[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 118 (Friday, August 19, 1994)]
[House]
[Page H]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: August 19, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                        THIS IS A BAD CRIME BILL

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Bachus] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BACHUS of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, in the last week or two, we have 
continually debated the so-called crime bill. If you read the papers or 
you talk to the people back home, it becomes apparent that neither has 
focused on what I consider the real issues. I am getting calls back 
home and they are saying, is this the NRA? Is this all about the NRA? 
Or they call and they say, ``No midnight basketball.'' Or they call and 
they talk about the need for more police. In the last day or two, I 
have been asked by press back in my district, ``Are you going to cut $2 
billion off this? Are you going to cut $1 billion? If you cut 4, would 
you vote for it?''
  This is not really about whether we spend $33 billion or $26 billion. 
It is about whether this is a crime bill, whether this is a wise use of 
money, whether it is $33 billion or $26 billion, and what does this 
bill do and what does it not do? I think the bottom line on this bill, 
if we reduce this from $33 billion to $23 billion across-the-board, it 
is still a bad bill. What this bill does and what I object so much to 
is this bill is a Federal takeover of law enforcement and of prisons 
nationwide.
  If this bill were about helping Birmingham, AL, that I represent, by 
giving money to the city and to Johnny Johnson, the police chief, and 
letting him go out and hire more police officers, I might say yes, he 
may need more police officers. If this was about giving the State of 
Alabama, which is under a court order to empty jail cells, if it was 
about giving the State of Alabama more money for prisons, I would vote 
for this bill. But does it do that? Does it give Mel Bailey, the 
sheriff of Jefferson County in Birmingham, AL, does it give Sheriff 
Bailey the right to hire more deputy sheriffs? No. No, it gives the 
right to a community board that is set up in this legislation to study 
whether more law enforcement officers are needed. And it gives this 
board the right to apply for a grant up here in Washington, DC to put 
on those police officers.
  Lo and behold, it says that before you hire them, you have got to do 
things. You have got to tell Washington, DC that you do not have the 
money for these deputy sheriffs or these police officers.

                              {time}  1440

  But you also have to tell Washington, DC, that when the Federal money 
runs out, and it will in the next 4 or 5 years, you have to tell them 
that you have the money to continue this program. That is rather 
absurd. You do not have enough money for the program, but you have 
enough money to continue the program, whatever it is, whether it is 
midnight basketball. I do not know whether Johnny Johnson, city of 
Birmingham, chief of police for law enforcement, whether they think 
midnight basketball is wise or not.
  I do know we should not be setting up a program where we tell them 
how to spend their money. We do not need a board here in Washington 
telling the State of Alabama how they ought to build their prisons, or 
how big the prison cell ought to be, or what kind of services the 
prisoners ought to get, and even what kind of material they have to 
build that prison out of.
  That is what is wrong with this bill. Do we not have faith in Mel 
Bailey, sheriff of Jefferson County, can we not give him the money and 
let him decide how to spend it and who to hire?
  What does this bill not do? It does not address gun violence. I voted 
against banning those 19 semiautomatic weapons. But let me tell you, if 
we ban them it will not do anything about gun violence. Over 99 percent 
of the crimes are committed by handguns. People do not go around with 
rifles. There is nothing in this bill to prevent gun violence. Ninety-
nine percent of the crimes with guns are with handguns.
  We tried to put in a provision into this bill which says if you stick 
a handgun in somebody's face in the commission of a crime, you serve 10 
years. The very Members that say we have got to get those 19 assault 
weapons off the streets, when there has never been one used to commit a 
crime in my home county, they resisted putting a 10-year minimum 
sentence on someone that did use those handguns, which are being used 
every day on the streets of Jefferson County. They did not want that. 
This bill does nothing about gun violence.
  It does nothing about habeas corpus. Charlie Wells, a sheriff down in 
Manatee County said do not give me more police officers. The county 
jail is full here. We are under a court order to let folks out. If I 
put them in they are going to get out the next day. I am not sure that 
100,000 new police officers will do anything.
  We do need prison cells, but what we do not need is this bill. We 
need something done about the endless number of appeals that these 
prisoners are getting. We need something done about the exclusionary 
rules where people are let off on technicalities.
  This bill spends $33 billion, but it does nothing about the real 
problems existing in real communities, and it does not let those 
communities address those problems.

                          ____________________