Protect Small Businesses From Excessive Paperwork Act of 2025

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, despite the ill-named bill, I rise in support of H.R. 736, the Protect Small Businesses from Excessive Paperwork Act, sponsored by Representative Nunn.

This bill extends the deadline for existing reporting companies under the Corporate Transparency Act, an essential piece of national security legislation designed to help law enforcement, financial institutions, and others root out the anonymous shell companies that are so often abused by domestic and foreign oligarchs, drug dealers, and terrorists to launder and hide their illicit funds.

Extending the reporting deadline gives businesses extra time to comply with the law and additional time for the U.S. Treasury to do the vital outreach needed to raise awareness among applicable businessowners.

I appreciate that Representative Nunn and Chairman Hill have chosen to offer this bill on the floor today, especially given the broad support for issuing this extension within our committee, but I have to say, given where things stand with the Trump administration, these concerns fall a little flat.

Since the inauguration, President Trump has disbanded Task Force KleptoCapture, which was designed to identify and pursue illicit Russian funds. He has declared that he will no longer prosecute most foreign corruption cases. President Trump has fired hundreds of bank examiners, who are responsible for ensuring that financial institutions are keeping up with their obligations to detect and report possible instances of financial crime. He shuttered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has returned $21 billion to defrauded Americans. Further, he and his GOP have fired criminal investigators at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service and prosecutors at the Department of Justice. He himself has offered cryptocurrency products that can be purchased without any verifiable identification, undercutting the very financial crime-fighting agencies that the CTA intends to bolster.

Yes, I urge Members to vote for this bill, though it has little meaning if my GOP colleagues remain silent as President Trump dismantles the national security and law enforcement capacity of the U.S. Government.

Also, it is ironic that I hear my good friend from Arkansas talk about the most sensitive, vital information that we have, our personally identifiable information, and at this moment, we don't even know who has access to it.

That is one of the things that angers most Americans. They don't know what Elon Musk is doing with this information or which young kid is running through these organizations getting that information and for what purpose they are using it.

Rome is burning, and my colleagues across the aisle need to stop fiddling and pick up the fire extinguisher.

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Mr. VARGAS. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers. I am prepared to close if the gentleman from Arkansas has no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, the Corporate Transparency Act has been called the most important improvement to the U.S. anti-money laundering framework in a generation. To both effectively enact the law and to assist companies whose reporting is essential to fight against oligarchs and criminal cartels, we need the extension provided by this bill.

As my good friend from Arkansas said, we, too, see and hear small businesses and businessowners. In fact, California has the largest number of small businesses in the United States. We don't want them to get swept up in the Corporate Transparency Act, but at the same time, we also need the ability to identify, investigate, and prosecute the bad actors.

Mr. Speaker, I urge all of my colleagues to stand up and speak out against what we are seeing today, unfortunately, which is President Trump's vengeful and self-interested destruction of our American national security, and to demand that we get information on how Elon Musk and his young marauders are using Americans' personal information.

We want to know: What are they doing with all of this information that they are gathering about all of these Americans? What is he doing with it? We have no idea, and no one is asking questions on the other side.

Again, it is important that my colleagues listen to their constituents right now, on both sides of the aisle. I know in my district, Republicans and Democrats want to know: What is going on with all of this information that Elon Musk is drawing out of the Federal Government? What is he doing with it? We have no idea. There is no investigation of this. We demand answers, and we think our friends on the other side should demand answers to this also.

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