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Source: Congress.gov
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Yeah, there are, and I hope we can find some solutions to that. Amen. Subcommittee will come to order. Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare recess. We welcome you all to the hearing today, and please stand as the gentleman from North Carolina leads us in the Pledge of Allegiance. I thank everyone for coming, and I'm told others are on their way. I hope that's true. I recognize myself now for an opening statement. I thank the members who are here and those who will be coming, and I thank our witnesses today. This is really a great panel we have. A lot of talent, expertise, and I'm grateful that you would take time to be with us today. Today's hearing is titled Criminalizing America, the Growth of Federal Offenses and Regulatory Overreach. We could have just as easily called it oversight of Congress because we created the problem that we are here to discuss today. The problem is the number of federal and regulatory crimes has simply escalated out of control to the point that law abiding Americans unknowingly commit several crimes every day. According to one study, the average American commits three felonies per day, which does not consider the overwhelming number of misdemeanors or civil violations. In some instances, the laws are so obscure and vague that even law enforcement and federal agencies are unaware that they even exist. The U.S. Code is estimated to contain more than 5,000 crimes today, and I'll hold it up for you.
This massive tome is the criminal code. Just a decade ago, some scholars estimated that there were approximately 4,500 crimes, and the fact that these numbers are just estimates underscores the severity of the problem. According to a study by the Federalist Society, the number of federal criminal offenses increased by 30 percent between 1980 and 2004. There were 452 new federal criminal offenses enacted between 2000 and 2007, averaging 56.5 new crimes per year. And over the past three decades, Congress has been averaging 500 new crimes per decade. And keep in mind that these estimated 5,000 criminal laws are not all neatly tucked into Title 18. Rather, they are scattered around the other 49 titles as well. The fact that this is only an estimate means that no one knows exactly how many federal laws subject US citizens to criminal sanction. That includes Congress. the Department of Justice and other federal agencies responsible for enforcing those laws, let alone your ordinary American. I called when I first got elected, this is an issue I wanted to take care of. And so eight, nine years ago, when I was here, I called Congressional Research Service and I said, how many crimes do we have, not just in the federal code, but through regulatory agency? They said, I'm not kidding you when I tell you this. They said, no one knows. And I thought that is impossible, that no one knows. But estimates have that over 300,000. And so I guess it truly is, no one knows. So how did we get here? After all, our founding fathers first enumerated federal crimes in the Crimes Act of 1790. And that act enumerated 23 federal crimes and established punishments for those crimes. Among others, the Crimes Act of 1790 established
crimes for treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. While the legislation did establish some crimes against the person, such as murder, and crimes against property, such as larceny, the federal jurisdiction of those crimes was limited to federal property and federal territories. Over the past century, Congress has lost its way. Instead of methodology, excuse me, methodically and deliberatively crafting a common sense criminal code, Congress acted in a knee-jerk reaction to every minor and major crisis. In doing so, Congress believed that there always had to be a federal response to every headline and every breaking news story. So, one academic has aptly noted, quote, it was the spate of bank robberies by John Dillinger in the 1930s that provoked passage of the federal bank robbery statute. The kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby about the same time caused passage of the federal statute on kidnapping. The assassination of President Kennedy in the early 1960s prompted the statute on presidential assassination, and the killing of Senator Robert Kennedy in the late 1960s that resulted in the passage of a statute finally making it federal crime to kill a member of Congress. More recently, we saw the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley in response to the Enron scandal.
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