Blaine Luetkemeyer: “I would like to take a moment of personal privilege to express my thanks to Mr. Thornberry, who is retiring, for his…”

“I would like to take a moment of personal privilege to express my thanks to Mr. Thornberry, who is retiring, for his many years of service to our military and our country through his actions in this committee. He will certainly be missed. Mr. Speaker, each year, Congress is tasked with one of its most important duties: reauthorizing the NDAA to ensure that our military has everything that they could possibly need to continue protecting this country. This year, I am proud to have served as conferee for the financial services measures in the NDAA, which includes the most significant overhaul of our anti-money laundering laws in decades. The bipartisan Anti-Money Laundering Act authorizes new resources for the Treasury Department to combat illicit finance and requires the Treasury to apply more rigor to its data collection. This will allow suspicious activity reports and currency transaction reports to be as useful as possible for law enforcement. For too long, Congress and the private sector have had little to no insight into how the executive branch uses these reports, which has decreased accountability and prevents us from modernizing the reporting regime. That ends with this bill. The conference report also contains the ILLICIT CASH Act, legislation that Congresswoman Maloney and I have been working on for years.…”