PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 1423, FORCED ARBITRATION INJUSTICE REPEAL ACT; WAIVING A REQUIREMENT OF CLAUSE 6(A) OF RULE XIII WITH RESPECT TO CONSIDERATION OF CERTAIN RESOLUTIONS REPORTED...
Matt Cartwright (Democrat, PA) \u2014 2019-9-18

I want to talk a little bit today about accountability. Accountability is something we teach our children. Let me burden you with a short story. prgtoken About 20 years ago, I am sitting in my kitchen. I think it was a Saturday morning. My son, Mattie, who is 4 years old, was in the middle of the kitchen floor and dropped a plate. It landed at his feet. He was wearing shoes. He looked up at me, I looked at him, and he said to me, Dad, I didn't do it. prgtoken Well, it is a funny story and it is cute, but the point is that you teach your children about accountability. You teach them to accept responsibility, to make things right that they have done wrong, and to move on with their lives. prgtoken My wife, Marion, and I have two boys, and we like to say we have done a marvelous job teaching them about accountability and taking proper responsibility. prgtoken But there is a poison in this country. There is a pestilence that has been occurring for at least a couple of generations. I want to say it started with the Watergate era back in the seventies, when people didn't want to take accountability and they didn't want to take responsibility. You heard phrases come up like ``plausible deniability.'' prgtoken And then we went on into the corporate world and we had the Enron scandal. Rather than taking accountability and responsibility, standing up and admitting what they did and making it right, no, what did they do? They were shredding the documents as fast as they could shred them. prgtoken It is routine in this country now for people in positions of power and responsibility to say, ``mistakes were made,'' not ``I messed up.'' ``Mistakes were made.'' It is a pestilence in this country to deny accountability and responsibility. It is unacceptable. prgtoken The question is: What do we do to bring back accountability to the American culture? Well, the FAIR Act makes a big step in that direction. It invalidates forced arbitration clauses: the ones that show up in the boiler plate of the contracts that consumers sign with every agreement we have with a big corporation. It shows up in the fine print. And if you take the time to read it, it is not debatable, it is not negotiable. You have to sign it or else you have to not get the contract, not get the account. prgtoken , if you look at those contracts, it makes you waive your constitutional right, as Congresswoman Torres just said. prgtoken We have a constitutional right to go to court to settle our disputes. Our Founding Fathers and people in the American Revolution fought and died for that constitutional right. prgtoken , with the stroke of a pen, you are allowed to give this away, even though it is in the fine print. Instead, you have to go to a rigged and secret arbitration process that the corporations control and usually win. It also means you can't band together with other claimants. prgtoken Think of what that means, . It means if you have an account with a big