00:002025 is common sense and happens to be bipartisan.
00:04For decades, the American people, Congress, and certain corners of the federal government
00:09have tried to grasp a reliable estimate of how many criminal laws exist, either in statute
00:13or regulation.
00:14In the 1980s, the Department of Justice tried to count the number of federal criminal laws
00:20within the U.S. Code and estimated there were about 3,000.
00:23In 1998, the American Bar Association attempted to count the criminal offenses, said it was
00:29likely higher than 3,000, but to complete the task with accuracy, quote, is likely to prove
00:34futile and inaccurate.
00:35In other words, the DOJ and the ABA stopped counting due to the likely near endless quantity
00:41of criminal laws on the books.
00:43In the nearly early 2000s, retired Professor Dr. John Baker from LSU estimated the U.S.
00:48Code contains more than 4,000 offenses.
00:50In 2008, he updated it to 4,450.
00:54In 2019, the U.S. Code estimated 5,199, according to the Heritage Foundation and the Mercatus Center.
01:02Additionally, there are estimated to be thousands of criminal offenses, many buried in regulatory
01:06codes.
01:07For context, there are an estimated 300,000 federal regulations that carry criminal offenses
01:12that could put an American citizen in prison.
01:16These 300,000 regulations with criminal penalties were created through the regulatory process, not
01:20drafted and deliberated by Congress, bypassing accountability.
01:25In some instances, the laws are so obscure and vague that even law enforcement and federal
01:28agencies are unaware they exist.
01:30It's no wonder why the issue of criminalization has drawn concern from my colleagues on both
01:34sides of the aisle.
01:36Every American faces the potential of unknowingly violating these federal statutes at any given
01:40moment only to be met with the DOJ charging them with a vague or bogus statute.
01:45This must end.
01:46The American people in Congress deserve to have a proper accounting.
01:50This bill to count the Crimes to Cut Act of 2025 is a prudent and necessary step toward
01:54restoring clarity, accountability, and proportionality in the federal criminal justice system.
01:58It requires the Attorney General to provide Congress with a list of all federal crimes in
02:02statute and regulation along with pertinent information such as the potential criminal penalty,
02:07the mens rea requirements for the offense, and the DOJ prosecutorial history of the statute.
02:13Fundamental to the rule of law is the idea that individuals must have reasonable notice
02:16of what conduct is prohibited.
02:18Publishing a complete index of federal criminal offenses supports due process by ensuring Congress
02:24and the public have access to this information.
02:26By requiring detailed information on prosecution history, criminal penalties, and mens rea requirements,
02:31Congress can identify where reform is most needed.
02:34As James Madison said in Federalist 61, when fundamental principles of representative
02:38government and the importance of accessible and understandable laws,
02:41quote, it will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws are so voluminous
02:48that they cannot be read or so incoherent that they cannot be understood,
02:52if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be tomorrow.
03:02That was Madison. That was 250 years ago.
03:05Here we are, and we have a complex code that a large number of the American people have no idea that the behavior in which they are engaging is potentially criminal.
03:15And I believe, and a couple more points to this, I don't want this legislation, though, to be cover for not taking other actions.
03:23I take as sincere the concerns that have been expressed already about mens rea or eliminating certain statutes.
03:29But if we wait around to study it endlessly, we're not going to act.
03:36I would suggest that we ought to be taking action, and I think this should apply across the board.
03:41I mean, concerns that, oh, this is only going to have some impact on white-collar crimes versus more violent crimes or something along those lines.
03:48That's not the point here.
03:50I can bring up numerous examples where Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh inserted himself into saying that the mens rea question
03:58with respect to an individual who's involved in a gang dispute as to whether it should be a manslaughter sentence or a murder sentence,
04:06secondary murder sentence, eight years versus 20 years, the mens rea mattered, and clarity was needed.
04:11There are things like that that are occurring all the time in our criminal justice system,
04:15and those of us who are concerned about over-criminalization should be mindful of that.
04:20I know it's bipartisan, and I appreciate the support.
04:23I appreciate the support of the gentlelady from Georgia, the previous support of the minority leader, Mr. Jeffries,
04:30and I believe the support of the ranking member.
04:32And so I'm grateful for that.
04:34But I do want to be clear that we need to be taking actions besides just the counting.
04:38And with that, Mr. Chairman, I'll yield back.
04:39The gentleman yields back.
04:41The gentleman from Maryland is recognized for his opening statement.
04:44Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
04:45And I want to commend Chairman Roy and Ranking Member McBath and Representative Cohen for their excellent bipartisan work on this legislation.
04:54I'm very pleased to support it.
04:56And as I've been saying this morning, I think it's the foundation for us moving forward on a whole bunch of the different initiatives and endeavors that we've been exploring today.
05:05I agree with my friend from Texas that this should not be an excuse for action.
05:12And there are some actions that could be taken right now by the executive branch of government to focus on real crime.
05:23Unfortunately, they've been moving in the wrong direction.
05:27They keep going after people for engaging in freedom of speech.
05:31They keep going after news entities, which the president of the United States has sued.
05:36Then the FCC comes after them.
05:38Then he gets a private shakedown settlement.
05:41The Department of Justice has dismantled the Clipto Capture Task Force.
05:47It has dismantled the Foreign Influence Task Force.
05:51It's dismantled the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force.
05:55So they are actually letting our guard down with respect to real crime while they focus on imaginary crimes and things which are constitutionally not crimes at all, like people engaging in freedom of expression, writing op-eds, attending rallies, and so on.
06:13But I agree with my friend about James Madison.
06:15The founders envision federal criminal law to be limited to national concerns, which is why the vast majority of crimes are prosecuted today at the state and local level, not in the federal government.
06:29And I'd like very much the quote that the gentleman from Texas repeated from James Madison about the laws should not be so voluminous that they cannot be read, nor so incoherent that they cannot be understood.
06:43There should be simplicity and clarity so people know what is expected of them and what's not, so that there's notice for everybody.
06:52This legislation will direct the DOJ and other agencies to compile a comprehensive report detailing every federal statutory and regulatory criminal offense, which have indeed grown substantially over the last several decades.
07:06And despite several previous attempts by the Department of Justice, the ABA and several scholars, to determine how many federal offenses there are, no comprehensive accounting exists.
07:17And I hope this legislation will cut through it.
07:21Our colleagues have described this as something like the 12 labors of Hercules, just to determine how many federal crimes we've got.
07:28I was wondering whether artificial intelligence could help.
07:32Maybe somebody could just punch into their AI program if they got it.
07:35How many criminal offenses are there at the federal level?
07:39Maybe they could begin to point us in the right direction.
07:41But in any event, this legislation will finally provide us that comprehensive inventory.
07:47We will get the elements approved, the potential penalties, the mens rea requirements that exist or don't exist,
07:54and the number of prosecutions each year for the preceding 15 years for every listed offense that's brought to us.
08:01We'll be in a position to thoroughly review the federal criminal law so we can begin to clarify, simplify, streamline, and reduce.
08:10And this is indeed, as the Heritage Foundation's Giancarlo Canaparo, one of the Republican witnesses, testified,
08:20this will be the first step towards solving the problem of scattered, vague, imprecise, and incoherent criminal law.
08:29So I'm glad we're doing this.
08:30I think it is important to point out that there is a move against over-criminalization, over-incarceration, over-prosecution in America.
08:40There's a separate agenda, which is to try to wipe out criminal law at all for white-collar criminals
08:47who some would like to see free to engage in fraud, embezzlement, corruption, bribery, kickbacks, embezzlement, and so on.
08:58That's not the agenda that I'm speaking for today.
09:01I'm for the other agenda of making the criminal law fair and equal for everybody in this society,
09:07not undercutting the criminal law just for white-collar offenders.
09:11With that, I'll yield back to you, Mr. Chairman.
09:13The gentleman yields back.
09:14The chair now recognizes the gentleman from Texas to offer an amendment in the nature of a substitute.
