[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]

 
                CAUGHT IN THE ACT; ARRESTED AT THE SCENE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Klink). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of February 11, 1994, and June 10, 1994, the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Hyde] will be recognized during morning business for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. HYDE. Mr. Speaker, on Sunday the President engaged in some rather 
unusual campaign strategy to pass his crime bill. He told us from a 
church in the District vicinity that God wants us to vote for this 
bill.
  Now, if Pat Robertson had said that, or Jerry Falwell or even Bob 
Dornan, I am sure that Mr. Fazio and the other crusaders on the left 
against the religious right would not swung into high gear. But it is 
the President, and he, I suppose, by virtue of his office, has the 
right to tell us that God wants us to vote for a bill. And I just hope 
that Mr. Fazio is not too tough on him, because he is the President.
  Occasionally you encounter somebody who has written something that 
rings so true that it overwhelms your own idea of what to say. And I 
must say that that has happened to me on this crime bill.
  Yesterday, Monday, in the Washington Times, Pat Buchanan, a favorite 
demon of the left, has a column on this crime bill. And when I read it, 
lights went on all over the room because it is so true. And I think the 
best thing I could do with my time is share it with you, parts of it 
anyway.
  He says:

       The degeneration and defeat of the crime bill raises a 
     question. Why is Congress incapable of getting it right? 
     Stopping crime, like educating children, is not horribly 
     difficult. The old America used to do it rather well. What 
     happened?
       Well, some years ago, cultural and political power in 
     America passed to a new elite that had come to believe the 
     old America had to be made over. All the old notions had to 
     go.
       From our public schools they effected the expulsion of all 
     Bible-based ideas about right and wrong. On the streets, 
     brutal cops were thought to be the real social problem, and 
     in need of constant oversight to keep their natural instincts 
     under check. In the courts, the balance of power was shifted 
     toward the criminally accused, in the name of fairness. In 
     society at large, traditional views on morality, the 
     permanence of marriage, the importance of families, the 
     indispensable role that religion plays in character 
     formation, were tossed out. The new elite had decided to 
     replace the pastors and preachers of old with themselves as 
     America's moral tutors.
       Don't tear a fence down until you know why it was put up, 
     Robert Frost wrote. Well, as we tore down the old fences with 
     cheerful abandon, we forgot they had been erected over 
     centuries as society's first line of defense against the 
     return of barbarism.
       And barbarism returned with a vengeance.
       So, who is responsible for our crime crisis?
       Go back and discover: Who did most to discredit the two-
     parent family and bring about its collapse? Who did the most 
     to purge all religious ideas and moral instruction from the 
     public schools upon which the poor so heavily depend? Who 
     worked ceaselessly to make it ever more difficult to arrest, 
     prosecute, convict and incarcerate criminals?

  Those are some very important thoughts for people to think about as 
we grapple with the idea of what to do about crime in this world, in 
this country.
  Now, one of the reasons why this was a bad bill was the incorporation 
of nearly $9 billion in social programs. Are all the social programs 
bad? No. I dare say many of them are good. Many of them would be useful 
if we knew which ones they are. The trouble is they did not have 
hearings. They just took a wish list of certain things that people 
wanted, all Democrats, I might add, and put together a list about $9 
billion, and said ``Let's do it.''
  Now, midnight basketball is one of the programs that is funded. Now, 
I have an open mind on midnight basketball. It is certainly while 
someone is playing midnight basketball they are not mugging you--at 
least there is a referee there to blow the whistle if they do. But how 
do they get up the next morning and go to work or go to school if they 
are all geared up at 3 in the morning after a game? I do not know. I 
would like to know.
  I would like to know which of these programs duplicate other 
programs, because we already have 156 job training programs at a cost 
of $25 billion a year already in place. And this bill superimposes 30 
new programs, many of which are duplicative, triplicative of existing 
programs.
  Now, we all promised our constituents we were going to be fraugal and 
cut unnecessary spending. It is not responsible to vote for this bill 
as it is.

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