Keeping Violent Offenders Off Our Streets Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 8205 is yet another vehicle for Republican campaign messaging that does nothing to help the American people. It is simply another attempt by Republicans to baselessly claim that Democrats are soft on crime and to distract the American people from the indisputable fact that crime rates continue to drop across this country, as they have for each of the last several years.

This legislation, which would amend the Federal insurance fraud statute to define ``the business of insurance'' to include the posting of any kind of monetary bail, would do nothing to actually keep violent offenders off our streets.

Instead, it targets nonprofit bail funds that try to address the clear inequities that result when people without financial means are held pending trial simply because they can't afford to pay the bail amounts set by the courts.

Defendants who can afford to pay the bail amount set by the court are set free. In New York, we have such a person, a well-known person who was accused of many felonies was set free on bail pending trial, was convicted of 34 felonies, and is now free on bail pending sentencing. I refer, of course, to Donald Trump.

Nonprofit bail funds, the Minnesota Freedom Fund in particular, have become a favorite target of Republicans recently as they desperately try to prop up their failing Presidential candidate by attacking Vice President Harris and Governor Walz. Former President Trump has repeatedly and falsely claimed that Vice President Harris donated to the Minnesota Freedom Fund and that her donation secured the release of a man who went on to commit murder.

This is nothing more than another made-up story the Republican ticket has created, and it is just as false as the former President's claim that immigrants are eating the dogs and cats in Springfield, Ohio.

Minnesota Freedom Fund has confirmed that Vice President Harris has never donated to them and that her only relationship to the fund was a 2020 tweet encouraging people to chip in if they were able.

The fund, 2 years later, bailed out an offender who went on to commit murder. The majority's attempt to link this incident to Vice President Harris demonstrates that Republicans are willing to politicize even the most heinous crimes to serve their desperate needs.

We know from experience and from actual data that, when the political rhetoric is put aside, Democratic policies work to reduce crime. Homicides are down across the country. Violent crimes are down. Property crimes are down. We learned just last week that even drug overdoses are substantially down this year.

While my Republican colleagues love to criticize policies aimed at eliminating or reducing our justice system's reliance on cash bail, study after study, including a recent comprehensive study of 33 jurisdictions, shows that bail reform has not led to an increase in crime.

The majority's only answer to this mountain of evidence about the crime rate is to claim that the FBI's crime data is fraudulent or that it does not include critical jurisdictions, but the FBI's data covers jurisdictions encompassing more than 312 million Americans. It includes every jurisdiction in this Nation with more than 1 million people.

Moreover, data from other agencies and organizations show the same decrease in crime rates that are shown by the FBI's data.

Despite the bill's title, it has nothing to do with violent crime or offenders. It applies to entities that post any type of monetary bond, including noncriminal immigration bonds and bonds for nonviolent criminal offenses, which make up the vast majority of criminal bonds.

In fact, the provision of this bill that actually attempted to address violent crime was stripped from the bill in the Judiciary Committee. All that remains in the bill is the provision relating to insurance fraud, despite the title.

I expect that, during today's debate, Republicans will cite individual examples of people who committed violent offenses after being bailed out by nonprofit bail funds. Each is tragic, and our hearts go out to the victims and their families.

What my colleagues on the other side of the aisle won't mention is the thousands more who received help from these funds, finished their cases, and moved on with their lives without incident. The majority won't mention the people who commit crimes after being released with the help of commercial bail agents. Republicans will not mention that it is a judge, not a bail fund, who decides whether to set cash bail in a given case and, if so, in what amount.

Bail funds simply allow indigent defendants to obtain a release that a court has already deemed to be appropriate.

We must remember that we cannot ask for or expect perfection from our bail system. What we can do is to make sure that the solutions we propose for violent crimes are actually targeted to address the problem rather than to provide sound bites for social media.

There is no question that we must address the root causes of violent crime, invest in proven solutions, such as community violence intervention and drug treatment. We must also support law enforcement with funding and other resources rather than attacking the FBI, the ATF, and our other Federal partners relentlessly.

If and when the majority decides to get serious about combating violence in America, I will gladly join them in exploring serious solutions, but this legislation is no solution at all.

Mr. Speaker, therefore, I urge my colleagues to join me in voting ``no'' on H.R.

Mr. Speaker, once again, Republicans have brought us to the brink of a government shutdown, threatening to cut off essential services for millions of Americans.

Instead of addressing the real needs of the American people, Republicans are poised to advance legislation that does little more than advance false Trump campaign rhetoric.

Although the majority claims that the bill is necessary to provide oversight of bail funds, the bill provides no oversight. It simply applies criminal penalties of up to 10 years, or 15 years in some cases, for misconduct that is already covered by Federal wire fraud and money laundering statutes.

The majority does not even attempt to explain how this bill will live up to its title of ``Keeping Violent Offenders Off Our Streets,'' as the bill has nothing to do with addressing violent crimes.

Like the majority's failed hearings in blue cities across the country, this bill is another baseless attempt by Republicans to engage in fear-mongering and to label Democrats as soft on crime while ignoring their own documented red State murder problem, the mountain of data showing that crime has been steadily declining throughout the U.S. under the Biden- Harris administration, and that bail reform policies have not contributed to increases in crime that occurred during the pandemic.

In bringing up this legislation, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle seek to distract the American people from the fact that their own actions have repeatedly made every American, from Presidential candidates to school children, more at risk at every turn by failing to support law enforcement funding and commonsense gun safety measures.

I urge Members to oppose this flawed legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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