Jerrold Nadler

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, none of us here deny that some of the provisions of the PATRIOT Act are very useful in fighting the war on terrorism. No one wants the PATRIOT Act to be eliminated, but the PATRIOT Act should be amended to safeguard civil liberties. Section 215 should be amended to provide meaningful protection from abuse by an overzealous government seeking sensitive and personal documentation. We should replace the mere showing of relevance standard with a three-part test that was the basis of the Senate compromise. Recipients of section 215 orders and of section 505 national security letters must be allowed a meaningful court challenge to the gag order, and the national security letter authority should sunset in order to guarantee Congressional oversight. We also must be mindful, while debating this, of the President's claim of extraordinary power to wiretap Americans in conversation he says with people who are terrorists abroad. We do not know that is the only wiretapping that is going on. It may be thousands, may be hundreds of thousands of Americans are being wiretapped. We do not know. This is all secret. It only got out because it leaked. The President claims the power to do this against the apparently plain language of the law. Many of us think it is illegal. Many people think this is illegal the President claims inherent power or that we authorized this when we authorized the use of force in Afghanistan. Well, maybe, but we ought to be holding hearings. It is an abdication of responsibility for the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees of this House not to be holding hearings on this. Why should the hearings only occur in the Senate? Is this House not an equal branch of the government? So I urge this bill. This extension ought to pass so that we can work out the problem of modification of the PATRIOT Act, and we ought not to abdicate our responsibility. I urge the chairman of the Judiciary Committee to hold hearings so that we can examine these issues.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the Graham-Levin amendment language contained in this bill. This provision restricts the jurisdiction of the Federal courts to consider habeas corpus petitions from detainees at Guantanamo or complaints about their treatment. It also would require military tribunals to ``weigh the value of the intelligence gained from an interrogation against a judgment on whether the statement was coerced.'' In other words, even if the bill says they cannot torture, it also says they can use the information they obtain by torturing people if the military tribunal concludes the statement itself was not coerced. These two provisions taken together, Mr. Speaker, make the anti- torture provision of this bill unenforceable. They cannot complain about it through habeas corpus. They cannot get into the Federal courts to complain about it, and the military tribunal can use the coerced evidence. That is not right. This is un-American, and this language ought to have been stricken from the bill. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the real question here is due process. We all want to deport illegal aliens. We all want to deport people who are not here legally. But the question is because the Border Control agent thinks that someone may not be here legally, because he thinks that the passport is fake, should there be no appeal? Should there be no ability to show facts? Should there be no due process? This country is built on due process. This country is built on a foundation of liberty and proper process. The Department of Homeland Security states that expedited procedures currently cannot be applied to the nearly 1 million aliens who are apprehended annually on the southwest border, where it can legally be applied, as it is not possible to initiate formal removal proceedings against all the aliens. So you cannot use it in too many of the cases where it is legal now, so let us expand it so we cannot use it in millions of more cases. Mr. Chairman, I realize that we have to talk about the principle of due process. I also realize that not passing this amendment is going to result in a fiction, the fiction of having this policy where we cannot use it for millions of people. So I am not sure what the practical impact of that will be. I recognize there is no point to spending more time on this. I wanted to make the point about due process, and I hope the Senate will listen. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Mr. Chairman, my amendment strikes section 407. Section 407 expands the controversial policy of expedited removal, which grants extraordinary power to low-level immigration officers to order deported without any judicial review and without any fair hearing people who arrive at ports of entry without proper documentation. This section would authorize such unreviewable deportation decisions, again without any real judicial review, for anyone picked up within 100 miles of any U.S. border, not just at ports of entry or near the Mexican border. My amendment would prevent this expansion of expedited removal and limit its use to the present locations. If the amendment passes, we would still, of course, deport illegal aliens; but people arrested within the U.S. would continue to have the right to some judicial review, some due process before being deported. They would have the right, as they do now, to challenge the decision of the Border Patrol agent. By imposing expedited removal proceedings on all aliens apprehended within 100 miles of any border, this bill would deny thousands of people all due process rights. The expedited removal process poses the gravest risks to refugees fleeing human rights abuses. Those fleeing torture, imprisonment or other forms of persecution are often forced to travel without valid documents because there is not enough time to obtain them or because it is too dangerous to apply for them. Those fleeing persecution or the Gestapo or the KGB or the Savak are least likely to have properly notarized and stamped documents, countersigned by the Gestapo, the KGB or the Savak. The expansion of the expedited removal process puts refugee women and children fleeing rape, honor killings, female mutilation, forced marriages and sexual slavery particularly at risk because these victims have the most difficulty sharing and explaining their painful stories to border agents who may not be experts in foreign cultures. Furthermore, when individuals are placed in expedited removal, they do not have access to relief from deportation under the Violence Against Women Act, the temporary protected status or as trafficking victims. My amendment seeks to prevent the inevitable consequences of deporting more asylum seekers, battered immigrants, trafficking victims and others who may be legally entitled to remain but who have no real opportunity for any appeal from the hasty judgment of the border agent, no due process. Even as currently applied, expedited removal has resulted in terrible mistakes, including its wrongful application to genuine refugees and even to U.S. citizens. The Senate heard the case of Sharon McKnight, an American citizen from New York of Jamaican descent who suffers a mental disability and was wrongly put into expedited removal and sent to Jamaica because an inspector mistakenly thought her passport was fake. Expanding this policy to include persons already within the United States poses grave constitutional problems. Immigration laws long made a distinction between those aliens seeking admission to the U.S. and those who are already within the U.S., regardless of the legality of their entry. In Zadvydas v. Davis, the Supreme Court held ``once an alien enters the country, the legal status changes, for the Due Process Clause applies to all `persons' within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary or permanent.'' Because there is no check or review of expedited removal decisions, there is no due process. This policy should not be expanded. It should be left where it is as my amendment would do. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution: in honor and support of our troops in Iraq, in opposition to our policy on the war in Iraq, and in urging the Republican leadership of the House to grant this an open and adequate debate on the entire question of our policy on Iraq on the floor of this House.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, what an underhanded, sneaky rule and bill this is. The Social Security Act has a provision that prohibits, that prohibits the use of Social Security trust funds for changing the Social Security cards. This bill repeals that provision. CBO estimates the cost that could be incurred there by between 5 and $10 billion to be looted out of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds by that provision of this bill. Now, I offered an amendment to restore this provision, to repeal the repeal. Mr. Thomas ran into the Rules Committee at midnight last night with his own amendment, because they saw the damage this could do. And his own amendment ostensibly repeals this, but it does not. The Thomas amendment only applies to the Social Security trust fund, but allows the looting of the Medicare trust fund. It allows monies from all trust funds, including Social Security, to carry out section 707 of the bill, a smaller expenditure, but a major expenditure. The Thomas amendment limits the prohibition against raiding the trust funds to title VII of the current bill. My amendment prohibits the use of these monies for any costs incurred in developing and implementing any change in Social Security cards. The Thomas amendment leaves open the possibility of future legislation looting all the trust funds. Why will we not simply restore the provision, as my amendment would, that this bill would take out? Why are we opening up the Social Security and Medicare and disability and unemployment insurance trust funds to be looted for these purposes? Mr. Thomas's amendment undoes a little of the damage, but it leaves wide loopholes. Wide. Does anybody know that in the immigration bill we are debating is permission to take $5 billion to $10 billion out of Social Security and Medicare and unemployment and disability? Is that what we want to do? I urge the Rules Committee, if it wants to make sure this is honestly done, make my amendment in order, not just Mr. Thomas's amendment, which is self-executed in this rule, although only brought to the Rules Committee at midnight last night. Make my amendment in order so we can stop the looting of the Social Security, disability unemployment, and Medicare trust funds.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I want to make two points: One, the bad parts about section 215 and section 505 are not that, under certain circumstances, the FBI or other investigative agencies can get information from libraries. No one is proposing, as Mr. Sensenbrenner said, to say that libraries are totally sacrosanct. The bad part is that the FBI can get all this private personal information without any proper or adequate judicial review and then can tell them, shut up, do not tell the victim about it, and that gag order also operates without any real judicial review. That is the real issue. Secondly, the gentleman from Wisconsin is attempting to do something, I think, improper, and that is, he tells us you cannot change the PATRIOT Act. There are good things in this bill, things we need, which is true, but you have got to take it or leave it, because your 3-month extension I will not allow to go through. We will blackmail this House. If you do not pass the bill as is today, if it expires, there will be blood on your hands, because he and his side of the aisle will not allow a 3-month extension. Well, if there is fault, if there is real danger by not extending the PATRIOT Act, it is on that side of the aisle by refusing a 3-month extension so that we can get it right. This country should not be subjected to that kind of blackmail. The Senate has real questions. Many liberals, many conservatives, have real questions about this bill. It should be worked out, and if it takes an additional 3 months, let it be. But we, this House, should not be told, take it or leave it, because if you do not take it the way it is, we will not permit a 3-month extension; there will be dangers to the Republic. Without a 3-month extension, there will be blood on your hands. That is not the way to legislate. That is not proper procedure. That is not respectful of the Constitution. It is not respectful of the people of this country. It is not respectful of the Members of this House.

Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, we are engaged in a serious war with terrorism. Unfortunately, we are going after the wrong targets. We are not protecting ourselves, but we are endangering our liberties. We are not doing anything or anything adequate about collecting the loose nuclear materials all over the former Soviet Union before they are smuggled to al Qaeda to make atomic bombs to attack us with. That costs money. We are searching 2 percent of the 6 million shipping containers that come into our country's ports every year, any one of which may contain a weapon of mass destruction; but to search them would cost money. We are not doing much about what the 9/11 Commission said was one of the most important things we should do, providing for intercommunicability between the first responders so police can talk to the fire and military. We are not doing that. What are we doing? We are violating the civil liberties of our people and making them think that we are protecting ourselves. Madam Speaker, this country has a great heritage of liberty. It also has an unfortunate history of violating that liberty whenever we get into a war, from the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 to the Espionage Act of 1971, the Palmer Raids of 1919, the Japanese American Internment Act of World War II, the FBI's egregious COINTELPRO program against opponents of the Vietnam War. And now in this war, this administration has resorted to torture, to indefinite detention without trial, to evasions of the great writ of habeas corpus, to going back in some respects to before Magna Carta. What does this bill do? This bill continues in that tradition. It does some okay things. It continues breaking down the so-called wall between intelligence and police work. That makes sense. But it also invades our liberties in ways that are very unnecessary. Let me focus on two of them. Section 215, the so-called libraries provision, allows the government to get orders from a FISA court to search any records of any business of a library regarding a third party who never knows about the search. It does not require a showing of a particularized suspicion of the target as the fourth amendment would seem to require. It simply says that the government has to come up with a statement of fact showing there are reasonable grounds to believe the tangible things sought are relevant to an authorized investigation. Well, that is hardly restrictive at all. Relevant, almost anything can be relevant. Moreover, it says that the government's statements that the information sought is necessary to protect against international terrorism or clandestine intelligence activities are presumptively relevant if the person they pertain to may be an individual in contact with a subject or agent of a foreign power. Presumptively relevant, that means they do not have to prove it. They do not have to show probable cause. This destroys the fourth amendment requirement for search and seizures. Then you have the gag order. They cannot tell anybody about it. The Internet service provider or the library that is giving up all the information about what you read or who you talk to cannot tell you. You cannot move in court to quash it. Section 505, national security letters which have been held unconstitutional by two courts so far do not even require a FISA court. It is an administrative proceeding. It is not even a proceeding; the FBI simply says they want it, and they can get it. This is like the writ of assistance the British granted in 1761 which this is very similar to. That started the American Revolution. But after the FBI gets the information, you can protest the gag order. You can say I want to be able to tell somebody about it, but you can only say that if you can show that revealing that information is not harmful to the national security or diplomatic relations, but the government's statement that it is conclusive, so the court is a cipher. The court cannot make any judgments. There is no evidence. The government's statement is conclusive. This does not protect liberty; this destroys liberty. We ought to have real protections for our liberty. We ought to have put some procedural safeguards on these powers such as our entire tradition demands. To pass this bill with no sunset of section 505, with no procedural safeguards on these very intrusive provisions is to disregard our entire history of ordered liberty. I very much urge defeat of this bill so we can do it properly after further consideration.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, due to official business, I missed four votes on December 7, 2005. I ask that the Record reflect that had I been able to, I would have voted ``no'' on rollcall vote No. 615, tabling appeal of the ruling of the chair; ``no'' on rollcall vote No. 616, the United States-Bahrain Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act; ``aye'' on rollcall vote No. 617, the Tax Revision Act; and ``aye'' on rollcall vote No. 618, the Gulf Opportunity Zone Act of 2005.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, due to official business, I missed a vote on November 17, 2005. I ask that the Record reflect that had I been able to, I would have voted ``yea'' on H. Res. 500 (rollcall vote No. 597) recognizing the 60th anniversary of the disappearance of the five naval Avenger torpedo bombers of Flight 19 and the naval Mariner rescue sent to search for Flight 19.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this horrible legislation. In all my years in Congress, this is easily one of the ugliest bills I have ever seen. I can't think of a more glaring example of pandering to the rich on the backs of the poor. It's no wonder the Republican leadership needed all the extra time to bring it to the floor. The cuts in this legislation will result in the reduction, if not elimination, of services to those who need it most, and those who are able to fight for them least. I hope that those in the faith-based community are watching closely: this is the true face of ``compassionate conservatism.'' This from the party which claims to have cornered the market on morality. It is hard to identify what is most egregious about this bill--there is such a litany of problems here. Is it the cuts in food stamps that will leave hundreds of thousands hungry? Is it that Medicaid funding has been decimated, adding to the rolls of the millions without adequate health insurance? Is it the hits that student loan programs take, leaving our Nation's youth with still more financial burdens? Is it the insidious weakening of environmental provisions, inserted under cover of darkness? The list goes on and on. And despite the rhetoric from the other side, this bill will do nothing to reduce the staggering deficits we've been seeing. That is because, under the Republican fiscal policies, deficits are built into the system. As a result of the tax cuts for the wealthy that the Republicans forced down this country's throat several years ago, there is simply not enough revenue coming into the treasury to eliminate the shortfall. Indeed, unless Republicans are planning to gut just about all discretionary spending, there is simply no way to plug the hole. It's basic arithmetic. No, what's going on here is that my Republican friends have created a monster. Their tax cuts have starved our government of its resources, and have brought us from record surpluses to record deficits. But will budget reconciliation reduce the deficit and begin to fix the problem, as they claim? No. This bill actually increases the deficit. This bill is about making room for still more tax cuts. In fact, the bill allows for up to $106 billion in new tax cuts during FY 06, not just the $75 billion specified in the bill. $50 billion in spending cuts, and $106 billion fewer dollars in the treasury, leads to an increase in the deficit to $56 billion! And the $106 billion in tax cuts will not benefit the families of the troops fighting in Iraq, nor those who suffered in the gulf coast. No, these cuts are targeted to benefit corporations and the wealthy. Three hundred thousand low-income Americans will lose food stamp assistance; 17 million Americans, half of them children, will see increased costs in Medicaid; the average student will suffer an almost $6,000 increase in his or her college costs because of $14.3 billion in cuts to student loan programs. So we give tax cuts to those who don't even need them, and the back of our hand to those who need assistance. This is a disgraceful bill. It is socially unjust, and it will aggravate, not help cure, our Nation's fiscal crisis. In the strongest possible terms, I urge a no vote on this bill.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the motion to instruct. This bill makes permanent the most dangerous and intrusive provisions of the PATRIOT Act, 14 of the 16 previously sunsetted provisions. The remaining two sunsetting provisions are renewed for 10 years. Ten years is not a sunset. Ten years is quasi-permanent. These provisions are particularly worrisome because they expand the powers of the police to pry into the privacy of ordinary Americans, to go into their homes, into their papers, into their Internet records, their telephone records, their medical records, their bank records. Reinstating the sunset is about accountability. The breadth of these provisions providing for roving wiretaps, for sneak-and-peek searches, for invading library privacy and section 505, expanding the use of national security letters invites abuse. The administration assures us, the chairman assures us that these provisions have not been abused. But how do we know? It is all secret. We were told repeatedly that section 215 we should not worry about; it is rarely if ever used to demand library records. Now we know why. The Washington Post revealed last Sunday that the FBI issues more than 30,000 section 505 national security letters a year, many to libraries for ``preliminary investigations and threat assessments'' before deciding whether or not to launch an investigation. These tens of thousands of invasive government demands for sensitive and private information which never even go before a judge have resulted in the collection of probably hundreds of millions of personal facts regarding innocent Americans, innocent American residents, citizens, and businesses. And the Bush administration has decided to file all this personal information in government databases even if no basis is found for a real investigation and they will not even rule out selling this information to private conditions. Sunsets have been the major check, albeit probably inadequate checks, on abuse of the PATRIOT Act. They mean that at least every 4 years Congress is required to look at the law again, to revisit it, and has the opportunity to ask tough questions on the use or abuse of these powers, and most important, the administration cannot stonewall these questions except for every 4 years. We should have to look into these burdens on our civil liberties at least one in four years and ask are these powers being abused, should they be fine tuned? Should they be narrowed? Have we made the right balance between security and liberty? What can we do to ensure that our constitutional rights are not violated? I wish, Madam Speaker, that this motion to instruct were broader than it is, that it kept all the sunsetting provisions from being made permanent. The FBI will still have all the powers it needs. It will simply have to hold itself accountable to Congress and the American people every 4 years about how these powers are used. Why is that so terrible? I call on all my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, to begin to safeguard the national security, not adequately, but to begin to safeguard the civil liberties of all Americans by voting for this very, very skimpy motion to instruct.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the remaining time. Mr. Chairman, the fact is, this does not gut the bill, as the gentlewoman from California said. It takes out the penalty, but you do not need the penalty because you establish the right of the court and the duty of the court to stop it in the first place. There will be no private taking for the prohibited use because you give the rights to the landowner to get an injunction against it in the first place. It is a much better protection than worrying about punishing the city later. You do not have to punish the city because you protect against it in advance, 100 percent.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, the power of eminent domain should never be abused to take private property for the private benefit of another, and I agree with the concept of the bill, but it is very poorly drafted. It goes too far and not far enough. It will permit many of the abuses and injustices of the past, while bankrupting State and local governments. It would allow highways to cut through communities and all the other public projects that have historically fallen most heavily on the poor and powerless. It does nothing to protect displaced renters. They get no compensation, no day in court, but absentee slumlords, they get their day in court. It allows a taking to give property to a private party ``such as a common carrier, that makes the property available for use by the general public as of right.'' Does that mean a stadium? It seems to me that is privately owned. It is ``available for use by the general public as of right'' at least as much as a railroad; you can buy a seat. Does that mean a shopping center? You do not even need a ticket. So this would not even prevent the use of public domain, apparently, for sport stadiums and shopping centers. The World Trade Center, on the other hand, could not have been built under this law. It was publicly owned, but leased as office and retail space. Affordable housing, like the Hope VI program would be prohibited. Local governments under this bill would risk all their economic development funding for 2 years, even for unrelated projects. The financial cloud this would place over all cities would ensure that they could never issue a bond, for any purpose, and companies doing business with the city would face the threat of bankruptcy. If we really want to help property owners, we should give them the right to stop the taking before it happens. This bill makes them wait until after the condemnation and offers them no damages. People do not want to bankrupt their communities. They want to keep their homes. This bill does not do that. I will offer an amendment that will at least change this part of the bill and solve that problem. A bill to prevent takings for improper purposes makes sense. It does not make sense to say that if the government makes a mistake, instead of giving private injunctive relief in advance to prevent that mistake to help the property owner, you put a cloud on the future finance of the State or city as they can never issue bonds for any purpose. Let us protect property owners but not destroy our communities. We should do this right.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, my amendment is very straightforward and, in my opinion, will better protect the rights of property owners than the way the bill is designed. Under the bill, if the government takes your property for a prohibited purpose, you could sue, and if you win your lawyers get paid and your town gets bankrupted. You get no damages, and if you think the town will bulldoze the new downtown and rebuild your house, you are fooling yourself. Instead, you should have the right, and my amendment grants you the right, to go to court and stop the government in the first place dead in its tracks. Americans do not want to bankrupt their towns; they want to keep their homes. Keep in mind the economic threat the penalties of this bill would pose to every single State and local government in the country. Any property owner under this bill could sue for 7 years after the conclusion of the condemnation proceeding, or at any time in the future if a public facility is later used for a private purpose. This is an open-ended and catastrophic threat. No financial institution would underwrite a bond or extend any financing to a city or State because the risk is too great. No private company would take a public contract because the city could lose 2 years' funding in the future. If the current city administration does not want to use eminent domain for any improper purpose or, for that matter, any proper purpose, it will still have trouble floating bonds because maybe its successor 10 years from now will use eminent domain improperly, they will lose 2 years of all the Federal revenue, and they will not be able to repay the bonds. Therefore, the bond counsel now will instruct the people not to lend to the city. No bank would do business with a public contractor for the same reason. This is absurd. We should protect our homes. The way to do that is to establish in this bill, as it does, a substantive right not to have eminent domain used against your home or property for the prohibited purposes, and then give you the right to enforce that by an injunction, with attorneys' fees paid in advance, that stops it. You do not need the ability of someone in the future to go to court and punish the city which does not even get the property owner help. So my amendment would say no penalty for the State or city later, that is unnecessary, because we are granting you the right to get an injunction, a permanent injunction to stop the taking in the first place. That is the proper protection. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this is not a gutting amendment. The constitutional basis for granting the injunction against the taking is the fact that the State is accepting Federal funds. The bill, on lines 12 through 15 on page 2, says clearly: ``if that State or political subdivision receives Federal economic development funds during any fiscal year in which it does so.'' That is the constitutional basis for saying, you cannot do certain kinds of takings as this bill prohibits and, if you do, you can establish penalties or injunctive relief. All I am saying is, we are using the Federal jurisdictional hook that the chairman mentioned and instead of penalizing later, which does not help the homeowner who has lost his home, you say you can stop it now, get an injunction for stopping it now, because the State has agreed not to use its power in this way as a condition of taking Federal funds. There is well-established constitutional law that we can condition Federal funds on that. That being the case, you can go into Federal or State court and get an injunction if you do my amendment. With the injunction, you do not have the taking, you do not have to worry about punishing anybody 10 years later, because there is no taking in the first place. It is a much better protection for the property owner. We prohibit the taking. The court says you cannot do it. There is no constitutional problem with that. It does not gut the bill because it says you do not have to punish what cannot have occurred. It cannot have occurred because the bill would now say you may not do it; and if you may not do it, the court will prohibit you from doing it, because we are establishing the right to go into court in advance and get an injunction against it. So total protection of the property owner against the improper taking. You do not have to worry about fouling up the State or city's ability to float bonds or the State or city finances later; you do not punish all the citizens of the city because the mayor is paying off some campaign contributor with a private taking, just prohibit the mayor from doing so in the first place and enforce that by letting the property owner get an injunction, period. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, the history of the 20th century aptly teaches us that when tyrants threaten genocide and mass murder, their words must be taken seriously because they have a tendency to do exactly what they said they would do. When President Ahmadinejad of Iran threatened to destroy Israel, says Israel must be wiped off the map, he joined the fellow he defeated in the election, the former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani who said that Israel must be destroyed by nuclear weapons, and it does not matter. One nuclear bomb will destroy Israel, and nuclear war will merely harm, not destroy, the Islamic world. These men must be taken seriously. The threats of genocide must not be permitted to be carried out. Iran is the enemy of peace and the enemy of order and the enemy of mankind in its behavior and its proclaimed intentions. Iran must not be permitted to have nuclear weapons. It is a shame that this country got diverted into Iraq from focusing on the real threat to peace in the world, Iran, and we should focus on Iran and make sure they do not get nuclear weapons, and make sure they return to peaceful sanity.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I oppose this bill because it will not reduce frivolous lawsuits, but will instead increase the cost of litigation at the State and Federal level, set back the fairness of civil rights litigation, and favor foreign corporate defendants at the expense of their domestic competitors. As a result of this misguided legislation, satellite litigation, costs and delays will result, and litigation abuses will not be reduced. H.R. 420 makes significant changes to Rule 11 sanctions without following the statutory rulemaking process. The Association of Chief Justices of the States and the Federal Judicial Council have both criticized skipping the statutory rulemaking process. This bill would revert Rule 11 back to the 1983 version and unduly affects plaintiffs in civil rights cases. The current Rule 11 was adopted in 1993 specifically to correct abuses by defendants in civil rights cases. By rolling back this rule and requiring a mandatory sanctions system to civil rights cases, H.R. 420 will chill many legitimate and important civil rights actions. Although the bill states that the proposed Rule 11 changes shall not be construed to ``bar or impede the assertion or development of new claims or remedies under Federal, State, or local civil rights law,'' the language does not clearly and simply exempt civil rights and discrimination cases, as it should. Determining what a new claim or remedy is will be a daunting and complex issue for most courts and clearly does not cover all civil rights cases. The Honorable Robert Carter, United States District Court Judge for the Southern District of New York, who was one of the pioneers in civil rights legislation and worked on the Brown v. Board of Education case, stated, ``I have no doubt that the Supreme Court's opportunity to pronounce separate schools inherently unequal in Brown v. Board of Education would have been delayed for a decade had my colleagues and I been required, upon pain of potential sanctions, to plead our legal theory explicitly from the start.'' This is a good example of the dreadfully detrimental effect of this rule on civil rights cases. Furthermore, this bill will operate to benefit foreign corporate defendants at the expense of their domestic counterparts. Section 4, the ``forum shopping'' provision, would operate to provide a litigation and financial windfall to foreign corporations at the expense of their domestic competitors. This is because instead of permitting claims to be filed wherever a corporation does business or has minimum contacts, as most State long-arm statutes provide, the bill permits the suit to be brought only where the defendant's principal place of business is located. In the case of a foreign corporation, that does not exist in the United States. If a U.S. citizen is harmed by a product manufactured by a foreign competitor, under this bill the injured U.S. citizen would have no recourse against a foreign corporation, whereas he or she would have recourse against the comparable U.S. corporation. This is unfair to both the U.S. citizen with no recourse and to all U.S. companies that must compete against the foreign firm. Consequently American employers and employees would be put at an unfair disadvantage vis-a-vis their foreign counterparts, not exactly what we would want to be doing not only from a standpoint of fairness, but from a standpoint of our economy. Mr. Chairman, this bill has another deleterious effect. Because it provides for reasonable attorneys' fees in the case of a sanction, because many Rule 11 sanctions are minor, and in any complex case there are almost invariably going to be some, the current law, first of all, permits the judge discretion whether to impose sanctions or not. This makes it mandatory for even the most picayune infractions. Second of all, the current law says that if it is pointed out to an attorney that he has done something that would fall under Rule 11, he has 21 days to correct it. If he does not correct it, he is subject to sanctions. This would say they have no time to correct it. They get automatic sanctions. That is unfair. Thirdly, because under those circumstances this bill provides for attorneys' fees, they had better have their head examined if they want to sue a large corporation, because if they are the little guy, and they have one attorney, and he is paid a reasonable fee, and they can afford the litigation, they hope; but if they are suing the big company, and General Motors has 32 attorneys lined up over there, and they are all charging $800 an hour, then reasonable attorneys' fees are going to be a lot of money, and they have to anticipate, if they file that suit, that because of the mandatory nature of the Rule 11 sanctions that this bill would impose, because of the lack of an ability to correct it, because of the automatic sanctions and mandatory sanctions, they have to assume that they are going to have to pay those sanctions, and they are going to have to pay the mandatory attorneys' fees, so they had better not sue the big boys. What this bill is really saying is big corporations shall be exempt from lawsuits by people who cannot afford to pay huge attorneys' fees of the big corporations, because we have to assume that will happen, and because this bill leaves no discretion to the judge. It is no surprise that the United States Judicial Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Alliance for Justice, Public Citizen, People for the American Way, the American Association of People with Disabilities, the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in Law, the American Bar Association, the National Conference of State Legislatures, National Partnership for Women, National Women's Law Center, the Center for Justice and Democracy, Consumers Union, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund all oppose the bill. In other words, if Members care about civil rights, if they care about the ability of the consumer to have justice with a large corporation, if they care about civil liberties, if they care about people being able to use the Federal or State courts, they must vote against this bill. I urge my colleagues to vote against this poorly drafted and unfair legislation. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. Announcement by the Chairman

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I do not seek recognition in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentlewoman. I think the gentlewoman has established not only that the system is not broken, but that any claim of an avalanche of frivolous litigation is absurd for these kinds of statistics of declining use of the courts, of declining caseloads, of declining filings. Again, the courts have not requested this, they have not said that there is any problem, there is any problem existing. This is an attempt again to shut the courthouse doors to people who need access to the courts, and on the most fundamental grounds of justice, this bill ought to be soundly rejected. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I observe the gentleman tells us that President Bush assures us of the problem of frivolous lawsuits. President Bush assured us there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and a lot of other nonsense. So I do not give that too much credence. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased that Chairman Sensenbrenner has included in the manager's amendment two provisions that I offered in the Judiciary Committee markup of the bill, and I thank the chairman for his support. The first amendment included in the manager's amendment provides for mandatory sanctions for destroying documents relating to a court proceeding. Delays during litigation provide ample opportunities for wrongdoers to destroy incriminating documents. Because this can result in the complete inability to hold these defendants accountable for their wrongful acts, parties who knowingly destroy relevant and incriminating documents should be severely sanctioned. Secondly, the second amendment bans the concealment of unlawful conduct when the interests of public health and safety outweigh the interest of litigating parties in concealment. Very often in civil litigation, a company producing an unsafe product or an unsafe procedure will settle with the plaintiff. The settlement will include a payment of a sum to the defendant, but will also often include an agreement that the records will be sealed and no one will ever talk about it. That is the condition that the defendant company puts on it. So the defendant pays the money, the plaintiff gets the settlement, everybody keeps quiet. But meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of people may continue to be injured by that product in the future. The defendant company forces the plaintiffs never to discuss the problems with anyone else, no one knows about it, and more people keep getting hurt because the product remains on the market. When it comes to public health and safety, people must have access to information about an unsafe product, not only to protect themselves but also to serve as a deterrent against companies that may continue to place the public in harm's way. Secrecy agreements should not be enforced unless they meet stringent standards to protect the public interest and the public health. This amendment prevents this harmful practice. The amendment says that an agreement to keep a settlement secret, the terms and conditions of settlement secret, cannot be approved by the court unless the court determines that the interests of the parties in secrecy, perhaps legitimate interests outweigh the interests of the public in knowledge of whatever it is. If the court so determines, the court can order the secrecy upheld. But if the court determines that the interest and the public knowledge outweigh the secrecy, then the court must say that and disapprove the concealment agreement. I support the manager's amendment because it includes these two amendments and other good ideas. But these changes are not enough for me to support final passage of what is still an egregious bill. Again, I would like to thank Chairman Sensenbrenner for working together in addressing these issues. I believe the manager's amendment provides some positive changes in what is otherwise an egregious bill. I urge my colleagues to vote for the manager's amendment, but against the final bill. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.