[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 111 (Thursday, August 11, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 11, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                             THE CRIME BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Dornan] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DORNAN. Mr. Speaker, there is nothing unseemly after a historical 
vote to come to the well and gloat, but there is nothing wrong with 
giving good advice that would serve the good of the commonwealth and 
the people of this country.
  This rule that we just voted on on the conference report was on a 
bill called a crime bill. It was not titled a crime and criminal 
welfare bill, but obviously what caused it to go down by a vote of 225 
to 210, with 11 Democrats voting the way Mr. Foley requested they vote 
and 58 Democrats, 88 days from the eve of an election, voting against 
the leadership of their party, 58 Democrats voting 88 days out from the 
evening before the November 8 election. That means that there was some 
fatal flaw in this crime bill, and the fatal flaw was the larding on of 
social and criminal welfare pork.
  This bill started out about in the neighborhood of the billions of 
dollars of the defeated, so-called stimulus bill of Clinton, somewhere 
in the high teens of billions. Suddenly it was into the $22 billion, 
$25 billion, $28 billion a few weeks ago, and it ends up over $33 
billion, and almost a half chunk of it for all of these bizarre new 
entitlement programs that, like all of the entitlement programs of the 
last 40 years, start on a growth and then suddenly on their growth 
charts they take off into almost a near vertical climb.

  This was a good defeat for the rule on this, and as the minority 
whip, Mr. Gingrich said just a little while ago, let us come back 
tomorrow, the leadership of both parties in an inclusive way of the 
loyal opposition here and come up with a crime bill.
  If Members think there was tension here, if they think it was fair 
for the press to describe our Speaker's expression as distraught, Mr. 
Foley is distraught, think of how they feel at the White House, think 
of how they are coaching Dee Dee Myers to spin this major defeat for 
Bill Clinton who was for all of the pork just larded into the so-called 
crime bill. They are pretty distraught down at the White House.
  I will give him advice that is good for his party and for any 
potential, as remote as it may be, for him having a second term, and 
that is if he wants a crime bill, then focus on helping victims and on 
locking up criminals. Liberal Democrats think it is a joke. But the 
average American cannot stand the thought of color televisions, color 
pornography, nautilus equipment in gymnasiums in prison, college 
courses leading to degrees, and they sure as hell, Mr. Speaker, do not 
want dance programs in the prisons of the United States with murderers 
leading one week and child molesters leading the step dancing to good 
country music the next week.
  No, this billion was one of the strangest thing we have ever seen.
  The remarkable travesty of the crime bill is think like, look, Mr. 
Speaker, we have spent $5 trillion on social programs since President 
Johnson's so-called Great Society program and what do we have for that? 
We have a 500-percent increase in violent crime since we have been 
throwing money at all of the broken families of this country. Liberals 
on the other side of the aisle seem to be obsessed with society's root 
causes. According to them everybody who commits a crime is not a 
criminal but a victim of poverty, bigotry, societal injustice. It is a 
perverse, absurd continuation of the funny line from the great Leonard 
Bernstein Broadway musical where the tough kids in that show sing to 
Officer Krupsky: We ain't depraved, we're deprived,'' and that was in 
the middle 1950s that that musical won all of the Tony awards on 
Broadway.
  There is such a thing in society and in all societies as good, as 
evil. There are people who look at all of the options and decide that 
that tail-end line of the great radio show, Gangbusters, when I was a 
kid that echoed in the chambers, ``Crime does not pay,'' there are 
young men and now young women who look and say crime absolutely does 
pay.

                              {time}  1750

  One of the safest crimes is to rape somebody if they will not date 
you. You know, the odds are 99 out of 100 you will never see a day of 
time if you violently rape some human being who does not want, who does 
not know you, if they do know you, does not want any part of you.
  Crime pays, and they are evil people opting for crime, and we must 
lock them up, Mr. Speaker. Bring back a real bill and watch it win 
overwhelmingly. You bring back a bill focused on criminals, you get 100 
percent of us on our side of the aisle.
  Mr. DORNAN. I repeat, the most remarkable travesty of the crime bill 
is the billions of dollars spent on social welfare schemes that have, 
time and again, proven to be a complete failure. This presumption of 
root causes is what motivated Democrats to come up with misguided 
resurrections of failed social solutions from the past. In fact, the 
crime bill adds $8.7 billion to fund 30 new social welfare spending 
programs, many of which duplicate already existing programs that have 
had no effect whatsoever on crime rates. That represents nearly one-
third of the funding in this bill.
  Some examples are the millions of dollars to be spent on ``community-
based organizations'' that will shower crime-prone youth with programs 
like midnight basketball, dance classes, and arts and crafts. While I 
have nothing against teaching kids how to shoot hoops and knit afghans, 
why is the Federal Government footing the bill for such programs in 
legislation aimed at fighting crime? This is absolutely absurd.
  But there is more. This bill also provides for ``Model Intensive 
Grants'' intended to bring ``meaningful and lasting alternatives to 
involvement in crime'' and relief to ``conditions that encourage 
crime.'' So vaguely written, this program like most others in this 
bill, simply translates into petty cash for local communities--cash 
that was promised by Democrats in last year's ``economic stimulus 
package'' but never delivered.
  Yet Bill Clinton and the Democrats are welcoming the crime bill with 
open arms, calling it the ``toughest, largest, smartest federal attack 
on crime in the history of our country.'' It may be the largest, but it 
is soft and dumb. One of the toughest provisions, they claim, expands 
the list of crimes that are punishable by the death penalty. Yet while 
it does add dozens of new crimes to this list, Bill Clinton is going to 
make certain the death penalty is rarely, if ever, enforced. That is 
because he has quietly promised the most liberal members in the House 
that he will order federal prosecutors to consider racial inequities in 
cases involving capital crimes. With the introduction of racial quotas 
into the criminal justice system, we can expect this nation to see an 
end to death penalty as we know it.
  Another celebrated component of the crime bill is the ``three strikes 
and you're out'' provision. While this may sound tough, it is not. In 
fact, this sentencing provision will only apply to 1 percent of the 
crimes that occur throughout the country, since the third crime occur 
on federal property for it to be eligible for this new punishment. If 
baseball adopted a similar rule, you would be out only if the third 
strike occured in, say, Fenway Park.
  And though the president had promised to put 100,000 new police 
officers on the streets of America, only 20,000 positions are being 
funded through this bill. It is up to local governments to fund the 
remaining positions--another unfunded mandate. Therefore, at most we 
can expect an average of one extra police officer per department 
throughout the nation. Anybody feeling safer yet?
  Democrats are also pretending that this bill will provide more space 
to lock up violent criminals. That is baloney. Republicans fought tooth 
and nail to ensure adequate funding for new prisons coupled with 
incentives for states to enact tougher sentences. But the Democrats 
changed the crime bill so that it now allows states to divert prison 
grants to other programs. And while it calls for longer prison terms by 
making ``truth-in-sentencing'' a condition for federal funding, there 
are numerous loopholes for states to avoid that requirement.
  I am also opposed to the bill's prohibition on a number of assault 
weapons. Banning a handful of guns is not going to have any real effect 
on crime and my colleagues know it. It is just one more provision that 
diverts attention from true impact-on-crime solutions.
  Mr. Speaker, the list goes on and on. This crime bill is a total sham 
that only empowers criminals and further exploits innocent victims. 
Furthermore, it provides little more than a means for Democrats to 
deliver pork to the folks back home in perfect time for the election. 
My colleagues should be ashamed. There is not one American who can 
expect to feel safer if this bill passes and is signed into law. Not 
one.
  The problem is that liberals are so busy coddling the ACLU they 
refuse to give the American people what they really want--a tough and 
effective crime bill that provides genuine truth-in-sentencing, 
strengthens the death penalty instead of killing it, reforms the 
exclusionary rule, puts more cops on the beat, toughens the juvenile 
justice system, and reforms habeas corpus.

  The American people deserve better than this crime bill and it is 
incumbent upon Congress to deliver. This is nothing more than a package 
full of goodies for the folks back home--none of which provide real 
solutions to the problem of crime in America. I therefore implore my 
colleagues to vote no on the rule and final passage. No crime bill 
would be far better than this one.
  Mr. Speaker, I also would like to insert this LEAA handout titled: 
``Law Enforcement Does Not Support This Crime Bill.''

       The gun ban and magazine capacity prohibition in this crime 
     bill will drive a wedge between law enforcement and honest 
     citizens; it will turn some 20 million + law-abiding gun 
     owners into potential felons because law enforcement 
     recognizes it is impossible to determine which components 
     (magazines) were legally owned prior to the effective date of 
     this prohibition.
       National leaders of select police organizations (such as 
     Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association 
     of the Chiefs of Police) are attempting to generate support 
     by making grave misrepresentations to their members and they 
     also have conflicts of interest:
       IACP has recently received over $400,000 from the Clinton 
     Administration (Law and Order Magazine, May 1994) prior to 
     their announced support of this legislation; IACP also 
     represents less than \1/3\ of the chiefs in this country.
       FOP is telling their members there is a ``police 
     exemption'' for law enforcement, the truth is the so-called 
     exemption does not cover officers' off-duty weapons, nor does 
     it apply to retired officers; it will adversely affect every 
     department in the country where officers purchase their own 
     weapons.
       If this legislation passes there will be a severe backlash 
     from these officers who have been mislead into supporting 
     this legislation, targeted both at their organizational 
     leaders and their elected representatives in Congress.
       Every major survey of America's police conclusively proves 
     that police officers do not believe that more gun control 
     will have any impact on crime or criminals.
       National Association of Chiefs of Police, '94 Annual 
     Survey: 88.7% responded that a ban on so-called ``assault 
     weapons'' would not help reduce crime.
       Southern States Police Benevolent Association, June '93: 
     96.4% strongly support firearms ownership for self-defense, 
     95.8% reject an outright ban on guns, they rated stricter gun 
     control as the LEAST effective option for reducing violent 
     crime.
       Police Magazine, April '93: 85% did not support an 
     ``assault weapon'' ban.
       Law Enforcement Technology Magazine, August '91: 85% of 
     ``street officers'' opposed gun control and 90% did not 
     support an ``assault weapons'' ban.
       This bill contains well over $8 billion worth of social 
     welfare spending that has nothing to do with genuine law 
     enforcement.

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