Jerrold Nadler

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher). (Mr. BOUCHER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, a couple of comments. First, the gentleman from Virginia said that, if this bill does not pass, if we continue to have a bankruptcy crisis, the credit card companies, the banks are going to restrict credit to people who need it. I suppose the fact that they will feel the need to restrict credit is evidenced by the fact that they are inundating people, inundating college students with credit card solicitations. I suppose the grave crisis is illustrated by the fact that the credit card departments or the banks are between two and three times more profitable than the banks as a whole. It is the profit center of the banks that shows what a terrible problem we have. I will reiterate that the real cause of the problem of increased bankruptcy filings is simply that people are going more and more into debt. The average chapter 7 filer today is has debt equal to 125 percent of his income, 15 years ago, it was 74 percent, because he is trapped in paying high interest rates and has taken out too much credit. This, to a large extent, is the fault of the companies that are inundating people with credit cards. That is the real problem. Simply saying that people who are in over their heads, that we should crack donor bankruptcy is the wrong solution to the wrong problem, to a misstated problem. I heard the distinguished gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Roukema) from the other side of the aisle take exception to this bill because of the provisions on child support. I think the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Roukema), I think most of the Members of this House know that the gentlewoman from New Jersey (Mrs. Roukema) knows the issues of support, of collection of child support probably better than most other Members of the House. She has been working in this area for years. When the gentlewoman says that this bill will wreck, will increase the problem of child support collections, we should pay attention. Mr. Speaker, I am going to introduce a motion to recommit. I have that motion at the desk, and I would like to simply explain it for a moment now. The conference report would allow credit card companies and other consumer creditors to have their debts survive bankruptcy. That would mean that those debts would compete with child support, with spousal support, with debts to drunk driving victims, and other high priority debts after the bankruptcy case is over. The motion to recommit will change that. The conferees stripped out important protections contained in the Senate bill which would have prevented creditors from using coercion and other illegal and unethical practices to obtain reaffirmation agreements in which debtors agree to repay debts which would otherwise be discharged in bankruptcy. We will deal with that in the motion to recommit. Reaffirmed debts, because they survive bankruptcy, compete with child support and spousal support and other high priority debts, which already survive bankruptcy, for the scarce resources of the debtor after the case is over. As I mentioned a moment ago, we will deal with that problem. The conferees also adopted broad exceptions to the discharge for credit card companies so that the high risk lending practices would have the same privilege status as support obligations and tax arrears, and we will deal with that in a motion to recommit. The motion to recommit would restore important protections for families and small creditors that were dumped or gutted in the conference report. As I mentioned before, that based primarily on these disastrous changes to the Senate bill, the administration has indicated that the President will veto this bill, and well he should veto this bill. We should sustain this veto unless the motion to recommit is granted and the provisions of that motion survive subsequent proceedings. So I urge the Members to vote for the motion to recommit if they care about child support, if they care about spousal support, if they care about debts to drunk driving victims, if they care about payments to victims of crimes, all of which would be endangered by this. So I urge my colleagues to vote for the motion to recommit and, if it does not pass, against this very unfortunate bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. Madam Speaker, this special interest legislation should not even be considered by the House today. It is being brought forward at the eleventh hour from a secret, closed-door conference for which the House minority was virtually excluded. This secret, rushed and closed conference report was written by and for the special interests, perhaps best symbolizing everything that has gone wrong in this 105th Congress. The majority has ignored the needs of the American people in favor of the special interests, acting with recklessness and haste. That is what has happened for the last 2 years, and perhaps it is fitting that the majority chooses to finish this Congress with this bill true to form. There was exactly one meeting of the staff of all of the conferees of the House and the Senate. There was only one pro forma meeting of the conferees. Members were not given the opportunity to deal or even to make any motions dealing with any of the substantive issues at that meeting. And then there was never another meeting of the conferees and there was never another meeting of the conferees' staff. The House minority was resolutely excluded from whatever meetings did occur. In the final stages of the conference, it was strictly a majority event. The extent to which this conference has failed even to pay lip service to including the minority in the discussions is staggering and reflects an unprecedented arrogance and contempt for the views of the minority and of the Americans whom we represent. This legislation has been written by and for the big banks, the credit card industry, and other special interest groups. Its sole purpose, everything else being window-dressing, is to take large amounts of money from middle income and low-income people in a time of distress of personal bankruptcy and give it to the big banks and the credit card companies. Everything else is window-dressing. All provisions which protected consumers from predatory practices have been either dropped or gutted. Any provisions which held wealthy debtors of big corporations accountable for their actions have been either dropped or gutted. For example, the conference report includes a provision which would make judgments from the drunken operation of a watercraft nondischargeable in bankruptcy. Legislation of this type has already passed the House and I was proud to support it. Curiously, however, an amendment accepted by the House Committee on the Judiciary on a voice vote which would hold tobacco companies accountable for the debt and injury they have caused with their product and for the death and injury they have caused by misleading the American people about the dangers of smoking, that was dropped early in the conference. Thanks to that change, the big tobacco companies, if sued successfully, will be able to evade responsibility for their wrongdoing, if that is proven in court, but they will still evade responsibility by filing for bankruptcy protection. Another provision which was gutted in conference was one which the majority in this House, including 100 members of the majority party and the distinguished Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary, supported on a motion to instruct conferees. Section 405 of the Senate bill which would prohibit a credit card company from discriminating against the most responsible borrowers, those who pay their bills in full every month. Now, we have heard, and I am sure there will be more rhetoric from the Republican side of the aisle, talking about how people have to be responsible, how debtors have to be responsible, how they are escaping in bankruptcy, how we are going to curb the abuses of the dead-beat debtors. But here we are permitting the banks to punish debtors for being responsible. If one pays their bills on time, that is terrible. We are going to punish you by discriminatory fees or by cancelling your credit card. The conferees would allow credit card companies to cancel these cards in a discriminatory manner at the end of the term and entirely delete the prohibition against discriminatory fees for those who have the nerve to pay their bills in full and on time since the credit card companies do not get the interest fees, they only get the activity fees. This bill still threatens parents attempting to collect child support, and crime victims seeking compensation from their victimizers, favoring banks and big government in collection of limited assets. This problem has not been fixed, despite the careful placement of several transparent fig leaves. While the majority fiddles, out there American communities are suffering from inaction in those aspects of the bankruptcy legislative agenda which would offer real relief. Chapter 12, which protects family farmers in crisis, lapsed on September 30. Although we have been urging for more than a year that this noncontroversial legislation be moved through this House independently, that has not happened. Now we are in the middle of a farm crisis, there is no chapter 12 protection, the farm belt is in crisis, and still the Majority has not acted. America's family farmers are being held hostage to the agenda of the big banks and the special interests. If chapter 12 is going to be renewed, it will be done only in this bill to try to get the agenda of the big banks. And we know that the President has threatened, has promised us he will veto this bill, so chapter 12 is being made veto bait in the hope that maybe it could help save the profits of the big banks. Similarly, our bankruptcy courts have needed additional judges for years. We moved a freestanding bill in the House last year, but nothing has happened. Congress could well leave town with that job undone for yet another Congress, causing more delays in cases at great cost to all parties in these cases. We could enact the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross Border Insolvencies on which there is general agreement and which might just come in handy now that there is a global economic crisis, but that has not happened. We could have taken these noncontroversial steps to modernize the code and stabilize the financial markets, but that entire agenda is being held hostage because we must serve the interests of the big banks. Madam Speaker, this is a flawed bill that will destroy families and small businesses and make it harder for small creditors, including custodial parents seeking child support payments from debtors, to collect what is their due. It still retains the unworkable, one-size- fits-all means test which bankruptcy judges, trustees, practitioners, academics and the nation's leading experts have told us time and again will not work. It fails to balance the responsibilities of debtors with basic requirements that creditors conduct their businesses in an honest and fair manner. It also lets wealthy debtors avoid their responsibilities by preserving loopholes, like unlimited homestead exemptions, for the very rich. Now we are going to vote on this special interest legislation handed out in secret and behind closed doors. This rule even waives the 3-day layover rule, even though we only received a hard copy of this 300 page bill Wednesday night and the electronic version was not available to Members and the public until yesterday. The legislative language runs 301 pages dealing with some of the most controversial and complex issues of bankruptcy law. I realize we are late in the session, but that is no reason to act with this kind of haste and ignorance. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no" on this rule and maybe we will redo this bill and get a less obnoxious product.

Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 15 seconds to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, if the card was used but the bill is paid on time and with no interest, they could not cancel it?

Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I just want to observe that I was elected to represent 600,000 citizens or residents of the city of New York, not to represent the city government of New York, which is interested in squeezing money out of people it should not be able to squeeze money out of.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, on the provision that this House voted on the instructions to conferees, we said that the bank should not be able to cancel the credit card for the sin of the cardholder having paid on time, and they should not be able to charge an extra fee for that reason. The gentleman stated correctly that the conference report eliminated the second provision, they can still charge an extra fee. But my understanding is that the conference report says that they can also cancel the card, albeit only at the end of the term, which is generally a year or two. So what is left of this provision to not to penalize responsible borrowers?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Leach). Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have remaining on both sides?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green). (Mr. GREEN. Asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, that the process of the conference report was not open we addressed during a debate in the Committee on Rules. I am not going to go back through that. Let me start by making several general observations about this bill. This bill deals with a phony crisis, concocted with a $40 million lobbying and propaganda campaign of the big banks and credit card companies. It does so by seeking in 30 or 40 different ways to take large sums of money, in toto, from middle-income and low-income American families in times of personal crisis, personally bankruptcy, to enrich the big banks and credit card companies. This bill has no other purpose, all the window dressing and fig leaves to the contrary notwithstanding. Mr. Speaker, we are told that the need for this bill is that the number of personal bankruptcy filings has increased greatly over the last 15 years, and that it has gone up to 1.4 million filings last year. We are told that the reason for this is that Americans are basically deadbeats. Americans are basically deadbeats. That is a slander on the American people. We are told that a couple of generations ago we had moral people in this country, and they would not go bankrupt and seek a discharge of their debts unless they were really in an extreme position, unless they had no other choice, and there was a moral stigma attached to bankruptcy. Now, in this era today, nobody cares about morality anymore. There is no more moral stigma. Therefore, people go bankrupt, they declare bankruptcy as a financial planning option, or at the first sign of difficulty, instead of in the last resort. They are deadbeats. Mr. Speaker, as I said, this is a slander on the American people. It is total nonsense. In fact, if we look at the statistics we see what nonsense it is. In 1983, 15 years ago, the average Chapter 7 filer seeking a discharge of debts in bankruptcy had debts equal to 74 percent of his annual income. Today, the average Chapter 7 filer has debts equal to 125 percent of his annual income. In other words, people are much more reluctant today to file for bankruptcy than they were 15 years ago. They do not file for bankruptcy when they have their debts equal to 74 or 75 percent of their income. They wait, they struggle, they work to resolve their financial situation until they get to 125 percent debt, 125 percent of their income, and only then do they file for bankruptcy. They are a lot more queasy about bankruptcy than they were 15 years ago. They are a lot more reluctant to enter into bankruptcy than they were 15 years ago, to the contrary of the arguments of the proponents of this bill. We are told those who file for bankruptcies, who can pay their debts but are not because they are given discharges, that this costs every American family $400; and if we pass this bill, Americans will get $400 more money, or will save $400 a year in lower interest rates on their credit cards. This is self-evident nonsense. We all know what has happened since credit cards were deregulated, since interest rates were deregulated in the early 1980s. They shot up to an average of 17, 18, 19 percent, which in an era of 17 percent inflation in 1980 may have been okay; the banks had to charge at least the inflation rate. We were told when the inflation rate and the cost of money went down that the interest rates would come down. Well, the cost of money has come way down, mortgage interest rates have come down, bank loan rates have come down, the prime rate has come down, everything has come down, but not interest rates on credit cards. They are still averaging 17.7 percent. Yes, we can find some small-town banks that will give us much better interest rates, but 90 percent of the credit cards, 90-95 percent of the credit cards' credit comes from the big banks, which can do the marketing and the advertising on television, and those rates are way up. If this bill passes, they are not going to lower those rates. They will just have bigger profits. The fact is that the profit rates of banks, which vary between 1 and 2 percent of assets, the profit rates of the credit card departments are between 4 and 5 percent of assets. In 1983, before credit card interest rates were deregulated, and before the ``bankruptcy crisis'' started, the profitability of the credit card departments was slightly higher than the profitability of the banks as a whole. Now, it is four times higher. In fact, if we want to know the cause of the ``bankruptcy crisis'', of the increase in filings, we do not have far to look. The increase in bankruptcy filings tracks directly year-to-year with the increase in the ratio of debt-to-income in society as a whole. In other words, people are getting more in debt. They are being lulled by the credit card companies to take more and more credit cards, get more in debt, more in over their heads, and the result is not a surprise. Mr. Speaker, let me outline just some of the problems with this bill, very briefly. We are told there is a means test. Before we can get a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, which now is allowed on request, unless it is abusive, we will have to pass this means test. A means test means that we should look at the ability of the borrower to repay his debts. What is his income; what are his real expenses. But we are not going to look at real expenses in this bill. We are going to let that wonderful agency the Internal Revenue Agency say what the average rent expense is in the northeast United States. Who cares? The question is what is his or her rent expenses. We are going to look at the average costs for everything else. It does not matter, the real cost is what are his or her expenses. If an individual has a major medical problem on an ongoing basis, it does not matter what the average family spends on medical expenses, it matters what that individual spends on medical expenses. Mr. Speaker, this bill expands the nondischargeability of credit card debts so that they will compete with child support obligations. It gives creditors powerful new leverage to coerce reaffirmation agreements, which will compete with child support after bankruptcy. It requires diversion of family income in chapter 13 to defend meritless claims of fraud. It adopts a restrictive definition of household goods so that more household goods will be repossessed, household goods of little value to the creditors but which are needed by debtors. It eviscerates all the Senate's consumer protection provisions. It adds new provisions eliminating punitive damages and class actions for intentional violations of the bankruptcy stay. It allows wealthy debtors to plan bankruptcy cases in advance so none of the bill's provisions will affect them. In other words, for the rich, they can still use bankruptcy abusively, but for the low-income and middle-income people, this bill says we are going to take a lot of their money, we are going to evade their chance to get it, we are going to eliminate or restrict their chance to get a new start, which is the purpose of the bankruptcy laws, because the big banks must be served. Mr. Speaker, this bill is one of the worst bills I have ever seen. It serves only the big banks against the interests of middle- and low- income Americans. The President, thankfully, has pledged to veto the bill, and so, ultimately, this bill will do no harm except to our reputations. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I saw the news this morning that 400 and some odd Members of the House yesterday voted for an inquiry into impeachment of the President, including all of those of us who voted for the Democratic amendment to the Hyde resolution. That is simply not true. Many people who voted for the Hyde resolution voted for it, many people who voted for the Democratic amendment voted for it because they wanted an inquiry, but they thought the Republican Hyde resolution was a formula for an open-ended, politicized fishing expedition, and at least this would make it fairer. So they voted for the Democratic amendment, and then, when it failed, they voted against the Hyde resolution. Some of us, however, thought and think there is no impeachable offense described in the Starr Report. Even if you assume the President did everything it alleges he did, there is no impeachable offense. He should be punished in some other way for things he did that are not good things to do, but there was no impeachable offense. We voted for the Democratic amendment as an amendment to make a bad bill, a bad resolution, a better bill, but, had the amendment passed, we still would have voted against the bill because, although it would have mitigated the damages in the bill, it made it much damaging to the country, it was still calling for an unnecessary inquiry. So one has to ask each Member who voted for the Democratic amendment which position he took, but one cannot say they all voted for an inquiry. I thought the record should be set straight.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, the issue in the potential impeachment is whether to overturn the results of a national election, the free expression of the popular will of the American people. It is an enormous responsibility, and an extraordinary power. It is not one that should be exercised lightly. It is certainly not one which should be exercised in a manner in which or would be perceived to be unfair or partisan. The work of this House during the Nixon impeachment investigation commanded the respect and support of the American people. A broad consensus that President Nixon had to go was developed precisely because the process was seen to be fair and deliberate. If our conduct in this matter does not earn the confidence of the American people, then any action we take, especially if we seek to overturn the result of a free election, will be viewed with great suspicion and could divide a nation for years to come. We do not need another ``Who lost China?'' debate. We do not need a decade of candidates running for office accusing each other of railroading a democratically elected President out of office, or participating in a thinly failed coup d'etat. The issue has the potential to be the most divisive issue in American public life since the Vietnam War. The process by which we arrive at our decision must be seen to be both nonpartisan and fair. The legitimacy of American political institutions must not be called into question. I do not believe personally that all the allegations in the Starr report, if proven true, describe impeachable offenses. We need to remember that the framers of the Constitution did not intend impeachment as a punishment for a wrongdoing but as a protection of constitutional liberties and of the structure of the government that they were establishing against a President who might seek to become a tyrant. The President's acts, if proven true, may be crimes, calling for prosecution or other punishment, but not impeachment. So I do not believe we need a formal impeachment inquiry. But if we are to have an inquiry, it must be fair. So far it has been anything but fair. The President was not given the Starr report before it was made public; a violation of all the precedents. No debate on the committee occurred on the merits whatsoever. We spent a month on deciding what should be released and what should be kept in private, and then we heard the report of the two counsels and then we discussed procedure but not a minute of debate on the merits on the evidence, on the standard of impeachment, on anything. The supreme insult to the American people, an hour of debate on the House floor on whether to start, for the third time in the American history, a formal impeachment proceeding. We debated two resolutions to name post offices yesterday for an hour and a half. An hour debate on this momentous decision is an insult to the American people and another sign that this is not going to be fair. The democratic amendment is a fair device for a fair process. It provides for a limitation in scope in time, and I urge its adoption. Point of Order

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, due to the lateness of the hour, I am not going to repeat the arguments or go into them in any depth. Suffice it to say I want to make two points. One. This is an excellent bill in general. I commend the chairman and the ranking member. Two. The so-called charitable choice provisions of this bill are clearly violative of the establishment clause of the first amendment. It is incredible that we would seek to enact exemptions from the religious discrimination clauses of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which this does. It is incredible that we would allow Federal dollars to be used, for example, by a church and a day care center, even if the church made a condition of receipt of day care services that the parents had to come and attend religious indoctrination or had to attend church services. Clearly violative of the first amendment. The language the distinguished chairman cited as saying this should not violate the first amendment does not add anything to the first amendment. It simply says what all know: legislation cannot violate the first amendment. We should not be enacting legislation that does so. I hope that this will not be cited as a precedent, as the welfare bill language is cited as a precedent. I hope we can take this out at some point, or else we will rue the day.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the motion. This legislation would grant the consent of Congress to a compact between the States of West Virginia and Maryland to operate the Potomac Highlands Airport Authority as required by the Compacts Clause of the Constitution. According to the testimony received by the Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, this legislation is supported by both States and indeed our colleague the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Mollohan) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Bartlett) appeared before the committee as did Senator Sarbanes. The legislation is supported by both States and has the bipartisan support of the delegations of both States. I am aware of no opposition whatsoever to this legislation. Congress' approval of this legislation is necessary for the compact to become legally effective. If that does not happen, if this legislation does not pass, the Airport Authority will be unable to borrow funds or engage in other core activities. I urge the adoption of this bill.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Iowa has explained the necessity for this bill cogently. I urge our colleagues to adopt this bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, this is a blatantly unfair rule. It is not a compromise, it is not inadequate. It is obnoxious. We had a debate on this floor, and the House voted that Federal employees covered by this bill should have available to them contraceptive services for birth control. The Senate voted to make available contraceptive services for birth control to female Federal employees. An attempt was made on this floor to say that some forms of birth control are really abortions; that the pill should be outlawed because it is an abortifacient; that the IUD is not good, that is an abortifacient. This House intelligently voted that down by 2-to-1. The conference report, the conference committee, faced with a House vote that said, we want contraceptive services covered, faced with a Senate bill that said, we want contraceptive services covered, put contraceptive services in the conference report. Then the Committee on Rules saw it and they said, oh, no, we do not care what the House said, we do not care what the Senate said, go back and rewrite the conference report, and they did. And since they could not pick and choose among the contraceptive services because they did not have the votes in the House, people laughed at it. This conference report before us today says, American women who work for the Federal Government shall not have available to them any contraceptive services paid for by their health plans. Mr. Speaker, that is obnoxious. It is not a compromise, it is obnoxious. The antichoice extremist agenda is very clear. Not only do they want to ban abortions by any means necessary, the Supreme Court decision to the country notwithstanding, they want to ban contraception as well. They are not content with denying reproductive health services for women in prison or Federal employees or women in the Armed Forces or women on public assistance. They will not stop there. They want to eliminate contraceptive services as well. Although this debate is supposed to be about Federal health plans, we can all see the dangerous precedent they are attempting to set. They are actually calling every woman who takes a birth control pill an abortionist. This is absurd, it is offensive, it is obnoxious. We must restore sanity to this discussion of women's health, and we ought to be clear that the American people will not accept efforts to make contraception or, for that matter, abortion illegal. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject this rule, send it back to the drafters, reject the rule as we did the last one. Let them come back again and do the will of this House and the will of the American people, and not say to American women, you cannot have contraceptive services.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I thank the distinguished gentlewoman for yielding me this time. I want to rise in opposition to that portion of the bill regulating music licensing fees. This is a very interesting occasion. Here we have under the leadership of the party that believes preeminently in the free enterprise system that government should not intervene against the operation of the free market advancing a bill that would interfere between an arm's length relationship between two different business interests. Now, I do not agree with most of my friends on the other side of the aisle in as great a degree of the sanctity of the free market system as they might. I probably support more government regulation than they would. I probably think the government should intervene in the free market more often. But I do think that before you have the government intervene in the free market, you have to have a showing of necessity. What showing of necessity have we here? Restaurants that pay an average of $400 a year in music licensing fees, a rather small, I would say minute percentage of the revenues of an average restaurant, do not want to pay the $400 a year to the songwriters. Well, that is interesting. Let them try to negotiate a different deal. Or let them not use the music. But what necessity, what public interest is served by the government coming in and making a decision and saying, ``Thou shalt not pay the $400; you shall get it free''? Is there a great housing shortage that necessitates rent control? Is there a great shortage of restaurant musicians or of restaurant radios that necessitates that, my God, if we do not pass this bill, people are not going to be able to eat because they will be so nervous without the radio music as to justify the government intervention in the free market here, to come in and say, ``We're not going to let you make this deal, we're going to upset the licensing arrangements''? I do not see the point. Why is government intervening in the free market here? Point One. Point Two: Assuming we want the government to intervene in the free market, assuming that we should arrogate to ourselves the power of determining what the deal should be, the deal should be very different. We are saying that the restaurant that pays a average of $400 a year for these licensing fees, a minute part of its expenses to the restaurant to which it makes virtually no difference, that is the one interest. The other interest is the song writer to whom this revenue may be a very large part of their income. So let us take the song writer for whom this may be a very large part of their income and say, ``You can't get that income because the restaurants for whom this is a minute expense, we don't want them to have this expense.'' So if government should make this decision, I would make it the other way around and leave the situation as it is, but why should government make this decision? Government should intervene in the free market when there is a real public policy purpose only, when there is a necessity, when the free market is not working right, when there is not an arm's length relationship, when consumers have to be protected, when the antitrust has to be promoted, when the free market is leading to exploitation of wages, when some real public policy purpose necessities the intervention. What is the public policy purpose? I have been asking that question for 2 years. I have never heard any answer suggested. So I would hope that this part of this bill, which I otherwise support, would not be adopted.