Lamar Smith

Mr. SMITH of Texas

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I am pleased to be an original cosponsor of H.R. 4362, the Stopping Tax Offenders and Prosecuting Identity Theft Act of 2012, with my good friend and colleague, the distinguished gentlewoman from Florida, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. This is a bipartisan bill that strengthens criminal penalties for tax return identity thieves. Tax fraud is a very real problem, and Congress should do all it can to protect citizens from this costly crime. Tax fraud through identity theft is a rapidly growing criminal enterprise in the United States. Criminals use stolen identities to steal income tax refunds from unsuspecting victims and from the Federal Government. With nothing more than stolen identity information--Social Security numbers and their corresponding names and birth dates--criminals have electronically filed thousands of false tax returns and have received hundreds of millions of dollars in wrongful refunds. The thieves deceive the Internal Revenue Service and file a return before the legitimate taxpayer files. The criminals then receive the refund, sometimes by check but often through a convenient but hard-to- trace prepaid debit card. The criminals then wait for the mail to deliver the cards and checks at abandoned addresses. According to reports in the media, postal workers have been harassed, robbed, and, in one case, murdered as they have made their rounds with their mail truck full of debit cards and master keys to mailboxes. Tax thieves victimize innocent taxpayers in a number of ways. These thieves will file fake returns under a false name or claim someone who is no longer living as a dependent on their own forms. Often, the fraud is not detected until an individual files a tax return that is rejected by the IRS because someone else has already falsely filed and claimed their return. The IRS has detected 940,000 fake returns for 2010 alone, from which identity thieves would have received $6.5 billion in refunds. And those are just the ones they caught early. It is estimated by the IRS that they missed an additional 1.5 million returns with possibly fraudulent refunds worth more than $5.2 billion. The number of these cases has increased by approximately 300 percent every year since 2008. H.R. 4362 is a bipartisan bill that strengthens criminal penalties for tax return identity thieves. It adds tax return fraud to the list of predicate offenses for aggravated identity theft and expands the definition of an ``identity theft victim'' to include businesses and charitable organizations. H.R. 4362 also improves coordination between the Justice Department and State and local law enforcement officials in order to better protect groups that are most vulnerable to tax fraud from becoming future victims. The changes to Federal law proposed by H.R. 4362 are important to keep pace with this ever-increasing crime. Tax identity theft costs American families and taxpayers millions of dollars each year. It also results in confusion and needless worry, as taxpayers must work to correct the ID problem created by the false filers. It is critical that we take further steps to reduce the number of people who are victimized by this crime. Again, I want to thank Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for her great work on this issue, and I urge my colleagues to join me in support of H.R. 4362. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Texas

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), former chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the sponsor of this legislation.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 3796, as amended, currently under consideration.

Mr. SMITH of Texas

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time on this side and reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Texas

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

Mr. SMITH of Texas

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1950) to enact title 54, United States Code, ``National Park System'', as positive law, as amended.

Mr. SMITH of Texas

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 1550, the Federal Law Enforcement Recruitment and Retention Act of 2012, was introduced by my friend and colleague on the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Pierluisi of Puerto Rico. It helps focus the Justice Department's law enforcement efforts on the areas of the country that need them the most. Crime in the United States began to rise sharply in the 1960s and continued up to its peak in the early 1990s. In response, Congress and the States reformed their criminal laws to include tougher penalties and truth-in-sentencing laws, and they dedicated additional resources to target the rising crime rate. To a great extent, our national focus on crime has been successful. The national violent crime rate in 2010 was almost half of what it was in 1991, and crime in the United States has continued to fall in spite of difficult economic times. The violent crime rate fell 5 percent from 2008 to 2009, and another 5 percent from 2009 to 2010. Despite this good news, we are far from a solution to the problem of violent crime in all areas of the country. There are still areas where violent crime remains a very serious issue and is even on the rise. For example, in my district, the number of murders in the city of Austin nearly doubled in 1 year, going from 22 homicides in 2009 to 38 homicides in 2010. Puerto Rico, home to the sponsor of this bill, has experienced an increase in drug-related violent crime. With more than 1,100 deaths in 2011, the homicide rate in Puerto Rico last year was more than five times the national average. The majority of this violence is attributed to the area's growing drug trafficking trade, which has implications, of course, for mainland U.S. The problem with high-crime areas may increase if there are not sufficient Federal law enforcement officers in these communities. To address this situation, the Justice Department started to dispatch surges of Federal law enforcement officers to prevent and investigate crime in high-crime cities like Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Oakland, California. H.R. 1550 continues this momentum. It directs the Department of Justice to consider, in coordination with State and local governments, the need to recruit, assign, and retain Federal law enforcement personnel in areas of the country with high rates of homicides and other violent crimes, which of course should include Puerto Rico. H.R. 1550 has bipartisan support and has been endorsed by the law enforcement community. The bill was reported out of the Judiciary Committee on a voice vote, and once again I want to thank Mr. Pierluisi for sponsoring this legislation. H.R. 1550 improves the safety of the many Americans who live in fear of violent crime in their neighborhoods. So I urge my colleagues to support the bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Texas

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. SMITH of Texas

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 30 seconds to respond to a question that the gentleman from Michigan posed a few minutes ago. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to include for the Record an article from earlier this year that appeared in The Economist magazine. This is a magazine that is one of the oldest, most respected sources of news and analysis, and it is favorably disposed toward the Obama administration. But it published an article detailing how the Obama administration systematically manipulates the cost-benefit analysis in agency rulemaking. This manipulation deliberately inflates benefits and minimizes the cost, the article says. The Economist goes so far as to call the administration's cost-benefit analysis ``highly suspect'' and ``subject to the whims of the people in power.'' [From the Economist, Feb. 18, 2012] Measuring the Impact of Regulation The rule of more--Rule-making is being made to look more beneficial under Barack Obama Washington, DC: In December Barack Obama trumpeted a new standard for mercury emissions from power plants. The rule, he boasted, would prevent thousands of premature deaths, heart attacks and asthma cases. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reckoned these benefits were worth up to $90 billion a year, far above their $10 billion-a-year cost. Mr. Obama took a swipe at past administrations for not implementing this ``common-sense, cost-effective standard''. A casual listener would have assumed that all these benefits came from reduced mercury. In fact, reduced mercury explained none of the purported future reduction in deaths, heart attacks and asthma, and less than 0.01% of the monetary benefits. Instead, almost all the benefits came from concomitant reductions in a pollutant that was not the principal target of the rule: namely, fine particles. The minutiae of how regulators calculate benefits may seem arcane, but matters a lot. When businesses complain that Mr. Obama has burdened them with costly new rules, his advisers respond that those costs are more than justified by even higher benefits. His Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), which vets the red tape spewing out of the federal apparatus, reckons the ``net benefit'' of the rules passed in 2009-10 is greater than in the first two years of the administrations of either George Bush junior or Bill Clinton. But those calculations have been criticised for resting on assumptions that yield higher benefits and lower costs. One of these assumptions is the generous use of ancillary benefits, or ``co-benefits'', such as reductions in fine particles as a result of a rule targeting mercury. Mr. Obama's advisers note that co-benefits have long been included in regulatory cost-benefit analysis. The logic is sound. For instance, someone may cycle to work principally to save money on fuel, parking or bus fares, but also to get more exercise. Both sorts of benefit should be counted. The controversy arises from the overwhelming role that co- benefits play in assessing Mr. Obama's rule-making. Fully two-thirds of the benefits of economically significant final rules reviewed by OIRA in 2010 were thanks to reductions in fine particles brought about by regulations that were actually aimed at something else, according to Susan Dudley of George Washington University, who served in OIRA under George Bush (see chart). That is double the share of co- benefits reported in Mr. Bush's last year in office in 2008. If reducing fine particles is so beneficial, it would surely be more transparent and efficient to target them directly. As it happens, federal standards for fine-particle concentrations already exist. But the EPA routinely claims additional benefits from reducing those concentrations well below levels the current law considers safe. That is dubious: a lack of data makes it much harder to know the effects of such low concentrations. Another criticism of the Obama administration's approach is its heavy reliance on ``private benefits''. Economists typically justify regulation when private market participants, such as buyers and sellers of electricity, generate costs--such as pollution-- that the rest of society has to bear. But fuel and energy- efficiency regulations are now being justified not by such social benefits, but by private benefits like reduced spending on fuel and electricity. Private benefits have long been used in cost-benefit analysis but Ms. Dudley's data show that, like co-benefits, their importance has grown dramatically under Mr. Obama. Ted Gayer of the Brookings Institution notes that private benefits such as reduced fuel consumption and shorter refuelling times account for 90% of the $388 billion in lifetime benefits claimed for last year's new fuel-economy standards for cars and light trucks. They also account for 92% and 70% of the benefits of new energy-efficiency standards for washing machines and refrigerators respectively. The values placed on such private benefits are highly suspect. If consumers were really better off with more efficient cars or appliances, they would buy them without a prod from government. The fact that they don't means they put little value on money saved in the future, or simply prefer other features more. Mr. Obama's OIRA notes that a growing body of research argues that consumers don't always make rational choices; Mr. Gayer counters that regulators do not make appropriate use of that research in their calculations. Under Mr. Obama, rule-makers' assumptions not only enhance the benefits of rules but also reduce the costs. John Graham of Indiana University, who ran OIRA under Mr. Bush, cites the new fuel-economy standards as an example. They assume that electric cars have no carbon emissions, although the electricity they use probably came from coal. They also assume less of a ``rebound effect''--the tendency of people to drive more when their cars get better mileage--than was the case under Mr. Bush. Mr. Bush's administration was sometimes accused of the opposite bias: understating benefits and overstating costs. At one point his EPA considered assigning a lower value to reducing the risk of death for elderly people since they had fewer years left to live; it eventually backed down. Mr. Obama's EPA has considered raising the value of cutting the risk of death by cancer on the ground that it is a more horrifying way to die than others. More consistent cost-benefit analysis would reduce such controversies. Michael Greenstone of the Hamilton Project, a liberal-leaning research group, thinks that could be done through the creation of a non-partisan congressional oversight body using the best evidence available to vet regulations, much as the Congressional Budget Office vets fiscal policy. It would also re-evaluate old regulations to see if the original analysis behind them was still valid. Rule-making would still require judgment, but it would be less subject to the whims of the people in power. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Griffin), a member of the Judiciary Committee and the sponsor of the legislation we consider today.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor), the distinguished majority leader.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake), who is a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Reed), who is a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Garrett), who is the vice chairman of the Budget Committee.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. I have no idea whether we have more or fewer regulations than other countries. I do know this: we have far more regulations today than we had 3 years ago. And I also know that the Obama administration has set a new record in the number of expensive, unnecessary regulations that it has suggested and implemented. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Coble), a senior member of the Judiciary Committee and the chairman of the Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. If the gentleman would yield to me, I would be happy to try to respond.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Amodei), who is a member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Quayle), a member of the Judiciary Committee and the sponsor of the Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act, which is a part of this legislation.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Ross), who is a member of the Judiciary Committee and a sponsor of the RAPID Act, which is a part of this legislation.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, America's economic recovery remains sluggish, with the national unemployment rate above 8 percent for over 40 months. The President promised that his $800 billion spending bill would keep unemployment under 8 percent. Instead, the spending bill only added to the deficit, which has doubled under this administration. More than 12 million Americans are out of work, 700,000 more than when President Obama took office; and the median income of American families has dropped too. The President's economic policies have failed, and his regulatory policies have made the economy worse. A recent Gallup poll found that among the 85 percent of U.S. small businesses that are not hiring, nearly half cited ``being worried about new government regulations'' as the reason. President Obama has turned America into a regulation Nation. A Heritage Foundation study found that in his first 3 years in office, President Obama implemented 106 major rules that imposed $46 billion in additional annual regulatory costs on the private sector. That's a new record. The President promised in his 2011 State of the Union address to fix ``rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses,'' but he has gone in the opposite direction. We need to encourage businesses to expand, not tie them up with red tape. Today, Congress continues to fight the constricting red tape that comes from Washington by offering commonsense solutions that deserve bipartisan support. And that's what we do today. Members of the Judiciary Committee introduced three of the titles in the Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act. Mr. Griffin's Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act gives small businesses a much- needed break from new regulations that cost the economy $100 million or more until the unemployment rate stabilizes at 6 percent. The Freeze Act is narrowly tailored to stop unnecessary economically significant regulations. It contains reasonable exceptions, such as health and safety, criminal or civil rights laws, trade agreements, and national security. The Freeze Act gives job creators confidence about future regulatory conditions, which will encourage them to make the investments that will jump-start our economy. The RAPID Act, introduced by the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Ross), helps to create jobs as it streamlines the Federal environmental review and permitting process. It draws upon established definitions and concepts from existing regulations and even from the administration's own recommendations. Employers and investors can't move forward without necessary permits and without confidence in the process. The RAPID Act establishes reasonable, predictable deadlines for agencies to complete the permit review process and for lawsuits to be filed afterwards. The Sunshine for Regulatory Decrees and Settlements Act, introduced by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Quayle), ends the abuse of consent decrees and settlements to require more regulations. For many years, regulatory advocates and agencies have used consent decrees and settlements to establish new rules in secrecy, outside the regular rule-making procedures that provide for transparency and public participation. The ``sue and settle'' approach has enabled agencies to impose higher costs and avoid accountability since they can claim ``the court made us do it.'' Mr. Quayle's legislation makes sure that the public and those affected by regulations have a say in these decrees and settlements. It also requires greater judicial scrutiny and helps to prevent an outgoing administration from unfairly setting its successor's agenda through consent decrees. These and all of the titles of the Red Tape Reduction and Small Business Job Creation Act provide needed relief to small businesses. Economic growth depends on job creators, not Federal regulators. This legislation frees up businesses to spend more, invest more, and produce more in order to create more jobs for American workers. I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense bill. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SMITH of Texas

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentlewoman from Minnesota (Mrs. Bachmann), who is a member of the Financial Services Committee and the Intelligence Committee.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lungren), who is a distinguished and senior member of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. SMITH of Texas. Mr. Speaker, we're prepared to close on this side, so I reserve the balance of my time.