[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 104 (Tuesday, August 2, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 2, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1840
 
            SOCIAL SPENDING AND THE CRIME CONFERENCE REPORT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Mann). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Hyde] is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the 
minority leader.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, the subject tonight that I would like to talk 
about concerns the crime bill that recently emerged from a conference 
committee and which we expect to debate and vote on this Thursday on 
the floor.
  We are all baffled and angry at the dramatic increase in the crime 
rate. Lots of well-meaning people spend lots of effort and money 
searching for the root causes of crime. Some of these causes are 
uncontrollable. For example, the age of our population, the more young 
males, the more young crime; crime also might be blamed on trends that 
could be changed perhaps in the long run, but certainly not in the 
short run, such as the loss of authority over the young by families, 
churches, schools, and communities.
  Traditional root causes are poverty and ignorance, envy, and just 
plain wickedness but to the criminal, the cost of crime is the risk of 
punishment, the real risk, not the threatened risk. The actual risk of 
punishment is distressingly small, and therein lies the problem.
  This legislation that we recently dealt with in conference by 
providing for more police and more prison space does help a little, but 
at a disproportionate cost, an irresponsible cost, and that is what I 
would like to discuss this evening.
  On Thursday of last week the House and Senate conferees on the crime 
bill completed work on a $32 billion, that is billion dollars, package. 
Since the conferees first met in mid-June, their role was to carefully 
set priorities both in policies and spending, to achieve the goal of 
keeping violent criminal offenders off the streets and away from 
innocent citizens.
  Unfortunately, whatever good this legislation accomplishes is heavily 
offset by about $9 billion in social welfare spending, all gratifying 
to the root-cause school of criminology, but excessive and duplicative 
of existing programs.
  Some have said that for every police officer this bill funds, its 
also funds two new social workers. You can call it money to fight root 
causes, you can call it revenue sharing, or you can call it crime pork. 
No matter what you call it, we have been investing in social welfare 
programs since the days of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Since 1965 we 
have spent almost $5 trillion dollars on the War on Poverty and urban 
aid, and we still cannot say which of these programs have proven 
effective in fighting crime, if any of them have. We just do not know.
  We do know the situation they are supposed to cure, the poverty and 
the crime, are worse, not better.
  The conferees have funded almost $9 billion in social spending in 
this bill under the heading of prevention programs. Not only do these 
programs duplicate existing programs already in operation, we are 
double- and triple-funding the same programs in the bill for arts and 
crafts classes, self-esteem classes, and have funded multimillion-
dollar grant programs based on untried and untested notions that have 
very little to do with crime or even crime prevention.
  Society has not ignored crime-ridden inner cities. Government has 
showered these areas with programs and money, and too many of them are 
costly failures, and here our answer is more of the same.
  I will focus on just one example: job training. The bill that we are 
talking about creates a new $900 million program, Youth Employment 
Skills. YES is the acronym, YES, Youth Employment Skills, and it is to 
``test the proposition that crime can be reduced in neighborhoods with 
high incidences of crime and poverty through a saturation jobs 
program.''
  But just a moment, as this chart shows, prepared by my friend, 
Senator Orrin Hatch, the Federal Government already funds 154 different 
jobs programs at a total cost this year of almost $25 billion. 
Remember, a billion is a thousand million dollars. Lest you say that 
there may be 154 jobs programs, but none for at-risk populations 
targeted by crime-prevention programs, youth and the economically 
disadvantaged, let me inform you today nine jobs programs specifically 
target the economically disadvantaged at a cost this year of $2.66 
billion, and if you look at this chart, you will see that 16 jobs 
programs specifically target youth at a cost of $4.5 billion.
  The next chart will show that 6 of these 16 programs were enacted in 
the last 5 years. So what is wrong with adding another program? Program 
No. 10 or No. 17 or No. 155? What is wrong is that everyone agrees we 
have got too many programs as it is, and this duplication has driven up 
costs and reduced quality.

  Vice President Gore's National Performance Review finds that the 
Federal Government should, and I quote, ``consolidate training programs 
for unemployed people.'' In recent months the General Accounting 
Office, the GAO, has repeatedly attacked the proliferation of jobs 
training programs. In testimony before the House Government Operations 
Committee, Clarence Crawford, Associate Director for Education and 
Employment Issues of the GAO's Health, Education, and Human Services 
Division, states that, ``The current fragmented system of employment 
and training programs is not meeting the needs of workers, employers, 
or administrators, and thus is not helping the United States meet the 
challenges of increased global competition.'' Crawford goes on to say 
the more than 150 programs providing employment training assistance 
have well-intended purposes but collectively they create confusion and 
frustration for their clients and administrators, hamper the delivery 
of services tailored to the needs of those seeking assistance, and 
create the potential for duplication of effort and unnecessary 
administrative costs.
  He concludes that, ``A new system consisting of significantly fewer 
programs affords the best opportunity for improving the quality of 
employment training services.''
  So in this bill are we helping or are we hurting? The National 
Commission for Employment Policy and Welfare Simplification and the 
Coordination Advisory Committee, both creatures of Congress, urge that 
Federal jobs programs stop proliferating, that they be consolidated. 
The Vice President, Congress' General Accounting Office, and Federal 
Commissions are urging streamlining and consolidation, and yet the 
Democrats in Congress, with the support of the President, want to 
create an entirely new $900 million jobs program. Incredible.
  Let us focus on the nine current jobs programs for the economically 
disadvantaged. We will fine-tune this.
  Linda Morra, director of education and employment issues of the GAO's 
Health, Education, and Human Services Division, finds, ``The overlap we 
found among the nine programs serving the economically disadvantaged is 
an example of how overlap can occur at each level of government, 
Federal, State, and local, and potentially add administrative costs.''
  Clarence Crawford reports that seven of these programs often share 
common goals, serve the same categories of clients, provide overlapping 
services, but are administered through five separate Federal agencies, 
each with its own structure.
  You have to ask yourself are we crazy here? Do we just proliferate 
programs and throw money around as though it is bacteria?
  How much overlap is there? Well, one of these charts, chart D: Of the 
nine jobs programs for the economically disadvantaged, these are 
already existing jobs, not what we are going to superimpose on it, six 
of them assess clients' employability skills, five teach adult basic 
education, five tutor clients for the high school equivalency test, six 
provide classroom vocational skills training, five provide employer-
specific training, five provide job-search training, and six provide 
life-skills training.
  Gee, one or two programs would do fine. But do we need five and six 
of them all competing for the same clientele? Besides adding to costs, 
this duplication confuses and frustrates potential clients.
  Mr. Crawford finds that, ``The current patchwork of employment 
training programs can create confusion for those seeking assistance, 
because it has no clear entry point and no clear path from one program 
to another. The minutiae that those seeking services must master is 
flabbergasting.''

                              {time}  1850

  In determining who is economically disadvantaged and thus eligible, 
there are six different standards to define low-income levels, five 
different definitions for family or household and five schemes of what 
is to be included in income.
  Looking at the youth job training programs, the lower age limits 
range from 11 to 16 and the upper limits range from 19 to 27. This is 
not only confusing to clients but to administrators as well. There are 
now 21 separate Federal and State committees or councils to try to 
coordinate different programs. And it is confusing to employers wanting 
to hire program graduates. Clarence Crawford notes, and I quote, 
``Employers also experience problems with the fragmented system of 
employment training programs. Employers want a system that is easy to 
access and provide qualified job candidates. Instead, employers must 
cope with many programs that provide job referral and placement 
assistance.'' The competition for bodies can result in job seekers 
being placed in inappropriate programs. Mr. Crawford states, ``For job 
seekers to get the most from the assistance provided, the services must 
be tailored to their specific needs. However, because local service 
providers who are under contract with local employment training 
programs often do their own outreach and have a financial stake in 
directing clients to their own program or are isolated from one 
another, little attempt is generally made to refer clients to other 
programs.''
  With all these programs, no one knows which are effective. Mr. 
Crawford states that, ``Another concern with the fragmented system is 
that fragmented efforts to monitor the program performance and outcomes 
are difficult because some programs cannot readily track participant 
progress across programs, and sometimes within programs.'' Is that not 
marvelous? Billions of dollars for these programs, and we cannot 
monitor them. They overlap, they are redundant, they are duplicative, 
and we just keep throwing the money out, throwing the money out. It 
seems everyone agrees we have to reduce the number of Federal jobs 
programs, everybody but the Democratic drafters of this crime bill. 
They should jettison their ill-conceived youth employment skills 
program. If they just read the reports put out by their own 
administration, by their own legislative colleagues and pay attention 
to them.
  Let us look at some of the big-ticket items in the bill.
  The Local Partnership Act provides $1.8 billion in formula grants for 
direct funding to localities around the country for drug treatment, 
education and jobs, oh, yes. The formula takes into account the 
community's relative affluence, unemployment levels and rate of 
taxation. Larger grants would be awarded to areas with higher taxes as 
a percentage of their citizens' income. So the Federal Government will 
be rewarding communities which tax their citizens the most, a rather 
perverse incentive, I would say.
  The model intensive grant program will distribute $895 million--see 
what a bargain. If it just went up another $100 million, it would be $1 
billion. That is for model crime prevention programs targeted at high-
crime neighborhoods.
  Under this program, the Attorney General may award grants to no more 
than 15 chronic high-intensive crime areas to develop comprehensive 
model crime prevention programs that ``attempt to relieve conditions 
that encourage crime'' and ``provide meaningful and lasting 
alternatives to involvement in crime.'' If they could do that, it would 
be well worth the money, but do not hold your breath.
  Priority is to be given to proposals that ``are innovative in 
approach.'' That is a favorite word of drafters of grant programs, 
``innovative in approach'' and ``vary in approach.''
  The purpose of this program--I guess helping the churches and the 
communities and helping preserve the family is too old-fashioned and 
traditional, not innovative enough. The purpose of this program is to 
see which model programs work so that the Federal Government can pump 
more money into them in the future--$895 million is a lot to spend on 
experimental efforts that lack guidelines and are terminally vague.
  Now we have the Community Economic Partnership, which will give $300 
million--a pittance--to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, for 
lines of credit to community development corporations to stimulate 
business and employment opportunities for low-income, unemployed and 
underemployed individuals, to improve the quality of life in rural and 
urban areas. This sounds remarkably like President Clinton's defeated 
fiscal stimulus program. And so, like Dracula at sunset, here it comes 
again.

  Money is scattered everywhere without any thought of duplication, 
whether the program has been successful in the past or whether the 
taxpayer will really get any return on the spending. Here is a sampling 
of the ``youth'' programs in the bill:
  The Community Youth Services and Supervision Grant Program Act of 
1994 provides $630 million for after-school, weekend, and summer 
programs in athletics, culture, education and arts and crafts. This 
program is supposed to provide children with positive activities and 
alternatives to the street life of crime and drugs.
  I imagine if some of this money could be differently allocated, a lot 
of these youngsters could go to Harvard with this money.
  The bill gives $270 million to the FACES program, the family and 
community endeavor schools. I do not know how they think of these 
titles. I would have run out by now with these repetitive programs. 
Under this program, local entities chosen by the Education Secretary 
and the Secretary of Health and Human Services are given money to 
``improve academic and social development by instituting a 
collaborative structure that trains and coordinates the efforts of 
teachers, administrators, social workers, guidance counselors, and so 
on.''
  Grants also go to community-based organizations to supervise various 
activities, including sports, arts and crafts--our favorite words back 
again--``social activities and,'' yes, ``dance programs.''
  There is a $125 million grant for the Attorney General to make grants 
to assist children who have ``come into contact with gangs,'' to 
``reach their full potential as contributing, law-abiding citizens.'' 
This program is supposed to give young people positive alternatives to 
gangs such as--and here they are again--``music, art, and drama 
activities, physical fitness training, life skills training and mental 
health counseling.''
  Now, there is an additional $40 million for a program known as 
``community youth academies.'' The Attorney General will make grants to 
organizations to provide residential services to youth aged 11 to 19 
who are at risk of dropping out of school or coming in contact with the 
juvenile justice system to increase their self-esteem, assist them in 
making healthy and responsible choices, improve the academic 
performance of such youth and provide them with vocational and life 
skills.
  Believe me, I do not ridicule the objects of these programs, I am 
just awestruck at their proliferation, at the repetition, the 
overlapping, the redundancy and the billions that they cost. Somebody 
ought to look at this, put this together, spend a month, 2 months, and 
study these and get rid of those that duplicate those that are not 
effective and work on the ones that are effective. But this explosion, 
this cornucopia of programs, all at high expense, is absurd.
  Now there is also $5 million to establish ``youth anticrime 
councils,'' to give students a structured forum to work with community 
organizations, law enforcement officials, Government and media 
representatives, to address issues regarding youth and violence. In 
other words, to sit around the gym and talk about these things, 
somebody gets $5 million. The councils must be composed of not more 
than five students and meet at least once a month. Thank goodness, 
there are some guidelines there.
  Finally, there is the GREAT Program. GREAT stands for ``gang 
resistance, education, and training.'' This program will provide $22 
million for the establishment of at least 50 additional gang 
resistance, education, and training projects by the Secretary of the 
Treasury.
  This bill is a grab-bag of programs worthy of the wildest fantasies 
of the most imaginative social workers. My point is not very 
complicated: Some of these programs may have merit, many may not; all 
are expensive. If we in Congress are to be responsible and accountable, 
we ought not spend $9 billion so casually.
  I would support some model programs and demonstration projects tests 
that are carefully chosen and carefully supervised. I fear, however, 
that we are acting out the old banality of throwing money at a problem 
in hopes that it will go away.

                              {time}  1900

  We all know that this Congress and this country do not have unlimited 
financial resources. We must carefully and critically choose programs 
that will have the greatest effect in protecting our citizens.
  I am afraid that this conference report is not something that we can 
proudly present to the American people. I would hope that we can take 
this bill back to the conference and get rid of its duplicative, 
redundant, overlapping programs and fund those that we can agree on 
have a real chance to work. As this bill now stands, it is not as the 
President said, the toughest, smartest crime bill in history. It is a 
bloated, extraordinarily overpriced tradeoff to every faction in the 
Democratic Party.
  Mr. Speaker, the people deserve better, and I yield to my friend, the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Gekas], a very valued member of the 
Committee on the Judiciary.
  Mr. GEKAS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. 
Hyde] for yielding, but I thank him more for the excellent presentation 
which he made.
  I believe that the gentleman from Illinois has succeeded in 
demonstrating to the American people that the way we do business around 
here, especially with such an important issue as crime, has got to be 
changed. The gentleman has outlined the overlapping programs, the 
billions of dollars that are being thrown into these social programs, 
midnight basketball, and training, and arts and crafts, and all those 
apparent good things for the neighborhood when at the same time we have 
ongoing programs to meet exactly those purposes. But here is an added 
element which I wish to bring out with the guidance of the gentleman 
from Illinois, and that is this, that what we have before us is a ruse; 
that is, a temptation. The people who know, like the gentleman and I 
do, that the death penalty and strong law enforcement by the way of new 
and better prisons for the violent offenders, and for three strikes and 
you're out, and for prisons, and for a hundred thousand new policemen 
and so forth, the law enforcement portion of the crime bill, parts of 
which, or maybe all of which, we confirm and endorse, are in a dilemma 
because thrown into the bill are these social programs and big bucks 
programs that the gentleman has outlined.
  What is the individual who is for strong law enforcement supposed to 
do? The theory is: ``Well, if you want these strong law enforcement 
bills, you better vote for the bill, and, as an added benefit, you're 
going to get these social programs which we feel might be wasted.'' 
That is why we have to defeat the rule; is it not? The rule that comes 
up before the House will give us an opportunity to point out this 
difference. Some of us want strong law enforcement----
  Mr. HYDE. The only way to send the bill back to conference would be 
to defeat the rule, absolutely
  Mr. GEKAS. Some of us want strong law enforcement, the death penalty, 
all these extra measures against the violent offender, and we are 
repelled by the social programing of the kind that the gentleman has 
presented here this evening.
  Mr. HYDE. Let me say to my friend from Pennsylvania that it is very 
easy to vote yes on these programs, and then to pat yourself on the 
back and say, ``I've really struck a blow for law enforcement.'' It is 
hard, miserable work going through every one of these hundreds of 
programs and trying to oversee them, monitor them, see if they work, 
having to say no to people. That is the toughest thing a politician has 
to do, say no.
  But we have not done it, and the result has been a terrible burden on 
the taxpayers' back, a plethora of ineffective programs that cross each 
other out, that neutralize each other, and the problem is getting 
worse. If it were getting better, I would say, ``More of the same is a 
great idea.'' But the problem is worse than ever, and so obviously we 
are doing a lot of things wrong. We have got to find out what we can do 
right.
  The gentleman and I know the restoration of the family is at the core 
of our problem.
  Mr. GEKAS. Welfare reform.
  Mr. HYDE. Too many kids wandering the streets, without parents 
watching them, latchkey kids learning their morals at the level of the 
street and the alley. We have horrible problems. Some of these programs 
are designed to give these kids something to do, but it is a terrible 
shame that we do not have government get out of the way of institutions 
that are already there, such as churches, help them once more have some 
authority in the community.
  But I yield further to my friend.
  Mr. GEKAS. I just want to point out one other thing that is a further 
travesty here:
  The people, like the gentleman and I, and many others who support the 
death penalty, for instance, have before us a bill now in the form of a 
conference report that has been crafted--now I say this advisedly--
crafted by opponents of the death penalty. That is they have created 
such a structure in the jury portion of the deliberations on the 
ultimate penalty, death penalty, that it may well be found to be 
unconstitutional. Thus the opponents of the death penalty, of whom 
there are legion in this House and on the Committee on the Judiciary on 
which the gentleman and I serve, will be voting for a bill for their 
social programs which they want vastly to take place while at the same 
time voting, ``Ha ha,'' for the folks back home, for a death penalty, 
showing how tough they are when they well know that it may be so 
entrapped with loose language that it would fall constitutionally, and 
thus at the end of the process, lo and behold, the liberal elements of 
the Congress will have voted for social programs and for a laughingly 
death penalty----
  Mr. HYDE. Evisceration of the death penalty.
  Mr. GEKAS. And the only thing left will be more spending, more----
  Mr. HYDE. We conservatives have been bought off with some additional 
money for prisons and with additional death penalties which are utterly 
meaningless because most of the murders do not occur in a post office, 
or on a Federal reserve, or on a military reserve. They occur out on 
the street and are State problems, not Federal problems.
  Mr. Speaker, I say, ``It's posturing to say you're tough on criminals 
by passing a litany of death penalties which are relatively 
meaningless, providing some money for additional prison space, which is 
good, but then, to get that much, you have to accept the rest of the 
baggage, which is eight or nine, properly figured, billion dollars 
worth of duplicative, probably hollow, social programs.''
  Now the hundred thousand police, which is also a carrot in front of 
the nose of many mayors and cities in the country, has a catch to it, 
as the gentleman knows. The local people are going to have to pay 25 
percent of the costs the first year, 25 the second, and 25 the third, 
and 25 the fourth, and they will find out this is a very costly benefit 
that they have received because, Mr. Speaker, I say to my colleagues, 
``When you get these additional few policemen, there are going to have 
to be additional squad cars, and uniforms, and locker space, and 
salaries, and insurance, and so it isn't all the great boon it's 
painted to be, but it's great posturing.''
  Mr. GEKAS. One further illustration on how we are confronted with a 
sham of a conference bill, and that is on the death penalty itself. I 
speak about this because the gentleman and I have been involved in this 
battle for many, many years. When the Committee on the Judiciary, 
notwithstanding the amendments that we offer to straighten out the 
death penalty, pass the current--the bill which eventually went before 
the House, we again came to the floor, and we were successful with an 
overwhelming House vote to reinstate into the jury instructions on the 
death penalty the direction that the jury must take to take the 
aggravating circumstances that occurred in a killing, like the rape, or 
multiple killings, or the use of horrible weaponry, or the maiming, or 
the torturing, aggravating circumstances that could lead reasonable 
people on a jury to find for the defendant and then to weigh against 
that mitigating circumstances, the age of the defendant, the mental 
capacity, the tenderness of disposition, those kinds of things that can 
be adduced in favor of the defendant. Then the jury has the duty of 
weighting those against each other, and they find aggravating 
circumstances. Then they should bring in the death penalty.

                              {time}  1910

  What the Judiciary Committee did was forbid my amendment that would 
have cured that. But the House overwhelmingly voted for it. I was happy 
about that.
  Later, in the period of time when the conference was forming for the 
bill, I then asked for a motion to instruct conferees and repeated that 
salutatory portion of the death penalty instruction, and again 
overwhelmingly the House voted to instruct our conferees, the House 
conferees, to make that point at the conference.
  This just absolutely shakes me, I say to the gentleman from Illinois, 
it shakes me so much I almost forgot your State, but when the conferees 
gathered in the conference, I am told, our conferees, not only did they 
not adopt the Gekas amendment that passed the House during the course 
of the bill----
  Mr. HYDE. The gentleman got rolled in conference. That has happened 
every year. It happens not only on the gentleman's amendment, but it 
happens on very significant things like habeas corpus reform. We did 
not even touch that this year. And a law that permits a John Wayne 
Gacey to be convicted and sentenced to death, and 14 years to elapse 
between the time of the sentence and the time of his execution is a 
pretty bad law. It makes a mockery of our justice system, and it 
burdens the families of the victims unconscionably. But we did not 
touch that because the Democrats did not want to, and that is another 
tragedy.
  But the gentleman is right. The other party controls the conferences, 
and they determine what lives and what dies, what survives and what 
does not, and never mind what the Senate has passed or the House has 
passed.
  I want to thank my friend for his brilliance, for his courage, and 
for his persistence on behalf of justice, as he understands it and as 
most people understand it. He is a very valuable and effective member 
of the Committee on the Judiciary. I want to thank George Fishman of my 
staff and Catherine Hazeem of my staff and Tom Smeeton of my staff, who 
worked very long and very hard to assemble the data analyzing these 
various social programs and, frankly, in showing how they overlap and 
duplicate existing programs. I think they have performed an invaluable 
service, and I am most grateful to them.
  If the gentleman has nothing further----
  Mr. GEKAS. Just one other thing. Just the way we are being tempted to 
vote for this because of the goodies on the other side, there are also 
provisions that help in women's issues that are in this bill. We are 
all for those. But they cannot tempt us to vote for this bill, with all 
its excesses and all its flaws, nor should they try to tempt us, 
because there happen to be good features in it for the protection of 
women. We all want that and will vote time and time again when issues 
are brought to us clearly and singularly on those issues. Do not let 
the American people feel that this comprehensive big bill is good for 
everybody. It is not.
  Mr. HYDE. I thank the gentleman.

                          ____________________