HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE RANKING MEMBER JOHN CONYERS ANNOUNCES DEMOCRATIC SUBCOMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS FOR THE 114TH CONGRESS

WASHINGTON– Today, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) announced the Democratic subcommittee assignments for the 114^th Congress:

Subcommittee on Constitution and Civil Justice

Ranking Member Steve Cohen (TN-09)

Jerrold Nadler (NY-10)

Ted Deutch (FL-21)

Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, and the Internet

Ranking Member Jerrold Nadler (NY-10)

Judy Chu (CA-27)

Ted Deutch (FL-21)

Karen Bass (CA-37)

Cedric Richmond (LA-02)

Suzan Del Bene (WA-01)

Hakeem Jeffries (NY-08)

David Cicilline (RI-01)

Scott Peters (CA-52)

Zoe Lofgren (CA-19)

Steve Cohen (TN-09)

Hank Johnson (GA-04)

Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Investigations

Ranking Member Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18)

Pedro Pierluisi (Puerto Rico – Res. Comm.)

Judy Chu (CA-27)

Luis Gutierrez (IL-04)

Karen Bass (CA-37)

Cedric Richmond (LA-02) 

Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security

Ranking Member Zoe Lofgren (CA-19)

Luis Gutierrez (IL-04)

Sheila Jackson-Lee (TX-18)

Pedro Pierluisi (Puerto Rico – Res. Comm.)

Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law

Ranking Member Hank Johnson (GA-04)

Suzan Del Bene (WA-01)

Hakeem Jeffries (NY-09)

David Cicilline (RI-01)

Scott Peters (CA-52)

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CONYERS LAUDS PRESIDENT OBAMA’S COMMITMENT TO BOLD INVESTMENT IN AMERICA’S FUTURE

WASHINGTON – Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (MI-13) released the following statement after President Obama delivered his 6^th State of the Union Address to a Joint Session of Congress: 

Dean of the U.S, House
of Representatives
John Conyers, Jr.

“Tonight, President Obama presented a powerful vision for America's economic success in the 21st century.  By focusing on education, career training, and basic financial security for working families, he demonstrated that we can achieve sustained and inclusive prosperity—not by slashing budgets, but by investing in people.

“The President's proposals to strengthen and expand proven programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit and career and technical education at community colleges are both not only good ethics, but also smart economics.  In the long run, these policies will help to reduce poverty and debt by giving working people the purchasing power they need to boost the economy and provide middle class stability for their families.  

“I applaud the President for his prudent attention to the unprecedented rise in income inequality, which threatens the character of the country as well as our economic future.  While 95 percent of the economic gains since the Great Recession have accrued to the Americans at the top 1 percent of the economic ladder, wages for the nation's working families have remained stagnant.  This is not because the majority of Americans aren't working hard enough—people are working harder than ever.  Rather, it is because the rules of the economy are increasingly skewed in favor of the top 1 percent.  Consider how stock markets are booming and worker productivity keeps rising, yet average take-home pay remains flat.

“The President's proposals to finance essential national investments in education, the safety net, cybersecurity, and infrastructure by increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans and fees on the biggest financial institutions are a step in the right direction.  But it is up to Congress to finish the job.

“For far too long, America has shown its dissatisfaction with the ineffectual state of the Congress.  It is up to both chambers to work in a truly bipartisan fashion and follow President Obama’s lead on these initiatives in the interest of the American people.  The future of this great nation depends on it.”

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John Conyers, who first proposed an MLK holiday, marks 50 years in Congress

Four days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., a junior member of Congress introduced a bill to establish a federal holiday to honor the slain civil rights leader.

Five decades later, the holiday is on the calendar, and that lawmaker, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), is now the longest-serving member of Congress.

Monday presents a unique bit of historical symmetry for Conyers, who marked 50 years in Congress this month. Both his longevity and the holiday are testaments and byproducts of the civil rights struggles led by King. For the first time, the 85-year-old will observe the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday as dean of the House, the ceremonial title for the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives.

“To me, [King] is the outstanding international leader of the 20th century without ever holding office. What he did — I doubt anyone else could have done,” he said.

An Army veteran and lawyer by training, Conyers worked with King and other civil rights activists in the South before coming to Congress. While many Americans are filling theaters to see the Oscar-nominated movie “Selma,” Conyers can recall his own visits to the Alabama town in the months preceding the infamous “Bloody Sunday” march.

Decorations in the Capitol Hill office of Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) include a photo of him with Martin Luther King Jr. (Andrew Harnik/For The Washington Post)

After a series of deadly police confrontations that left black men dead in Missouri and New York, a new generation of Americans is mobilizing around concerns about issues of law and justice. Conyers said these new battles mirror the struggles that propelled him into public life.

Issues of justice and equality remain top-of-mind for Conyers, one of the founders of the Congressional Black Caucus and the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.

“We’ve always had a very tense relationship between the African-American community and police, law enforcement, particularly young African American males,” he said.

“The one thing I notice is that there’s more attention being focused on racial police incidents, the use of police force than ever before,” he added. “It isn’t that these kinds of events weren’t happening before.”

The deaths of Michael Brown, who was killed by a Ferguson, Mo., police officer, and Eric Garner, who died after being placed in a chokehold by a New York police officer, have compelled Republicans to engage on an issue they rarely discuss publicly. Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said late last year that he expected his caucus to continue exploring “unanswered questions” in the wake of the two men’s deaths.

“I do think that the American people deserve more answers about what really happened here and was our system of justice handled properly,” he said at the time.

Conyers said that Boehner’s remarks contrast sharply with the Congress he joined in 1965. Then, he was one of only five African Americans in office. Now, there are 48.

Marking 50 years in Congress, Conyers seeks candid discussion on race

The Michigan Democrat has earned the ceremonial title of dean as the longest-serving member of the House

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“We’ve gone from where there was flat-out segregation and there was a fairly sizable school of members of Congress who believed in segregation and did not see it as a constitutional or legal problem in any respect. Now that doesn’t exist anymore,” he said.

But he’s disturbed by how other Republicans talk about race. He’s not surprised by the news that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) once spoke to a white supremacist group while serving in the Louisiana legislature. Scalise apologized and has distanced himself from the group, and other GOP leaders are eager to move on.

“I don’t know who the group was, I don’t know what he said, but this complete denial and almost cover-up of that is not very encouraging,” Conyers said.

Conyers wants Congress to have a candid conversation about race but says he can find few Republicans willing to engage him.

“Considering the political circumstances that the Republican majority find themselves in, I think they’re less than eager to want to get into this,” he added. “But I think like everything else, it’s sort of inevitable. You can’t get away from some of the questions that are being raised and the discussion going on.”

Conyers and House Democrats plan to spend this year drawing attention to ongoing concerns with voting rights after the Supreme Court invalidated parts of the Voting Rights Act in 2013. The court struck down sections of the law dealing with the special scrutiny imposed on states with a history of discrimination, compelling Congress to come up with a new formula based on current data to determine which states should be subject to the law.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) said last week that he sees no need to revamp the law — yet another sign of disagreement between Republicans and Democrats.

“We have not seen a process forward that is necessary to protect people because we think the Voting Rights Act is providing substantial protection in this area right now,” Goodlatte said at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Conyers is undeterred.

“The Supreme Court kind of threw us a curveball on that, but look, that’s happened before,” he said. The court’s decision makes voting rights “a new, big issue,” he said. But, he said, people should be mindful that things have been much worse.

A petition dispute nearly kept Conyers off the ballot last year, but he prevailed in court and earned nearly 80 percent of the vote on Election Day. Despite younger challengers eager for the seat and his advancing age, he’s preparing to run again in 2016.

“The reason I think I’m going to run again is that I’ve never thought about stepping aside,” he said. “I still enjoy my work. There’s still plenty of challenges, new ones arising.”

He’s especially worried about the nation’s growing dependency on technology.

“In this age of cybertechnology, of computerization, of drones, the ability to commit ourselves to national, local, international military activity is much easier now than it used to be,” he said. “Unless we’re dealing with that, there’s no way we can make the nation and the nations of the worlds, the peoples on the planet safer. We have this super-technology that’s making it easier to commit violence.”

Conyers is one of seven men — all of them Democrats — to serve in Congress at least 50 years, and he relishes the irony in succeeding his former boss, former congressman John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), as the chamber’s longest-serving member. Conyers was once a Dingell staffer, and their fathers were close.

Dingell was the last member of Congress elected in the 1950s. Conyers is the last current member of Congress to have been elected in the 1960s. His next-nearest colleague is Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.), who came to Congress in 1971.

Conyers introduced the bill proposing the King holiday on April 8, 1968 — four days after King was killed. Ronald Reagan didn’t sign the law making it a federal holiday until 1983.

Many Americans use the three-day weekend for ski trips or beach vacations, and many businesses discreetly mark down prices to draw in shoppers. Conyers will celebrate at a series of events in his district. He’s heartened that the holiday is so widely observed.

“King is still studied, honored, remembered, and the holiday is still meaningful,” he said. “It is not just another day that you have to go to work.”

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Radical Deregulation Won't Bring Real Growth

By John Conyers, Jr.

Dean of the U/S. House of
Representatives
John Conyers, Jr.

Throughout the 1920s, Congress was focused on slashing taxes on the wealthy and eliminating business regulations, arguing that a free market could govern itself and that a rising tide would lift all boats.

The results were devastating: Wall Street ran amuck, resulting in the 1929 stock market crash. Wealth became highly concentrated at the top, leaving everyday consumers with too few resources to fuel a meaningful post-crash recovery. Industrial pollution began accelerating, setting the stage for an era of smog and even flammable rivers.

Fast-forward 90 years, and you'll wonder: Why haven't we learned our lesson?

Today -- with majorities they've touted as their largest since the 1920s -- congressional Republicans are pushing the most aggressive deregulatory agenda in nearly a century. My colleagues in Congress should look to both history and to current affairs to learn a simple lesson: Smart regulation is not only necessary for society but can be good for growth.

This is something our constituents inherently understand -- with 70 percent of the general public supporting rules to protect our climate from greenhouse gases, including 56 percent of Republicans. They trust in the power of markets to deliver solutions when regulations properly incentivize reform.

House Republicans' headline bill for this week -- the deceivingly named Regulatory Accountability Act ("RAA") -- exemplifies the wrong-headed approach of the 1920s. The RAA (H.R. 185) would require that all laws implemented through federal regulations be implemented in the weakest and cheapest manner possible with maximum input from industry. The bill would decrease the effectiveness of our landmark environmental protections, create delays that are costly to both consumers and good corporate citizens, and derail many of our most dynamic domestic industries. This is to say nothing of the bill's awful impacts on workplace safety, financial protections, and consumer product safety.

The laissez-faire environmental standards of the 1920s remained largely in place for decades until people could no longer afford to avert their eyes. In 1969 -- the same year of the famous Cuyahoga River fire -- the Rouge River in my own hometown also caught fire. These fires and others in several major cities across the country were a direct consequence of the failure to regulate the use of freshwater systems as sewers, harbors, and dumps. While it's troubling that it took such a conspicuous fiery accident to generate action, Congress finally came to its senses and adopted a smart regulatory response -- the Clean Water Act -- in 1972. Two years later, we passed the bipartisan Safe Drinking Water Act. Both were signed by Republican Presidents.

But the decades of neglect and abuse could not be cleaned up overnight. Thirteen years after the Clean Water Act was passed, a young man died of a rare waterborne disease after falling in the Rouge River and ingesting a mouthful of water. Now, 30 years after his death the Rouge River Basin is in vastly better condition, but it's still recovering -- in spite of decades of work and hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup costs.

H.R. 185 could erase those decades of environmental progress by forcing agencies and courts to defer to the environmental regulations found in nations like China -- where air pollution cuts life expectancy by five years in the north of the country and 16,000 dead pigs recently filled one Shanghai River. These environmental hazards have direct economic consequences -- easily measured in the responses of the two-thirds of wealthy Chinese who have left China or a planning to do so.

So much money, time, and effort could have been saved with regulations that preempt or quickly address environmental impacts. Unfortunately, too many people want to govern by crisis -- acting only when they are forced to by a catastrophe like a flaming river. This is of course a natural inclination -- we all from time to time refuse to do more than the bare minimum. The GOP's bill this week exemplifies this sort of short-sighted thinking, preferring a pound of cure to an ounce of prevention.

The US public is paying for regulatory inaction with their lives, their health, and ultimately their taxes when the consequences become so egregiously apparent that Congress finally acts. The GOP's 1920s-style deregulation, including bills like H.R. 185, threatens our economy by reducing businesses' expected consequences when they take shortcuts and shirk responsibilities, instead placing the burden on citizens who pay for cancer treatment, and waterway clean-up, and other costs that the polluters should have picked up.

The GOP deregulation agenda also places good corporate citizens at a competitive disadvantage to the greedy and unethical. Every time the good corporate players clean up their mess, source responsible raw materials, and refuse to pass the buck, they fall behind the companies that cut corners to maximize profits. Many of those good guys are eventually forced to play dirty too, or they go out of business.

H.R. 185 and the GOP's broader deregulatory agenda aren't pro-business -- they're pro-bad business. They reward antiquated business models and intransigent managers. As Harvard Business School management guru Michael Porter hasdemonstrated, US firms have shown again and again that they can and will respond with hard work and innovation when regulations offer them flexibility and a fair playing field. Consider how increases in Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards have empowered Motor City to develop cleaner manufacturing processes, build aluminum F-150s, and develop a $30,000 plug-in hybrid that can drive from Detroit to Lansing on a single gallon of gas. Crucially in a global marketplace, adopting energy-efficiency and consumer safety standards ahead of foreign competitors secures an important first-mover advantage. Any company that can make it in a free market isn't going out of business because they -- and their competitors -- have to reduce ozone emissions or prevent fracking fluids from entering aquifers.

Smart environmental regulations are both good ethics and good economics.

The GOP deregulation agenda is about shifting the burden of responsibility from businesses to taxpayers. It's about shamefully low expectations for US industry. In short, it's about a return to the 1920s economic model that yielded unprecedented inequality, mass pollution, and the worst financial crisis of the 20th century.

H.R. 185 is just the beginning. In the months ahead, congressional Republicans will continue to build on their recent actions to approve the Keystone Pipeline (the perfect economic strategy for an aspiring Russian-style Petro-State) and to deregulate Wall Street derivatives (the recipe for an automatic taxpayer bailout for the riskiest gambling). Let's stand up for the lessons of history and defend the prudent role of government.

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FLOOR STATEMENT: HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE RANKING MEMBER JOHN CONYERS, JR. ON H.R. 185

WASHINGTON – Today, during debate on the House Floor of H.R. 185, the “Regulatory Accountability Act,” House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. urged his colleagues to vote against the measure.  Rep. Conyers delivered the following remarks, as prepared for delivery:

U.S. Representative
John Conyers, Jr.

“Mr. Speaker, I strongly oppose H.R. 185, the so-called “Regulatory Accountability Act.” 

“Under the guise of attempting to improve the regulatory process, H.R. 185 will, in truth, undermine that process.  It invites increased industry intervention and imposes more than 60 new analytical requirements that could add years to the regulatory process. 

“As a result, H.R. 185 would seriously hamper the ability of government agencies to safeguard public health and safety, as well as environmental protections, workplace safety, and consumer financial protections.

“My greatest concern is that H.R. 185 will undermine the public health, safety, and well-being of Americans. 

“The ways in which it does this are almost too numerous to list here, so I will just mention a few.

“First, H.R. 185 would override critical laws that prohibit agencies from considering costs when public health and safety are at stake - including the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Occupational Safety and Health Act. 

“This means that agency officials will now be required to balance the costs of an air pollution standard with the costs of the anticipated deaths and illnesses that will result in the absence of such regulations.

“At a hearing on an earlier version of this bill in the 112^th Congress, our witness testified that if this measure were in effect in the 1970's, the government “almost certainly would not have required the removal of most lead from gasoline until perhaps decades later.”

“This explains why numerous respected academics, consumer organizations, public interest groups, and environmental organizations strongly oppose this dangerous legislation. 

“For example, the Coalition for Sensible Safeguards – consisting of more than 70 national public interest, labor, consumer, and environmental organizations –  says the bill will“grind to a halt the rulemaking process at the core of implementing the nation’s public health, workplace safety, and environmental standards.” 

“The Natural Resources Defense Council adds that the practical impact of H.R. 185 ‘would be to make it difficult if not impossible to put in place any new safeguards for the public, no matter what the issue.’

“And, the Consumer Federation of America states that  H.R. 185 ‘would handcuff all federal agencies in their efforts to protect consumers’  and it ‘would override important bipartisan laws that have been in effect for years, as well as more recently enacted laws to protect consumers from unfair and deceptive financial services, unsafe food and unsafe consumer products.’

“Further, the AFL-CIO warns that the bill’s procedural and analytical requirements add years to the regulatory process, delaying the development of major workplace safety rules and will ‘cost workers their lives.’

“And, as more than 80 highly respected administrative law academics and practitioners observe, the bill’s many ill-defined new procedural and analytical requirements will engender ‘20 or 30 years of litigation before its requirements are clearly understood.’   

“My second concern is that this legislation would give well-funded business interests the opportunity to exert even greater influence over the rulemaking process and agencies. 

“We already know that the ability of corporate and business interests to influence agency rulemaking far exceeds that by groups representing the public.

“But rather than leveling the playing field, H.R. 185 will further tip the balance in favor of business interests by giving them multiple opportunities to intervene in the rulemaking process, including through less deferential judicial review.

“Finally, H.R. 185 is based on the faulty premise that regulations result in economically stifling costs, kill jobs, and promote uncertainty.

“While supporters of H.R. 185 will undoubtedly cite a study claiming the cost of regulations exceed $1.8 trillion, the Congressional Research Service, Center for Progressive Reform, and the Economic Policy Institute found that a prior iteration of this study was based on incomplete and irrelevant data.

           

“In fact, the Majority’s own witness at a hearing on nearly identical legislation clearly debunked this argument. Christopher DeMuth, who appeared on behalf of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, testified that the employment effects of regulation ‘are indeterminate.’

“The other central argument put forth by proponents of this legislation – that regulatory uncertainty hurts businesses – has similarly been debunked.

“Bruce Bartlett, a senior policy analyst in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush Administrations observes:

‘[R]egulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out.  In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment.’

“Not surprisingly, the Administration issued a strong veto threat stating that the bill ‘would impose unprecedented and unnecessary procedural requirements on agencies that would prevent them from efficiently performing their statutory responsibilities.’

“Rather than heeding these serious concerns, the supporters of H.R. 185 simply want to push forward without any hearings, markups, or deliberative process in this Congress with a bill that has absolutely no political viability.

“I urge my colleagues to oppose this dangerous legislation and I reserve the balance of my time.”

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Letter From Rep Conyers to Gov Snyder on Issuing Gun Licenses to Individuals with Personal Protection Orders

Letter From Rep Conyers to Gov Snyder on Issuing Gun Licenses to Individuals with Personal Protection Order...

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America Must Stand Up To Cyberattacks

By Bob Goodlatte and John Conyers, Jr.

As a steady flow of information about the cyber-attack on Sony Pictures has been revealed, we have watched with shock and increasing concern as American lives and our values have been threatened by a narcissistic dictator. As the Chair and Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, we don’t agree on every issue—but we are in complete agreement that our national response to this chilling threat must be clear and unequivocal, so that we continue to zealously protect our freedoms and principles, most notably the freedom of speech.

The F.B.I. has confirmed our suspicions that a group known as “The Guardians of Peace”—a front group for the North Korean government and its dictator, Kim Jong Un—hacked into Sony’s internal emails, released a trove of embarrassing and salacious communications, and divulged sensitive information about Sony employees because the North Korean government did not approve of its movie, The Interview.  On December 16, the hackers escalated their cyber-war by threatening physical harm to those who intended to see the movie itself, which led to Sony initially canceling the release of the movie.  However, Sony has now decided to release it to a limited number of theaters.

This is not the first time terrorist groups and foreign governments have used intimidation to attempt to destroy our freedoms and way of life. On the eve of World War II, the German government issued various threats to prevent Charlie Chaplin from directing and producing The Great Dictator, a thinly veiled satire of the antics and excesses of Adolph Hitler and Benito Mussolini.  Paramount Pictures ultimately released the movie to great popular and critical acclaim, both in the U.S. and abroad.

The 9/11 attacks were aimed at New York and Washington because the terrorists wanted to shut down our nation’s centers of finance and government. However, Americans stood unified and sent a clear and resolute signal that we would not be intimidated.  Our nation’s airports quickly reopened, as did Wall Street and the Pentagon, and Congress continued to represent the will of the American people without pause.

The cyber-attacks and terror threats associated with The Interview represent the latest twist on earlier efforts at intimidation - the combination of the threat of physical violence with the use of the modern tools of cyber warfare and social media. A tyrant who severely oppresses his own people has used technology to both infiltrate a company and threaten physical harm to Americans who choose to watch a film that doesn’t meet his approval.  Whether or not we like the plot, production, or tone of a creative product, each and every one of us has a stake in ensuring that our freedom of speech is not abridged by either our own government or by a foreign government.

The United States must stand firm against this type of aggressive attack on our freedom of speech. Otherwise these actions will have a chilling effect on the availability of information and creative works in the future and will embolden North Korea and other copycats to act again. We must not allow terrorists and foreign governments to dictate what Americans can or cannot say, watch, produce, or distribute.

Ultimately, this and other cyber-attacks point to the need for a robust national security apparatus, including strong cybersecurity, to protect Americans not just from bodily harm, but from threats aimed at restricting our freedoms.  Congress and the Administration should work to ensure that we have in place the appropriate sanctions against North Korea and that we are using all available tools to combat attacks like this. The more we can do to detect and intercept threats from our enemies, the more we will be able to protect our cherished liberties.

The threat to Americans who wish to see this film is not the last time that thugs and tyrants will seek to challenge our character and our creativity.  But we are united in our resolve to defend our freedoms against all threats, foreign and domestic.  In the past, we have stood together—ignoring the petty and partisan differences that too often divide us.  Again, we must stand together to send the strong message that the United States will never yield to those wishing to silence our freedoms.


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