Jerrold Nadler

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield the gentlewoman from Virginia an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the resolution (H. Res. 183) condemning anti-Semitism as hateful expressions of intolerance that are contradictory to the values and aspirations that define the people of the United States and condemning anti-Muslim discrimination and bigotry against minorities as hateful expressions of intolerance that are contrary to the values and aspirations of the United States, as amended.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Clyburn), the distinguished whip.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished majority leader.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Gottheimer).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the distinguished gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Richmond).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), who is the distinguished Speaker of the House.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the resolution under consideration.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, could you please tell me how much time the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins) has remaining, and how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Bass).

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

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Zeldin and Mr. Rose for holding this Special Order hour on the importance of reauthorizing the Victim Compensation Fund and ensuring that every responder and survivor is made whole, as Congress intended. As my colleagues have also discussed, we have been pushing for more than 15 years to finally address the moral obligations we have to those made ill by exposure to toxins on September 11 and in the weeks and months after the attack. It is a two-part moral obligation. First, the attacks on September 11 were not just attacks on New York or on Washington, D.C. They were attacks on America. In the last few weeks, we have heard an objection raised to this bill that New York should handle this issue because it is a ``New York problem.'' The World Trade Center stood in my district. Many of the people who ran into those towers were my fellow New Yorkers. The people who fled their homes and offices to find safety were my constituents. But they were Americans, and those towers fell on that Tuesday morning not because they stood in New York, but because they stood in the United States of America. While it may have been the brave men and women of the Fire Department of New York and the New York Police Department and the Port Authority who first rushed to those towers, to say that the responders and survivors who are sick today are just in New York is factually untrue. There are sick responders and survivors in every State and in 434 of the 435 congressional districts. This is not a New York or a D.C. issue; it is a national issue and deserves a national response. The second moral obligation directly ties the Victim Compensation Fund to the Federal Government. The reason so many survivors and responders were exposed to the toxins that made them sick was that they were told by the Federal Government--specifically, by Christine Todd Whitman, then the Administrator of the Federal EPA, and then by Mayor Rudy Giuliani--that the air at Ground Zero and in Lower Manhattan was safe to breathe, that they should work for months to clean up the pile, that they should go back to work in Lower Manhattan, that the air was safe to breathe. But it was not safe; it was toxic. In the rush to get Wall Street up and running, tens of thousands of people were sent directly into harm's way by the Federal Government. I went to Ground Zero days after the attack. We knew even then that the air was not safe, that the air was thick with dust and debris, and we had no idea what was swirling in those clouds around us as we struggled to breathe. But the Federal Government said it was safe. I think of those responders, first on the rescue mission. And I don't begrudge anybody who worked on the pile in the first 3 days when people may have still been alive who worked without proper respiratory protection to save lives. But after the first 3 days, it was a recovery mission; and people worked, breathing that air, for hours and days without adequate protection. I think of the families sent back to their apartments in Lower Manhattan and told to wipe away the layers of asbestos from their furniture and their windows with a damp cloth. I think of the students sitting in their classrooms at Stuyvesant High School, blocks from Ground Zero, and the barges removing debris as trucks full of asbestos idled below the high school's open windows. The Federal Government bears the burden to care for and support all those who went back to Ground Zero because the Federal Government told them it was safe when it was not safe. And since the day the EPA and others told people it was safe to go back to work, to school, and to their homes, since the day the EPA told those responders at Ground Zero that it was safe to work with minimal protection, I have been fighting alongside my colleagues Mrs. Maloney and Mr. King to secure healthcare and support for the people who became sick because of that exposure. We fought for nearly 10 years to get the first Zadroga Act passed in 2010. That bill created the World Trade Center Health Program and reopened the Victim Compensation Fund. But we only authorized the VCF for 5 years. We knew we needed more than 5 years, and we came back in 2015 and passed the reauthorization bill. That bill made the health program permanent--or, at least, until 2090--which gave much-needed certainty to those suffering from 9/11 illnesses and their families. But, again, we authorized the Victim Compensation Fund, the VCF, for just another 5 years. As those 5 years have gone on, people have become sicker. More and more responders and survivors have been diagnosed with various cancers, particularly cancers with long latency periods, and, tragically, more and more have died from those illnesses. As people become sicker and pass away, the VCF has functioned exactly as Congress directed. It has provided those individuals, those first responders, those survivors, and their families with compensation and resources they need to get through these difficult times. But, just as people are getting sicker, the VCF is running out of money. Last month, the Justice Department announced that, because of the high demand for claims, because the cancers are more numerous than anticipated, because more people of the heroes of 9/11 than anticipated are getting sick, the Department would be forced to cut awards by 50 percent if they were filed by February 1 and 70 percent if they were filed after February 1. Can you imagine that? You are dying of stomach cancer, unable to work, unable to leave your house for more than your doctor's appointments, and waiting for compensation so you can pay off your house and protect your family before you die, and the award you anticipated is cut in half or by 70 percent. Your wife dies after a long struggle with breast cancer, and you are waiting for your claim to pay her funeral expenses, and your compensation is cut in half or by 70 percent. You have such severe gastrointestinal issues that you can only work part-time. You are waiting for your award to pay for your child's college tuition, and your claim is cut by 70 percent. That is not the promise we made to those first responders and survivors. That is not fulfilling the moral obligation that pushed us to create the VCF in the first place. That is failing Lincoln's statement of our duty ``to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.'' That is failing our promise to never forget 9/11 and failing the brave men and women who helped us on that day and who struggle and fight to this day. But that doesn't have to happen. If we pass the Never Forget the Heroes Act, we can stop these cuts and make the Victim Compensation Fund permanent, providing responders and survivors the certainty that, no matter how sick they get, they will have us at their backs and the resources they need. I thank my colleagues who have been with us in this fight from the start, and I thank the 142 bipartisan cosponsors who have already signed on to this bill. We will get this done. We must get this done. We will meet our moral obligations. We will never forget these heroes.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chair, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Chair, the right to vote has been called protective of all other rights. Without it, you can't protect your rights. That right has been eroded in recent years. We have seen many attempts on the State and local level to limit the right to vote for minorities, to close polling places, to limit the hours of voting, to put in phony requirements that prevent people from voting. We must restore, as this bill will do, the protections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that guarantee the right to vote, that stop local politicians from choosing their own electorates. We must eliminate the poison of large campaign contributions from hidden money. The dominance in our politics of large campaign contributions when someone anonymously can give $20,000 to $30,000--or millions of dollars--to various PACs which then funnel the money to politicians is subversive of our democracy. It is a metastasized cancer on our democracy. And if we don't excise this cancer through this bill, historians will eventually write, I fear, that the American Republic, like the Roman Republic, had a good 250-year run with democracy but then evolved into an oligarchy, which is the direction we are headed in. We must ban those huge campaign contributions, substitute a system of small contributions by ordinary people that will be matched so that the public, not the plutocrats, will dominate our politics and control our legislation. We should restore our right to vote for people who committed crimes long ago and have long since paid their debts to society. These restrictions and ex-felons voting were put in specifically to guarantee white supremacy. Read the debates in the various State conventions in the 1900s and 1910. This bill will help strengthen Americans' faith in their government institutions and ensure that everyone has a voice in determining how our country is governed. Mr. Chair, I urge all of my colleagues to support this landmark legislation.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 1112, the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2019.

Mr. NADLER. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise in support of this amendment, and this completely takes care of Mr. Collins' concern, whether he realizes it or not. Because this says that the transfer can take place for 25 days after the transfer becomes legally permissible. In other words, under the longest timeframe, the background check doesn't come back within 10 days. The purchaser waits a few days, and then petitions the attorney general. It takes another 10 days. Then it becomes legally permissible. This says the transfer can take place for 25 days after that. So there is no way that this doesn't take care of the problem that Mr. Collins raised, and then some. The current procedures in place do not take into account the longer waiting period in the petition process that H.R. 1112 requires. This amendment more than takes care of that. It is a salutary amendment. It makes the system work, and I can't understand anybody, whether they support the bill or not, who wouldn't want to support this, so I support the amendment.

Mr. NADLER. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I support this amendment to require the GAO to submit a report to the relevant congressional committees analyzing the extent to which the additions required by this bill prevent firearms from being transferred to prohibited persons. It will be important for us to get information about the implementation of the law and its impact on so-called default proceed transactions. The amendment also requires that the GAO report its findings after 90 days and again after 1 year, 3 years, and 5 years. I think it is always a good idea to actually track the effect of new legislation and see how effective it is. Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this amendment, and I commend the sponsor for doing so.

Mr. NADLER. Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. NADLER. Madam Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I support this amendment, which requires the FBI to report on the number of petitions it was not able to resolve with a determination within 10 days. We know that providing more time for checks to be completed in the instances that more time is needed will help prevent guns from getting into the hands of those who are ineligible under current law from purchasing and possessing the guns. The goal of this bill is to do just that, and to allow individuals whose checks take longer than 10 days to complete the opportunity to petition for their case to be reviewed within another 10-day period. Madam Chair, the report required by this amendment will help us oversee the implementation of this new process and the changes instituted by this law. I urge my colleagues to support this salutary amendment.

Mr. NADLER. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Chair, this is an important bill that addresses a significant, and tragically demonstrated, threat to public safety. Today is the 25th anniversary of the implementation of the Brady Background Check Act. This lifesaving law has served us well, helping to prevent firearms from getting into the hands of those who are legally prohibited from possessing and purchasing them. But we know that some aspects of this law and the system that implements it must be updated and improved. Let's remember what this bill does. All this bill does is give the FBI additional time--gives the NICS system additional time--to complete a background check in the 8 or 9 percent of cases where it is not done within 90 seconds. If you haven't gotten a background check back in 3 days, under this bill, you can't get it automatically, and you can't get the weapon automatically. They have 10 days to do it. If after 10 days they still haven't done it, then you can petition the Attorney General. And if they still don't do it, get your firearm within 10 days. That will save a lot of lives. We hear about mass shootings, but we also should remember that we are not talking about just mass shootings. Thirty-four people a day are killed in this country by guns--34 a day. Every other industrialized country in the world: 90 deaths with guns a year, 120, 170. The United States: 39,000. How are we different? Are we thousands of times more mentally ill than people in Europe or Japan? No. Are we more vicious? No. Are our habits more degraded? No. The difference is that this country is awash in guns. The difference is that, in this country, people who are dangerous can get guns. These are modest steps. We should take much more advanced steps. We should ban assault weapons. We should ban large capacity magazine clips. But we are not doing that. We are starting with very moderate steps. This is a very moderate step to improve the background check system. With all the rhetoric we hear, that is all it does. It gives a little extra time to make sure that someone who is dangerous, whose possession of a firearm is illegal, cannot get it. Enacting this bill will save lives. I urge my colleagues to ignore all the nonsense rhetoric about extraneous considerations. Join me in supporting this bill today. Join me in supporting saving lives. Join me in making the United States a little safer to live in. Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Madam Chair, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. NADLER. Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), a member of the committee.