[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 115 (Tuesday, August 16, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 16, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                             THE CRIME BILL

  Mr. MOORHEAD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge the House to vote 
against the Clinton crime bill.
  We need a crime bill in America very badly, but we do not need a bill 
that is more friendly to the criminal than to their victims in the 
United States. The American people will not accept a crime bill that 
protects criminal rights more than it protects victim's rights.
  Nearly one-third of this $33 billion bill is to pay for over 30 new 
social spending programs. More Government programs are not the answer.
  Our criminal justice system has become a revolving door, and this 
bill fails to address the loopholes and inadequacies that continue to 
allow violent criminals to operate freely on our streets after serving 
only a portion of their sentence. In fact, it greases the revolving-
door system by relaxing mandatory minimum sentences and watering down 
truth-in-sentencing requirements for prison grants.
  There are many difficulties with this legislation. There are some 
fine points in it that I would like to see enacted into law such as 
building up the Boarder Patrol and doing something about some of the 
death penalty issues, but in this bill, we have approximately 60 new 
death penalties, and I wonder, when you go into this particular subject 
that deeply, whether we are actually going to see more people executed 
or only more delays and more opposition from the American people.

  The people we need to bring to justice are those people that are out 
willfully killing our citizens on the streets with thousands of people 
killed each year throughout the United States.
  We need to bring those people to justice and to bring them to justice 
as rapidly as we can. I know that during this debate many people have 
been misled about what this legislation does. The legislation provides 
that we have social programs, midnight basketball for areas that have 2 
percent or more HIV-positive people, it provides some social programs 
that perhaps in the long run will do some good. But to spend $33 
billion on a piece of legislation that really does not address the 
crime problems of our Nation the way they need to be addressed is a 
travesty of justice.
  We need more people on our police departments, but in this 
legislation we are told we have 100,000 new positions that are created. 
That is a total fallacy. There is actually going to be money for about 
22,000, and we are taking the money from our Federal drug programs and 
from the FBI, from our ability as a Federal Government to stamp out 
crime on a Federal level.
  Much of the money we give to local police departments will be used 
for salaries, but over half of the cost that our police departments 
have is the need to provide the automobiles, the technical equipment, 
the guns, the uniforms, and the other things that police officers need. 
When you mandate a program of this kind, many of our departments are 
not going to be able to use them. If you gave them the money to build 
up the programs they have, they could really fight crime, but if you 
tell them that they have to use them in an area where they do not have 
the money to supplement their use to really make them effective, you 
are wasting your money.
  I have been told by the head of the FBI, who was in my office the 
other day, that much of this money is going to come from their ability 
to enforce the Federal laws and from the money for the DEA and their 
drug enforcement programs.
  I want to do something about crime very, very badly, but I want to do 
something with legislation that meets the problems and not one that 
only misleads the American people that something is being done when we 
are passing a pork-barrel bill that helps some people's special 
projects, like giving a little money to colleges here and there, a 
little money for other social programs. We need to fight crime and not 
to build up pork-barrel programs.
  Polly Klaas was kidnaped and murdered in California by a hardened 
criminal who was allowed to go free under our current system. This is 
the system we must change.
  I cannot support a crime bill that ignores the rights of victims of 
violent crimes and continues to allow violent criminals to rule our 
streets.
  Let us correct this legislation. Let us get a bill that does 
something to fight crime in America.

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