toxic measure which, nonetheless, reasserted some stability in the financial services sector--nobody really knew if it was enough. I remember wondering whether we might not see a bankruptcy in a money center bank, a moment, perhaps, in which ATMs wouldn't have money in them. This was January of 2009. Most importantly--there are a lot of big words--asset values, this, that, and the other thing, money center banks--this meant devastation for millions of Americans who lost their jobs, for families who weren't going to be able to send their kids to school, who were going to have to postpone retirement, unemployment going into double digits, meaning that--and I spoke to one of my constituents yesterday who has an Ivy League degree who found himself working as a clerk at Home Depot, surrounded by other people with lots of education who were fortunate to have that job back in 2009, 2010 because the economy had been devastated by a financial services industry and, yes, by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and insufficient regulation and irresponsibility on the part of some of the regulators had devastated the economy and left the American people holding the bag. So what happened? We went to work. We went to work in 2009. In 2010, we passed the Dodd-Frank Act. The Dodd-Frank Act is a complicated, big thing, but it addressed every stage of that chain of irresponsibility and malfeasance, starting with the selling of toxic and explosive mortgages to families that brokers and others knew couldn't possibly repay those mortgages to the bundling of those toxic mortgages into complicated securities which, frankly, you needed a Ph.D. to understand, to the fact that some of the credit rating agencies then put investment-grade AAA ratings on these toxic securities, to the fact that derivatives were then written on these securities, derivatives that were largely unregulated as the result of an act of this Congress, a long line of malfeasance and irresponsibility of insufficient regulation and of regulation insufficiently enforced, a terrible market practice. And, of course, in the middle of 2008, the chickens came home to roost and the economy was devastated and the American people, almost without exception, suffered. We saw the Troubled Asset Relief Program--the bailout--passed. Imagine how shocking that is to the American people. I have lost my job; I have lost my home, and there is a bailout of these institutions that I don't know a whole lot about; but I suspect, correctly, were at the heart of this crisis. No wonder we had political upheaval in this country after that happened. Every step in that chain, Mr. Speaker, from toxic mortgages to securities that nobody understood, to credit rating agencies doing an awful job in evaluating those securities, to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac acting irresponsibly, to regulators being asleep at the switch, Dodd-Frank addressed every element of that set of problems which combined to devastate the American economy and to hurt American families. Did it do it perfectly? Of course, it didn't do it perfectly. We were legislating under conditions of great fear and heightened emotions, and at the end of the day, we are mortals addressing very, very complicated issues. It was a good-faith effort to address what had clearly caused this problem. This notion that the Republicans are peddling that it was caused by Washington's dumb regulations is beyond insane because Dodd- Frank looked at what actually caused the problems of 2008 and addressed them. What happened? We were told that Dodd-Frank would be a job killer. This was back in 2010 when anything that the then-Democratic Congress did was going to be a job killer. The Affordable Care Act which, as it turns out, has provided health insurance to 16 million Americans, was going to be a job killer. Dodd- Frank was going to be a job killer. Everything was going to be a job killer. When we turned the lights on in this room, it was a job killer. You don't hear that much anymore because, since those fantastic descriptions of job-killing legislation, we have added almost 13 million jobs to the economy. The unemployment rate today is as low as it was before the meltdown of 2008. The stock market has doubled since then, business confidence is up, business investment is up, and our capital markets are healthy. This idea that it was going to be job-killing was just flat-out wrong, certainly compared to the crisis, which was the true job killer. Mr. Speaker, the other accusation that was made, of course, was that Dodd-Frank was going to crush credit markets, that the sources of financing that a family needs to buy a home or to send a child to college, the sources of financing that give rise to startup companies, companies like Google which didn't exist 25 years ago, venture capital, the stock market that, of course, gives equity to our businesses to grow and expand and employ more, those were going away because of Dodd- Frank. The criticisms leveled and the predictions made about the credit markets were apocalyptic. Let's take a look at what actually happened. I assembled a little bit of the data here just to show what has happened in the credit markets. We all love venture capital, that iconic image of the entrepreneurs in the garage developing a product that grows into a multibillion-dollar corporation that provides an electronic device that changes our lives and that makes our lives better--venture capital. Here is the line. Venture capital at the start of Dodd-Frank and, today, that is a line running up and to the right. Let's look at total consumer credit. You want to buy a car; you want to buy a television set. Consumer credit, we all use it. At the start of Dodd-Frank, 5 years ago--and today--a dramatic increase in consumer credit. Stock market--the stock market, of course, is where established companies go to raise money and where we put money hoping it will grow. What has happened there? A near doubling of the stock market--robust. Commercial and industrial loans--what if you are a business and you don't want to raise money in the stock market, you want to borrow money? Commercial and industrial loans--every one of these lines which capture most of the financing mechanisms and how healthy they are running at the point in time when Dodd-Frank was started to today is running strongly upwards. All of those criticisms that it was going to crush the credit markets are completely rebutted by pretty much anything that is happening in the credit markets today. Let's just spend a minute, Mr. Speaker, on what was actually in Dodd- Frank because this is pretty complicated stuff. What was actually in Dodd-Frank were a couple of important ideas, that we should have something called a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that says to credit card companies, No, you can't switch the order of a purchase to make it look like somebody overdrew an account or spent too much money so that you can charge a $25 fee; that said to mortgage brokers, No, you can't put somebody into an inappropriately risky or high-cost mortgage just because you make more money for doing so. Mr. Speaker, we have standards in our country. You can't buy a toaster that will burn down your house. You can't buy a car that will explode when you turn on the ignition. That happens because we have minimum safety standards. If you can't buy a toaster that will burn down your house, why should you be allowed to be sold a mortgage that very clearly will cause you to lose your house? That is what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau does, and it has returned literally millions and millions of dollars to the American public as a result of its telling those cheats, those people who would prey on the financial naivete of the American people: You can't do that anymore; and if you do it, we are going to shut you down, and you are going to give the money back. That is what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is doing today. Mr. Speaker, the second important thing that Dodd-Frank did was to say, for the first time, that maybe we ought to regulate this derivatives market. Now, derivatives are a fairly complicated financial instrument. Most Americans don't use derivatives directly and don't necessarily know what they do. They are essentially bets, and that is okay. If you want to bet that oil prices are going to go up or down because you use oil, you ought to be able to take that bet to hedge your risk. That is okay. But in the early 2000s, the derivatives market had become very literally nothing but a betting game for people who simply wanted to roll the dice on the mortgage market or on the direction of a corporate credit or on the stock market. You could take any bet. People would lend you money; you could place that bet, and off you went. That is, of course, what brought down what was otherwise an iconic American insurance company, AIG. This was truly a storied insurance company that got into the derivatives business and touched off the crisis. Shockingly, by law, the derivatives market, even though it is more complicated and larger than the stock market, by law, was not regulated. When you wanted to buy or sell a derivative, you picked up the phone; you called your broker; you did the deal, and nobody necessarily knew about it. That obviously doesn't happen in the stock market. You go through a broker; the trade gets registered, and the SEC looks over the shoulder of the market to make sure it operates in a safe and sound fashion. By law, the derivatives market was unregulated and untransparent, and Dodd-Frank said that does not make sense and said that, if you are going to trade derivatives, you are going to do it over an exchange, the way we trade stocks. If you are going to trade derivatives-- particularly risky ones--you are going to put up capital against the bet you are taking so that if you lose, you can pay it off. That is what happened with AIG. They took a whole lot of very big bets that they had no ability to pay off when they lost. Who lent them the money to take those bets, Mr. Speaker? It was banks and brokerages who, when they found out that the bet they thought they won, there was no money coming to them, that is when we got into real trouble at places like Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers. We said, crazy though it may sound, a market as complicated and as large as the derivatives market ought to be subject to the same transparency and regulation that the stock market has been subject to since the 1930s. That is what Dodd-Frank did. Finally--Dodd-Frank did a lot, but this is another really big thing-- Dodd-Frank said we ought to actually have a mortgage market that is a little friendlier to the American people because, for most Americans, the savings that they have is in their homes. For generations, until 2008, generally, home prices had gone up. Let's face it, the middle class works pretty hard not making a lot of extra money. The growth in the value of their home was the way you amassed a nest egg to retire or to buy that vacation cabin, whatever it was you aspired to do; yet by 2008, this had become yet another dangerous casino. It was true at the time, though it is not true anymore, that a broker could sell a mortgage to a family that was a lot more expensive and a lot riskier than it needed to be because that broker could get paid more in commission for selling that more complicated, more risky mortgage than that broker would get paid for selling a plain vanilla mortgage. Those days are gone. Those days are gone, and that is a very, very good thing for the American people. Remember, homes are where people-- most people--have their savings. That is what Dodd-Frank was. My friends on the Republican side who have these incredible statements, like the financial crisis was caused by Washington's dumb regulations, fail to see that Dodd-Frank was actually a proportionate and targeted response to a truly devastating financial crisis that had real impact on an awful lot of families. I am sorry about that. The reason I am sorry about that is because Dodd-Frank, of course, is not perfect. There are clearly issues around some things like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which Dodd-Frank was silent on. Today, the vast majority of American mortgages are still explicitly backstopped by the Federal Government because we didn't reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Shame on both parties for that, by the way. We had a lot to do when the Democrats were running the show, and we didn't get to that point. In the many years since the Republicans have been controlling this Chamber, they have not taken that up. We should take that up. I am very proud to be, along with Congressman Delaney and Congressman Carney, a sponsor of legislation which would do just that. Mr. Speaker, there is still difficulty for Americans who should probably qualify for a mortgage in getting that mortgage. It is possible that Dodd-Frank swung the pendulum a little far in the mortgage market in a way that we ought to look at and be very, very careful about because, remember, at the core of the crisis in 2008 were mortgages that an awful lot of people shouldn't have been in, an overcommitment on the part of public policy and others to make every American a homeowner, to make it cheap, and to have outrageously complicated mortgages so that could happen. Carefully, we ought to look at what is happening in the mortgage market today. Mr. Speaker, there are more technical issues. There are questions about whether there is enough liquidity in the mechanisms, particularly bonds, that companies use to finance themselves. There are fair questions about whether we have adequately dealt with the question of too big to fail. Dodd-Frank certainly put profound strictures on large institutions. It gave the government unprecedented authority to look into the so-called too-big-to-fail institutions and say: Sorry, you have got to shrink down. You have got to get out of this business. It put additional capital--in fact, just this week, the Federal Reserve announced the additional capital that large institutions will be required to set aside. It is a fair debate as to whether or not we have truly dealt with the question of too big to fail. Mr. Speaker, this is the rub: as long as the discussion we have about Dodd-Frank is a near religious discussion with my friends in the Republican Party making statements like Dodd-Frank should be repealed, the Dodd-Frank Act leaves America less stable, less prosperous, and less free; and, yes, frankly, as long as the Democrats don't open the door to the notion that we may not have gotten it perfectly right on each one of its pages, we won't be able to come together to do something which is essential in any piece of legislation, but particularly in financial regulation, which is to adapt and allow the regulatory structure to change to reflect changing conditions. There are very few markets as adaptive, that change more rapidly, that innovate for good and for ill, as rapidly as the financial services market. As a result, we need a regulatory apparatus that adapts along with the market, that looks for new threats, and that realizes that the regulation of 40 years ago actually doesn't make a lot of sense today. This near religious conflict that we have with the Republicans saying, You ought to do away with the whole darn thing--they say that, of course, they have never actually brought legislation forward to repeal Dodd-Frank which should cause you to ask, Mr. Speaker, how serious they are about truly repealing it, but as long as that is the conversation--repeal or don't change a word of this legislation--we give up the opportunity to make it better and to make it change with the underlying conditions that it seeks to regulate. That is where we need to go. We need to acknowledge that Dodd-Frank has done some very, very good things, that it has addressed some catastrophic problems, that it took on behavior that is embarrassing to contemplate when looked back 5, 10 years, but that maybe we didn't get it 100 percent right and start that conversation. We should do that to make sure that American families are never put in the position they were put in back in '09. We should do that because the truth is that the financial services industry is crucial to prosperity in this country. If you want to buy a house, educate a child, buy a car, invest in a company, start a company, grow a company, you have to have access to capital. One of the competitive advantages of this country is our incredibly liquid and efficient capital markets. It is a big part of why we are as prosperous as we are today. But if we can't acknowledge that the regulatory structure has to adapt and change, we risk either putting Americans at risk one more time or damaging these incredible capital markets that are truly a national competitive advantage of the United States, one of the reasons we are the center of innovation on the planet. I think, Mr. Speaker, we can get that balance right. I think we just need to take the temperature down, approach this from the standpoint of what makes sense, acknowledge that we all have good ideas, and move forward so that we remain innovative, we keep our competitive advantages, but we never, ever allow the American people to suffer the way they did starting in 2008. So looking back over 5 years, I think Dodd-Frank was a tremendous accomplishment. It really addressed a cataclysmic problem. But it doesn't stop there. I urge my colleagues to recognize that we have taken a very big step in the right direction, but the next step demands us to be constructive and remember that we can find a balance between innovation and liquid and strong capital markets and the protection of our constituents. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, 4 days ago, on July 4, a young man was murdered just a mile from here in broad daylight on a crowded subway. That young man was Kevin Joseph Sutherland, 24 years old. He was my campaign volunteer, my intern, and my friend. Maybe that is unremarkable. Violence seems to be a part of who we are and all too present with us. But I want to tell this House that Kevin was in Washington because he believed in the best of us, each one of us. He believed that we could come together. He believed that we could set aside our petty prejudices. He believed that we could bring our voices together in this Chamber and make a better world. I think there is a chance that 20 years from now Kevin might have served in this Chamber. Now, that is not going to happen. But Kevin's spirit of openness, of optimism, of possibility, that spirit must live on in this Chamber and in our hearts. Thank you, Kevin.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, let me begin by thanking the chairman and ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary, as well as Chairman Nunes and Ranking Member Schiff of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, for their good, bipartisan work on a bill that I think is long overdue. The good work on this bill, Mr. Speaker, goes back to the fact that the PATRIOT Act, a piece of legislation crafted in haste and in fear after the tragic events of 9/11, in my opinion, pushed the boundaries too far on the government's ability to surveil and gather information on people, including American citizens. The USA FREEDOM Act, which I stand today to support, goes a very long way to restoring an appropriate balance between the imperative of national security and the civil liberties which we hold so dear. This bill makes important reforms to the FISA court, but, importantly, it prohibits--I will say again, prohibits--the bulk collection, under section 215, under the pen register authorities, and under National Security Letter statutes, of data on American citizens. Americans will now rest easy knowing that their calls or other records will not be warehoused by the government, no matter how careful that government is in the procedures it uses to access those files. Mr. Speaker, whatever the legal interpretations, most recently definitively ruled upon by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, whatever the legal interpretations, there is something about the idea of a government keeping extensive records on its free citizens which damages our intuitive sense of freedom and liberty. So whatever the law and whatever the legal interpretations--and I do believe those have been settled--what we do here today, which is to say that the government of the United States will not keep detailed call or other bulk records on its free citizens, I believe is an important step forward for this country. I urge all of my colleagues to vote in favor of the USA FREEDOM Act.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Madam Chairwoman, I would like to thank my friend from California for yielding time and start by saying that I am thrilled to be standing here to urge support for the Protecting Cyber Networks Act. I would like to thank and congratulate Chairman Nunes, Ranking Member Schiff, and the chairman of the subcommittee on which I serve as ranking member, Mr. Westmoreland, for coming together at a time when this Congress is accused, often rightly so, of being dysfunctional to take a very substantial step to secure the networks on which so much of our lives today depend. As ranking member of the Cybersecurity Subcommittee, my daily travels every single day expose me to people who say the single most important thing we as a Congress can do today to advance the security of our networks, to protect Americans, their financial records, their health records and, of course, even more ominously, to protect them against potential attack against our utilities and any sort of thing that our antagonists around the world would seek to do to us, the single most important thing we can do is to do what we are doing today, which is to set up a rubric whereby the very good people within the private sector who focus on this day in and day out can communicate threats to each other and communicate with the experts within the United States Government to work as a team to counter very, very serious threats. This rubric has been set up with ample attention and good attention to the very legitimate privacy claims and the liberties that we all take so seriously. The stakes are high. We saw what happened at Sony. We saw what happened at Anthem. We know all the attacks that have been leveled internationally that destroyed computers. This is the reality that we live with, and this is a very big step, an information-sharing protocol that will counter those who wish us ill. I would note that the privacy protections in this bill are considerably better, as the chairman and ranking member have pointed out, than those that were in the bill of the last Congress. The objections of those who are focused on privacy have been dealt with point by point. And while I won't say that the bill is perfect, this bill does what it needs to do to protect the privacy of the American people by obligating everyone to work hard to scrub personally identifiable information from any code, any information that is exchanged. I have learned in my 6 years here that we don't produce perfection, and it is my hope that as this bill proceeds through the legislative path that we will work even harder to make sure we are very clear about definitions and, in fact, are protecting the privacy rights of Americans as best as we can. But in the meantime we have taken a very big step forward in a bipartisan fashion in a way that will make America, its people, and its networks more secure. For that, I am grateful to the leadership and urge support of the Protecting Cyber Networks Act.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I was unable to be present to cast my vote on passage of H.R. 1030--The Secret Science Reform Act. I wish the record to reflect my intentions had I been able to vote. Had I been present for rollcall No. 125, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, I have the privilege of serving on the House Intelligence Committee. And just yesterday, in a hearing entitled ``Worldwide Threats,'' I sat with the Chiefs of our Intelligence Services to learn about those worldwide threats. The meeting was classified, but the summary is this: there are people out there who would count it a smashing success to reap death and destruction on the homeland. Yet my Republican friends have engineered a situation where, in 2 days, the Department of Homeland Security will shut down. It is not because they don't have an alternative to get in the way of the President's immigration initiative. A judge in Texas ruled with them. Now, I think that judge is going to be overturned, but a judge ruled with them. Yet they are going to shut down the Department of Homeland Security. I don't understand that, but I have got two questions: If we shut down DHS and, heaven forbid, there is a natural disaster that destroys a community in Oklahoma or Connecticut, what are we--what are you going to tell the American people? If, heaven forbid, one of those people who wishes this Nation ill succeeds and the Department of Homeland Security is shut down, what will we--what will you tell the American people?

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, on February 26, 2015, I was unable to be present for rollcall vote 91, On Question of Consideration of the Resolution, H. Res. 125. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.'' I respectfully request that this be noted in today's Congressional Record.

Mr. HIMES

Mr. HIMES. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to clause 1, rule I, I demand a vote on agreeing to the Speaker's approval of the Journal.

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