Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Mr. Chairman, let me just advise my colleagues that these bankruptcy mills that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) is talking about are attorneys who provide bankruptcy services, consumer credit counseling services, many of whom are sanctioned by local governments because they provide a very valuable service in local communities. I have one in my own community of Charlotte. I was on the board of directors of this nonprofit agency which receives substantial government funds and provides a major service when people get into debt. We can characterize every single one of these people as bankruptcy mills if we want, but they are not. To try to inflame the opinions of the colleagues in this body by referring to every lawyer who practices bankruptcy law or every consumer credit counselor as a bankruptcy mill is just inaccurate and unfair and it should not be done. There are some bad apples in the barrel. For those we need to understand, Mr. Chairman, that there is a specific provision which remains in this bill, this section 526, which says that a debt relief agency shall not do a whole list of things that are listed in this bill. One of those things it shall not do is misrepresent to any assisted person or prospective assisted person, directly or indirectly, affirmatively or by material omission, what services the debt relief agency can reasonably expect to provide that person or the benefits, and it goes on and on and on. There is a prohibition in this bill against the kind of activity that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) is trying to outlaw. I think it ought to be outlawed, but we ought not impose the burdens of all of these disclosures on the reputable people who are in the business. He says that we have got to stop this faulty advertising, but what does his amendment do? I am reading directly from page 8 of his amendment. If you do an advertisement, under the Moran amendment, this is what you have got to say, in quotes: ``We are a debt relief agency. We help people file bankruptcy petitions to obtain relief under the Bankruptcy Code.'' I do not want people to be disclosing that or saying that to the public. I want to stop people from advertising. And yet the same people he is saying we want to stop from faulty advertising, he is telling them how to go out and advertise in a misleading way. That is not what we need to be doing, is undermining the policy of the bill. Mr. Chairman, I understand his motivations for this amendment. I understand that there may be some lawyers he does not like, there may be some consumer credit counselors that he does not like. There are some that I do not like. That is why we have prohibited them in the bill from engaging in any kind of sinister activities. But that is different than requiring every reputable lawyer and every reputable consumer credit counseling service to give page after page after page of worthless disclosures. I encourage my colleagues to vote against this amendment. It just adds paperwork and adds burdens to small businesses. That is what it does.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I offer amendment No. 8, which is made in order under the rule.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. I believe it is my right to close as a member of the committee and in defense of the bill.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment, and I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am saddened to have to rise in opposition to this amendment. This exact language that is proposed in this amendment was in the bill originally and was considered by the Committee on the Judiciary, and an amendment passed in the Committee on the Judiciary to remove this language from the bill. Now, the chairman of the subcommittee, who has risen to express his support for this amendment to put it back in, voted against that amendment in the committee. So it is not surprising that he would be here saying he likes the Moran amendment. But the majority of the Committee on the Judiciary, including a bipartisan group of individuals, not just Democrats or Republicans, both Democrats and Republicans, voted to remove this language from the bill. Now, why did they vote to do it? First of all, understand that there continues to be language in the bill which prohibits misrepresentation and misleading of the public by these persons who are assisting folks with bankruptcies. But remember that every attorney who does bankruptcy practice would be covered by this provision; every credit counseling service, consumer credit organization, many of which are governed by or under the city and county governments in our local communities, would be governed by these provisions; and these agencies would be put to the task of giving page after page after page of disclosures in an effort to get at a few bad people who are in this business. Now, I am not saying that there are not people who are providing credit counseling advice who are bad. There are people in the business who are bad. But 99 percent of the people who are providing advice to bankruptcy applicants or potential bankruptcy applicants are reputable people, attorneys who provide information and services, credit counseling services and the like, that we are simply imposing substantial burdens on if we put this language back in the bill, which the Committee on the Judiciary, I remind my colleagues, has taken out of the bill. If we start on page 3 of this proposed amendment and we go all the way over to page 5 of this proposed amendment, there are disclosures that would have to be made by anybody who even sat down and talked to somebody about the possibility of filing a bankruptcy. This is not for people who file bankruptcies, because these disclosures have to be given at the first encounter before there is even a decision to file bankruptcy. Most of the disclosures are, essentially, worthless because what most people will do is print up these disclosures verbatim from the bill and hand them to people when they come into their offices and nobody is going to read this stuff. And Republicans and Democrats alike acknowledge that these kinds of disclosures are simply worthless. Additionally, for those of us, including the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran), who is the sponsor of this bill who say that they want to stop attorneys from soliciting folks to file bankruptcy, there are additional advertisements that must be given which require folks who advertise to say to the public, look, I am in the business of providing bankruptcy advice. That is exactly the kind of advertising we have been trying to discourage. That is not something that is furthering the public policy that underlies this bill. So, for those reasons, I want to state strongly that we do not want to impose additional burdens on good reliable business people. We want to, as the bill still does, prohibit false information from being given to potential filers of bankruptcy. But we do not need to burden the people who are the attorneys and credit counseling people who are reputable by forcing them to give page after page after page of useless disclosures. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, this is a simple amendment, and hopefully it will not take the entire allotted time. This is an amendment that was offered in the Committee on the Judiciary, and the Committee on the Judiciary split evenly, so I am sure the chairman of the subcommittee has a position on it, but the Committee on the Judiciary itself has failed to express an opinion one way or another because it failed on a split vote. I believe the vote was 13 to 13. Mr. Chairman, this bill currently requires that every bankruptcy filer, no matter whether his filing is or is not contested, file at least 3 years' worth of tax returns with the court. In our subcommittee we had hearings, and the bankruptcy judges, bankruptcy trustees, every single witness who came agreed that requiring all of these tax returns to be filed simply creates a massive paperwork burden and expense to the bankruptcy system, and that this was not a good idea. These burdens are unnecessary. Credit industry finance studies, consumer advocacy group finance studies, all indicate that the number of abusive Chapter 7 bankruptcy filings are approximately 10 percent, at most, of the bankruptcy filings. They also indicate that the vast majority of bankruptcy filings are what they categorize as uncontested filings. So why are we requiring tax returns for 3 years to be filed with the bankruptcy court, when in the great majority of these cases there will not be any contest about it, there will not be any need for the tax returns? They will simply sit there in a corner in the bankruptcy court, clutter up space, take up needed time and energy to move around from place to place. They are simply unneeded. So my amendment simply says, look, you do not have to file these returns unless some party in interest says, I want you to file the returns. If some party in interest, any party in interest in the bankruptcy wants the tax returns, all they have to do is file one sentence which says, I want the tax returns filed. They do not have to give a reason, there has to be no hearing, there does not have to be anything but one sentence saying, I want the tax returns of this filer filed, and that person would have to file them. And for some reason the author of this bill thinks that is terrible. Mr. Chairman, I think he is overreacting. What he has decided is that every person who files a bankruptcy petition is a bad person, and we are going to impose all these burdens on him. But Mr. Chairman, listen to what the Congressional Budget Office says about this provision. I quote: ``This section would require the Administrative Office of the U.S. courts to receive and retain the tax returns for the three most recent years preceding the commencement of the bankruptcy case for all Chapter 7 and Chapter 13 debtors, about 8 million debtors over the 2000 to 2004 period. CBO estimates that appropriations of $34 million over the next 5 years would be required to store and provide access to over 20 million tax returns.'' That is the Congressional Budget Office, who is telling the sponsor of this bill that because he thinks every filer in America of a bankruptcy petition is a bad person and ought to be subjected to this, even though nobody is ever going to look at most of these tax returns, he is willing to cost the taxpayers of America $34 million because he has this personal agenda that, I do not know, even Republican Members on the committee said, this is a bad idea. Even members of the Committee on Rules said, this is a bad idea. We support your amendment. That is how this amendment got made in order. Yet, we are taking up valuable legislative time arguing about something that is completely inconsistent with what the professed philosophy is, to save taxpayers' money and to do something that is valuable to the system of bankruptcy. This is a provision in the bill which is not needed. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time, but as opposition it is our right to close anyway.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I thought that might be the case. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute just for the purpose of asking the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Paul) a question. I take it that the gentleman believes that government is too big and that is a function of both what it takes in and what goes out, what it spends out. So would it be fair to say that the gentleman would support a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds vote for expenditures, too?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. I want to start by responding to a few comments that were made by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) in his presentation. Madam Speaker, one would think that all of this talk about how taxes have gone up and revenues have gone up during the President's tenure, that it was the Democrats who were in the majority of the House and Senate during that period of time. Oh, no. Madam Speaker, the Republicans were in the majority during that period of time. So we can come and try to make a political point today on April 15, but the truth of the matter is that this debate is not about whether taxes are too high or whether President Clinton increased taxes or the Republicans are responsible for increasing taxes. That is really not what this debate is about. The debate is about the little document that my colleagues were waving around and using as a prop in this debate. Every once in a while it would be nice if my colleagues would actually pay some heed to that document. They came in here in 1994, 1995, and said that they were the most conservative group that was ever going to hit this place. Well, what is the most conservative document that we have in this country? The Constitution. Yet, during the 2-year period after they came to the majority, over 100 proposed amendments to the United States Constitution were filed. They think they know how to put the government together better than our Founding Fathers knew how to put it together. That is really what they think. That is a very cavalier notion. Our Founding Fathers said that majority rule is the essence of democracy. That is really what this debate is about. It is about whether we will protect the rights of individual citizens to have an equal voice in their government, or whether we will have some supermajority or a small minority that just frustrates the will of the majority. That is really what this debate is about. It is about democracy. Every single decision in our government, with the exception of two, under the Constitution of the United States, is reserved for majority decision. Somehow or another my colleagues who think they are better or would be better at shaping a constitutional government than our Founding Fathers, those same Founding Fathers whose Constitution has survived over 200 years, my colleagues think they can do it better, so they come and say, on tax day we want to make a political point, and we want to bring this two-thirds majority vote requirement before it, not because we think it is going to pass but because we want to make a political point. Madam Speaker, I am embarrassed that we would play political games with the Constitution of the United States. We are in serious debate about a range of issues, some of major magnitude, some of minor magnitude. I can understand when we play politics with minor issues, but when we come to the Floor of the House and we wave in front of the American people the Constitution of the United States and treat it like a prop for a political sideshow, and for 4 straight years we bring the same constitutional amendment which has been defeated four straight times, bring it to the Floor of the House on tax filing day, we are playing political games. We heard the gentleman who followed me on the debate on the rule on this issue. He got up and told me to be prepared for April 15 of the year 2000, because they are going to be back next year with the same constitutional amendment, not because even a majority of them think it has merit. If they had to really live under this system they would not support it, because it would be their constituencies whose vote would be diminished, just as it would be my constituencies' vote which is diminished. But on April 15 of next year, they are going to be right back here with the same political charade. That ought not to be what we are engaged in here. If they are serious, this amendment should have gone through the regular committee process. It never did. We should have had the opportunity to offer amendments to it that would make this bill better. We do not, all because it would have interrupted the ability of the majority to get this matter to the Floor of the House on April 15, the same day they brought it to the Floor of the House in 1998, 1997, 1996, and will bring it again in the year 2000. Madam Speaker, this is not about substance, this is about trying to gain some political advantage. We should reject this amendment, and at least if we are going to consider it, send it to the committee and let us do some serious work on it so that we can address the flaws that exist in it.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I do not see that anything in the rule that brought this matter to the floor mentions the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton).

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Let me get through it. We can engage in a dialogue. The gentleman has got plenty of time to engage in it if he wants to on his side.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. If we want to set up a judicial process where we spend 200 years defining what the word ``de minimis'' means and have the courts do it, that is what this bill is going to do. But even more important is, we are setting up a direct conflict between the Congress' definition of de minimis and the court's definition of de minimis. Because when we say the measure is going to be measured, determined at the time of the adoption of the bill, we are trying to give the Congress the authority to make its decision about what the word ``de minimis'' means. But we cannot do that. So basically what we have done is set up a direct conflict between the legislative branch of the government and the judicial branch of the government. That is exactly what we have done. Now, I recognize that. I recognized that the first time we debated this bill in committee. I recognized it before the Committee on Rules 2 days ago. I went to the Committee on Rules and I said, would you allow me to bring to the floor an amendment which would improve this legislation, which would make it clear that the sole authority that the Supreme Court will have is to determine whether the Congress has followed its own rules in making this determination so that we could avoid this conflict between the legislative branch and the executive branch?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I appreciate it. Is he going to accept my amendment under unanimous consent?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I will yield to the gentleman, so maybe we will get a unanimous consent request.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I appreciate the gentleman offering to work with me and, of course, if this bill had gone through the committee, we could have done the work in a serious legislative manner and we could have treated this bill as a serious bill. But it is quite obvious that this is not what this is about. It is about political theater on the 15th of April. We have got to play political theater so that we can tell the American people how terrible it is that we have taxes. That is what this bill is about today. If it were not about that, we would have considered this amendment. We even offered an amendment last year that would have taken out the term ``de minimis.'' If you do not want to raise taxes, and you want a two-thirds requirement, you at least would not get into 200 years of litigation arguing about what de minimis means if you just said it required a two-thirds vote to raise taxes. I mean, that would be clear. At least we would not have to look in a Latin dictionary to figure out what we are talking about and ask the Supreme Court to tell us what we are talking about. At least that would be clear.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. We even offered to take that out of the bill. You would think that people who were seriously interested in passing a constitutional amendment that limited the ability to raise taxes would have jumped at that, they would have said, ``Yeah, that's absolutely consistent with what we are trying to do.'' But they have not demonstrated any degree of seriousness about this issue. Everybody has talked about the gentleman from Texas' two-thirds and three-fourths, his equations. I want everybody to stay with me now, because when you require a two-thirds majority vote to do something, what you are saying is, if one-third objects, you cannot do it. So everybody has talked about this powerful supermajority. What my colleagues need to understand is that we are setting up, not a powerful supermajority, what we are doing is setting up a powerful superminority which will control the process. It will be one-third of the people in this House who will be in control of it. It will not be the two-thirds. It will not even be the majority rule. And if that is not countermajoritarian, if that is not counterdemocratic, I do not know what is. We do not require a two-thirds majority to declare war. If the President came over here and said, please declare war on Kosovo, as he should under the Constitution--the gentleman from California (Mr. Campbell) and I agree on that--it would not require a two-thirds vote. And somehow or another this majority wants to elevate the questions about taxation to some higher pedestal even than a declaration of war. And so really what you are talking about is giving one-third of the people in this House the ability to bring the process to a halt. I will tell you what that does to my constituency. If I am in the two-thirds or not in the one-third, and I want to get something done, what you have said to my constituency is, you are less important than that one-third minority over there, because they are controlling the agenda. That is not my definition of democracy, my colleagues. We can talk all day today about how this is about taxation and whether we are paying too much in taxes. I have conceded that. I mean, I do not like to pay taxes any more than anybody else. And my constituents do not like it any more than anybody else's. But I will tell you that every American citizen is entitled to the same representation in this body. And any time you create a supermajority and thereby create a super- superminority that can control the agenda of this House and the agenda of this country, you have deprived American citizens of their equal representation in the process. So it is tax day. You can talk and make it sound like this is about taxation, but it is about basic fairness. It is about democracy. It is about who has the authority to rule. And in my democracy, that is 50 percent of the representatives and 50 percent of the people plus one.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, we have no objection. I just want to make sure he got them in the Record. I did not think he ever did.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I just wanted to inquire whether the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton) made a unanimous consent request to offer those matters for the Record?