[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 105 (Wednesday, August 3, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 3, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1650
 
                     CONSIDER CRIME BILL CAREFULLY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11 and June 10, 1994, the gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. 
Schiff] is recognized for 15 minutes as the designee for the minority 
leader.
  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Speaker, polls and news reports and information from 
constituents leave no doubt that the American people believe that the 
fight against crime is the No. 1 issue facing our country. And I agree.
  I believe that the first purpose of government is public safety, and 
that is for the very simple reason that we cannot solve our other 
problems, serious as they might be, whether they are addressing the 
health care system, educational system, or employment, if we are not 
free to go from our homes to our jobs, if we are not free to send our 
children to school in safety in fact, if we are not free to be in our 
homes safely.
  Possibly as early as tomorrow, the House of Representatives may 
consider a conference report on a proposed crime bill, a bill that has 
been under discussion between the House of Representatives and the 
other body for at least the last 3 years. It should be stated, and the 
reason I am taking the floor, is to express reasons why there are 
reservations about this bill. After all, if public safety is the number 
one issue, and I believe it is, and properly so, and if we are going to 
consider a proposed anticrime bill, why would it not just pass without 
any reservations at all?
  That is because in its many hundreds of pages it contains many 
provisions. It contains a number of provisions with which you and I 
agree. As a Member of the Committee on the Judiciary, I hope I helped 
fashion some of them. I think a number of these positive provisions 
have been emphasized in the media, and time does not permit a 
reiteration of them here. But I wanted to acknowledge there are 
provisions in this bill which I think are positive.
  Unfortunately, there are provisions which are not positive, which I 
think in fact are counterproductive. I want to take a few minutes to 
talk about these.
  First of all, I want to talk about some of the spending provisions. I 
believe in a special order last evening Congressman Henry Hyde from 
Illinois went into these in more depth than I am going to now. But the 
area that I am talking about is the area that is called crime 
prevention.
  Now, we are all in favor of crime prevention. It is difficult to 
assess, however, what is crime prevention. Clearly the idea behind the 
spending provisions in the crime bill is that crime prevention is 
largely the result of lack of economic opportunity.
  I personally believe, and this is after a career as a criminal 
prosecutor before coming to Congress, as well as having been a defense 
attorney for 2 years, crime is extremely complex, there are no simple 
reasons or causes. There are no simple solutions. So I am not prepared 
to say anything does not have a role altogether in crime, and, 
therefore, in crime prevention.
  I would point out that we read day after day in the newspaper, maybe 
in smaller boxes than some of the more highly publicized cases, of some 
lawyers stealing from their trust accounts, some physicians 
fraudulently overbilling Medicare, some business people cheating on 
taxes, some bankers stealing from savings and loans, some real estate 
representatives fraudulently selling real estate, and so forth.
  Of course, these are not the majority of the members of any of these 
professions. But we see these enough times, and I could go on, of CIA 
agents selling out their country, so they could have a bigger house and 
bigger car, law enforcement officers taking bribes. There are enough of 
these stories to reach the conclusion that having a good education and 
having a good job does not guarantee that an individual will not also 
be a criminal.
  But what I would point out in the bill is I do not think we have to 
question how different social programs, economic programs for 
education, might solve crime, because there are provisions in the crime 
prevention section that have never had anything to do with crime 
prevention, even if one does accept that the broad-based social program 
to help disadvantaged youth will stop crime.
  I would just give as one example the Local Partnership Act. The Local 
Partnership Act would spend $1.8 over the next several years.
  When this act was introduced into the House of Representatives at the 
beginning of 1993, it was accompanied by its sponsors putting in a 
preamble as to why we needed this act. And the preamble was basically 
that we needed economic stimulus. In other words, we needed to spend 
money on urban aid for the primary purpose of stimulating the economy 
and stimulating spending in urban areas. It was, in other words, a 
House version of the President's economic stimulus package which failed 
to pass in 1993.
  Now, I understand there are reasons behind this kind of proposal, and 
it is not my purpose to debate them for or against right here and now. 
What I want to emphasize is this program never had anything to do with 
crime prevention. It became the Local Partnership Act to prevent crime 
when it could not pass any other way.
  So there is another example of $1.8 billion in the approximately $30 
billion in this bill added simply as a spending initiative on the part 
of the sponsor, a pork barrel program I would submit by its opponents, 
but which never when introduced mentioned crime prevention at all. But 
there it is, in the crime prevention section of this bill.
  Now, this is significant, because money is not unlimited. We are 
supposed to gain the money to pay this approximately $30 billion 
through the savings accrued by the reduction in the number of Federal 
employees, according to plans outlined by the Vice President.
  Now, the question is, and the question has not been answered, are we 
going to be able to reduce Federal employment enough to raise $30 
billion over the next several years as planned? If not, we do not fund 
any of these programs perhaps, since this bill is an authorization, 
which means, of course, we say we may spend the money. But we have to 
get the money to spend to perfect that. And I submit that since we do 
not know that we will have enough money to fund the propolice and the 
law enforcement provisions, we should take out those provisions that 
would filter money and siphon off money to programs that have nothing 
to do not only with law enforcement, but with crime prevention.
  Another provision I would like to bring to the attention of my 
colleagues is that this bill changes the mandatory minimum laws dealing 
with certain drug traffickers. In other words, if this bill takes 
effect, certain individuals who are convicted of drug trafficking are 
no longer subject to the mandatory minimum provisions of the law in 
terms of being required to serve time in prison.
  The bill even goes further than that. Not only does it take a large 
group of drug traffickers out of a mandatory minimum provision, it 
places them over to the sentencing guidelines way of sentencing them. 
The sponsors decided the sentencing guidelines were too stiff and 
directed they be reduced. And I believe, I have not seen the final 
wording, that this provision will be retroactive. And if it is 
retroactive, thousands of individuals in prison for drug trafficking 
could be released.
  Now, it is interesting, Mr. Speaker, that when I hear the President 
around the country and the Attorney General around the country making 
speeches supporting this bill, they never mention that provision. I 
have yet to hear the President or Attorney General or any other sponsor 
of this bill say we need this bill so that we can turn drug traffickers 
loose. If they are proud of this and believe this is an accomplishment, 
why do they not talk about it? Why do they not publicize it? I think it 
is because they hope it stays hidden in the bill.
  Now, the argument in favor of this provision, obviously, is that 
these are nonviolent criminals who do not need to be in prison for as 
long. I submit that anyone who traffics in drugs is not a nonviolent 
criminal, any more than the driver of the get-away car in an armed 
robbery is not a nonviolent criminal. Anyone who traffics in narcotics 
is a willing participant in a very violent enterprise, whether they 
choose to hold a gun or not.

                              {time}  1700

  I would say that there is at least an argument that one size fits all 
needs to be addressed. In other words, under the present law, all drug 
traffickers seem to be applied to the same provisions of the law, the 
big trafficker and the small trafficker. And I could see some reasons 
for making distinction. But I would keep that distinction within a 
mandatory minimum prison sentence, because that is our policy on drug 
traffickers. I would not take it all the way down to outside of 
mandatory minimums, much less lower the sentencing guidelines on top of 
it.
  Another provision is on prison funding. There is indeed funding 
proposed here. All funding, again, is subject to the availability of 
funds from the savings we are expected to get but have not yet gotten, 
I do not believe, from the realignment of Federal employment. But the 
prison language is bifurcated. Forty percent of the prison funds would 
go to those States which encourage truth in sentencing. Meaning, as 
under the Federal system today, those convicted of crimes need to serve 
85 percent of their sentences. The 60 percent, the other 60 percent 
goes toward those States which have a policy of freeing up space, in 
other words, letting certain criminals go, called nonviolent criminals, 
so that they would create space for the more violent criminals. 
Certainly we want violent criminals incarcerated, but there are many 
times when nonviolent criminals, so-called, need to be incarcerated.

  I personally believe even nonviolent criminals can become violent in 
a hurry. People come home and surprise a nonviolent burglar. That 
burglar may become violent in a hurry.
  The point is this, it is true people do not want to be robbed at gun 
point, but they do not want their houses broken into by nonviolent 
criminals. And they do not want their cars stolen by nonviolent 
criminals. They do not want their businesses broken into by nonviolent 
criminals. I do believe that on a case-by-case basis there will be 
those that are convicted of a crime who, considering all of the 
circumstances, should be given another chance in society.
  I am not saying, and I do not believe, every convicted criminal needs 
to serve time in prison. I think that those individuals who after going 
through the whole process have been determined by a court, you should 
be in prison, they should serve their sentence and they should serve at 
least 85 percent of that sentence. Because when the service of sentence 
gets down to well below that, if individuals who get a headline 
saying--sentenced to 10 years in prison--are out in 4 or 5 years, it 
not only is a danger to society, it creates an obvious cynicism in the 
public of the criminal justice system because we are not truthful about 
what we are saying.
  They are sentenced to 10 years in prison. They do not serve 10 years 
in prison. That is another provision that has not been publicized.
  Just one more provision, Mr. Speaker. There are provisions which 
would fund more police, provisions which would fund more prisons. But 
you do not get from arrest to prison or any other type of sentence 
unless there is a conviction in court. The only provision I saw for 
funding the district attorneys was a provision that talked about 
community justice programs.
  It required the district attorneys who applied for grants under this 
bill to have a program in coordination with social workers and 
educators and so forth. Is there anything wrong with district attorneys 
working with social workers, educators, other people in the community? 
I certainly hope there is not. But I suspect that, I suggest, rather, 
that the first duty of the district attorney is to prosecute cases in 
court and, if they are just cases and if there is evidence to support 
the charge, to win those cases, to get the conviction. But I did not 
find a single grant program that funded the district attorneys just to 
do the main part of their job.

  The point is, Mr. Speaker, that I have seen enough problems with this 
bill that when it comes up, it is my intention to vote against the rule 
that will bring it to the House floor. In this particular case, at 
least, we are advised as of this time it will be presented to the House 
of Representatives upon a rule from the Committee on Rules, a rule of 
procedure to handle the bill on the House floor and to take care of 
other legal matters that may be joined with the bill.
  I intend to vote no, to send this bill back to the conference 
committee. I do not want to kill a crime bill. I think the American 
people need a good crime bill too much. But I think there is enough 
wrong with this bill, particularly in areas that have not received 
considerable media attention, that I think we need to send it back to 
the conference committee and say, We need you to do some more work on 
this. And hopefully, come up with a better bill, because the way this 
institution works, it is unlikely we will have any other bill for quite 
some time.

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