Jerrold Nadler

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill. Mr. Speaker, despite the rhetoric, we all know that the real purpose of this bill is to make it even more difficult for women to exercise their constitutionally protected right to have an abortion. That is the real motivation and that is what is driving this bill, not the concern about parental involvement. We know, in any event, that 75 percent of women under the age of 16 consult their parents before seeking an abortion. But young woman who feel they cannot confide in their parents will now be unable to confide in their grandparents or any other adult. This bill would punish young women, would force them to risk their health and isolate them from adults who might be able to help them in a time of crisis. This bill would force a young woman to drive by herself for long distances both before and after an abortion rather than allow a responsible adult to accompany her. The American Medical Association has noted women who feel they cannot involve a parent often take drastic steps to maintain the confidentiality of their pregnancies, including running away from home, obtaining unsafe back-alley abortions, or resorting to dangerous, sometimes fatal self-induced abortions. The AMA has reported that, ``The desire to maintain secrecy has been one of the leading reasons for illegal abortion deaths since 1973.'' This bill, Mr. Speaker, is a death sentence for many young women. Like all parental consent laws, this bill further risks women's health because it delays abortions. As we all know, the further a pregnancy progresses, the more dangerous any termination procedure becomes. We should be taking action to ensure that abortions are as safe as possible, and we should be strengthening sex education and increasing the availability of contraception to help reduce the number of unintended pregnancies. This bill does not address those issues, and instead seeks to isolate teenagers and makes their lives even more difficult. This bill also invites families to sue one another for damages. Who gets to sue? Parents. Even parents who have been abusive or have abandoned their children. Fathers who have raped their daughters are allowed to sue for damages. Who can they sue? They can sue doctors, clinics and relatives. What about the criminal penalties? This bill could force a grandmother to go to jail for coming to the aid of a grandchild. It could criminalize almost any adult relative of a child who tries to help the young woman at this time. Proponents of this bill ignore these concerns and wave around judicial bypass as a panacea. But the judicial bypass option of many parental consent laws has proven ineffective. Many local judges refuse to hold hearings or are widely known to be anti-choice and refuse to grant bypasses, despite rulings of the Supreme Court that they cannot withhold a bypass under certain conditions. This bill also promotes a dangerously unconstitutional concept. I know of no other law that seeks to make it criminal to accompany someone to a different State for the purpose of doing something that is legal in that State. Will we next make it illegal to help someone go from New York, where gambling is illegal, to Atlantic City or to Las Vegas? What this bill really says is: We regret forming the Constitution. We regret our Federal union and we want to go back to a series of sovereign States, back to the Articles of Confederation. That is simply foolish and dangerous. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject this bill and to affirm that in a Federal union we cannot criminalize going to another State to do what is legal in that State.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. NADLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this opportunity to say, having talked about the merits of the bill and why it is necessary, and that it is in fact a good compromise between the undoubted necessity of the States and local governments to have the ability to tax the Internet once, and the necessity on the Federal level of having a moratorium now to make sure that we do not have overlapping and commercially destructive rival taxation, this is a good bill. I want to say a word about the process. First of all, I want to thank and congratulate the chairman of the committee, the Committee on the Judiciary, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), and the gentleman Pennsylvania (Mr. Gekas) from the subcommittee, for the cooperative and bipartisan manner which this bill was moved, and the cooperation they have afforded to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) as ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary, and myself as ranking member of the subcommittee. I also want to point out for the Record that this bill is entirely and completely within the jurisdiction of the Committee on the Judiciary, and that interstate taxation is within the core jurisdiction of the Committee on the Judiciary, and that the Committee on the Judiciary reported the bill to the floor, and the bill that we have before us now is virtually identical to that bill, and that the bill that the Committee on Commerce reported was stripped of all interstate taxation matters and Internet taxation matters by the Committee on the Judiciary because they have no jurisdiction, and we do not want any precedent set for the future on this bill. So it is a good bill. I am glad some members of the Committee on Commerce cooperated on this, but the record should reflect that this bill came through the Committee on the Judiciary, and we will have a full record of the history and the extension in the Record, because we should not permit a further diminution or attempted diminution of the jurisdiction of the Committee on the Judiciary on this worthy bill. I urge my colleagues to vote for this bill.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, to advance the bipartisan support for this bill, in addition to the support given by King William, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Internet Tax Freedom Act. This legislation is the product of long and careful negotiations between the States and the emerging Internet businesses. It strikes a careful balance between the right of States and local jurisdictions to tax commerce within their borders and the need to protect new and developing businesses from discriminatory and multiple overlapping taxes. It contains a moratorium of limited duration and provides for a balanced commission to study the very complicated questions involved in taxing these new types of transactions. That commission will report back to Congress, and we will then have the benefit of their work to consider how best to proceed in this new arena. Congress should tread very carefully when it intrudes into areas involving State power to tax, but it is also the responsibility of the Federal Government to ensure that interstate commerce is not overwhelmed by local taxes which cumulatively could have a disastrous national impact. This legislation strikes an appropriate balance between these important concerns and sets the stage for more thoughtful and careful look at this question. Most importantly, it ensures that the Internet will be free to develop and to continue as a vital new force in the economy, and I congratulate those on the committee and on the Committee on Commerce who have worked on it, and I urge its adoption.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren).

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, today, I am proud to introduce House Resolution 483 regarding strengthening of the Social Security system. I am pleased that this resolution has 59 original cosponsors and has been endorsed by 14 national organizations representing millions of Americans. This is a very important day for Social Security. It marks the true beginning of our national debate about the privatization of this great social insurance program. I say the true beginning because, until today, the Social Security debate has been one-sided and has shut out the voice of the American people. For too many months, there has been a growing consensus in Washington that privatization--substitution private individual accounts for all or part of Social Security--is a done deal, that economists think it's the only way to go, that young people are clamoring for private accounts, and that Americans in general want it. This is simply not true. There is no wellspring of public support for privatizing Social Security, there is merely a wellspring of expensive public relations creating the illusion of public support. Today, I am introducing a resolution into the House opposing the creation of private accounts as a substitute for Social Security. This resolution has 59 original co-sponsors and the initial endorsements of national advocacy groups representing Americans of all ages and all walks of life. Together, these initial endorsers represent tens of millions of Americans who are opposed to wrecking the promise of Social Security by privatizing it. Together, I believe this alliance represents the true sense of the American people: that privatizing Social Security is a bad idea and is unnecessary. The early support for this resolution, still in its early stages, should make us question the myth that there is massive public support for partially replacing Social Security with private accounts. The introduction of this resolution also debunks the myth that there is overwhelming Congressional support for privatization. Fifty-nine Members of Congress, so far, have endorsed this resolution, more than have spoken out in favor of private accounts in general. This resolution also debunks the well-financed myth that Social Security is in a state of grave crisis. As this year's Trustee report tells us, Social Security--at the very worst--faces a manageable gap of 2.19 percent of taxable payroll. This gap can be closed without reducing Social Security benefits, without raising the retirement age, without forcing individuals to put their retirement income at risk through individual private accounts, and without raising tax rates. This 2.19 percent is not only manageable, but it is quite possibly overstated by the Trustees, who, out of fiduciary caution, use economic assumptions that have been described as extremely pessimistic by leading economists. Let me state it clearly--Social Security is not going bankrupt; Social Security faces a manageable gap which can be closed without dismantling the basic insurance functions it provides. Finally, I would like to express my hope that the introduction of this resolution will spark a more realistic analysis of privatization. With few exceptions, the creation of private accounts has been presented as a panacea for Social Security's troubles. This view is baffling to many of us in that it overlooks obvious problems with using private stock market accounts as a substitute for Social Security. For example: The creation of private accounts doesn't account for the millions of children, disabled workers, and widowed spouses who collect disability and survivors' benefits from Social Security; The switch from a self-funded social program to private accounts will cost Americans many billions of dollars, a transition cost that will hurt the youngest workers the worst; Individual private accounts fail to protect individuals from severe downturns in the market; and Even a system of individual private accounts that enjoys a good average return on investment means that millions of Americans whose investment perform below average will be thrust into poverty. Social Security is not just a retirement program. Social Security is a national insurance program which, for a remarkably low premium, protects Americans from economic misfortune at every stage of our lives. Even at the best of times, people need insurance, and it is vital that we protect Social Security and preserve its current structure. It is my hope that this resolution will help clarify the public debate and move us in that direction.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, apparently the gentleman from Colorado did not listen to what I said. I said I voted against the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act because I do not have a problem personally with unfunded mandates on the private sector being enacted by Congress for good and proper purposes. I did not agree with that act then. I do not agree with it now, but it is the law. What I am saying is that, if you vote yes on proceeding today, you are voting against the purpose of that law. I am going to vote no because I think it is a terrible bill. I think that we ought not to be conceit doing that. I think that, if we pass a law, we ought to obey it. If I had my way, I would repeal the law. I did not vote for it. But I think that if it is on the books, we ought to obey the law, which is why I am going to vote against proceeding and urge my colleagues to do so. I do not know what the gentleman was reading from a moment ago about government. That was probably yesterday's report of CBO. But today's report of CBO is about private sector mandates. Yesterday's report said at least $214 million unfunded mandate on the Federal Government. Today says somewhere between $260 million and $1.3 billion unfunded mandate on the private sector, which will come out of the money available for repayment of creditors. I think that, frankly, as I said, the bill was rushed through. I do not think that the sponsors of the bill anticipated this effect and ought to go back for further study and amendment. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, this motion makes four changes to the underlying bill to protect child support and alimony payments and victims of crime and drunk driving. First, the motion clarifies that child support and alimony payments are to be excluded from the means test. The majority may try to claim that these payments are accounted for by IRS guidelines, but the bankruptcy experts disagree. In any event, there can be no harm in Congress clearly specifying that child support should be deducted when calculating the means test. We should not leave our families at risk based on decisions made by IRS bureaucrats. Second, the motion protects against reaffirmation agreements that adversely impact family support obligations. It is no secret that unscrupulous creditors can end-run the bankruptcy process by forcing debtors to reaffirm their debt. If this happens, none of the supposed child support protections provided under the bill would apply. We fix this problem by making sure that reaffirmation agreements do not make it more difficult for families to pay family support. The motion also acknowledges the bankruptcy rights of creditors who are drunk driving victims and other victims of crimes, as the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) mentioned. Finally, the motion provides for a real mechanism to enforce protections for child support and alimony payments. The changes made by the bill to protect child care payments create a right with no remedy. This amendment makes clear that credit card companies who illegally collect money that should be going to child care are subject to damage and statutory fines. This is the only way to truly protect child care payments outside of bankruptcy after the discharge. Mr. Speaker, I urge the Members to vote for this motion to recommit which protects our families and victims of crime from aggressive credit collectors.

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

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the present unfinished business be considered to include a request for a recorded vote on the Nadler substitute.

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

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Democratic substitute. Unlike the bill before us, H.R. 3150, this bill represents a balanced and reasoned response to the problems of bankruptcy abuse by debtors as well as by creditors. What does this substitute do? First, the substitute strikes the bureaucratic inflexible means testing provisions of the bill and provides, instead, for a strengthened dismissal procedure based on the debtor's actual income and expenses. Under the substitute, trustees as well as the courts and the United States trustees could seek dismissal of a bankruptcy case involving families with incomes over $60,000. This deals with the problems of bankruptcy abuse in a reasonable manner while taking in account such important items as child care payments, health care costs, the cost of taking care of ill parents and educational expenses. I might add, Mr. Chairman, it changes in two fundamental ways the means testing provisions of the bill before us. First, it has a human being in it. I believe in human beings. We believe in human beings on this side of the aisle. It has a judge. If someone thinks that this person can pay, has the ability to pay his debts and ought not to be allowed to have a discharge under Chapter 7, fine, convince the judge. This provides pretty strong procedures of what you have to prove to get into Chapter 7 to get your discharge, but there is a judge to judge it. It is not an automatic filing that goes into a computer, as it is in the bill. Second, it makes the commonsense observation that if the question is, can this debtor afford to repay his debts, as opposed to getting a discharge, it has practical, specific questions: What is his income? What is his assets? What are his expenses? How much rent does he pay? How much child support obligation does he owe per month? Not, as in the bill before us, what is the average rent that the Internal Revenue Service thinks someone ought to pay in the northeast or southwest United States; not what does the average person, according to the IRS, what they think the average person might be paying for child support. Who cares? The question is this person in front of us, how much can he afford to pay, what are his real expenses, how much is left over for debt service. This applies that kind of a traditional test, instead of a fictitious test dealing with a fictitious average person who does not exist. Third, the substitute eliminates provisions making significant amounts of credit card debt nondischargeable in bankruptcy, pitting these aggressive and sophisticated creditors in direct competition with child support, alimony, spouse support, and victim support. After first denying that a problem ever existed, the majority has come up with a series of toothless and meaningless fixes. The substitute responds to the real problem by protecting against giving increased money to credit card companies at the expense of alimony and child support. The substitute also modifies the business provisions of the bill, which impose massive new legal and paperwork burdens on small business and real estate concerns and will cost our economy thousands of jobs. In a letter opposing H.R. 3150 written today and which I referred to earlier today, the AFL-CIO has stated that H.R. 3150 ``threatens jobs by placing substantial procedural barriers in the way of small business access to the protections of Chapter 11.'' As I also read earlier, the Small Business Administration says the same thing, and the National Bankruptcy Conference says the same thing. This removes that. In addition, the substitute adds a new provision protecting charitable contributions in Chapter 11 and Chapter 12 cases. The bill in front of us protects tithing only in Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 cases. There is no provision allowing individuals and corporations to utilize Chapter 11 or family farmers to utilize Chapter 12 to continue to make religious and other charitable deductions before and in and after bankruptcy. The substitute is the only proposal which fully protects these charitable contributions. I might add, the halfway drafting of the tithing provisions of the bill in front of us is a symptom of the hasty manner in which this bill was drafted, the sloppy manner in which it was drafted, without proper review. We were told time and time again by all the organizations that deal with bankruptcy about how hasty this was, how hasty the process, how sloppily drafted. We kept telling the committee leadership, slow down the process, but they did not. The fact that they forgot to put in Chapter 11, the fact that they forgot to put in Chapter 12 in the tithing provisions is just one obvious example of the sloppy drafting of this bill and hasty drafting of this bill. The substitute also adds a provision specifying that the new post- bankruptcy priorities for alimony and child support apply to benefit creditors who are drunk driving victims and victims of crime or willful or malicious injury, also. The bill in front of us only grants these new post-bankruptcy priorities to alimony and child support creditors, and completely ignores innocent victims of crime and drunk driving who, under the bill, are forced to compete with aggressive credit card companies in the post-discharge situation. In addition, the substitute goes much further than H.R. 3150 in protecting family farmers, because it strikes language making it far easier for banks to foreclose on family farms. Again, the Democratic substitute is the only amendment which offers the Members a chance to stand squarely behind our farmers at a time when they face massive new challenges. The substitute retains the vast majority of the other provisions in the majority bill. It offers significant new benefits to banks and other lenders while protecting women and children and protecting jobs. In a conscientious, intelligent, realistic fashion, it applies a test that makes sense in separating out those people who cannot pay their debts and ought to have a Chapter 7 discharge from those who probably can, the small minority of those who probably can and should be in a Chapter 13 workout situation. But the test is realistic, it is based on facts and on the individual case, not on a theoretical construct of the Internal Revenue Service. It boggles my mind that the authors of this bill and the supporters of this bill, who stood on this floor day after day after day telling us how insensitive the Internal Revenue Service is to real people, now think the Internal Revenue Service ought to be running the lives of Americans caught up in the bankruptcy courts. So I urge my colleagues to vote yes for the substitute resolution as a much better substitute to accomplish the professed goal, the claimed goal, of the legislation, without accomplishing the real effect of the bill in front of us, which is simply to give a lot of undeserved money to the credit card companies, instead of to people who need child support, the victims of crimes, and to debtors in serious situations, and to other creditors. Mr. Chairman, I urge a yes vote on this substitute. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Meehan) may control the balance of the time which I have been granted.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. NADLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I simply want to point out, this amendment originally required that the credit card company that obtained payment from a parent who owed past due child support, a nondischargeable debt, and they obtained the payment from someone who owed child support, had to hold this money in trust for up to 5 years in case they found and made due diligent efforts to find the parent owed the child support and then turned it over to her. The amendment is simply eliminating the due diligence effort and is shortening the time period to 2 years, and what it is really doing is making a real admission. The admission is that when all is said and done, the nondischargeability, making credit card debt nondischargeable, as this bill does, makes it impossible in the post- discharge situation to enforce the child support. The change in this amendment recognizes this, because it would be a real burden to hold it for 5 years. But why would you want to hold it for 5 years? Because the credit card company has gotten to the bank first, and they may not know where or who the child support owed the custodial parent is. This is just throwing in the towel and admitting that we cannot enforce the child support, and there is no point in this situation. And there is no point holding the money in trust for 5 years so we will only do it for 2 years. I do not oppose the amendment, but, again, I think it just illustrates that what we are saying about the provision of the bill, that making that credit card debt undischargeable makes it impossible, makes it very difficult to collect the child support despite all the cosmetic amendments that we have heard about.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I assume that side of the aisle is not going to control 100 percent of the time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am constrained to correct what the gentleman from Virginia said a moment ago. He quoted half a paragraph. What this paragraph says in the statement from the administration is, the formulaic approach in this bill, as currently written, could result in moving to Chapter 13 those debtors who are likely to fail to complete required repayment plans. These debtors would return to Chapter 7 with a diminished ability to repay their nondischarged debt, including child support and alimony. There are other approaches to limiting access to Chapter 7 that would not have this result. And they are referring not to the needs-based approach of this bill but to the approach of the Democratic substitute. Then it continues: If debtors truly have the ability to repay a portion of their debt after taking into account all the relevant factors, including child support and alimony payments, a successful, supervised repayment plan under Chapter 13 could result in a more reliable payment, et cetera. They are talking about under a different system from this bill, under a system such as under the Democratic substitute that we will be offering a little later. Frankly, it is not accurate to refer only to the second half of the paragraph in saying that. The fact remains that the administration and most of the women's groups, the NOW, the Children's Defense Fund, the American Association of University Women, the YWCA, they all oppose this bill because of the problem of child support. They all say that these amendments do not solve that problem. Having said that, again, I will observe, this is not a terrible amendment. I do not think it does much good, but it does not do any harm. I will not ask for a vote against it. All I am saying is I do not think it solves any problems.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this, again, is another one of those amendments that may do a little good. It is probably harmless, but it does not solve any of the fundamental problems. For instance, we are told that on the provision of this amendment regarding debts incurred to pay nondischargeable debts, it amends another of the provisions, creating large categories of new nondischargeable debts, mostly credit card debts. This amendment, which purports to protect women and children dependent on support from the debtor, does nothing to change this provision of the bill. Besides being limited only to cases in which debtors are single parents or are in arrears on support, it simply requires the creditor to show that the debtor ``intentionally'' incurred the debt in question. Virtually no debts incurred to pay other debts are not incurred intentionally, so the change is meaningless. Then we have the provision that states that alimony and support claims should be paid before other priority claims in Chapter 13. But this does not change the Chapter 13 payment formula, which still requires payment of nonpriority credit card debt concurrently with support. In other words, the requirement in section 102 that support be paid concurrently with credit card debts is not changed at all. The amendment does not deal with the larger problems created by other provisions that required payments so great that a Chapter 13 plan may not be feasible, in which case no creditors may be paid. This amendment makes a new section that places child support and alimony ahead of all other unsecured priority claims in the distribution of the assets in a Chapter 7 case. While this is a worthy idea, and I commend the author for this, it will have little effect since it is rare, very rare, for any assets at all to be distributed in a Chapter 7 case. Also, because the amendment places child support and alimony ahead of administrative expenses, like the trustee's commission, we are going to have trustees abandoning these assets rather if there are not sufficient additional assets to compensate the trustee. The amendment, therefore, could cause, and in many cases would cause, women and children to receive even less support in some cases. In summary, Mr. Chairman, as the administration has said in its letter that we received today, and as most of the organizations concerned with child support agree, this amendment, the manager's amendment, the amendments in committee do not really deal with the problem of child support collection. Let me just add one comment, since the gentleman referred to the Law Department of my own city, the City of New York. The Law Department of the City of New York has one concern overriding everything else: collecting taxes. That is what they care about, not child support. So I do not credit what they say about how this will deal with child support. I know the Law Department of my own city only too well. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.