Tom Malinowski

Mr. MALINOWSKI

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Speaker, this is a rare moment in this House. We have a bipartisan bill, a bill that we have worked together, Republicans and Democrats in the House. We have worked together in the Senate. There is a companion piece of legislation; it has been praised by the Trump administration. We have a chance to do something tremendously good here, and the bill says something very simple: No one should be able to establish in the United States a shell company with completely secret ownership, secret even from law enforcement. We are saying that we are not Panama. We are not the Cayman Islands. We are not some little island nation tax shelter that puts out a welcome mat for drug dealers and arms dealers and dictators hiding money from their people. We are the United States of America. We are a nation of laws that does not tolerate corruption at home and that fights corruption around the world. Mr. Speaker, when I was running the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the State Department, I would often speak to dissidents fighting for freedom in countries like Russia. And I would say to them, What can we do to help you? And they would say, You know what, we don't ask you to fight all of our battles for us, but just don't be complicit in what our dictatorship does to us. And I would say, What do you mean ``complicit?'' And they would say, You know what, because of the money that people like Putin and their oligarchs steal from us all goes into banks and real estate in America and in Europe, and they do it through shell companies. And they were right. Under our current laws, anyone can set up an anonymously owned company to hide the proceeds of corruption or crime. Fentanyl dealers do it, terrorists do it, human traffickers do it, foreign dictators do it. The wildly corrupt son of Equatorial Guinea's former president, for example, set up a shell company in the United States to launder millions of dollars in bribes from international logging companies. Corrupt officials in Nigeria use shell companies to steal aid we sent them to fight Boko Haram. Next time you are in New York City, check out 650 5th Avenue. You can go shopping in the Nike store, on the ground floor; get some shoes. You probably wouldn't realize that the building was owned for 20 years by the Government of Iran, once again using a shell company. And let's be clear: Shell companies not only allow foreign bad actors to hide dirty money in the United States, they allow them to use that dirty money to corrupt our system. Yeah, I know it is illegal for foreigners to contribute to our campaigns, but if you launder your money through a front company with anonymous ownership, there is very little we can do to stop you. Now, I am thrilled to hear my Republican colleagues say they are concerned about privacy and civil liberties. But this bill already has extraordinarily strong privacy protections. Law enforcement can only ask for access for this data if there is already an ongoing law enforcement investigation. The whole process is overseen by civil liberties and privacy officers at FinCen, and the information is so simple. My name: Tom Malinowski. My address: 86 Washington Street, Rocky Hill, New Jersey, 08553. My date of birth: 9/23/65. My driver's license number is too long to read, but you know what, the government already has it. What the government does not have is the names of the owners of companies that are set up here by foreign kleptocrats, drug lords, and criminals. Law enforcement should have access to that information. So let me just close by reminding this House who is for this bill: The National Association of Attorneys General. The National District Attorneys Association. The Fraternal Order of Police. The Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI. The U.S. Marshals Service Association. The Small Business Majority. The Main Street Alliance. The American Sustainable Business Council. The bankers' association of every single State that we represent in this body. Virtually every major human rights and anticorruption group in the United States and around the world. Please, join them. Join me. Join the bipartisan champions of this blow we are about to strike against corruption. Reject this MTR; support the bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MALINOWSKI

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Speaker, when I saw the President's comments over the weekend, my first thought was, my politics may not always be the same as the Congresswomen he was attacking; but all of us are Americans. And unlike most of them, I was actually born in a foreign country. I took the oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States when I was 10 years old, with my mom, when I was sworn in to be a citizen 5 years after we came here from Poland. Does the President think I should go back because I am an immigrant who disagrees with his policies? There are 44 million of us American citizens who were born somewhere else, and we new Americans know what it means to be American because we chose America. We know the alternative. Many of us do come from broken countries, a communist country, in my case, broken by communism and, in many cases, broken by leaders who did just what we are condemning today, using race and religion to divide people. The President may be doing it cynically. He wants the drama. He wants the reality show. In my district, we have to deal with the reality that these words are dangerous. Every synagogue in my district either has armed security or is struggling with the question of whether to have it. Every mosque has State Police coming to Friday prayers. We know that the words the President uses to drive up his ratings can be like sparks to the gasoline of disturbed minds in our country; that the man who massacred Jews in Pittsburgh was obsessed with migrant caravans and blamed Jews for helping refugees; that the man who murdered Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand, believed immigrants are invaders who should go back to their country. These fringe haters have always been with us. Never before have their twisted thoughts been legitimized by the highest leaders in our land. Yesterday, after the President's tweets, the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer website gloated that this is the kind of white nationalism we voted for. Now, we have to decide, is this the kind of politics that we want in our country? Mr. Speaker, this resolution is not really about the President. We know who he is. My Republican colleagues know who he is. The question is--the only question left to us is, who are we? Because this is not about him. This is about us. Are we still the country of immigrants and of laws that every great American leader, from Ben Franklin, to FDR, to John F. Kennedy, to George Bush, believed in? Do we still believe what Ronald Reagan said that: ``Americans lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people, our strength, from every country and every corner of the world;'' that new Americans ``renew our pride and gratitude in the United States of America, the greatest, freest Nation in the world''? This is the choice that every Member of the House will have to make tonight. Do we agree with President Reagan's hopeful, confident, patriotic vision of America, or with President Trump's message of fear? Mr. Speaker, Republicans and Democrats can afford to disagree about many things in this House; but let us not be divided on decency to our fellow Americans. At this defining moment for our country and for this body, let us come together to support this resolution.

Mr. MALINOWSKI

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Engel for his leadership on this issue. I also want to recognize Ranking Member McCaul and all my colleagues on the Foreign Affairs Committee for working with me to ensure that we could move forward with this bill in a bipartisan way. All of us agree that our relationship with Saudi Arabia is important, but we equally agree that how the Saudi Government treats its people and the people of other countries is important. We have known this for a long time, I think, but last year's murder of Jamal Khashoggi by the Saudi Government makes it especially important that we take meaningful action in defense of our interest and our values. When I was campaigning for Congress last year in New Jersey, foreign policy issues did not come up very often, and yet the murder of Jamal Khashoggi somehow broke through the noise. I was asked about it a lot. I think this is because people understand that, while human rights violations in countries like Saudi Arabia are all too common, what happened to Khashoggi was not common. He was not killed, after all, inside Saudi Arabia. He was a resident of the United States. And yet the Saudi Government lured him into one of their embassies on the soil of a NATO country, where they brutally slaughtered him. Many governments around the world abuse their people. Very few governments reach out beyond their borders to kidnap or kill people living in other countries. Russia has done it; Iran has reportedly done it. But this kind of crime is very rare. It is profoundly in our interest to keep it rare, and that is why it is essential that we name and hold accountable those who are responsible for the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. We need to do this not because what the Saudi Government did was wrong, but because it crossed a line that no partner of the United States should ever be allowed to cross--not just because it showed a lack of respect for human rights, but because it demonstrated a lack of respect for the United States. Let's remember that there are thousands of Jamal Khashoggis living in America today. Men and women who have taken refuge in our country from dictatorships around the world and who sometimes speak up about injustices in their countries of origin. If the Saudi Government gets away with what it did to a resident of the United States, what is to stop China or Russia or Cuba or Iran or North Korea or Venezuela or any other dictatorship from doing the same. We know it is not their scruples that hold them back. The only thing that stops them is their fear of the consequences if they do this to somebody living in our country or to an American abroad. That is why there have to be consequences. Our bill ensures that there will be. It requires the Director of National Intelligence to give us a list of everyone--without exception--whom the intelligence community believes to be responsible for planning, executing, or covering up this terrible crime. All on this list will be subject to a visa ban. The sanctions can only be lifted if the Saudi Government takes meaningful steps to reform human rights conditions in the kingdom. Mr. Speaker, it is clear that, while the Saudi Government has faced a lot of rhetorical condemnation for what they did to Jamal Khashoggi, it has not yet gotten the message. We know that the FBI has visited at least four Saudi dissidents living in the United States since Khashoggi's murder to warn them about the threats to their life from Saudi Arabia, including as recently as 6 weeks ago. The Saudis also continue to imprison American citizens without trial or charge, despite repeated requests from the Trump administration for their release. While I appreciate that the State Department has sanctioned several Saudis for their involvement in Khashoggi's murder, this action also risks sending the wrong message. By only sanctioning the rogues, whom the Saudis themselves are willing to throw under the bus for this crime, we risk reinforcing the Saudi Crown Prince's lie that the murder of Khashoggi was a rogue operation. The relationship with Saudi Arabia is important, but it is not so important that we have to lie for the Saudis or allow them, literally, to get away with murder. No relationship and no individual is so important that we need to debase ourselves in that way. Now is the time to send the message, especially now, before Mohammad bin Salman ascends to the Saudi throne, that this is wrong. Now is the time to make clear that reckless behavior, whether the murder of an American resident or the kidnapping of the Lebanese Prime Minister or the blockade of Qatar, carries a price, that the men who rule Saudi Arabia, who, after all, depend far more on us than we depend on them, need to take our interests and values into account rather than always counting on us to cover up for them.

Mr. MALINOWSKI

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Madam Chair, let me begin by saying what this amendment will not do. It will not end our security relationship with Saudi Arabia. It will not prevent us from helping the Saudis defend themselves against the Houthis or Iran or anybody else. It won't prevent us from working with them to deal with maritime threats in the Persian Gulf or from sharing intelligence about terrorism. It will not, in other words, preclude us from doing anything that is in America's national security interest. All it will do is stop something that is categorically harmful to our national interest: the provision of offensive weapons that enable Saudi Arabia to keep defying our advice by bombing Yemen and prolonging the war there. There is a reason why people say that this war has caused the world's worst humanitarian crisis. More than 200,000 civilians have been killed or died of starvation. While the Houthis are to blame for much of this, Saudi and UAE airstrikes are responsible for two-thirds of Yemeni civilian casualties. There was a strike on a funeral where more than 150 civilians were killed, a strike on a school bus that killed 40 kids, on a Save the Children Hospital, on a wedding. These were not mistakes. These were deliberate and precise attacks. And everybody in Yemen knows that the bombs causing the suffering are made in the United States. Who benefits from this? Certainly not us. From a strategic perspective, the only winner is Iran. By making a relatively small investment in Yemen, the Iranians have drawn the Saudis into this quagmire which tarnishes them and the United States and pushes Yemenis into Iranian hands. Over two administrations, the U.S. Government has tried to use its influence to change how Saudi Arabia fights this war. I know about this effort because I was in charge of it in 2015 and 2016 at the State Department. It was worth a try then, but the Saudis did not listen to us. Under both the Obama and Trump administrations, we have given the Saudis specific lists of targets not to strike. We have told them: Do not hit this specific hospital or this port facility or that bridge. And then, repeatedly, they have gone ahead and hit the precise coordinates on our no-strike list. And then we just keep on selling them the bombs. What does that say to the people of Yemen? What does it say to the leadership of Saudi Arabia? Now, I know some have argued that, if we want to protect civilians in Yemen, it is better to at least make sure the Saudis have precision munitions to help them avoid collateral damage. This argument does not make sense. The Saudis are using our precision weapons to precisely hit the wrong targets. Others have said that, if we don't help the Saudis, the Russians or the Chinese will. That is nonsense. The Saudis use American aircraft. Last I checked, you cannot service an F-15 with MIG parts. They are, for the foreseeable future, utterly dependent on us. The question we have to decide is: What kind of relationship are we going to have with Saudi Arabia? Is it one in which the Saudis can do whatever they please, contrary to our advice, contrary to our interests, knowing that, whatever they do to us, we will take it on ourselves to save the relationship? Or will we finally recognize that, while we benefit from working with Saudi Arabia, the Saudis need us far more? This is a measured amendment, Madam Chair, that deals with precisely the Saudi conduct that we most oppose, without undermining our ability to cooperate with Saudi Arabia on other issues. I urge my colleagues to support it, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Madam Chair, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith).

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MALINOWSKI

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the amendment I have offered increases minimum funding for the IRS' Tax Counseling for the Elderly program. Filing taxes remains a far too complicated task in America. I am sure we can all agree on that. This vital program provides free tax assistance to people age 60 and older. It is particularly helpful to filers who have questions about their pensions and retirement. In my home State, New Jersey Citizen Action is one of the grantees for this program. They do tremendously positive work, which will only be enhanced with additional funding. There are several reasons to strengthen this program: First, older Americans are often subjected to financial exploitation schemes. According to AARP, every year, abuse and exploitation rob older Americans of $3 billion--and this is only the amount that is reported. Having another set of eyes on elderly filers' finances would help to identify the victims of these schemes and help us to combat them. Next, the ongoing controversy surrounding TurboTax, which manipulated taxpayers into paying to file their returns despite being eligible to file them for free, underscores the need for programs that help those most vulnerable to manipulation. Relatedly, the way we file our taxes is obviously evolving at a faster rate than many people can keep up with, including those who have filed on paper their entire lives. Finally, the new tax law created additional confusion for many filers. The loss of the State and local tax deduction hurt many taxpayers in my district, especially seniors struggling to stay in their homes on a fixed income who were surprised not to get the refunds they have come to count on. So, in sum, we should do everything in our power to protect older Americans and ensure they can file their taxes securely and with confidence. Let's help this program help even more people next year. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. MALINOWSKI

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Chair, my first amendment increases funding for the Department of Transportation's Office of the Inspector General by $1 million and decreases funding for the Office of the Secretary by $1 million. I am very concerned about recent reports that the Department assigned senior officials to smooth a ``special path'' for the Senate majority leader's favored grant projects. I have no problem with funding transportation projects in Kentucky or any other State. We should all have a problem with the Department setting up a concierge service for one State while slow-walking obviously critical projects like New Jersey's Gateway Program. My second amendment makes clear that the Capital Investment Grant program cannot be run in a manner outside the bounds we have established in law. Congress never intended for politically motivated, indefinite delays to transportation projects or for some projects to be held to a much higher standard than others. Infrastructure spending is something we all agree on. It is something we all need.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Every part of the country will lose, if not now then eventually, if we allow grantmaking to become politicized and the intent of Congress to be ignored. Mr. Chair, I urge support for the en bloc amendment.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, my amendment increases funding for the Low or No Emission Grant Program by $6 million, from $94 million to $100 million. The program, as the name implies, provides funding to State and local governments for zero- and low-emission transit bus programs. Using funds from the first and second round of the Volkswagen settlement, my State of New Jersey has begun our transition to electric transit and school bus fleets. This program, and others like it all across America, would benefit greatly from additional funds from the Low or No Emission Grant Program. The benefits to our country will be profound. First, we get reduced carbon emissions. The Department of Transportation has estimated that each zero-emission bus has reduced carbon emitted to the atmosphere by 1,690 tons over its 12-year lifespan, or the equivalent of taking 27 cars off the road. Second, we get healthier kids. Smog from diesel buses drives up rates of asthma with children and low-income communities suffering the most. Finally, it is good economics. While electric buses cost more up front, with their lower maintenance costs, they save around $39,000 per year over their lifetime, a savings to taxpayers of more than $150,000 per bus. So I hope my colleagues will agree that this is a smart investment. It will speed our transition to a clean energy economy and it will do it in a fiscally responsible way. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Price).

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Chairman, I would add that we are not reducing the grants available for bus programs in this country. We are simply recognizing that there is a transition under way in our economy, a transition to clean energy. We want to speed that transition and we want to make sure that America leads that transition because, if we don't, somebody else will. We want American companies to be the world leaders in producing electric buses, for example. We know that there is an upfront cost. There is a long-term savings, but an upfront cost that the Federal Government can help with. It will be good for our economy, in addition to being good for the environment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MALINOWSKI

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chair, when I visit a synagogue or Jewish community center in my congressional district these days, I usually pass by an armed security guard. Inside, there is talk about safe exit routes and the cost of adding bulletproof glass and other security enhancements. When I visit mosques during Friday prayers, I have noticed that State Police officers generally, these days, are standing watch outside. My friends at Hindu and Sikh temples are worried as well. There is a lot of angry, intolerant rhetoric in the United States and other countries like ours these days, and we know it comes from all sides of the political spectrum, but the guards at the gates of places of worship are not there because of a general fear of intolerance. They are there because of a specific threat from a specific group of people. Domestic terrorists, white supremacists, or neo-Nazi terrorists, like those responsible for the attacks at the Tree of Life Congregation synagogue in Pittsburgh, the synagogue in Poway, California, and the mosque attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. According to the Anti-Defamation League, 73 percent of terrorist killings in the United States since 2009 have been committed by domestic terrorists who spouted white supremacist ideology, as compared to 23 percent committed by Islamic extremists. In 2018, there were 50 extremist murders in the United States. All 50 were committed by adherents of far right-wing extremist groups. Anti-Semitic incidents rose by 60 percent from 2016 to 2017. If this threat came from outside the United States, we would be consumed by it here in Congress, as we were when we awoke to the urgency of reorienting our national and homeland security strategy to fight al-Qaida after 9/11. That it is coming from within, from our fellow Americans, makes it more sensitive but no less urgent, and there is more work to be done. Though the FBI acknowledges that domestic terrorists claim more lives in the United States than international terrorists, it has told us that its counterterrorism case numbers line up around 20 percent for domestic terrorism, 80 percent for international terrorism. The Department of Justice's senior official for dealing with its Domestic Terrorism Counsel runs what is basically a one-man operation. And in the last 2 years we have actually cut funding at the Department of Homeland Security to counter domestic violent extremism. This amendment begins to correct the imbalance. It would add $1 million to the budget of DOJ's National Security Division to be directed to the Domestic Terrorism Counsel. In the underlying bill, we already recommend that the Counsel be elevated to have a Deputy Assistant Attorney General with adequate staff and resources. The goal is to give a senior official at the Justice Department the stature and the tools needed to lead this effort so that we can focus as much attention on the rising threat of domestic terrorism as we have rightly devoted to the threat from groups like al-Qaida and ISIS. So let us do more than just condemn anti-Semitism and other forms of hateful intolerance in this body. Let us actually do something practical to protect people from violence. Mr. Chair, I urge bipartisan support for this amendment, and look forward to working with my colleagues on all sides to advance this goal in the year ahead. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. MALINOWSKI

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Mr. Speaker, June is Gun Violence Awareness Month, and I am so tired of watching innocent children being lowered into the ground. A week ago, there was another mass shooting in Virginia Beach. The shooter had a sound suppressor and a large capacity magazine. And it struck me: these things which gave him an advantage are banned in my home State of New Jersey. We have one of the lowest rates of gun violence of any State in America. Why is that? We have poverty, we have crime, we have mental illness just like other States, but we also have sensible gun laws. It has been just over 100 days since the House passed a sensible gun bill that the vast majority of Americans support. Universal background checks will save lives. The Senate could pass this bill today, but the Senate majority leader refuses to hold a vote. Mr. Speaker, this is what the voters who sent us here are most tired of: special interests blocking action on what most of us agree must be done. It is time for the Senate to give the American people the safety and common sense that they voted for and, at long last, pass universal background checks.

Mr. MALINOWSKI

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 393) remembering the victims of the violent suppression of democracy protests in Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in China on June 3 and 4, 1989, and calling on the Government of the People's Republic of China to respect the universally recognized human rights of all people living in China and around the World, as amended.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H. Res. 393.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Speaker of the House.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I thank Chairman McCaul for his eloquent statement and his leadership on this issue, and I rise in very strong support of this measure. Thirty years ago, I was here on Capitol Hill, my first job out of college. I was working on the Senate side for the late, great Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and one day, I was sitting in my cubicle and we were watching our TVs, which were tuned to this novelty station called CNN that was bringing these events live to us, something we had never really experienced before. One day we looked up, and we saw the image of this young Chinese man with his grocery bags standing in front of that line of tanks, and we watched it unfold for about 2 minutes. It seemed like forever. We did not know what would happen. Would he be killed? Would he be run over? It was a moment that changed my life and changed the world. We all know what happened afterwards: a massacre; mass arrests; efforts that continue to this day to bury the truth of what happened in Tiananmen Square. The Chinese Government has tried to erase the memory of that day from our collective memory. Here is something very important, something that should command our attention: the Chinese Government today is not satisfied merely with censoring its own people. It is insisting on censoring the entire world. It is trying to intimidate companies, and universities, and individuals all around the world into never uttering the words, ``the Tiananmen massacre.'' With this resolution, we say to the Chinese Government that they cannot intimidate the United States of America. This resolution makes clear we are going to speak the truth about the crime that they have committed 30 years ago, and all of the crimes they continue to commit today: the wholesale imprisonment of lawyers; their efforts to crush the culture and heritage of the Tibetan people; the mass surveillance technology they are exporting to the whole world; and the mass internment of innocent men, women, and children in Xinjiang. We see the significance of these actions, not just what the Chinese Government is doing on human rights, but what is being done on trade, and in the South China Sea. All of them are an effort by the Chinese Government to break free and to rewrite the rules that keep the world safe and free. We see the Chinese Government's attempts to silence us on these issues for what it is, a sign of weakness, not of strength. The Chinese Government's power rests on a fragile foundation of falsehood. It depends on people forgetting the past. It depends on people believing a lie. So today, we say that they are failing, and they are going to fail. It has been 30 years. We still mark this anniversary. We still remember Liu Xiaobo and all of the heroes of the square. The footage of Tank Man still plays on TV, and thanks to the internet, more people are seeing it today than saw it in 1989. We will carry on until we know his name, until the Chinese people have the freedom that they fought peacefully for that day and that they so richly deserve. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern), the author of this resolution and one of the greatest champions of human rights I have had the privilege to know.

Mr. MALINOWSKI. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume for the purpose of closing. I will simply say that our disagreement here, the disagreement we have been expressing in such a united way, is not with China. It is certainly not with the Chinese people. It is simply with the Chinese Government. We stand in full agreement with the Chinese people, with everybody in China who wishes to live in a country governed by respect for the rule of law and for human rights. That is what this resolution is about. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this resolution, and I yield back the balance of my time.