Brad Sherman

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, due to redistricting just last year, I now represent what I believe is the largest veterans' facility in the West, the West Los Angeles VA. I have seen exemplified in my own district a problem in large quantity that should strike at the hearts of all of us, and that is homeless veterans. To see any American out on the street is a shame, but when that American has put their life on the line for this country, it is a shame that we need to correct. This Congress has provided significant money to build housing for veterans. We need to do more. I will focus on one particular problem with the HUD-VASH program that we fund. It sets a limit on the income that a veteran can have, and it is understood we are building this housing for low-income veterans. Included in that income calculation are disability benefits. We have a situation right in my district where disabled American veterans are living on the streets and can't get into veteran housing on veteran land because they are receiving veteran disability benefits for the disabilities they suffered in the service of the American people. I have proposed legislation, which passed unanimously, 49-0, through the Financial Services Committee, to say that disability benefits not be included in that income calculation. Two things to be aware of: First, the income of a disabled veteran can be calculated, but what must be kept in mind is that they face higher expenses. They have to live a different life, and that additional income or payments that they receive does not mean that they are middle class or wealthy. Second, our Internal Revenue Code already recognizes that disability payments received by veterans are not counted as income. Finally, the people who I think would most benefit from housing on the VA campus, where we have the largest VA hospital in the southern California area are the disabled veterans who need the medical care. Mr. Speaker, I hope that my colleagues will join in cosponsoring and supporting this legislation. In Recognition of the 75th Anniversary of Valley Industry and Commerce Association

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I congratulate the Valley Industry and Commerce Association, known as VICA, for 75 years of working tirelessly to make the San Fernando Valley the place to do business in California. VICA serves 1.8 million residents, nearly a quarter million businesses, and VICA has been a leading voice for the business community since 1949. Under the leadership of President Stuart Waldman and Chair Lupita Sanchez Cornejo, VICA has helped the valley become an economic engine that has powered the recovery from the COVID downturn for the entire area of Los Angeles, where they are advocating for a better business climate, improved regional infrastructure, and a 21st century workforce. VICA has left its mark. I congratulate VICA on this 75th anniversary. I look forward to working with VICA day after day, month after month, as I have in my 28 years in Congress. In Celebration of the Life of Morrie Markoff

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize the life of Morrie Markoff, and what a life it was. Morrie was a well-known resident of Los Angeles and the father of my good and longtime friend, Steven Markoff, and Steve's sister, Judith Markoff Hansen. Morrie lived to be the oldest man in the United States, reaching the age of 110, before passing away in his southern California home on June 3 of this year. Morrie grew up in New York City, attended trade school, married the love of his life, Betty Goldmintz, and settled in Los Angeles. Morrie was a skilled machinist, businessman, artist, and author. He was not just someone who lived to an incredibly advanced age. He was famous for his cognitive abilities late in life. He held his first art exhibit as a centenarian. At age 103, Morrie was selling his book, ``Keep Breathing,'' a good idea, from his own booth at the LA Times Festival of Books. He was known as the world's oldest blogger. Morrie witnessed tremendous social and technological changes in 110 years. He inspired so many of us to live life to the fullest. Los Angeles reflects with pride on the life of Morrie Markoff. Defining Anti-Semitism

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, Jewish Americans are facing a tide of hate in this country that we thought could only be in a different century, on a different continent. U.S. anti-Semitic incidences have skyrocketed 360 percent since October 7. Between October 7 and January 7 alone, the Anti-Defamation League has recorded 3,283 anti-Semitic incidents, including harassment, vandalism, and physical assaults. Just outside of my district, Paul Kessler was bludgeoned in the head and bludgeoned to death by an anti-Israel protester. Recent polling from the American Jewish Committee found that 93 percent of Jews in this country think that anti-Semitism is a problem, and 87 percent think that it has gotten worse since October 7. Yet, some refuse to listen. That especially is happening in campuses across this country. Too often, university administrators have failed to protect their Jewish students. At Columbia University, leaked text messages show how administrators were mocking a panel on anti-Semitism while it was happening. At Yale, a Jewish student was assaulted by encampment protestors. At Reed College, Jewish students had their mezuzah torn down or struck with a rock through their dorm room. Just this week, a man was arrested for throwing a rock in the face of a Jewish Columbia student. The list goes on and on. Now, anti-Semitism can't be fought, particularly on campuses, if it can't be defined. So many are engaging in anti-Semitism and claiming that it is not anti-Semitism. If there is dedication to fighting it, it has to be defined. America should use the same standard for evaluating its own campuses that the State Department has been using for a decade and a half in looking at global anti-Semitism. The same standard that we use in criticizing or evaluating the University of Bucharest should be used for Columbia University. That is the IHRA definition, and the most controversial part of that definition says that, when there is a call for the expulsion or death of every Jew living between the river and the sea, that is anti- Semitic. That shouldn't even be a question. If, God forbid, a Member were to come to this floor, grab this microphone, and shout: ``Death to Albania,'' would anyone doubt that that Member was anti-Albanian? When one calls for the destruction and ethnic cleansing of the only Jewish majority country in the world, is there any doubt that that is anti-Semitic? Some oppose adopting this definition because they say it deals with free speech. Keep in mind, fortunately or unfortunately, homophobic speech, racist speech, and anti-Semitic speech enjoy substantial First Amendment protection. We should adopt a definition of anti-Semitism and then use that to evaluate and use our free speech rights to comment on the anti-Semitic speech being screamed on campuses across this country. Students are entitled to the protection of title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That says that you cannot interfere with their education because of their race or national origin. I have battled for 20 years three or four different administrations' Department of Education, and we now have it clear--as we had it clear and then they revoked it and then they made it clear again--that title VI applies to Jewish students. It may say race and national origin. People can debate whether Judaism and the Jewish people are a people or a religion or a civilization. That issue has been handled. What campuses have to do is follow title VI if they are going to receive any Federal aid, and they are not. Their method for ignoring civil rights law is to refuse to define anti-Semitism. Let us hope that this Department of Education will take its responsibility seriously, that this Department of Education will go that last step from saying that they are using the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism to say that they actually publish it as their definition of anti-Semitism. That is a slight step. Let us hope that university administrators will protect Jewish students just as the National Guard was used to protect African- American students many decades ago when they entered campus. Mr. Speaker, may inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, there is substantial discussion of cryptocurrencies. It was one of the things that I agreed with Donald Trump on when he tweeted in 2019, back when he was on Twitter: ``I am not a fan of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which are not money and whose value is highly volatile and based on thin air. Unregulated crypto assets can facilitate unlawful behavior, including drug trade and other illegal activity.'' ``We have only one real currency in the USA, and it is stronger than ever, both dependable and reliable. It is by far the most dominant currency anywhere in the world, and it will always stay that way. It is called the United States dollar.'' Donald Trump got it right in 2019 because he hadn't figured out that there was a way to get money by getting it wrong. Since then, he has flip-flopped. He has decided that he likes cryptocurrency. Why is that? First, he may have discovered that those who are doing crypto mining are creating enormous amounts of greenhouse gases, entire mothballed electric plants have been taken out of mothballs. These are coal-burning plants, and the entire output is used to do highly complex calculations in order to mine cryptocurrency. That is to say, whoever does these calculations, the system gives them crypto. Maybe it is the enormous amount of greenhouse gases, but I don't think that is it. What Trump has discovered is that there is an enormous amount of money for him by embracing crypto. What is crypto? Why does it have a value? At first blush, it looks like an electronic pet rock. Why does it have value? It is right in the name. It aspires to be a currency, and if it actually became a currency--if you went to the local McDonald's and were told how much a burger cost based on its crypto value, how many hamster coins for an order of fries, then it would be a currency. Those who are investing in crypto mostly are just thinking they will buy it now and will sell it in a month, and it will go up in value. They have no idea what they are buying, why it would have any value, why anybody else would buy it except they heard they can make money on it. There is a constituency for that. A lot of people will make investments without thinking of the consequences. Those in the crypto movement have told us why they have created it. They want to compete with the U.S. dollar in order to make enormous amounts of money themselves and to take from the U.S. dollar its tremendous role as a reserve currency and as an international settlements currency. The effect of that would be to make a mockery out of the sanctions that we impose on Iran, North Korea, and others. What is the market for cryptocurrency? Why does anybody need a new currency? What is the matter with the euro? Hell, what is the matter with the dollar? The dollar is an outstanding currency. It is a medium of exchange, a store of value, but there is a huge market for another one. That is because dollar transactions can be discovered by American law enforcement. Yes, we do have the one hundred dollar bill, but big-time drug dealers, big-time tax evaders, and big-time human traffickers find it difficult to carry around that many suitcases filled with one hundred dollar bills, let alone to try to spend them. They need an electronic currency that gives them all the anonymity of a sack full of one hundred dollar bills and all the convenience of a 21st century currency. If it catches on, what are the markets? The biggest market, the only market that justifies the current prices that some crypto is getting, is the tax evasion market. Trump's own Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, his appointee, testified that there is roughly a trillion dollars of uncollected taxes. The vast bulk of that is from very wealthy people who are hiding their income. In order to not pay $1 trillion in taxes, you have to hide $3 trillion of income. If you hide $3 trillion of income year after year, after a decade, you have $10 trillion of assets to hide. That is a lot of assets. You cannot put it all in a sack full of one hundred dollar bills. So, they create a currency that meets the needs of the tax evaders. What about the sanction evaders? It does it even better. What about the drug dealers? We have all seen the movies where the toughest problem the big-time drug dealer has is how to deal with all this cash. It solves that problem. You can tell by the name. They are trying to create a currency. What do they call it? Cryptocurrency. What does that literally mean? Hidden money. Donald Trump is finding that he can get hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions, God knows what else he might be taking, from people who see this as an opportunity to create a currency where they are the first owners of it. They create it. They mine it. They already have it. They have over $1 trillion of this ``currency,'' and they have to find somebody who will take it off their hands. That market won't arise unless they can change the laws of the United States, the security laws and a host of others, in order to compete with the U.S. dollar. First, if they are able to do this, bankruptcy laws will be unenforceable. Husbands or wives trying to hide assets from their former spouses will not be detected. The income tax will become a tax only on wages. The IRS has your little W-2 form. They know how much you have to pay, but the big-time folks, for them, the income tax will be as much as they feel like paying. We have to deal with crypto. We also have to deal with the rank hypocrisy of the Republican nominee for President. Finally, as of today, Mr. Trump is 78 years old. Both parties have nominated Presidential candidates that are older than those that have been nominated anytime in history. There are those who say one or the other is too old. I will simply say this: It is true, Biden is 3 years older as of today, but Trump is 83 pounds heavier. If you were a life insurance agent, perhaps you wouldn't want to sell that policy. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, the ICC's ruling is outrageous. The organization has dishonored itself. I would have been happy to cosponsor a resolution denouncing and sanctioning. I wanted to cosponsor this bill when I read the title; unfortunately, I read the bill. Once again, we have a poorly drafted, poorly thought-out messaging bill that hasn't gone through the committee process, that hasn't gone through regular order, that hasn't been thought through. No amendments are allowed on the floor, and the author defends it on the theory that, well, if the bill is poorly drafted, the Senate will save us and correct it. We cannot vote ``yes'' on a bill today that is this infirm and count on the Senate to clean it up. Once again, the Republican Party has decided to hurt Israel for its own benefit. Israel has one friend in the world, the United States-- plus Guatemala. Israel has survived because it has had the support of both political parties. During the first 76 years of Israel's existence, Democrats have had roughly half the power in this city, and Republicans about half of the time have been in control. If Israel is to survive another 76 years, it will need the support of both parties. Yet, the purpose of this bill, which masquerades as pro-Israel, like so many bills brought up as messaging bills, is to drive a wedge between the Democratic Party and Israel for the benefit not of Israel but the Republican Party. The decision by the International Criminal Court's prosecutor to seek arrest warrants against Israeli leaders is an outrageous perversion of everything anyone who has dedicated themselves to human rights holds dear, as I have for 28 years on the Foreign Affairs Committee. It is a perversion of the international justice system. It is putrid. It dishonors those who originally thought that the International Criminal Court would be a good idea. It undermines the rule of law, and it is based on a hatred of Israel and perhaps a hatred of Jews. I would like to vote for this bill, but unfortunately I read it. Now, the ranking member has pointed out a number of problems. I will point out a couple as well. You cannot vote for this until you read section 2(a)(1)(A), which imposes sanctions on anyone who assists an effort to investigate, assists an effort to investigate. What does that mean? It includes those who provide exculpatory information. Israel was subject to investigation. I am sure many patriotic Israelis and well-meaning Americans provided information to the ICC, as Chip Roy did when he gave his speech, detailing why that action is wrongful on the law and the facts; but you assist an investigation when you provide exculpatory information, and anyone who does that is subject to sanction. Mr. Roy won't be sanctioned because he is a U.S. citizen, but anyone else who contacted the court and said here is what you are doing is wrong will be subject to these sanctions. Second, this bill punishes the spouses and family members, even estranged family members. You may feel that your son has gone wrong. By involvement with the ICC, you get sanctioned for what that son does. Particularly, I want to focus on spouses. As I said, the bill punishes spouses and family members, even those spouses and family members who oppose the ruling. You are going to wonder why I have this poster up here. All last week, the Republican Party told us that the decision of the Alitos to fly an insurrectionist flag at their two houses should not be imparted to the Justice because it was done by his spouse. Today, one week later, they come back and say that when a judge does something wrong, we are going to impart it to the spouse. Which is it? Are Justices and their spouses responsible for each other's actions or not? Some Republican is going to have to explain this to me. Now, of course, this is even different and more extreme. Justice Alito lived in the houses, Justice Alito did not disclaim the message of these flags, and Justice Alito is not estranged from his wife, yet someone who is totally apart from anyone at the ICC but happens to be related will be subject to sanctions. Again, how can you defend an appeal to Heaven under those circumstances? The attention of the world should be on the incredible hypocrisy on the International Criminal Court, which failed to issue rulings about driving the Rohingya from their home, about the complete depopulation of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, of the Republic of Artsakh where the entire country was driven into exile in ethnic cleansing. It failed to issue a ruling dealing with northern Ethiopia, where 600,000 people died. This illegitimate court failed to issue a ruling on the Yazidis, who were subjected to a genocide, as the world watched thousands of Yazidis being butchered and burned alive and subjected to sexual slavery. Instead of focusing our attention on the hypocrisy of the court, we are focused on this poorly drafted resolution. I tried making suggestions to the author. Every suggestion I made was rejected. This was not an attempt to pass a pro-Israel bill.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, this was not a pro-Israel bill. Instead it was a poorly drafted, rush-to-the-floor, strictly partisan messaging bill that distracts the world from the hypocrisy of the ICC and focuses us instead on a supposedly pro-Israel, performatively pro-Israel Republican bill. We will have to vote ``no,'' and then we will have to work later to demonstrate how wrong and how putrid the action of the ICC is.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chair, had I been present, I would have voted No on Roll Call No. 228. Amendment No. 3 Offered by Mr. Davidson

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Madam Chair, today the gross hypocrisy of crypto advocates is exposed. For several years, they were screaming: Don't touch crypto because it is innovative, and innovation is wonderful, and innovation shouldn't be stopped and if we don't innovate other countries will. Today, the crypto forces bring a bill up that has one purpose: to block innovation. Why do we block innovation? Because there might be a competitive payment system to the crypto payment system. In other words, the crypto bros need to innovate and create a better payment system, and if they face competition, we need a law to stop them. This is a bad bill if it did what the authors say it will do. What it will actually do is hard to know because of how poorly drafted it is. It bans a central bank digital currency or anything that comes close to one or anything that is substantially similar. The bill itself is a word salad of antigovernment and pro-crypto buzz words. How does it define this digital currency that it prohibits? It simply says digital money is a direct liability of the Federal Reserve system. Well, all our money is a direct liability to the Federal Reserve system. It bans that, presumably, if it is electronic, so it bans 20th century technology. When the Fed buys $100 million of Treasury bills from a large bank, do you think that they put it all in armored cars and send it to J.P. Morgan? No, it is electronic. They are paying for it with a digital liability, a direct liability of the Federal Reserve system. This bill, as it is written, not as it is oratorically described, would require hundreds of thousands of armored cars if we are going to do the business that we have been doing since the 20th century. I would ask any judge interpreting this bill to keep in mind not the words in the bill, because that would stop 20th century technology and all of our major financial transactions, but the purposes of the authors. What is the purpose? The purpose is that we should not have an electronic payment system that does not achieve two purposes: Number one, the crypto bros must make a profit; and number two, it has to be a system that is effective for drug dealers and tax evaders. Judges interpreting this word salad that calls itself a bill should keep those two objectives in mind. Then we are told that we need a new payment system in this country so the government cannot freeze bank accounts because Canada froze bank accounts of anti-vax truckers. I have no idea whether Canada should have frozen those bank accounts, but I do know this: If because Canada froze bank accounts of anti-vax truckers, we should have a payment system that makes it impossible for the American Government to freeze the bank accounts of convicted tax evaders, convicted drug dealers, and convicted charlatans. Then we enter into a new world that I call patriotic anarchism, the folks who demand that America be strong and that the government be totally defanged and inept and unable to do anything. It is a wonderful world. You can believe in a strong America without an American Government or an American Government unable to freeze the bank accounts of convicted murderers. You want a strong America but not a government that is able to do that. Now, this world of a surveillance state if we had a central bank digital currency, keep in mind the use of that currency is entirely voluntarily just as the use of a credit card is voluntary. If you use a credit card to buy a gun and then you kill somebody, there is a record. You are also free to use cash. Cash has some disadvantages. In the example I just gave, those disadvantages are not apparent, but those disadvantages include that it is not electronic, that it is bulky, and that if you have over $10,000 you want to deposit in bank, a report is made.

Mr. SHERMAN. Madam Chair, we have a bill, which if it is interpreted as written, blocks the American economy the way it operates today and has for decades and would create lots of American jobs building those armored cars because the Fed would have to deal with nonelectronic transactions. If it is interpreted as intended, it is designed to create a world in which the American Government cannot conduct a criminal investigation that follows the money, and if someone is convicted, their bank accounts cannot be frozen because we have a new payment system without bank accounts that are not subject to being frozen. Vote against this bill because of what is in it. Vote against this bill because of what they wanted to put in it and hoped to put in it but didn't.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chair, we are told to reject this because China is doing this. In China, they drink orange juice. Should we prohibit orange juice? Not everything that happens in China needs to be banned by statute in this Congress. We are told we need to protect privacy, but this bill does not require anybody to use a digital currency. You are still going to have cash. You are still going to have a credit card. It is just one more option. You may say the use of the credit card doesn't give you privacy because my wife then finds out I spent too much on a tie. So what do I do? I spend cash. You are going to have debit cards, credit cards, cash, and maybe a digital currency. If you want it to be private, don't use it. It is not mandatory.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chair, last week we had police week. This week, the Republicans show us that they support crime in the suites. The effect of this bill in the short term will be to disempower the most effective investor protection crime investigation organization in the world, the SEC. The long-term objective of the crypto billionaire bros is to create a new currency, and they have named it well. Cryptocurrency literally means hidden money. If it ever becomes a currency, it means we will not be able to enforce our tax laws, except on wage earners, and we will not be able to enforce our laws against child traffickers, drug dealers, and those who violate our sanctions. The crypto bros have a lot of money. They make money by literally making money. They spread it around all of Washington. They had Sam Bankman-Fried do it. Now he is in jail, and others have stepped forward. They have a PR campaign. The Lakers don't play at ``enforce tax laws arena.'' They don't play at an arena dedicated to law enforcement. They play at Crypto.com Arena. In spite of all that money and power, three-quarters of Democrats voted ``no'' on this bill when it was before our committee. There are those who say they want clarity. We have clarity. The SEC has jurisdiction. What they really want is a patina of regulation, as little regulation as possible to claim to be regulated. Now, this bill would be bad enough if we were dealing with the original statute. I know a lot of my colleagues have had meetings in their offices, and they were told about this bill weeks ago or months ago. Some are leaning toward voting for it because they don't know that they dropped a new title in the bill just a few weeks ago. What does that new title do? Does it prohibit secret wallets, self- custody wallets? No. Does it outlaw the mixers whose sole purpose is to mix up law enforcement? No. What does this new title do? It defines an investment contract in a new way, designed to make this bill not just applicable to crypto, but it says our regular stocks and bonds can be put on blockchain and have no regulation from the SEC. It is a dagger at the hundred-trillion-dollar capital markets we have that finance our whole economy. It doesn't just say you are moving from the SEC's tough regulation to the CFTC's weak regulation. It allows crypto to get no regulation by defining themselves as an investment contract. This is a bill that will gut regulation of crypto and may gut regulation of all our capital markets, but it goes beyond that. Its ultimate purpose is to move forward with this cryptocurrency project. Right now, crypto is not a currency. There are very few purchases of goods with crypto. You can't buy a sandwich, but the very few times, as Mr. Casten pointed out, that crypto is used as a means of exchange, it is used by the worst criminals in the world. If crypto does become a currency, then we will not be able to enforce our other laws. Now, we have to understand every time a billionaire cheats on his taxes, a member of the Freedom Caucus earns his wings. The patriotic anarchists come forward and say we want a strong America and we want to destroy the power of the American Government. You can't have it both ways. This is a bill that in the short term means no regulation of crypto; not just lighter regulation under the CFTC but no regulation under their new title. It is a bill that could gut all securities regulation for the stocks and bonds that power the American economy. In the longer term, it creates a competitor to the U.S. dollar which has one advantage right in the name: hidden money. Hide your money from the IRS, from our sanctions enforcers, from everyone involved in the U.S. Government. Finally, crypto declares that it wants to partially displace the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chair, you have to understand how important it is. We, frankly, are not fiscally responsible in this House. We don't collect nearly as much in taxes as we spend in benefits. We are able to do that without too much harm because of the role of the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency. We have fiscal policies that would make Argentina blush, but we are able to do it. The crypto bros see the incredible amount of money and power the U.S. Government has by being the world's reserve currency and they say no. They want to appropriate that for themselves.

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chair, this amendment gives the illusion that it prevents the bill from being useful to our foreign adversaries when, in fact, we see Iran using crypto to avoid sanctions, North Korea profiting from crypto, and Hamas raising huge amounts of money and being able to sneak around our efforts by using crypto. Finally, we see the crypto advocates viewing this bill as their ticket to move crypto into a competitor with the U.S. dollar. With tomorrow's bill, they try to hobble the dollar by saying it can't be digital and we can't have a better payment system involving the dollar, and that is their system for having crypto outcompete the dollar. The administration opposes this bill. Even if you looked at it a few weeks ago, it has gotten much, much worse. I want to reemphasize that they added a new title that allows crypto to be completely unregulated and would allow for nonregulation of our stocks and bonds, so even if you liked this bill when you saw it 3 weeks ago, vote ``no.''

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chairman, this amendment illustrates the problem. A commodity other than a digital commodity, but any commodity can become a digital commodity, or you can have a contract or a derivative tied to the physical commodity that now becomes a digital coin. We are told that the bill does not allow stocks and bonds to be digital assets, but it does allow them to be defined as investment contracts. If you get defined as an investment contract, you are without regulation. As to the underlying bill, keep in mind, the administration opposes it, and three-quarters of Democrats voted against it before it got much worse. The bill got much worse a few weeks ago. If you studied it before then, and I know the bill has been out there since July of last year, your analysis won't show you how this bill now allows digital crypto to go without regulation and opens the door to taking our traditional stocks and bonds out from the SEC. Vote ``no'' on the amendment, but especially vote ``no'' on the bill.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, my pro-Israel efforts began long before my 28 years on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and I believe that my pro- Israel record is as long and as strong as any Member of this House. I rise to oppose this pseudo pro-Israel bill. It purports to deal with this issue of 2,000-pound bombs. As the ranking member has pointed out, suspensions occurred also under Reagan and Ford. More significantly, this is just a communicative act. It has no strategic significance. Israel already has such a large stockpile of 2,000-pound bombs and similar weapons that the administration is going to be providing many thousands of JDAM kits to turn those dumb bombs into smart bombs. The chair is working with several of us on a much better response to this suspension, and I look forward to that working its way through the committee. No one should be tempted to vote for this bill. There will be a better bill. This bill does nothing to help Israel strategically, but it attacks Israel at its two weakest points. The first is bipartisan support. Israel has one friend in the world. It cannot afford to have only one- half of one friend. We saw that bipartisan support when 85 percent of Democrats and 85 percent of Republicans voted to provide Israel with $14 billion of extraordinary aid, but this resolution has poison pills, including condemning Biden by name, in a clear effort to get as little Democratic support as possible. Second, this bill attacks Israel's international image. Israel, in fact, meets American international standards for minimizing civilian casualties, but what this bill does is it exempts Israel from the Leahy and similar laws, in effect declaring from this Congress to the world that Israel can't meet the standard. Israel is doing at least as good a job as any military in the history of urban warfare. The report from the Biden administration wasn't as clear as it should be on that but reached the right conclusion. Congress should not step forward and exempt Israel from a test that Israel clearly meets. That is poison on the international stage.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, over the past 8 weeks, my friends, Ken and Rowan, have peddled 3,500 miles across this country to address the national homeless crisis and to raise funds to provide homes. Founded 15 years ago in the San Fernando Valley, Hope the Mission has grown to become the largest rescue mission in the country, operating 23 interim housing shelters with 2,700 beds and serving over 3 million meals annually. Hope will be adding 11 new projects in 2025, including five permanent supportive housing sites. I might point out that they are able to provide these housing sites at less than a quarter of the cost done by local government in the Los Angeles area. Hope works to treat the unique needs of the housing insecure, operating shelter sites for families and for other victims of domestic violence, offering mental health services as well as shelter. Ken and Rowan have put their bodies on the line more than once, not only bicycling across the country, but they also lived for 4 days on the streets. They also lived for 4 days in a car, and they previously ran to Las Vegas from Los Angeles. I look forward to continuing to support Hope's efforts. I hope my colleagues, particularly in the Los Angeles area, do so as well. I am pleased to have secured $2 million for them for homeless services, another $2 million for mental health services, and just this year almost a million to provide modular affordable housing.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, the crypto industry comes before our committee almost every week saying: We want clarity. Then the SEC provides the clarity. Now, the friends of crypto are here to abolish the clarity, to not only take away release 121, which requires that the custodians of crypto indicate that on the balance sheet, but to prevent the SEC from issuing a revised version of 121 that could call for that same disclosure to be made in footnotes. It is very clear to me, as co-chair of the bipartisan CPA Caucus, that the financial statements must reflect the incredible risk that banks take when they become custodians of billions and hundreds of billions of dollars, supposedly, worth of crypto. Now, why the uniqueness of crypto? We have seen Sam Bankman-Fried. He was the face of crypto. He is now facing only a quarter century in jail, which seems rather light. The crypto industry would tell us that Sam Bankman-Fried was just a single snake in the crypto Garden of Eden. The fact is, we have learned since Sam Bankman-Fried's indictments that crypto is a garden of snakes. It is uniquely problematic. Why is that? Because crypto's whole purpose is to facilitate evading American law and to help criminals. Who does it attract? It attracts criminals. What is the comparative advantage that crypto has as it attempts to become a currency and partially displace the dollar and the euro? Is it more stable? Certainly not. Is it more useful to buy something? You can go to Rayburn and buy a sandwich for $1--well, okay, $8, but you can't buy a sandwich anywhere in this complex for a bitcoin. It is not a better medium of exchange. It is not a better measure of value. What advantage does it have? It is secret. Now, the best way to have their secrecy is to have the iceberg above the water be available and visible and then to have under the water seven-eighths of the crypto subject to being hidden from the know-your- customer and anti-money-laundering laws. So how can the crypto compete with the dollar, aspire to become a currency, and compete with the best currency in the world? By tapping into the markets that don't want to be surveilled by the U.S. Government. What are those? Obviously, the sanctions evaders, the drug dealers, and the human traffickers, but that is not a big enough market for crypto. They want the tax evasion market. The IRS Commissioner under Donald Trump testified that we are losing a trillion dollars in revenue. That means that those who are cheating on taxes, almost all at the high end of the spectrum, have to hide $3 trillion of income each and every year. That is $30 trillion of hidden income every decade. They can't do it with U.S. dollars, so crypto is designed to fill that need. Now, if you think it will be successful in doing that and you want to bet against America and facilitate the undermining of American laws while perhaps making a profit, you can buy crypto, but it is an asset whose very nature creates an additional risk. That risk needs to be shown in the financial statements of the custodian. This resolution would prevent the SEC from causing that to be disclosed either on the balance sheet or in the footnotes. If you doubt what the purpose is of crypto, then look at their latest invention: the mixer. What is the mixer? It is designed to mix up law enforcement. It is a facility available to every crypto owner to disguise their transactions and to hide from American law enforcement. Not only that, of course, crypto aspires and claims that they will partially displace the dollar as the reserve currency. If it does that, that will be a tremendous decline in America's power in the world and the American economy. So I see no reason for us to have rules that hide this risk from the shareholders of the custodian.

Mr. SHERMAN. I see no reason for us to hide from those who are looking at bank balance sheets the unique risk that they take in order to facilitate a crypto ecosystem whose sole purpose and whose strategy is to defeat the American Government whether it tries to collect taxes or enforce our sanctions. Mr. Speaker, if you have any doubt, look at what the proponents, the visionaries, behind crypto say. They say that they are innovative. They are trying to innovate a way to make sure that America cannot enforce its sanctions, cannot deal with drug dealers, cannot enforce its taxes, and, oh, by the way, particularly useful to Sam Bankman-Fried, cannot enforce its bankruptcy laws.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Speaker, I want to focus on the 40 percent of this bill that gets little or no attention. It provides $9.1 billion in humanitarian aid, and that aid is un-earmarked. So at a hearing last week, I got the administration to go on record as to where that money will be spent. It will be spent in Haiti where 80 percent of the capital is in the hands of gangs and hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee. It will be spent in Sudan where 18 million people face ``acute food insecurity'' due to civil war. It will be spent in Ethiopia, where we have seen the highest casualty war of this decade. Five hundred thousand Tigrayans have died, and now millions face famine. It will be spent in eastern Congo where 7 million people have been displaced by war. It will be spent on the 1.1 million Rohingya in camps, where they are due to ethnic cleansing by Myanmar, and where rations have recently been cut by 30 percent due to lack of funding. It will be spent in Armenia where 120,000 refugees are there because of Azerbaijan's ethnic cleansing. It will be spent to meet the critical needs in Gaza. This bill will save hundreds of thousands, I believe millions, of lives. Vote ``yes.'' Mr. Speaker, I commend President Biden for putting this whole package together back in October. It is time to pass it now.

Mr. SHERMAN

Mr. SHERMAN. Mr. Chair, I rise in opposition to the bill. It is not a good bill. We have some amendments that will make it slightly better, but it still won't be a good bill. All the Democrats on the Financial Services Committee voted against this bill in committee. Let's give a little background here. The gold standard is a public offering of securities. They then become registered securities. They can trade on an exchange. They provide disclosures to investors and audited financial statements. We do have exceptions to this rule--exceptions for small offerings and exceptions where you are going to have accredited investors who have the capacity to absorb an enormous amount of risk and the capacity to evaluate the investments. The definition of an accredited investor was criticized by the chair of the full committee when he was here, and I agree that definition should change. Right now, it is focused too much just on wealth and income. We need, instead, to also allow people to be accredited investors if they have the expertise to evaluate the investment and are not putting too much of their own resources into one illiquid investment. We also need to take a look at the expertise that an investor may not have himself or herself but can acquire through truly independent advisers. The fact is that the definition of accredited investor should be improved, and that is why this House passed and sent to the Senate bills that would improve it, and I hope the Senate will finally take action on those bipartisan pieces of legislation. This bill doesn't really improve the definition of accredited investor. It says that you are an accredited investor if you sign a piece of paper saying you want to be an accredited investor, self- certification. That shreds investor protection. This bill not only guts investor protection when it comes to the definition of accredited investor, but it also locks in a system in which a company can say they are a private company even though they have thousands of owners--thousands. You can have 2,000 or more owners because you may have an investment vehicle that has hundreds of investors of its own, and it counts as only one investor toward that 2,000. That means that a lot of companies will never go public. That means that those investors who want investor protection and want the liquidity of being able to sell their shares on an exchange will never be able to invest. It means that these companies will not provide the audited financial statements and the other disclosures that are required of public companies. It guts the concept of being a public company. Why is that so important? Because today, the SEC published climate disclosures required of public companies, and today, we are considering a bill that is designed to truncate the number of public companies that we have. If you care about the economy, vote ``no.'' If you want to protect investors, vote ``no.'' If you want to protect our climate, vote ``no.'' This bill would open the door to investors placing their entire nest eggs in private securities with insufficient transparency, no audited financial statements, and no liquidity. Vote ``no.''

Mr. SHERMAN. Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. SHERMAN. Madam Chair, in the debate on the bill in chief, the chair of the full committee correctly criticized the definition of accredited investor as it occurs under current law. Accredited investor is an important concept in securities law because, Madam Chair, when you have a private offering, one that hasn't gone through the SEC process, the amount that can be raised and the number of investors you can have are related to, in large part, how many of your investors are accredited. The current definition makes you an accredited investor if you earn over $200,000 a year or have a net worth of more than $1 million. Frankly, the fact that you have that level of income or that level of wealth does not show that you have particular expertise or that your adviser team has particular expertise. While it certainly shows that you are in a position to absorb a loss, no one can afford to absorb a loss of 100 percent of their net worth. We need a different definition of accredited investor, one that does not limit that status just to those who happen to be wealthy or have a high income. The bill before us here does provide that different definition by saying you are an accredited investor, first, if you acknowledge the risks that you are taking and, second, if you are investing less than 10 percent of your net worth in the securities offering so that you can afford a loss on what, after all, is a higher risk--as many people have pointed out--offering about which you get less information. The problem with the bill in chief using that 10 percent standard is twofold. First, it includes in your net worth your primary residence. If you happen to have a $1 million home, you could take out a $100,000 mortgage on it and invest all $100,000 in one relatively risky investment.

Mr. SHERMAN. You have literally bet your house on an investment that is of a type that is risky and where you get less information and where the investment is illiquid. That is not good investor protection. What this amendment does is it says, yes, we are going to look at what portion of your net worth you are investing, but we are going to take a look first at your net worth excluding your primary residence because very few people feel they can afford to lose their house; second, that you cannot invest more than 10 percent of your net worth in any single offering or more than 25 percent of your net worth in all these private offerings. Therefore, we look at wealth, excluding your home so you don't risk losing your home, and we look at not only how much you are investing in the particular investment, but how much you are investing overall. I want to correct one thing. This amendment limits it to, excluding your primary residence, 5 percent of your net worth on any one private offering, and no more than 25 percent of your net worth, excluding your primary residence, on all such private offerings. Madam Chair, I urge adoption of this amendment. I think it gives us a better definition of those who can afford the risks and the risk of liquidity that comes with these private investments. The risk of liquidity is there. You may think, well, I made an investment and it is going to pan out, but if you need the money and you can't liquidate the investment on a fair basis, it is almost as if the investment failed. Therefore, we are talking higher risk, less liquidity. We limit it under this amendment to 5 percent of your net worth on any one deal, 25 percent of your net worth on all such deals. Also, when we look at your net worth, we exclude your personal residence. These are not situations where you should be betting your home. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SHERMAN. Madam Chair, let me respond to those comments. The underlying bill acknowledges the fact that the government puts some restrictions on how much of your net worth you can put into one of these unregulated, risky, low-information, illiquid investments. Therefore, to say that we have clashed with some great principle of personal freedom in my amendment because it says 5 percent, but that it is consistent with the same great overriding principle of personal autonomy when you back a bill that says 10 percent, defies logic.