[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 42 (Monday, April 18, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: April 18, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1050
 
                     DEMOCRATS' CRIME BILL A CRIME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mazzoli). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of February 11, 1994, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Linder] is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, we are again presented with an 
administration that talks to the right and walks to the left on all 
bills that we have seen. The language that this administration uses 
does not match with the words that they write in their bills.
  You will recall the very first commercial that Candidate Clinton put 
out during the campaign was to end welfare as we know it, to get tough 
on welfare, get people out working for themselves.
  Again, that rang well in the ears of the electorate. That is 
something the Americans have been thinking and worrying about for some 
time. We spent $5 trillion since 1965 on the poor, and the poverty rate 
has gone from 12.8 to 14.1 percent.
  What has the administration written on this welfare reform? Not one 
word. Indeed, the liberals on the Democrat side will not let welfare 
reform come to the fore, because those folks on those plantations are 
their voters.
  Last year on the budget, the President you will recall during the 
campaign said we are going to have a middle class tax cut. In the last 
debate, he said if any of my proposals would require any tax increase, 
I will drop them.
  Then he said in December, well, I have been surprised by a budget 
deficit that was much larger than I thought, and we are going to have 
to have the largest tax increase in history. However, it will only 
affect the top 1.2 percent of the income earners.
  Well, he needs to talk to those people who are retired and making 
$40,000 a year and who have got a 70 percent increase in the taxes on 
their Social Security. I am sure they do not consider themselves in the 
top 1.2 percent, but they got the tax increase. He needs to talk to the 
truck driver who makes a living going across our roads, who pays 4.3 
cents per gallon more in new taxes every day.
  On health care the President made it clear he was going to provide 
everybody with universal coverage that you cannot lose, lifetime 
security in health care. He was going to improve your choices, improve 
the quality of care, and reduce the cost.
  Well, words mean things. Words are the currency of this profession, 
and you cannot just keep lying to the American people. We learned you 
do not listen to what they say; you read what they write.
  When the President was interviewed on CBS by Paula Zahn, she said 
could someone go to their own doctor and pay them with their own cash? 
The President said of course you can. That is not what his bill says. 
You may do it, but you would be guilty of bribery, and the doctor who 
takes the money is guilty of a felony worth a $10,000 fine.
  The most recent example, of course, is the crime bill we are working 
on on the floor of the House at this time. The President promised to 
expand the number of crimes for which capital punishment can obtain, 
and they brag about that. But in fact, the procedural roadblocks put 
into this bill make it unlikely that anyone will ever be put to death 
for any Federal crime again.
  The President promised to get tougher on habeas corpus, the endless 
appeals, to shorten them. In fact, as the speaker before me said, they 
are dramatically lengthened. We even add an additional government-paid 
lawyer for those appealing.
  The President promised in a press conference last September and in 
his State of the Union that he is going to endorse three strikes and 
you are out, three violent felonies and you are in prison forever. 
Well, the bill says that, but procedurally it makes it virtually 
impossible to apply to anyone, and, indeed, of the thousands and 
thousands of people in prison on Federal charges today, only 500 would 
be eligible for the difficult procedure to use the three strikes and 
you are out.
  It has been said that somewhere between 15 and 25 percent, in some 
states, of all the people in our Federal prisons are there as illegal 
aliens. Did we get tough on that and send them home? No, we do not 
address that.
  The President did not do one thing in his crime bill about addressing 
the root cause of crime, which is not insecurity and lack of self-
confidence. It is drugs, neighborhood use of drugs. The communicable 
disease spread by user to user in our neighborhoods, we do not address 
that.
  It is obvious to everyone who looks at this problem, and it is 
repeated over and over, that 6 percent of Americans commit 70 to 80 
percent of all crimes. Those are studies that go back as far as 1945.

  Are we taking them off the streets? The way you do that is to build 
prisons or, even better yet, take these hundreds and hundreds of 
military bases we are shutting down and turn them into boot camps with 
fences around them. They have eating and sleeping facilities. Take the 
repeat offenders off the streets.
  The President provides $3 billion in his crime bill to build prisons 
and $8 million for social welfare programs. $8 billion of pork that 
failed last year in the stimulus package, 8 percent of which will be 
handed out by the President and the administration themselves to cities 
and mayors that they choose to help. Nothing but payoffs, Indeed, some 
of the programs to be used in that $8 billion are self-esteem courses, 
removal of graffiti, and, indeed, even the 100,000 officers that were 
promised turns out to be 50,000 officers, and they do not even have to 
be police officers. Many of them will be social workers.
  Ladies and gentlemen, the biggest crime we are facing today is this 
bill. It is a crime what they have written.

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