Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, if you live in a 5-year floodplain or a 10-year floodplain or even a 25-year floodplain, you can reasonably expect to have a flood every 5 years, every 10 years, every 25 years. But when you live in a 500-year floodplain, you cannot prepare for it. You do not buy insurance for a disaster that occurs every 500 years. This is what has happened in North Carolina. People have been hit by an incident that can reasonably be expected never to occur again in our lifetimes, not again for 500 years. So we need the kind of response in this body to an incident and in a way that demonstrates that we are responding once every 500 years. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank these colleagues for bringing this resolution to the floor, and talk about the resolution for a little bit. The resolution is three pages long. Most of the first two pages talk about the devastation that has occurred. I want my colleagues to zero in on the last four lines of this resolution, because that is where we make our 500-year commitment to these people. It says that we pledge to support to continue to work on the people's behalf to restore normalcy to their lives, and to renew their spirits by helping them to recover, rebuild, and reconstruct. Now, we can express all the sympathy that we want to, and that is important in this context. But this is the four lines that we make our commitment in, and it would be a mistake for any of my colleagues to come and support this resolution simply out of a political motivation to get some brownie points if they are not serious about living up to the last four lines of the resolution.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding this time to me, and I wanted to just bring to the attention of my colleagues a concern that I have about this bill that is a little bit different than the concern that has been expressed during the primary debate on the bill, and I bring this to the attention of my colleagues not to diminish the value of the debate that has occurred. It is very important that this bill not undercut the right to choose either directly or indirectly or by implication. But there is another concern about this bill that I think we have lost sight of and that my colleagues who came riding into Congress on the States rights horse have lost sight of. Unfortunately, when they start to talk about abortion issues and issues of this kind, they lose sight of the fact that we operate in a Federal form of government under which certain rights are reserved to the States, and for the Federal Government to exercise jurisdiction in a particular area, there has to be some particular Federal nexus involved. Under this bill my colleagues would have us believe that because the Federal law and the Federal Government has an interest in protecting, for example, Federal law enforcement officials, that that same interest would expand to protecting a fetus or an unborn child in the womb of that Federal law enforcement official. The nexus for protecting Federal law enforcement officials is the fact that they are Federal law enforcement officials, and we as a Federal Government, therefore, have a vested interest and a constitutional right to protect them. We cannot take that same constitutional right that the Federal Government has and take it to the next level. So in this case that has been talked about over and over and over in North Carolina, they would have us believe that because the mother was protected under Federal law when she was driving down the street in North Carolina, the child of the mother should have the same Federal protection. In fact, it is the State law that we have to look to to protect the interests of the unborn child or the child in that case just as we could not extend Federal law to protect a born child or a passenger in that car with the mother. We do not have the right in our Federal system to extend Federal law willy nilly, and there is simply no basis in a lot of the instances that this bill covers under Federal law for exercising jurisdiction. Mr. Chairman, I would encourage my colleagues to oppose the bill for that reason.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the Chair of our subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Canady), would have us believe that this is a technical amendment. It is not. It is a very substantive amendment, and we should be aware of that. The chairman of our subcommittee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Canady), would have us believe that the Committee on Armed Services waived jurisdiction over this bill because it thought it was an uncontroversial bill. The truth of the matter is that there is a whole section of this bill which has never, ever, been debated in any committee of this House. The bill came to the Committee on the Judiciary. We had a debate on a part of the bill that was under the Committee on the Judiciary's jurisdiction. We exercised our rights to debate that part. We tried to offer amendments to the part of the bill that was under the jurisdiction of the Committee on Armed Services. We were denied that right in the Committee on the Judiciary on the parliamentary ruling that we did not have jurisdiction over that part of the bill. Now, on the floor of the House, after the Committee on Armed Services has decided not to take jurisdiction over the bill and consider amendments in the committee, we are here on the floor of the House making major substantive changes to this bill. Now, what does this amendment do? It says an offense under this section does not require proof that, one, the person engaging in the conduct had knowledge or should have had knowledge that the victim of the underlying offense was pregnant. That means if you kill an unborn fetus, you do not even have to know there was a fetus in the womb. You do not have to have any kind of intent. There is no criminal law in this country that ought to be passed that gives that right. If we are going to pass it in this House, at least we ought to have jurisdiction in a committee; and a committee ought to take up the bill and debate it in the committee. We ought not use the processes of the House to our advantage and say, well, this is a parliamentary ruling, we cannot deal with it in the Committee on the Judiciary, and then tell the Committee on Armed Services, well, we do not want you to deal with it over there, and then try to accomplish the same thing that should have been done in committee on the floor of the House. Mr. Chairman, this is just patently wrong. The proper thing to do would be to send this bill back to one of these two committees, and if we are going to make substantive changes to the bill, major policy changes, I might add, to make those changes in the committee. Now, there are some people from the Committee on Armed Services I am sure that are getting ready to jump up and say, yes, we support this. But what about the other people on the Committee on Armed Services? Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, as masterful as the chairman who spoke on behalf of the Committee on Armed Services is, he cannot speak for the Committee on Armed Services. We bring a major substantive change to this bill to the floor, give it 10 minutes of debate, 5 minutes per side; never has been in the Committee on Armed Services. The chairman of the committee comes out and says I am here to speak for the committee. What about all the other people on the Committee on Armed Services? When are they going to have an opportunity to weigh in on this major substantive provision to this bill? That is what I am talking about when I say we have subverted the processes of this House using parliamentary procedures. Basically, what we have done is deprive the minority of the Committee on Armed Services of the right to weigh in on this important issue. The chairman waived jurisdiction. They did not bring it into the committee, and they did not do anything. There are 60 Members. Fifty-nine of them have not spoken.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I am not a member of the Committee on Appropriations or the Committee on the Budget, and seldom do I come to the floor to speak on appropriations or budget matters. And I would not be here this afternoon but for the fact that I was sitting in my office watching the debate on the previous resolution that was passed. And that resolution was one where we are pledging to not spend any of the Social Security surplus in this year's appropriations process when I know full well that the appropriations bills that are on the table now have already done that. And so one of the Members asked the question, Well, what harm does this resolution do? And I just could not sit there any longer and be quiet in the face of absolute dishonesty with the American people. If there is one thing we have an obligation to do, it seems to me, is to at least say to the American people the truth about what we are doing. Otherwise, this House and every Member of this House loses integrity. It seems to me that, while this may not be germane to the rule that we are debating now or to the appropriations bills that will be coming forward, certainly we should be honest with the American people and tell them the truth about what we are doing.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher) for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I want to tell the gentleman from Virginia how much of a pleasure it has been to try to work toward something that accommodates his concerns and accommodates my concerns. I believe that this amendment, while it does not go all the way to the point that I was trying to get us to, reaches a reasonable balance between the two approaches. It at least does not allow somebody to walk in off the street, unknown to the litigation, and pick it up and move it. One has to be a named class representative or a named plaintiff to move it before they have the right to remove, and I think this accomplishes that purpose. I would encourage my colleagues to support the substitute; and if the substitute passes, then obviously that would take precedence over the underlying amendment which I have offered.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I have already expressed my opposition to this bill for a number of reasons, and in the opening debate I also alluded to some internal drafting concerns that I have about the bill. One of those drafting concerns is that the bill allows someone who purports to be a member of a class to come in and remove a case to Federal court before that person is even determined to be a member of the class; before there is a class certification. The purpose of this amendment is simply to strike two words from the bill. The relevant provision in the bill says this section shall apply to any class action before or after the entry of any order certifying a class. All my amendment would seek to do is to strike two words, ``before or,'' so that at least a person would have to be determined to be a member of the class before that person could pick the lawsuit up and move it to the Federal court. I am not sure what the objective was to give somebody who is not even determined to be a party to the litigation the right to pick a lawsuit up and move it when they have not even had any role in the case up to that point. So I would encourage my colleagues to support this amendment, although I understand that there may be a substitute for it which I hope I can be supportive of. Amendment Offered by Mr. Boucher as a Substitute for Amendment No. 7 Offered by Mr. Watt of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, let me make several points, as many points as my time will allow me to make, about this bill, and encourage my colleagues to vote against this proposal. First of all, I practiced law for a number of years before I ever thought about running for Congress. There is just a basic fairness argument that I think we all need to be aware of. If a plaintiff is injured, he goes and hires a lawyer, they cultivate, research, put together a case, decide where the appropriate place is to litigate that case, spend months and months preparing for the case, file the case. Two days later somebody who has done absolutely nothing to get that case to trial under this bill has the ability to walk in and move that case to another forum. There is something patently unfair about that. I just want us to focus on that. The second point I would make is that in 1994, when my Republican colleagues came riding into the House, one of the principles that they gave major lip service to was the whole notion that there was too much going on at the Federal level, that we needed to decentralize government, that our whole system of Federalism was in jeopardy, and we needed to return power to the States. Time after time after time since 1994 we have seen our Republican colleagues say, well, we do not like the result that we got at the State level, so let us federalize this and let us just take it over, an absolute erosion of States' rights in the criminal law area. In the area of tort reform they have tried to do it, in the area of juvenile law they have tried to do it. We do not even have a juvenile court, a juvenile judge, a juvenile counselor, and yet, we have tried to federalize juvenile law, and the people who are behind that are the very same people who in 1994 were railing and rhetorically saying, this is terrible, to federalize all this stuff. We need to be returning rights and responsibilities to the most local level, to the State level, the local level, the individual level. Here we are again in this matter trying to bring something else into a Federal court. The third point I want to make, the Federal courts are hopelessly backlogged. They cannot handle the business that they are doing now. We cannot get the Senate to confirm enough people to fill the vacancies that exist on the Federal bench. Even if they did fill them, there would not be enough judicial power to handle all of these cases. Yet, here we are in our infinite wisdom saying that the Federal courts know better; the State law, the Federal law, we know everything at this level. This is absolutely contrary to the horse that my colleagues rode into this House on, the States' rights horse. We should not sanction this. It is just a bad idea. The final point I want to make, and I will talk about this a little bit more in the context of an amendment that I have to offer, is that even if this were a good idea, this bill is so badly drafted, there are some irrationalities in the drafting of the bill, that we are going to try to correct some of them during the course of the debate, and hopefully we will get some of those things worked out. But there are some just severe unintended, or maybe they are intended. I never know whether my colleagues are accomplishing things that they intend or accomplishing things they do not intend, since they told me they intended to preserve States' rights, and they keep cutting the legs from under it.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Jackson-Lee amendment, but both the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson- Lee) and Mr. Nadler's amendment really point up the problem with this legislation and what happens when we do not have a central principle that controls when you are going to be in Federal court and when you are going to be in State court and opens you up to efforts to try to pick out one industry or the other and exempt them or not exempt them. The problem is that there is no central core principle here. We have left the central core principle that our constitutional framework gave to us. That principle says if there is not something in the Constitution that gives a matter to the Federal Government, that matter is reserved to the States. That is what the constitutional principle is. Once we start to stray away from that constitutional principle, then we do not have a central principle that we are operating from anymore and then we get subjected to this kind of let us make this exception because we do not like this industry or make that exception because we do not like that industry. And we end up with a hodgepodge of jurisdictional standards for when one can get in the State court and when one can get in the Federal court. Now we have had a long-standing diversity jurisdiction principle that has been at play for years and years and years. It says when someone can get into Federal court; and because the supporters of this legislation do not like that, they start to make exceptions to that principle. And because then people who do not like particular industries do not like that exception then they start making exceptions to the exception, and that is what we are engaged in right now. The underlying bill is an exception to a long-standing principle. The amendments of the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) want to make an exception to the exception, and none of it makes sense. So what we ought to do is reject the exception to the exception, the Jackson-Lee and the Nadler amendments and any other carve-outs that somebody comes to the floor with during the course of this debate. More importantly, we ought to reject the underlying bill which is an exception to the generally-accepted rules that we are operating under because then we do not have a central principle if we do not reject the underlying bill. That is really where we ought to end up on this piece of legislation. So that is why I am rising in opposition to the exception to the exception, but I am also rising in opposition to the bill which is an exception to the rule, and that rule is that if we did not give it to the Federal Government then it is reserved to the State governments, and that is the principle that we ought to be controlled by.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Scott amendment and want to applaud my colleague for bringing this amendment forward again this year. Mr. Chairman, for those who have voted against the amendment in the past, they may have done it because they thought they needed more prisons. But understand that the crime rate in most States is down and the need for more prison space is down, so that even for those people who supported this program from which the funds would be transferred in the past, who thought they had a rational basis for it, in many communities jail construction and prison construction has just become an employment program now. Mr. Chairman, let me assure Members that the places to which the money is being transferred under this amendment would employ people also. So we are down to a choice between whether we build some more prisons, which are not needed, even if you think being harder on crime is important and has played an effective role in reducing crime. Once that effective role is played, then you eliminate the need for the money to have additional prison space, because during the time when the crime rate was on the incline, going up, we built a lot of prison beds and prison space in this country, and now that the crime rate is going down, we have got more than we really need. So we cannot even justify it, even if you claim to prefer to be hard on crime. In fact, it would be better if you did not support these prevention programs to which the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) is proposing to transfer the money. It would actually be better to just void the program out and put the money in debt reduction than it would be to continue to spend the money on a program serving no useful purpose. But that is not what I am advocating. I am advocating transferring the funds, as the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) has proposed in his amendment. Now, why am I doing that? First of all, the gentleman is transferring $50 million of the funds to the Boys and Girls Programs. Why do we want to do that? Because what we understand is that the period of time from the time that kids get out of school to the time that these working parents who have to work to sustain this economic boom that we are having, unemployment is down and jobs are up so more people are working, the time that most of the crime occurs among young people in this country is the period between the end of school and the time that their parents come home. When is the most effective time and the most need for the Boys and Girls Club? What purpose do they serve? They fill this time void between the end of school and the time that their parents come home with constructive, important activities that are very positive, and that is why this program is so successful and so much needed. It transfers $37.3 million to the prison drug treatment program. Now, why does the gentleman do that? Because, again, this is an effective program. What we have been doing is putting people in jail because of drug use or drug sales. They go in the jail with a drug habit, and they serve their time and they come right back out, still addicted to drugs, with no drug treatment while they were in prison. We had a captive audience of people who were addicted, and we did nothing about it during that period of time. One of the most cost effective things we could do is to treat people while we have them as a captive audience.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I will wrap-up. I just want to address this third thing that we are doing with the money under the Scott amendment. The gentleman is transferring $50 million to the Drug Court Program. Now, I can tell you, because I have a Drug Court in my Congressional District, I have several Drug Courts in my Congressional District, and what they are doing is they are intervening with people who come in to the court system for drug offenses and they are being proactive with them. They are identifying the problems they have of addiction. They are getting them into treatment programs. They are making sure that when somebody comes into that drug program, the Drug Court, they are not processed through the system without having their problem dealt with. So what you see is this reduced recidivism, which, again, has contributed to the reduction in crime and the reduced need for prison space. This is just a wonderful, good amendment, and we all ought to be supportive of it. I urge my colleagues to support this wonderful amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I am observing this debate in somewhat disbelief. About 25, 30 years ago, when I was a young lawyer just starting to practice law in North Carolina, I tried the first carpal tunnel syndrome case under the North Carolina workers compensation law. Ever since that time, in North Carolina, carpal tunnel has been recognized as a compensable workers compensation injury in North Carolina. It comes as a substantial surprise to me that my colleagues who say that they are using the States as laboratories on many issues are now back here 25 or 30 years later questioning whether carpal tunnel and other ergonomic injuries are even workplace injuries. It strikes me that, if a number of people were getting sick in a plant, and we did not know exactly the best way to solve the problem of keeping them from getting sick, maybe we should write some regulations and not pass any kind of safety rules to address the situation in the interim. That is what my Republican colleagues seem to be suggesting here. I am not opposed to the study that is being done. But what I do wonder is, what happens between now and the time the study is completed. Why should the American workers not be protected when we know that they are walking into these workplace situations, engaging in repetitive motion activities, developing carpal tunnel syndrome and other kinds of ergonomic injuries; and we should just turn around and walk away and pretend that this is not happening. This is an unbelievable, unreal debate that we are having here on this bill. It is like we want the perfect to be the enemy of the good. Because the department had not written the perfect set of regulations to deal with this issue, we want to delay any kind of regulations when we know full well that these injuries are caused by repetitive motion and workplace conditions. This is an unreal debate that can only be engaged in in a Congress that has no acknowledgment of the rights of working people. Over 650,000 workers were injured last year by repetitive motion and ergonomic-related injuries. The bulk of those were women who sit at a desk or do some repetitive motion kind of activity, and they do it over and over and over again. We are going to penalize those people trying to say that we ought to hold off on writing any kind of regulations until we can get a perfect set of regulations. We can revise a regulation at any point in the process. It is not a big deal. We revise regulations all the time in the Federal Government. So what is the problem with putting some regulations in place, operating under those, allowing the study to be completed, and then, if necessary, in response to that study, revising the regulations to make them better? We cannot afford in this situation to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. I urge my colleagues not to engage in this unbelievable kind of activity and slam against the working people of this country to vote against this bill and let us get on with some real business of the country.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, most of the debate up to this point has been focused on the issue of privacy. That is, in fact, an important issue as we move forward to modernize financial services. We have to assure the protection of the privacy of consumers' financial and medical records. I want to direct my colleagues' attention to paragraph 2 of the motion to instruct and rise in support of the motion to instruct conferees, because that paragraph gets to the heart of what financial modernization is about. We are instructing the conferees to ensure that we come back with a bill that ensures consumers enjoy the benefits of comprehensive financial modernization legislation, that provides robust competition, and equal and nondiscriminatory access to financial services and economic opportunities in their communities. As we move forward in this process, we are modernizing financial services, but we have to keep in mind that this is for the benefit of consumers and communities. Let us support the motion to instruct for that reason.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the rule. Sometimes we have to make tough choices, and if I were put to a choice under this bill of choosing to keep jobs in North Carolina or send them to Africa, that would be a wonderful choice that I would have to make. Unfortunately, because the Committee on Rules did not make in order the amendment authored by the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), the choice is not that, but the choice is whether I keep jobs in the textile and apparel industry in North Carolina or create a platform in Africa for Asian and Eastern markets. So I think this rule is unfair. We should have been allowed to debate this issue on the floor. I encourage my colleagues to oppose it.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I want to start by complimenting all the parties to this debate and on both sides. We have been at this for a good while in the subcommittee, in the full committee and now on the floor. While I rise in opposition to this bill, I would note that many of my colleagues of all political persuasions and many of my friends of all political persuasions are supporting this bill which should give Members and the public some indication of how difficult an issue this is. My opposition to the bill is based on several different factors. First of all, I believe this bill is of uncertain constitutionality. The earlier religious protection law that the Supreme Court struck down as having constitutional problems is addressed in this bill by tying this particular bill to the commerce clause. In effect, it gives us the jurisdiction to do what we are doing under this bill by virtue of a connection to the commerce clause. The problem with that is that it seems to me that that benefits larger, more established religions who tend to operate in interstate commerce at the expense of more localized private religious groups who tend to not operate in interstate commerce. The irony of this is that many of the people who are advocating that the commerce clause should cover this kind of activity and action are the very same people that are saying that the Federal Government should stay out of a number of different things and that the commerce clause does not cover these things and give the Federal courts and the Federal Government jurisdiction over these matters. I think on the commerce clause issue, while it is an ingenious way to bootstrap our way into hoping that the Supreme Court will not strike this down, I think it has its limitations and problems. Second, this bill is of uncertain interaction with other civil rights bills and civil rights laws. I am sure that people are going to be advocating on both sides of this, either that it overrules civil rights laws or that it does not overrule civil rights laws. The truth of the matter is that we do not know. But I am personally and on behalf of my constituents not prepared to take a gamble with this. I do not think we can simply pass a law that could be interpreted to place religion over race or religion over other civil rights and give religion a more important place in our jurisprudence than we give to other civil rights laws. I simply do not believe we can do that. I think the gentleman from New York's amendment would address that, but I have not seen any inclination yet on the part of the supporters of this bill to be supportive of the gentleman from New York's amendment. I want to come back to that briefly at the end of my discussions. The third reason that I have concerns about this bill is that it will give the Federal Government substantially more control and involvement in local zoning and land use decisions. This is something that we have historically reserved to local and State governments. Yet many of the very people who have said that this is something that is sacrosanct, that should be decided at the local levels, the advocates of States rights, so to speak, are some of the people who are advocating that we now put a national standard in this bill having to do with land use decisions. I think that is a problem. Finally, I want to address the people who continue to say, especially like my good friend the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Edwards) who says, ``We're going to fix the concerns that we have about this bill, about civil rights and other civil rights issues, in conference,'' that this consideration of this bill has been going on for a long, long time. There has been no inclination to address that problem. That is why the gentleman from New York, who was one of the original cosponsors of this bill, is now on the floor of the United States House offering an amendment to address the problem. That problem needs to be addressed now. Otherwise, this bill should not warrant our support. I encourage my colleagues to oppose this bill in its current form.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Nadler amendment and want to encourage my colleagues to support the amendment. The thing that is really interesting about the debate on the Nadler amendment is how everybody seems to be claiming to be on the same side. The proponents of the underlying bill say, ``Oh, no, we are not trying to trump civil rights laws.'' The gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) says, ``Oh, no, we are not trying to trump religious use protection.'' And then we have people really claiming to be achieving the same objective, protecting religious freedom and protecting civil rights laws. The problem is those same people started out together, and they have been together all along during this process. The gentleman from New York has been trying to get the proponents of the bill to accept his amendment from the very beginning. He has gone through different iterations of it, revisions of it, and here we are on the floor of the House with everybody still saying they support the same objective: ``We do not want to undo civil right laws,'' they say, ``but we are not going to support the Nadler amendment to make that clear.'' Well, there is a third version. There is the NAACP Legal Defense Fund saying that the amendment of the gentleman from New York does not go far enough. I happen to agree with the Legal Defense Fund in its assessment, but I will tell my colleagues what I am prepared to do. Since everybody says they would like to work this out in the conference committee, and everybody is trying to achieve the same objective, I have decided that I will support the Nadler amendment and I will vote for the bill if the Nadler amendment is adopted and we can continue to work on this in conference. The problem that I have is the people who keep telling me this is going to work itself out in conference are the people who have not given one inch, one word throughout the whole discussion of this process. We need to adopt this amendment and pass the bill; or, if we reject the amendment, we need to vote against the bill.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes. Madam Chairman, this amendment is noncontroversial, I believe, and I hope that there is no opposition to it. In this day in which we are moving toward allowing banks and insurance companies and securities companies to come together into one corporation, the concern that I hear more often than any other concern as I talk to constituents is a concern that when they go to borrow money from a bank, that bank will require them as a condition of getting the loan to use other services that are being brought into this umbrella such as requiring them to purchase insurance from a subsidiary of the bank or an affiliate of the bank, and of course that would be extremely unfair and put the customer at a disadvantage and would put the financial institution at a substantial advantage if they could require as a condition of getting a loan that insurance be bought from one of the affiliated companies. So in the Committee on Banking and Financial Services I offered this amendment. It passed overwhelmingly in the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, and for some reason when the bill was re-printed, it was not there. So I offered the amendment before the Committee on Rules to get this reinstated. Let me be clear that this does not prohibit a bank from requiring insurance to be purchased in connection with a loan, because many loans are securitized with life insurance or other kinds of insurance, title insurance. What it says is that that lender cannot require that the customer obtain that insurance from one of its affiliates, and it should be clear that the customer is free to go to an unaffiliated company to obtain insurance if in fact that insurance is required as a condition of the loan. Let me make one other quick point. This amendment becomes even more important in light of all of the discussions about privacy because if there is to be a sharing of information among affiliates, one of the things that will be able to be shared is the expiration dates on insurance policies, and that in and of itself is likely to put a subsidiary insurance company at an advantage because they may know when an insurance policy is expiring. All the more reason we need to make it absolutely explicitly clear that no customer can be required to purchase insurance from a subsidiary or affiliate of the lending company as a condition for getting the loan. Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. LaFalce).

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. As a cosponsor of this amendment, I rise in support of the amendment. One of the concerns that a number of people have had about all of this consolidation and the ability to merge and cross financial lines is the impact that it will have on lending, particularly for minority communities, for small businesses, for farms. That is why we have been so insistent on maintaining the CRA provisions, and that is why I think it is important for us to support this amendment, to make sure that if there is an adverse impact that results from this bill, we know about it immediately and can take whatever steps are appropriate and necessary to respond to it. I want to applaud the gentlewoman for coming forward with this amendment and strongly encourage my colleagues to support it.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Chairman, I rise in support of the Burr-Myrick amendment. It is true that this amendment will impact on the one company in the Nation, because this is a unique company. The company happens to be in the insurance business and it currently happens to be in the communications business. The underlying bill restricts income from nonfinancial activities to 15 percent and limits ownership before divestiture to 10 years. All this company is asking to do is to go up to those limits by acquisition. They are not at those limits now. There may be other companies that are grandfathered under this provision that are already at those limits. They are not asking to go beyond those limits. They are simply asking to be able to conduct their business within the confines of the limits of divestiture and time that are applicable to other companies. I certainly think this is reasonable. We should not restrict companies from growing as long as they are not restricting commerce and unduly exposing financial activities to risks that are not foreseen. Obviously, the risks are foreseen by this bill because the 15-percent, 10-year limit continues to apply.