Jerrold Nadler

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, another rule on the chopping block is to update heavy machinery emergency brakes. Does my colleague also want to roll back this rule, a rule that will save lives? If the will of the people is truly that we roll back these lifesaving measures, my colleagues should have the bravery to vote down each rule individually. Then you can tell your happy constituents that you voted for lead poisoning, and you voted for not implementing a national suicide hotline. Let me say this: The gentleman from Arizona gets it exactly backward. First of all, he says the cost of all of the regulations is $1.2 trillion. What are the benefits? Maybe they are far greater than that. We ought to know. If you find a rule that you think is wrong, if you think the cost of this rule outweighs the benefits, fine, bring a CRA to the floor. That is not what this bill does. This bill says don't bring a CRA to the floor. Bring a combination of 25 or 30 CRAs to the floor so that you can't examine them individually. Maybe some of them make sense. Maybe, in some cases, the regulation outweighs the benefits, or the cost outweighs the benefits. Maybe in another case, it is a different regulation, the benefits outweigh the costs. We should look at it as an individual CRA. That is why the CRA process was designed. What this bill does is to upend that process by saying we are not going to look at the individual regulation. We are not going to look at the individual CRA. We are going to put 25 or 30 or 40 or 50 or 100 CRAs together in one vote with presumably an hour of debate on the floor. It is saying you can't look at the merits. That makes no sense. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Arizona says the Biden administration has enacted rules that will cost $1.4 trillion. Over what period of time, he doesn't tell us, and I don't know whether it is correct or not, but I am sure, in terms of the budget, the Democratic and Republican staffs of the Appropriations Committee are looking at them very carefully every year. He picked one as an example, $45 million to protect against lead poisoning. Lead poisoning is a real problem. It leads to mental deficiencies in children. If there is a $45 million rule to deal with this, that sounds fine to me. The real question is, maybe we ought to examine that rule. Maybe, as Mr. Biggs said, there is something wrong with that rule. Maybe we ought to repeal that rule, but we have the procedure to do that in the current law. What this bill seeks to do is to say: Don't look at that law. Take 25 rules and put them together so that you can't examine any one of them, and in one vote, we will get rid of 25 rules. Maybe some of them are good rules, and maybe some of them are bad rules, but no one is going to get a chance to debate them because we have one vote, one bill. That is what this bill does. This bill says to combine all the CRAs into one CRA vote. CRAs are a proper exercise of congressional power. It helps us control the executive, whether it is Democratic or Republican. Nobody argues against a CRA--well, maybe a particular CRA, but no one argues against the idea of a CRA. A CRA ought to be looked at individually. We ought to look at the merits of the CRA, maybe debate it on the floor. Maybe Republicans support it and Democrats oppose it, or maybe the other way around. Maybe it splits not along partisan lines. Maybe it is very clear that we want to do it, but we ought to look at it. This bill says take 25 CRAs and have one vote so that we can't look at the merits of the individual CRAs, and with one vote, we may be doing immense damage to the health, safety and welfare of the American people, or not. We have no way of knowing because we can't study the CRAs individually. This bill is pernicious because it combines everything into one vote and denies us the ability to look at the merits of each. Therefore, it ought to be defeated. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Arizona just said that the greatest number of CRAs that we have had in a given Congress is 17. Okay, I will take him at his word. Why not have 17 votes? Why not debate each for up to an hour so we know what we are doing? This bill says put them all together so we don't know what we are doing. Mr. Speaker, this legislation is just the latest Republican effort to undermine the regulatory process. It would allow Donald Trump and his Republican enablers in Congress to wipe away dozens of lifesaving regulations and consumer protections in one single party-line vote under cover of darkness. Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose this dangerous legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, first of all, I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a letter from more than 250 organizations representing workers, consumers, and the environment opposing H.R. 115.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Illinois (Mrs. Ramirez).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, despite the bill's title, H.R. 115 is not really intended to address midnight rules, but rather is an effort by our Republican colleagues to advance their antigovernment, deregulatory agenda under cover of darkness. This legislation may appear to be a modest change to the Congressional Review Act, but do not be fooled. It would enable the Republican-controlled 119th Congress to use a turbocharged CRA to nullify every rule issued by public agencies under the Biden administration for the entire year of 2024 in a single party-line vote. Under the CRA, if a rule is overturned, agencies are forever prohibited from considering, without new congressional authorization, a ``substantially similar'' rule, an unreviewable, vague, and harmful standard that would undermine agencies' statutory missions. Doing away with dozens of rules at once, as the Republicans intend with this bill, would substantially weaken agencies' ability to protect the public long into the future. While historically the CRA has been used sparingly, after Donald Trump's first inauguration in 2017, the Republican-controlled Congress used the CRA to repeal 16 rules issued by the Obama administration, an all-time high. Critical rules on teacher training, internet privacy protection, and the prevention of water pollution from coal mines, among many others, were all repealed over a few short weeks. It seems that Republicans have even bigger ambitions for the next deregulatory spree as they pursue their unabashedly antigovernment agenda. Rather than consider agency rules on their individual merits, they want to package as many rules as possible into a single resolution to eliminate them all at once with little debate or deliberation over the merits of each individual rule. The results of this single vote could be catastrophic. Right now, there are dozens of regulations at risk of summary execution, including rules that ensure the safety of bath seats for infants, implement the National Suicide Hotline Act, create dust-lead and lead pipe safety standards, update chemicals listed under the Toxic Substances Control Act, update heavy vehicle automatic emergency braking standards, and ensure all cell phones are hearing aid compatible, among others. Why do Republicans feel they even need this power? Maybe it is because they realize that many of the agency rules that they constantly rail against are actually popular with the American people. Taking a series of votes making it easier for corporations to pollute the environment or take advantage of the most vulnerable would likely not be well received. Better to overturn as many rules as possible in a single vote, reducing transparency and obscuring the consequences. Make no mistake, whether those votes are held individually or en bloc, the American people will be the ones to bear the consequences. With Republicans in charge of the House, Senate, and White House, it is likely that every rule the Biden administration has issued in the last year will be on the chopping block, along with the protections those rules provide to our constituents' health, safety, and economic well- being. In addition, striking down a bundle of rules at once means not only that each rule will not be considered on its own merits but also that months and years of agency time and taxpayer dollars, along with the expert analysis and public comments from industry, nonprofit groups, and individual Americans, all will have been wasted. Members on both sides of the aisle have recognized that midnight rulemaking, if left completely unchecked, can lead to abuses by the executive branch, but true midnight rules are rarely issued, and there is already a lookback period under the CRA to address rules promulgated at the end of any congressional term. If we are truly concerned about so-called midnight rules, we have other options to check them. For example, at the end of President George W. Bush's administration, I authored a bill that would delay implementation of rules issued near the end of a President's term, giving his or her successors a chance to review such rules and to determine if they should go forward. I believe there are ways we could work together in a bipartisan manner to address this issue. Where past efforts tried using a scalpel to address the problems associated with midnight rulemaking, today's Republicans would instead use a machete, hacking away at the Biden administration's regulatory agenda and furthering their ideological goal of radically transforming our government. None of this should be a surprise. H.R. 115 is a key plank of Project 2025, the blueprint for the incoming Trump administration. Project 2025 calls for ``dismantling'' the administrative state and argues that doing so must be ``a top priority for the next conservative President.'' That is because, according to the document, ``the only real solution is for the national government to do less.'' To be clear, the ``less'' that they want to do refers to the important and expert work undertaken by the country's Federal agencies protecting consumers, workers, and the public from corporations and people that break the law. We should reject any backdoor efforts that would eviscerate vital regulations, would open rules and protections to even more political interference, and could prevent agencies from ever working on similar issues again, all with just the most cursory examination by Congress. Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose the Midnight Rules Relief Act, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER

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

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time for closing. Mr. Speaker, had the Republican leadership taken this bill up in September, we could have been celebrating a true bipartisan victory right now. There is no question that it is necessary to authorize new Federal judgeships for the growing caseload in the Federal courts. That is why I fought to take up this bill earlier this year when the next President was unknown. That is why the Senate passed the bill in August. That is why Mr. Issa and I and others urged Mr. Jordan and the Republican leadership to take up the bill before the election, when the central arrangement of the bill they were setting up, 66 new judges across three unknown Presidential administrations and six unknown congressional majorities, would have been there. Now, it is too late for that. Now we can wait for the new Congress in January and pass the bill, but it will have to be delayed 4 years. Why? Because the Republican leadership refused to take up the bill when it should have, when it would have gotten a unanimous vote here as it got a unanimous vote in the Senate. I will continue to fight for more Federal judges, but we must do it at a time when the identity of the next President is not known. That is the fundamental bargain that is fair to both parties. Until then, we should reject this bill as nothing more than partisan gamesmanship. Mr. Speaker, I urge Members to oppose the bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Jordan), the chairman of the committee, says we don't like what the American people did. Well, obviously we don't. We lost the election. Relevant to this bill is we don't like what Mr. Jordan did. We don't like what the Republican leadership did in refusing to bring the Senate bill to a vote before the election. We begged them to. Darrell Issa begged them and begged Mr. Jordan. I did. Hank Johnson did. We said to bring it to the floor before the election. It will pass unanimously, and we will have the judges that we need because if it is not brought to the floor until after the election, one party or the other is going to oppose it. Mr. Speaker, we are objecting to this bill not because we object to what the American people did but because we object to what Mr. Jordan and the Republican leadership did. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Ivey).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), the distinguished gentleman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we are here today because of a broken promise. Last year, I proudly joined my colleagues, Courts Subcommittee Chairman Issa and Ranking Member Johnson, in introducing the JUDGES Act. For decades, Congress has been at an impasse on the question of how to create new judgeships while not knowingly giving new appointees to the other party. This bipartisan, bicameral bill would have broken that logjam by having both sides agree to take a chance on their own party winning the White House. Under this legislation, we all promised to give the next three, unknown, Presidents a certain number of judgeships. Because no one can tell the future, we were all at an equal disadvantage. Nevertheless, for this deal to work, the bill had to be passed before election day. On November 6, we would all know who the next President would be, and the deal would be broken. The Senate did its part and passed the bill over the summer, but the House Republican leadership was unwilling to take a chance on their own candidate, and they refused to bring the bill to the floor before the election. Thus, the agreement central to the JUDGES Act, that the opportunity to appoint new judges is given to an unknown future President, is now broken. However, that is not stopping our Republican colleagues from taking advantage of all of the Senators and House Members who took a chance on bipartisanship. Unfortunately, we are back where we have always been every time a bill to create new judgeships comes before Congress, with one party seeking a tactical advantage over the other. Since we know that Donald Trump sees the Federal courts as nothing more than an extension of his political operation, and during his first term he stacked them with dangerously unqualified and ideological appointees, giving him more power to appoint additional judges would be irresponsible. Under the allocation set forth in the JUDGES Act, he would get 25 judgeship nominations on top of the 100-plus spots on the judicial bench expected to open up over the next 4 years. Donald Trump has made clear that he intends to expand the powers of the Presidency, and giving him 25 new judges to appoint gives him one more tool at his disposal to do just that. Many of the people elevated by Donald Trump to the Federal bench were not just conservative-leaning judges. They have proven to be ultraconservative ideologues who have perverted the law to benefit Donald Trump and conservative causes. They have also repeatedly been criticized for their lack of understanding of the law, for their inability to provide speedy decisionmaking, and for their repeated errors in judgment. We should not compound this problem by giving him yet more nominations to fill. I have long argued for more Federal judges. Twenty years ago we were already overdue, and the problem has only gotten worse. However, Republicans and Democrats, quite reasonably, have never wanted to give an opposing party's President more power. Presidential administration after Presidential administration went by with no new judgeships created. The JUDGES Act would have broken that impasse if it had been passed before the Presidential election this year. The genius behind the JUDGES Act and the deal to pass it was that it was devoid of the politics that have plagued the Federal judgeship creation process. We took recommendations made by the nonpartisan Judicial Conference of the United States. The nominees were spread out over three Presidential administrations and six Congresses. The judge allotments would begin with a future, unknown, next President. In August, Senators from both sides of the aisle joined together and unanimously passed the JUDGES Act. We could have done the same thing here. We should have done the same thing here. If Republican leadership had brought the bill to the House floor in September, then we could have passed it on suspension in no time. Back then, the President would still have been unknown, and the underlying promise of the bill was still present. Nevertheless, when S. 4199 arrived in the House, Republican leadership refused to touch it. As the days counted down before the election, my colleagues and I begged them to take it up. We explained the stakes. They knew that bipartisan support for creating desperately new judgeships would only exist if the bill was passed into law before November 5, but they refused. Republican leadership was uninterested in taking the chance that their candidate might not win in November. It was a fair fight, and they wanted no part in it. Now they are here today during the narrow widow when the central promise behind the JUDGES Act is broken, trying to force this bill through the House on a partisan basis. What we are seeing today is a tragic breakdown in what should have been a bipartisan process. I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who fought for this bill over the summer and in September. Our work together reminds me that there can be opportunities for collegiality and collaboration across the aisle. This good, honest work is even more striking when juxtaposed with the political gamesmanship we are seeing today, as the majority takes a nonpartisan bill and perverts it toward their own ends. Mr. Speaker, 1 month and 8 days from now will be January 20, 2025. On Inauguration Day we will no longer know who the next President will be, and I would be happy to take up the promise behind the JUDGES Act that day and to give the additional judicial appointments to Presidents yet to come. Until then, I must urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on S. 4199, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER

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

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. Mr. Speaker, the Prove It Act is just the latest in a long line of Republican bills meant to undermine or block agency rulemaking. If this legislation is enacted, every single rule--past, present, and future-- would be funneled for review through a single official in a chronically underfunded office within the Small Business Administration. This one person would be granted unreviewable and unilateral power to block or suspend lifesaving regulations that ensure that we have clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and safe food to eat. I urge Members to oppose this dangerous legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Velazquez), the distinguished ranking member of the Committee on Small Business.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Landsman).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, over 200 labor, consumer protection, and environmental organizations oppose H.R. 7198, the Prove It Act. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record letters of opposition from the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, Earthjustice, and Public Citizen. Coalition for Sensible Safeguards, December 4, 2024. Representative Mike Johnson, Speaker, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Leader, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Speaker Johnson and Democratic Leader Jeffries: The Coalition for Sensible Safeguards (CSS), an alliance of over 200 labor, scientific, research, good government, faith, community, health, environmental, and public interest groups, is writing regarding the House of Representatives' consideration of the Prove It Act of 2024, H.R. 7198 which CSS strongly opposes. The Prove It Act would expand the authority of the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy while failing to address fundamental flaws of the Regulatory Flexibility Act. This bill would slow down the regulatory process and empower an office that has been neither appropriately focused on small business concerns nor adequately transparent in how it conducts its actions. The ostensible purpose of the Regulatory Flexibility Act is to ensure that small businesses continue to play a role in the U.S. economy. In practice, though, the implementation of the Regulatory Flexibility Act has failed to achieve this basic purpose, as it has instead been wielded as a blunt weapon to weaken regulatory requirements for firms of all sizes, often at the behest of large corporations and the trade associations they dominate. The result is that protections of public health, safety, and the environment have been sacrificed without substantially improving the competitive position of small businesses in their respective industrial sectors relative to that of larger firms. These flaws are most apparent in the Regulatory Flexibility Act's burdensome analytical requirements, which are designed to weaken regulatory safeguards rather than promote small business competitiveness. H.R. 7198 does not fix this basic problem, however. Instead, it would expand those analytical requirements and make them more onerous. The Prove It Act would enhance the authority of the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy in harmful ways. H.R. 7198, in Section 2(a)(3), would allow for endless petitions from ``Any small entity, group of small entities, or organization representing the interests of small entities'' that challenge a rulemaking agency's certification that its rule would not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. In many cases, these petitions would trigger burdensome hearings conducted by the Chief Counsel for the Office of Advocacy, after which the Chief Counsel could then force the rulemaking agency to retract the certification and instead perform the full suite of burdensome analyses mandated by the Regulatory Flexibility Act. The bill also provides for expanded judicial review opportunities against agency certifications, which would further tie up rulemakings in wasteful and time-consuming litigation. We urge members of the House of Representatives to consider reforms that would instead place greater constraints on the Office of Advocacy to ensure that it is actually helping, rather than harming, small businesses. A scathing 2014 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found significant deficiencies in the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy's compliance with its own internal procedures when it intervenes in regulatory actions or engages in commissioning research on regulatory costs to small businesses. Of greatest relevance, GAO found that: (1) the Office had no policies dictating when individual staff should intervene in individual rulemakings, making it susceptible to improper industry influence; and (2) the Office repeatedly cited small business input in its regulatory comments but could provide no evidence or documentation supporting this input. Evidence has also demonstrated the extent to which the Office of Advocacy has been captured by regulated industry. The Office has often worked with large trade associations to weaken rules in ways that benefit large businesses, at the expense of small ones. These interventions have the effect of harming small businesses, contrary to the Office's statutory mission. Nevertheless, this bill would give the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy even greater authority to intervene in and block agency rules. Additionally, the Prove It Act would further delay needed regulatory actions--causing real harm to public health and safety and the environment--without improving the quality of agency decision-making. Numerous studies have demonstrated how existing regulatory analyses, and procedural requirements contribute to extensive delays of agency rulemaking. These studies confirm that existing Regulatory Flexibility Act requirements are among the biggest contributors to these delays. By creating new analytical and procedural requirements, this bill would only worsen those delays. These additional delays are unjustifiable because they do not result in better regulatory decisions. Finally, the bill would empower the federal judiciary to block regulations by making agency compliance with its new analytical and procedural requirements judicially reviewable. This would provide judges with an additional new tool for blocking needed public protections. Providing the Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy with more authority to block, delay, or weaken new regulatory safeguards, without enacting the significant reforms recommended by GAO and others, will leave the public even more at risk to health, safety, and economic security threats. The numerous petitions, time-consuming hearings, and expanded judicial review that this legislation would allow will thwart needed protections while failing to help small businesses with better designed regulations. CSS urges the House of Representatives to oppose the Prove It Act and encourages the Committee to evaluate proposals that offer real and meaningful reforms to strengthen the regulatory process, such as H.R. 1507, the Stop Corporate Capture Act. We hope to work with the House of Representatives to ensure that our regulatory process is working effectively and efficiently to protect the American public. We strongly urge opposition to the Prove It Act of 2024,

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Colorado (Ms. Caraveo).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Mrs. Lee Carter), the newest Member of the Judiciary Committee, proudly carrying on her mother's legacy.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 7198, the Prove It Act, represents the latest effort by Republicans to dismantle the regulatory process, giving well- resourced special interests a powerful new cudgel to wield against regulations, while causing harm to the very small entities the bill purports to help. This legislation would vest enormous and unreviewable authority over agency rules to the chief counsel of the Office of Advocacy within the Small Business Administration, a chronically underfunded office that has not even had a Senate-confirmed leader since 2017. It authorizes the chief counsel, unilaterally and without review, to exempt large parts of the business community from proposed rules if he or she determines that an agency did not properly consider how a proposed rule would affect small entities. Not only would this broad and vaguely defined authority apply to proposed regulations, but the bill would also charge the chief counsel with tracking agencies' completion of mandatory reviews of existing rules every 10 years. If they find that an agency failed to conduct the required review of the rule, they can simply suspend operation of the rule. I note that, while this legislation would impose significant new burdens on the SBA, it would provide no additional funding to carry out these duties, putting a further strain on the agency's ability to assist small businesses. Our public agencies are responsible for writing rules that protect our community from harm. They make sure that the toys our children play with are safe. They make sure that the vehicles we drive and the buildings we live in are up to code. They make sure that the legislation we pass in Congress for tackling issues like climate change and public health are implemented as we intend. The Prove It Act would grind all of this to a halt. Rules that would ban toxic chemicals or take contaminated food out of the market would hang in limbo while petitions mount before this single official to complete his or her reviews, if he or she can ever complete them at all. This bill is not about lessening the burden on small businesses. By law, agencies already must take small businesses into account. These small entities already have power through the Office of Advocacy to champion their concerns, so the bill is entirely unnecessary if that was truly the purpose of the bill. In reality, this bill is about giving big businesses the ability to shut down the regulatory process. Any group that merely purports to represent small businesses, no matter how large or well-resourced they may be, could petition this one official to block a pending rule they do not like. There would be no limit to how many times they do this. This is a recipe for chaos and dysfunction. That, of course, is the point. Republicans do not want to empower the agencies that ensure the drugs we take are safe, that ensure child car seats protect the most vulnerable among us, and that enforce our competition laws to ensure that small businesses have a chance to thrive. They want to throw sand in the gears of these agencies to ensure that they never issue the regulations we depend on to keep us safe. This bill would do little to help small businesses, but it could prove to be a windfall for powerful companies and special interests. It is no surprise, therefore, that this legislation is right out of the Project 2025 playbook, which calls for ``supercharging'' the Office of Advocacy at the SBA so the entity can ``dismantle extreme regulatory policies and advance limited-government reforms.'' Republicans are so determined to carry out this dismantling of the regulatory process that they are even willing to violate their own House rules against legislation that will increase mandatory spending, ignoring a CBO estimate that the bill would add millions of dollars to the deficit. We all want to ensure that small businesses can thrive, but this bill would not help them. Instead, it would create uncertainty and chaos while giving big businesses a new tool to dismantle the regulatory process that protects public health and safety and that protects consumers from rising costs. Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER

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

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. Mr. Speaker, once again, Republicans have brought us to the brink of a government shutdown, threatening to cut off essential services for millions of Americans. Instead of addressing the real needs of the American people, Republicans are poised to advance legislation that does little more than advance false Trump campaign rhetoric. Although the majority claims that the bill is necessary to provide oversight of bail funds, the bill provides no oversight. It simply applies criminal penalties of up to 10 years, or 15 years in some cases, for misconduct that is already covered by Federal wire fraud and money laundering statutes. The majority does not even attempt to explain how this bill will live up to its title of ``Keeping Violent Offenders Off Our Streets,'' as the bill has nothing to do with addressing violent crimes. Like the majority's failed hearings in blue cities across the country, this bill is another baseless attempt by Republicans to engage in fear-mongering and to label Democrats as soft on crime while ignoring their own documented red State murder problem, the mountain of data showing that crime has been steadily declining throughout the U.S. under the Biden- Harris administration, and that bail reform policies have not contributed to increases in crime that occurred during the pandemic. In bringing up this legislation, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle seek to distract the American people from the fact that their own actions have repeatedly made every American, from Presidential candidates to school children, more at risk at every turn by failing to support law enforcement funding and commonsense gun safety measures. I urge Members to oppose this flawed legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cardenas).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 8205 is yet another vehicle for Republican campaign messaging that does nothing to help the American people. It is simply another attempt by Republicans to baselessly claim that Democrats are soft on crime and to distract the American people from the indisputable fact that crime rates continue to drop across this country, as they have for each of the last several years. This legislation, which would amend the Federal insurance fraud statute to define ``the business of insurance'' to include the posting of any kind of monetary bail, would do nothing to actually keep violent offenders off our streets. Instead, it targets nonprofit bail funds that try to address the clear inequities that result when people without financial means are held pending trial simply because they can't afford to pay the bail amounts set by the courts. Defendants who can afford to pay the bail amount set by the court are set free. In New York, we have such a person, a well-known person who was accused of many felonies was set free on bail pending trial, was convicted of 34 felonies, and is now free on bail pending sentencing. I refer, of course, to Donald Trump. Nonprofit bail funds, the Minnesota Freedom Fund in particular, have become a favorite target of Republicans recently as they desperately try to prop up their failing Presidential candidate by attacking Vice President Harris and Governor Walz. Former President Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that Vice President Harris donated to the Minnesota Freedom Fund and that her donation secured the release of a man who went on to commit murder. This is nothing more than another made-up story the Republican ticket has created, and it is just as false as the former President's claim that immigrants are eating the dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio. Minnesota Freedom Fund has confirmed that Vice President Harris has never donated to them and that her only relationship to the fund was a 2020 tweet encouraging people to chip in if they were able. The fund, 2 years later, bailed out an offender who went on to commit murder. The majority's attempt to link this incident to Vice President Harris demonstrates that Republicans are willing to politicize even the most heinous crimes to serve their desperate needs. We know from experience and from actual data that, when the political rhetoric is put aside, Democratic policies work to reduce crime. Homicides are down across the country. Violent crimes are down. Property crimes are down. We learned just last week that even drug overdoses are substantially down this year. While my Republican colleagues love to criticize policies aimed at eliminating or reducing our justice system's reliance on cash bail, study after study, including a recent comprehensive study of 33 jurisdictions, shows that bail reform has not led to an increase in crime. The majority's only answer to this mountain of evidence about the crime rate is to claim that the FBI's crime data is fraudulent or that it does not include critical jurisdictions, but the FBI's data covers jurisdictions encompassing more than 312 million Americans. It includes every jurisdiction in this Nation with more than 1 million people. Moreover, data from other agencies and organizations show the same decrease in crime rates that are shown by the FBI's data. Despite the bill's title, it has nothing to do with violent crime or offenders. It applies to entities that post any type of monetary bond, including noncriminal immigration bonds and bonds for nonviolent criminal offenses, which make up the vast majority of criminal bonds. In fact, the provision of this bill that actually attempted to address violent crime was stripped from the bill in the Judiciary Committee. All that remains in the bill is the provision relating to insurance fraud, despite the title. I expect that, during today's debate, Republicans will cite individual examples of people who committed violent offenses after being bailed out by nonprofit bail funds. Each is tragic, and our hearts go out to the victims and their families. What my colleagues on the other side of the aisle won't mention is the thousands more who received help from these funds, finished their cases, and moved on with their lives without incident. The majority won't mention the people who commit crimes after being released with the help of commercial bail agents. Republicans will not mention that it is a judge, not a bail fund, who decides whether to set cash bail in a given case and, if so, in what amount. Bail funds simply allow indigent defendants to obtain a release that a court has already deemed to be appropriate. We must remember that we cannot ask for or expect perfection from our bail system. What we can do is to make sure that the solutions we propose for violent crimes are actually targeted to address the problem rather than to provide sound bites for social media. There is no question that we must address the root causes of violent crime, invest in proven solutions, such as community violence intervention and drug treatment. We must also support law enforcement with funding and other resources rather than attacking the FBI, the ATF, and our other Federal partners relentlessly. If and when the majority decides to get serious about combating violence in America, I will gladly join them in exploring serious solutions, but this legislation is no solution at all. Mr. Speaker, therefore, I urge my colleagues to join me in voting ``no'' on H.R. 8205, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close, and I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, once again, the Federal Government is just as it was this same time last year, on the brink of shutting down, threatening to cut off essential services for millions of Americans. Instead of addressing the real needs of the American people, Republicans have spent this week spreading misinformation about immigrants, attempting to hide from their own record on reproductive care, and evading their responsibility to govern. In bringing up this legislation, they seek to distract the American people from the fact that their own actions have repeatedly made every American, from Presidential candidates to schoolchildren, more at risk of gun violence. When Democrats take back the House, we will work to make everyone in this Nation safer, but for today, I urge Members to support this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.