[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 112 (Friday, August 12, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 12, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
        CRIME BILL DEFEATED BECAUSE BILL AND RULE FOUND WANTING

  (Mr. EHLERS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. EHLERS. Mr. Speaker, I want to respond to some of the things I 
have heard discussed here this morning in regard to yesterday's vote on 
the rule to debate the crime bill. The statement has been made that the 
Republicans and the NRA defeated it. That is simply not true. The 
majority of the Members of this Chamber, of course, are Democrats, and 
58 Democrats voted against it.
  Personally, I did not hear anything from the NRA pro or con on the 
rule or the bill. I think we have to face the fact that it was a bad 
bill, and the rule was defeated because the rule prevented us from 
amending a bad bill and the rule prevented us from raising points of 
order against some of the pork and some of the bad features of the 
bill. That is why it was defeated.
  I believe that with a rewritten bill, we will easily have a crime 
bill passed in this Chamber, and I think we have to stop pointing 
fingers of blame and simply say that we all want to do something about 
crime but we do not want a bill that is filled with pork and we do not 
want a bill that says it provides 100,000 policemen when in fact it 
only provides 20,000.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge the conference committee to come back with a 
better bill, a bill that we can all support and vote for.

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