Iranian Leadership Asset Transparency Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. HECK of Washington. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in opposition to this bill because, well, it is a distraction. It is a distraction not just from the work we should be doing--I mean, I would ask more than rhetorically exactly how many babies have to be born with microcephaly before we actually get serious about dealing with that proposed issue and the menace that it threatens America with. Frankly, this bill is meant to be a distraction from the fact that when it actually mattered, the Financial Services Committee was absent from the debate over the Iran deal--MIA.

In May 2015, we passed the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act to provide a framework to consider the Iran deal, which we all know now is known as JCPOA. Frankly, as one Member--I know a lot of others spent a lot of time thinking about that issue and that vote, and I, frankly, would suggest that Members on both sides of the aisle gave this a considerable amount of consideration, but we didn't learn anything about it from the Financial Services Committee--zero, zip, nada.

One would think that if the committee were so concerned about JCPOA, they would have explored these issues in detail while the deal was still under consideration, just as many other committees did.

In fact, I counted more than 30 Iran-related hearings in the House of Representatives between June 2014 and June 2016, including 9 in the 2- month review period mandated in the REVIEW Act. In that full 2 years, Financial Services had no Iran hearings in full committee or subcommittee--zip, zero, nada. All we got was one solitary hearing and a working group before the deal went into effect.

It is not just hearings where Financial Services was MIA. Since I have arrived in Congress, we have passed at least four bills dealing with financial sanctions or terrorism finance where the chair agreed in writing to waive jurisdiction with an exchange of letters. On two additional bills, the leadership brought to the floor without the chairman's seeking to protect the committee's jurisdiction over this critical issue.

So I would just ask, Mr. Chairman, if this issue were so important-- and it is--where was the Financial Services Committee while the JCPOA was being debated? It was MIA. It was absent. Then, after sitting silent while the pivotal deal was being developed, considered, and debated, the committee has finally sprung to life to attempt to sabotage a deal that didn't fall apart, frankly, as a lot of the proponents of this deal would have liked.

The IAEA has stated clearly, for months, that Iran is compliant with its nuclear-related obligations under JCPOA, but we are only now bringing to the floor legislation that undermines our own commitments to the JCPOA.

Sadly, it is clear that the bill we have on the floor today is about politics. It is a distraction, and we should reject it.

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