[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 116 (Wednesday, August 17, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 17, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                  FIXING THE CRIME BILL IN CONFERENCE

  (Mr. GOSS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GOSS. Madam Speaker, questions have been asked, why are so many 
Members of the House opposed to the crime bill, which has sometimes 
been called the President's crime bill? It is not the President's crime 
bill; it is the conference committee's crime bill, and there are good 
reasons to be opposed to it on both sides of the aisle.
  The important point is that there are opportunities to fix what is 
wrong, and that is the process that is going on now.
  The bill we voted on last week had inadequate funding for building 
prisons, it had inadequate funding for having more policemen to put 
them on the beat, and it had weakened the sexual predator provision. It 
had various pork barrel projects, the most celebrated of which was the 
$10 million that was stuck in there surreptitiously for some kind of a 
project in Chairman Brook's district, at Lamar University.
  We estimated that the bill would have released as many as 10,000 
convicted drug felons and put them back on the streets. It did not 
include the victims restitution provisions of the Senate-passed bill. 
It did not include the strengthened death penalty procedures to end the 
endless appeals process. It did not include tough penalties for violent 
gang offenses, mostly juvenile offenses. It has $9 billion in it for 
social programs. There was much that was wrong in the bill, and it can 
be fixed.

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