[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]

 
                    A BETTER CRIME BILL IS POSSIBLE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Klink). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of February 11, 1994, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Goss] is 
recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GOSS. Mr. Speaker, the problem is not the GOP and five dozen 
Democrats. The problem is the crime bill. We can have a much better 
crime bill, one that is paid for, and one that will get tough on crime, 
and one that will fix some of the problems that the conferees wanted to 
be fixed. The conferees took out four or five get-tough measures that 
the Senate put in. The conferees ignored seven motions to instruct that 
this House of Representatives put in. The conferees did sneak in, or at 
least Members in the conference snuck in, projects that neither body, 
apparently, knew about, what we call pure pork, $10 million for a 
university somewhere in Texas. The conference report required a rule to 
protect parts of this bill that we do not even know what it said, or 
did not know at the time we voted, and the other thing is that most 
Members of this Congress; in fact I think I can say every Member of 
this House, had not read the crime bill we voted on because there was 
not time to do it under the rule we reported out.
  Mr. Speaker, the crime bill, as we had a chance to look at it, that 
we voted on in the past 5 days, had some good and some bad parts. There 
is quite a list of social programs, about 9 billion dollars' worth. 
Part of the problem with those, they are not high priority, and they 
are paid through the patronage system; they are not paid through 
competitive grants. They are done on the who-you-know-in-Washington 
basis.
  There is also no accountability for a great deal of that money. Nine 
billion dollars; we do not know whether it is going to work. There is 
no standard, there is no measure, there is no come back, and report, 
and find out if this worked. Nine billion dollars is a lot of money.
  Mr. Speaker, that talk about getting tough on crime sort of goes pale 
when we see that we are going to let something like 10,000 people who 
have been convicted of drug crimes, who are in jail now, out because 
they are lower priority and we need those prison spaces for higher 
priority. I have already been asked by some constituents in my district 
if one of those 10,000 is going to be the son of Joycelyn Elders who 
was recently convicted of such a crime. I do not know the answer to 
that.
  This supposed 100,000 policemen on the streets that are going to be 
put in that we have heard so much about from the White House, actually 
there is only funding in this bill for about 20,000 policemen on the 
streets, and, if we were to divide that into three 8-hour shifts, which 
is what we have to do when we are running a police department at any 
given moment in America, right now that will be an additional 6,000 or 
7,000 policemen. I say to my colleagues, ``Well, when you divide that 
countrywide, you can see that's a help, but it's not going to be a 
gigantic help, and frankly most of those police are going to go into 
the urban areas that are decided by somebody else, and most communities 
are not going to get those policemen.''
  There is no habeas corpus reform in this bill, and this bill is not 
paid for. It is a budget buster. It is about $25 billion added to the 
deficit over the next 10 years or so, and we do not even know how much 
it will cost beyond that.
  Nevertheless, Mr. Speaker, we need a crime bill, and we have the 
ability to get a crime bill and to deliver a crime bill, and, if we 
had, perhaps, little more help from the White House on focusing on a 
get-tough crime bill that would pass here instead of the demagoguery 
that is going on, I think we can accomplish it.
  Some of the things that we are worried about is that my colleague and 
friend, the gentlewoman from Washington [Ms. Dunn], introduced an 
amendment for tracking sexually violent predators and community 
notification. Now, some of my colleagues may remember picking up a 
paper a few weeks ago and reading about a 7-year-old youngster in a 
town in New Jersey who was strangled is a sex crime by a known sexual 
offender who was living in that community, been no community 
notification. We wanted those requirements put in this bill so that 
that kind of thing cannot happen again, and I ask, ``You know what? We 
instructed the conferees to put it in, and you know what? They left it 
out, and you know what? They're accountable-less to tell us why, and 
you know what? They didn't tell us.'' So, Mr. Speaker, that family was 
not invited to the Rose Garden yesterday by the White House, and I do 
not know why. I hope the President will correct that oversight. I feel 
very sorry for that family and all families in that situation, and we 
have the ability to fix that and make this crime bill right in this 
country.
  We asked for $13.5 billion for prison funding by a vote of 338 to 81 
in this Chamber, and do my colleagues know what? The conferees did not 
do that. They cut it by $5 billion, and they did not explain why. They 
just ignored the instructions of 338 Members of this House.
  Mr. Speaker, it seems to me we can do better when everybody in 
America is saying, ``Lock up the criminals. Please lock up the 
criminals. We want to be safe on the streets, in our houses, in our 
cars, when we go to the store, and, if you let those criminals out, we 
will not be safe.''
  Mr. Speaker, everybody in America understands that. Why did we chop 
out $5 billion? I do not know. We need to do better than that.
  We had a provision to instruct the conferees for minimum sentences 
for crimes carried out with handguns. Now, my colleagues would think 
that would be pretty simple to do. We are having all this fuss about an 
assault weapons ban, but we cannot even get a provision in, in this 
crime bill, this supposedly get-tough-on-crime bill, that says, ``If 
you carry out a crime with a handgun, that you get a severe minimum 
sentence.'' It seems to me that is pretty basic stuff if we are trying 
to do a bill on crime.
  Mr. Speaker, we can do this better, and we will.

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