[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 111 (Thursday, August 11, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
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]

 
            HOUSE ACTION ON THE CRIME BILL CONFERENCE REPORT

  Mr. DOLE. Madam President, I will now comment on the House action on 
the rule regarding the crime conference report, which was defeated by 
about 15 votes, as I understand it. I listened to President Clinton say 
what a sad day it was and how badly he felt because 225 Members of the 
House--Democrats and Republicans--chose some procedural route to 
indicate their displeasure with the crime bill.
  The President indicated that it was because of the National Rifle 
Association. I do not think that is the case. The bill that passed the 
Senate by 94 to 4, for the most part, is a good bill. But a strange 
thing happened--as sometimes happens--it got loaded up with a lot of 
pork, a lot of spending. There was not a minute of hearings on some of 
this spending that added up to billions and billions of dollars. That 
is what killed this bill.
  I put in the Record just a few days ago a statement by Mr. DiIulio, a 
professor at Princeton, a Democrat, someone who supported the Brady 
bill, supported the ban on assault weapons, who said that this bill, 
instead of being a crime bill would create more crime. He also says in 
his statement--and I will refer to parts of it--there are not going to 
be 100,000 cops on the street, there are going to be 20,000 cops on the 
street. We will be lucky to have 2,000 cops on the street.
  He said:

       The bill calls for 100,000 new cops. But when you read the 
     relevant titles, you discover that really means about 20,000 
     fully-funded positions.
       And when you further look at how this bill is to be 
     administered, you come to recognize it is to be administered 
     by the Office of Justice Programs, which is the alphabet soup 
     of agencies left over from the days of the old Federal Law 
     Enforcement Assistance Administration, which is to figure out 
     some way of divvying up this money between 85 percent for 
     more manpower and 15 percent for everything else having to do 
     with policing, so much to jurisdictions under $150,000, so 
     much under $150,000, and so on.
       And if you are stouthearted enough to look at this bill in 
     light of the relevant academic literature, you know that it 
     takes about 10 police officers to put the equivalent of one 
     police officer on the street around the clock. This is 
     factoring in everything from sick leave and disabilities to 
     vacations and three shifts a day and desk work, and so on. So 
     that 20,000 funded position becomes 2,000 around-the-clock 
     cops. And 2,000 around-the-clock cops gets distributed over 
     200 jurisdictions for an average actual street enforcement 
     strength increase of about 10 cops per city.

  I really commend this four-page statement to everyone, regardless of 
politics. As I said, this person happens to be a Democrat. He said the 
Senate bill was not very kind.
  He said:

       The Senate version of the crime bill that was drafted and 
     put out back in November--November 19, 1993, to be exact, by 
     a vote of 95 to 4--would, I think, have done something, 
     though I'm not exactly sure how much, to stop revolving-door 
     justice. But now, almost 9 months later, we have before us a 
     crime bill that would actually, in my view, grease the 
     revolving door, at the Federal level, at least, via such 
     provisions as the so-called safety valve provision, which is 
     essentially a provision that would permit certain categories 
     of convicted drug defendants to be invited back to court, to 
     be given a virtual retrial under a retroactive law.

  In other words, about 5,000 prisoners are going to be released 
immediately, and he said it could go up to 16,000 that are back on the 
street. In paragraph after paragraph, he talks about all the bad points 
in this bill and all the money we put in this bill that has nothing to 
do with crime control, nothing to do with prevention, and he concludes 
that it is a terrible bill and ought to be defeated.
  So I just suggest that if you have not read the statement I put in 
the Record a couple days ago--I am not going to do it again--but I 
would be happy to give copies.
  I say this to the President: If we want a crime bill that fights 
crime, we ought to look at some of the provisions that were dumped out, 
some of the tough anticrime provisions. I think if that happens and we 
cut down a lot of the spending, then we might be able to pass this 
bill. Right now, it is full of pork. That is what killed this bill in 
the House, or killed the rule. I hope that the President will take a 
hard look at it. I wish the President would read this statement made by 
the Princeton Prof. John DiIulio, who supported the Brady bill and 
assault weapons ban, and says this bill might even create more crime.
  Madam President, I yield back any time I may have.

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