Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this bill to defend Americans' right to access, understand, and debate the law. The Pro Codes Act threatens public access to the law and undermines due process by keeping essential legal standards hidden behind restrictive barriers. Instead of providing open access, the bill offers only limited public access. Under this flawed bill, individuals would be forced to forfeit personal information just to view the standards. The standards would not be available in useful formats, preventing users from searching, copying, pasting, printing, downloading, or retweeting. To get full access to the law, some people would have to pay, creating a two-tiered system, a free but limited economy-class access, and a full-access version for those who can afford to pay. This is neither fair nor just not in keeping with our tradition of everybody who is going to be held accountable under the law has to be able to fully access the law. Despite bipartisan concerns, we had no hearings, we had multiple failed Judiciary Committee markups, and finally, a sparsely attended markup. Some are working to rush the Pro Codes Act through here in the suspension format. Ranking Member Nadler himself, although he supports the bill, did note during the markup that since we began consideration of this legislation, we missed many opportunities to strengthen the bill through a better process.…”