Jerrold Nadler

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I understand that. Mr. Speaker, will we have the opportunity, as part of that debate, to offer the amendment in the form of a motion to recommit, as is our right during debate?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I take it that we will be able to offer that motion to recommit before we finish debate tonight.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, you didn't answer my question, sir. Mr. Speaker, we are, of course, entertaining debate on the bill now. The motion to recommit is part of that debate, and my question is: Will we be permitted to offer that motion to recommit before we finish debate tonight?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, there may be. Mr. Speaker, if the Chair can't answer, perhaps the chairman of the committee can answer that question about the motion to recommit. Mr. Chairman?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, can the chairman perhaps comment on when the House will vote on this bill?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, for what purpose are we debating this bill tonight if we cannot guarantee when or if we will vote? Let me rephrase the question. Mr. Speaker, can the Chair guarantee that we will, in fact, vote on this bill at some point?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I am asking the Acting Speaker right now. I think the mace is up, so Speaker.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, we are entertaining debate on the bill, obviously, but can the Chair guarantee that we will, in fact, vote on this bill at some point? Otherwise, why are we wasting time?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, can the Chair guarantee that we will have the opportunity, as guaranteed under the rules, to offer our motion to recommit, whether or not we ever vote on this bill?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, the Chair will not guarantee that the rule will be adhered to and give us the opportunity to offer that motion?

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, the Chair is being very forthcoming. Mr. Speaker, I do assume that we will have the opportunity to offer our motion to recommit. Mr. Speaker, I further assume that at some point we will vote on this bill, otherwise, everything the majority has said about why it is being offered would be a little less than honest. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, this supposed compromise bill is a sham. It fails to cover all Dreamers or to provide them with a certain path to citizenship. It fails to end the Trump family separation policy. It revokes critical protections for detained children and families. It eliminates important asylum protections. It makes communities less safe, and it slashes legal family immigration. At every step of the way, this bill attacks family unity. It attacks immigrant communities, it attacks common decency, and it evades fulfilling the pledge of the Speaker and the President that we will solve the problem and allow a path to citizenship for the Dreamers. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a report by the Cato Institute titled: ``House GOP Bill Cuts Legal Immigration by 1.4 Million Over 20 Years.'' [From CATO at Liberty, June 21, 2018] House GOP Bill Cuts Legal Immigration by 1.4 Million Over 20 Years (By David Bier and Stuart Anderson) The House is scheduled to vote tomorrow on a bill--the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act, the supposed GOP compromise bill. The authors claim in their bill summary that ``the overall number of visas issued will not change,'' yet that is simply incorrect. In fact, the proposal would reduce legal immigration at least 1.4 million over 20 years. The bill would reduce the number of legal immigrants in five ways: 1) eliminating the diversity visa lottery, 2) ending sponsorship of married adult children of U.S. citizens, 3) ending sponsorship of siblings of U.S. citizens, 4) restricting asylum claims, and 5) indirectly by restricting overall immigration, which will lead to fewer sponsorships of spouses, minor children, and parents of naturalized citizens years later. The bill partially offsets these effects by increasing employer-sponsored immigration and by granting permanent residency to some Dreamers in the United States, but the net effect is still strongly negative. Table 1 breaks down the cuts to legal immigration by category over the 20-year period from 2020 to 2039. The net effect is a reduction in legal immigration of 1.4 million including Dreamers or 2.1 million not counting Dreamers toward the total. This is a cut of 7 percent or 10 percent in the number of legal immigrants that would have been allowed to enter under current law.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I urge all Members to oppose the bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2851, the Stop the Importation and Trafficking of Synthetic Analogues Act. This bill is well intentioned but fatally flawed. I agree with the goal of preventing dangerous synthetic drugs from evading regulation, but this bill circumvents existing procedures for placing synthetic analogues on the existing schedule of the Controlled Substances Act, which reasonably incorporate medical and scientific analysis in favor of a law enforcement-focused approach that would worsen the mass incarceration crisis and could undermine scientific research. There are already statutory mechanisms in place to provide for the scheduling and regulation of new drugs that may be dangerous if misused. Those mechanisms require an appropriate degree of collaboration at the outset among the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Food and Drug Administration in scheduling synthetic analogues. This is because each of these agencies is equally important to the scheduling process. By marginalizing the roles of HHS and the FDA in this bill, we would establish a mechanism that does not adequately consider scientific and medical evidence about the substance in question. Such input is critical to a process that may result in the imposition of significant criminal penalties related to these analogue drugs. Under this bill, not only would the Attorney General hold the sole authority by himself to schedule these substances, but he or she would also have the power to set sentence levels for newly scheduled analogue drugs by establishing equivalencies between each newly scheduled analogue and drugs that are already controlled. As a result, this legislation would expand penalties for drug offenses, concentrate an overwhelming amount of unchecked power within the Justice Department, overcriminalize certain conduct, and punish individuals without adequate proof of intent. While the bill was slightly improved during our committee markup by eliminating the new mandatory minimum sentences included in the bill as introduced, the bill, nevertheless, would impose potentially lengthy maximum sentences for offenses involving these analogues. I am mostly concerned that substances designated as analogues under the procedures instituted by this bill could trigger the imposition of mandatory minimum sentences under other provisions of the Controlled Substances Act. Although we have been told by the majority that this is not the intent of the bill, this ambiguity is another reason to oppose the legislation. At the very least, the bill would explicitly impose mandatory minimum terms of supervised release, which, as the Judicial Conference of the United States observes, undermines the discretion of judges who are in the best position to make such determinations based on the facts and circumstances of each case. We can do more to address concerns about emerging and potentially dangerous analogue drugs, but ditching scientific evidence and imposing new mandatory minimums is not the answer. Mr. Chair, I urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to H.R. 5682, the FIRST STEP Act. On principle, I cannot support legislation which fails to address the larger issue of sentencing reform, and, though this bill makes some modest improvements in areas related to our prisons, actually it does more harm by cementing into our system new areas of racial biases and disadvantage that make worse a criminal justice system desperately in need of reform. Despite the bill's good intentions, the new incentive system for pre- release custody credits could exacerbate racial biases and, unlike previous criminal justice efforts, is not balanced with the necessary reforms to our Federal sentencing system. As Monday's New York Times editorial observed: ``A partial bill could end up being worse than nothing.'' The bill excludes large categories of inmates, based on convictions for various offenses and on immigration status, from being eligible for the pre-release custody incentives established by the bill. Second, certain prisoners who are eligible to participate in the incentive system and who successfully participate in recidivism reduction programs would face being denied early entry to pre-release custody if such inmates are judged to have a higher than low recidivism risk under the new system. It would be unfair to deny these prisoners what they have earned, and it is counterproductive for all of us to, in effect, create a disincentive for prisoners who most need recidivism reduction programming from engaging in it. Third, the combination of these factors, implemented through a problematic risk assessment tool, could operate to exacerbate racial and socioeconomic disparities already present in the criminal justice system. As the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the ACLU, the NAACP, the National Immigration Law Center, and dozens of other advocacy groups warn, ``the exclusions could . . . have a disparate impact on racial minorities.'' I want to acknowledge the tremendous work of my colleagues on the Judiciary Committee--Representatives Jeffries, Richmond, and Bass particularly--for their efforts to improve the legislation. I wholeheartedly support certain provisions in the current version of the bill, such as expanding time credits for good behavior, banning the shackling of women prisoners, and enhanced compassionate relief. But, unfortunately, these good provisions do not outweigh the potentially harmful provisions contained elsewhere in the bill. Perhaps more importantly, it is clear that prison reform alone will not ameliorate the crisis of mass incarceration unless we address the principal cause of the problem--unjust sentencing laws. As former Attorney General Eric Holder writes in today's Washington Post: ``To reform America's prisons, we must change the laws that send people to them in the first place. Anything less represents a failure of leadership.'' It is unfortunate that after waiting nearly 1\1/2\ years to take up the issue of criminal justice reform, the majority was unwilling to subject H.R. 5682 to a single legislative hearing or even bother to obtain a CBO score so we could understand its impact. I also do not believe we can simply accept as a reason not to change our sentencing laws opposition to sentencing reform by a Trump administration that changes its legislative positions on a near daily basis and that has already done so much to weaken and undermine the criminal justice system. Nor do I believe more balanced reform is not viable when Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told us: ``For any criminal justice system proposal to win approval in the Senate, it must include . . . sentencing reforms.'' Although I oppose this legislation, I remain fully committed to achieving balanced reform as part of an effort to make our criminal justice system more just and our constituents more safe. But I do not believe that passing this bill today would contribute to that goal. I therefore urge an opposition vote. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Ellison).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Cicilline).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis).

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Bass), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

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

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Richmond), a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I am prepared to close if the other side is, and I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Speaker, in spite of the good intentions of this bill, I believe the restrictions in the incentive system it would create with respect to recidivism reduction programming could compound the injustices that occur at earlier stages of the criminal justice process; that its approval would lessen the odds of achieving sentencing reform; and that, on balance, the negatives outweigh the positives of this bill. A broad spectrum of dozens of civil rights and other organizations agree and oppose this bill, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the ACLU, the NAACP, the NAACP Legal and Education Defense Fund, the American Federation of Federal Government Employees Council of Prison Locals, the National Immigration Law Center, and Human Rights Watch. For the reasons I have outlined today, I reluctantly oppose H.R. 5682 and ask that my colleagues do the same. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jeffries), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

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

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Jayapal), a distinguished member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I have one further speaker, and then I will be prepared to close. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), the distinguished ranking member of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations.

Mr. NADLER

Mr. NADLER. Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.