[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 108 (Monday, August 8, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 8, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                             THE CRIME BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentlewoman from Colorado 
[Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  (Mrs. SCHROEDER asked and was given permission to revise and extend 
her remarks.)
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, I take the floor because I have been 
very frustrated by what some of the politicians are saying about the 
crime bill. I think it is time we have a little truth in advertising 
around here.
  I proudly sit on the Committee on the Judiciary, and I am proud of 
how this House dealt with the crime bill. We dealt with it piece by 
piece by piece so all Members had a chance to debate and understand 
fully what is in it. Then it was packaged in the omnibus crime bill, 
and now it appears many Members have all sorts of reasons they suddenly 
cannot vote for it.
  I think every voter ought to be very angry about that. The No. 1 
thing that any government ought to do is to be able to protect its 
citizens against violence. I think this is one of the smartest bills we 
have seen yet.
  Let me talk about the four parts that are in it. First of all there 
is very strong punishment. The three strikes and you are out is in 
there. There is money to help States build more prisons which we know 
are way underfunded, and to help catch up with that backlog and many 
other pieces for very strong punishment.
  Then there is a very strong antiassault weapons ban. We voted on it 
separately. We debated it separately. We won that bill, and it seems 
very important that the ban on assault weapons belongs in an anticrime 
bill. Look at the average law enforcement officer today and he or she 
is way outgunned by the criminals, way outgunned. Look at the average 
law enforcement officers today and they do not look much different than 
Wyatt Earp, except they have a car rather than a horse. But the 
criminals have much stronger firepower. They can do these drive-by 
shootings, they can terrorize all sorts of neighborhoods, and we do not 
need assault weapons out there in the hands of people. This is a very 
important component.
  There is also a very important component in the prevention, and 
prevention breaks out into two different parts. I must say as I listen 
to Members say they are voting against this because of pork, they 
really ought to take a look at what they are really voting against.
  No. 1, under prevention we put a very important bill in called the 
Violence Against Women Act.

                              {time}  1040

  It really starts moving this country forward in dealing with the 
violence in the home by either men or women. We have totally left the 
home untouched. We allow domestic terrorism by both sexes against 
children and against each other, and that is wrong.
  In fact, today the American Bar Association put out an excellent 
report about how the law has totally failed in this area. Well, that is 
why we need the Violence Against Women Act, because this will beef up 
the laws in this area. It will also provide for more shelters in those 
kinds of violent actions. Right now we have three times as many 
shelters in this country for dogs and cats as we do for people.
  Does that make sense, that we are more concerned about battered dogs 
and cats than we are about children and families? I do not think so.
  We also do not have a 1-800 number that we can use in this situation. 
This funds 1-800. Do you think that is pork? Do you think those are 
things we really need? I do, and I do not think that is pork.
  We also have some very important preventive programs that are being 
tried in my great city of Denver, CO. I must tell you we had so much 
violence on the street in the spring and fall of last year I was 
terrorized to go into the summer, and I contacted our Attorney General, 
Janet Reno, and she made our city one of the models to see if these 
programs work.
  What people are calling pork is really a few bucks that we are able 
to put in the hands of an awful lot of community groups who want to 
reach out and work with the youth. Before, these groups have had to 
spend over half their time getting the money to be able to pay the rent 
or insurance or whatever it was. They are all volunteering their time, 
but they were having to spend twice as much time having bake sales or 
car washes or whatever. With these few extra bucks, they can spend 100 
percent of their time on the young people, and I must tell you it has 
worked like a charm in Denver, CO.
  This has been our summer of safety, the quietest summer we have seen 
in a long time. We put in a very tough curfew where kids are picked up 
off the street after a certain hour. They are taken to a rec center. We 
found a lot of troublemakers came from other cities that came in to 
make trouble. Their parents are notified. If they are from our area, we 
put them in touch with community groups that are willing to get them 
into sports or get them into some kind of a job or get them into 
something so we get them out of trouble. That is what we need to do.
  It has worked so well, and that is the model that this ``pork'' has 
been developed around. Yes, midnight sports; why not rather have them 
do midnight sports than some of the other ``sporting'' things they were 
doing on the street?
  So I really hope this week we can get this crime bill passed. It is 
the smartest bill we have had on this floor. Year after year we have 
been passing just the tough bills without the prevention part, and year 
after year crime went up instead of down.
  In my city, where we have balanced the tough part with the prevention 
part, guess what, crime is going down, and it is going down rapidly.
  So I hope everybody gets ahold of the politicians that call the crime 
bill pork or they are so afraid of the NRA and do not want to vote 
against assault weapons and say, ``Look, this is the very basic thing 
you should be doing,'' and make sure we get this bill out of here this 
week.

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