[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 73 (Monday, June 13, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: June 13, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
            THE SPECIFICS, PROS AND CONS, OF THE CRIME BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Ms. Shepherd). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentlewoman from 
Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized for 60 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Madam Speaker, I found it very painful to sit here 
and listen to the distortions about the crime bill. I am on the 
Committee on the Judiciary, and that committee worked very hard and 
this body worked hard, very hard, because the American people are tired 
of the same old crime bills we have seen year after year that did not 
do the job.
  Now, everyone knows we have had crime bill after crime bill after 
crime bill in this body, and crime has gone the wrong way, it went up 
instead of down. This year we have put together one of the most 
thoughtful crime bills around after consulting with all sorts of 
people, and I think it makes an incredible amount of sense. I am very 
saddened to see people come down and take pot shots at it and not 
really want to get into a give-and-take about specifics. They want to 
give you language, but they do not really want to deal with the 
specifics.
  Let me tell you what is in this crime bill. No. 1, even the gentleman 
from North Carolina [Mr. Taylor] side half of it, half of it goes 
directly to law enforcement. It goes for prisons and it goes for 
police. These are very important things to remember.
  Now, where does the other half of it go? The other half of it goes 
directly targeted at those things that communities told us would help 
prevent crime. You might call them social programs, but I happen to 
think they are the best crime prevention we have seen. A significant 
amount of that money goes to police violence against women, violence 
against women. The gentleman was talking about the rape sentencing not 
being tough enough; you want to believe that I do not believe that? Of 
course I believe that. You know what he should do if he wants to do 
something about that? He should have supported this bill because in 
this bill we have the Violence Against Women Act, which says States 
must up the sentencing statistics and sentencing terms of people who 
create and do violence against women, whether it is rape, domestic 
violence, or whatever.
  Now, that may be termed a social program, but let me tell you what 
the statistics say. The statistics say that any child who sees violence 
in the home is 700 times more likely to end up being a violent criminal 
themselves than a child who does not see violence in the home.
  We know that most States have winked at domestic violence and winked 
at violence against women. So you can call that a social program, but I 
call that the biggest prevention of violence in the future we could 
possibly do, and almost everyone who has looked at and studied that 
agrees.
  We also increase the penalties for violent acts against children. We 
increased the penalties for anybody who is perpetrating violent acts on 
children. If this society cannot protect its children, what can we do?
  I think most people are absolutely for that.
  When look at my own State, what were we doing? We spent $300 million 
in my State for prisons and only $4 million for prevention. There is 
something wrong with that formula because we cannot build prisons fast 
enough.
  So what do we do in the name of ``social programs''? It says here 
there shall be money available to cities with high crime areas for 
jobs, for jobs and job creation, and to get youth into those jobs.
  I think if you keep them busy, that is a very good thing to do. It 
goes to community policing, it goes to all sorts of new things that are 
being tried, such as boot camps, drug courts, on and on and on.
  Now, those do not sound like social programs to me; they sound like 
very practical things that people out in the streets have been talking 
about and saying they need, they need, they need. They really have not 
been getting them because all we have been doing in this Congress is 
having a bidding war and we will get tougher, get tougher, get tougher, 
but we never gave them the money. Please do not forget, most of the 
crime is at the local level.
  So this is trying to recognize that and encourage them to get tough 
or get better, have more prisons, have more programs that work and move 
in the proper direction.
  There are also some very exciting other programs that we have done 
that were not even in here. We have the troops-to-policemen program 
that we put in the defense bill. That is, that as we downsize the 
military, we are trying to transfer as many who want to go into law 
enforcement to law enforcement, and we will pick up half the price of 
those policemen because everyone knows the number of crimes per 
policemen have gone up significantly. That is a very costly event, 
getting policemen out there and getting them well trained. If we have 
got them in the services who are trained, the city can have them and 
they pay half and we pay half.
  We had that in the defense bill.
  We are also trying to get them much more equipment. When we talk in 
defense, we talk about a soldier and what can we do for force 
enhancement so that the soldier can be as effective as possible. We 
have never utilized that concept on the law enforcement side. So we 
went roaring out there, we have great equipment for defense, and we won 
the cold war. Guess what? We lost the war in the streets.

  So this crime bill is dealing with the fact that we lost the war in 
the streets. I would think everybody would be happy about this crime 
bill because it is picking up what we have done in putting the 
Department of Defense with the Department of Justice and looking at the 
things the Department of Defense has that they can transfer to police 
forces all over.
  In fact, on June 20, I say to all of you who want to trash this crime 
bill, go downtown because the Department of Justice is having a 
showcase of what they have been able to get already out of the Defense 
inventory that we are going to be able to transfer to local communities 
to be able to solve some of these things.
  Let me give you some examples: Soft-body armor for policemen which 
keeps them from getting shot. Every time we save a policeman, we save 
over $1 million in training for any community. And we save so much in 
the morale. How absolutely disheartened we are every time that happens.
  That has been a terrific thing.
  Safe gun procedures, they have not got; we have stuff that will show 
you wherever gunfire is going off and they can go; we have detection 
for explosives, we have all sorts of things coming up, sticky foam, on 
and on and on and on.
  There is going to be that showcase downtown, and they are inviting 
law enforcement officials from all over America to come and see this. 
That is because of this crime bill. I do not consider that a social 
program.
  I consider that a terrific oversight by this Government that we have 
been so busy defeating the Russians, which of course we should have 
done at the time of the cold war, but we forgot to look at home and we 
lost the war in the streets.
  So this is about that, and I just cannot believe anybody would take 
the floor and call these things social programs. It really troubles me 
because it toughens things up. It adds the things that we want, it does 
all sorts of added gravitas, I guess, for State and local government to 
act out and connect together with other States so they can start 
tracking guns, so they can start trying to make sure their police are 
better armed than the criminals.
  Right now, show me a jurisdiction where the criminals are not better 
armed than the police. Something is wrong with that picture.
  So, yes, we went after assault weapons because we do not think that 
is right.
  The policeman has a pistol, and the people on the street have assault 
guns. Now, I am sorry, I do not know who wants to argue the other way 
around on that one. But not only that, you can say, ``Well, a knife 
could be an assault weapon and a rock could be an assault weapon,'' but 
I never heard of a drive-by knifing or a drive-by rocking, but I have 
heard of drive-by shootings with weapons that have wiped out all sorts 
of people.
  So, we went after the very practical thing in here. The same with the 
Brady bill. How can anybody be against the Brady bill? Who is for 
criminals getting guns? All this does is set up a nationwide check to 
try and prevent people with a record from getting guns.

                              {time}  1930

  Madam Speaker, I would find it very surprising that someone would be 
for that, so I must say it saddens me when I hear people come to the 
floor and talk about these things and then not really want to engage in 
debate about what the specifics are. There are some wonderful 
specifics. Of course we did not get everything down we would like to 
do. There are always more things that one would like to do. But whether 
it is three strikes you're out, whether it is State prison grants, 
whether it is increasing the death penalty, whether it is reforming 
habeas corpus so you only get to do it once, and you must do it within 
a year after the State acts, so we expedite that, whether it is crime 
prevention, whether it is trying juveniles as adults on cases of 
murder, assault, rape and robbery; I think all of those things are the 
things the American people wanted.
  And let us try this, let us try this because we do need a little 
prevention put in there, too, and it is targeted prevention, it is the 
right kind of prevention, and I sincerely hope a year from now, or so, 
we are really going to begin to see the numbers change for the first 
time.
  So I must say I was pleased that this crime bill, I thought, was one 
of the best ones I have seen in the 12 years we have been doing it 
since I have been here, and I think we have got the most sensible 
balance, and I think that is why cities backed it, that is why 
Governors backed it, that is why most of the people in this body backed 
it, and it saddens me very much to come to the floor and hear somebody 
did not back it, Madam Speaker.

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