[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 118 (Friday, August 19, 1994)]
[Senate]
[Page S]
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]

 
                                 CRIME

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, finally, I would say that there is one 
thing, I guess, we are going to do before we leave--and I will 
conclude; I know the Senator from Maryland has been waiting--and that 
is to complete action on a crime conference report.
  I listened to the President carefully at 1:30. I think it is a 
positive development. He indicated that he is willing to work with the 
Republicans.
  I must say, the President has a strange interpretation of 
bipartisanship. You stiff the other side as long as you can if you do 
not need them. That is fine. But if you need them at the last minute, 
then you scream for bipartisanship. That is a different way than I 
think we do it in the Congress. If you do not start off together in a 
bipartisan way, it is pretty hard to get people to come on board after 
the takeoff--after the crash landing, in this case. It was a crash 
landing.
  So they are back in conference as we speak. Hopefully, they will cut 
out some of the pork, and there is a lot of it in there. Some was put 
in by Members on both sides. So I am not going to start reciting where 
the amendments came from, but I must say, I know there are a lot of 
Appropriations members who have been in and out of here today.
  If someone asked about some program that affected my State or the 
State of Washington or the State of Maryland, or any other State, and 
we did not have a hearing on it and it was over $1 or $2 million, we 
would be in real trouble. There is about $9.5 billion in spending in 
this so-called crime bill that there has not been 1 minute's hearing 
on, not 1 minute--$9 billion.
  So if that is the way you want to work it, I guess that is OK.
  The President did say he now supports the public notification 
provision in the law, and that is a step in the right direction. But I 
do not think a 10-percent across-the-board cut is 100 percent, right? I 
hope they can negotiate that, because we ought to. We should not take 
it out of police hiring. The President says there are going to be 
100,000 police on the street. Some people say that is not true, that we 
are lucky to get 20,000 on the street. Even that is better than zero. 
If you cut a 10-percent cut across the board, you are not even going to 
get 20,000, and you are not going to get to build the prisons. One 
thing, when you lock up a violent criminal behind bars, he is not going 
to commit a violent crime.
  We ought to take all these cuts out of social programs that are in 
terms of billions, not millions of dollars, and we ought to put that 
back in some of these tough proposals that were kicked out in 
conference, or I guess it was a conference. I do not know. The 
Republicans were not able to participate. Normally, they do not in a 
crime conference. After the first day or two, the Democrats get 
together and decide what ought to be in the bill. And particularly 
House Republicans are treated as I do not know what--they are not 
treated at all.
  We ought to take Senator Simpson's proposal requiring the swift 
deportation of criminal aliens and that ought to be back in the bill. 
It was taken out. If you have criminal aliens in America, why are they 
not deported back to their country? Why have them coming to America? 
What is wrong with that? Why do the Democrats not understand in the 
conference there is nothing wrong with that?
  Why do we not have a mandatory minimum sentence. If I use a gun in 
the commission of a crime and I am convicted, I ought to have a 
mandatory prison sentence. That was kicked out in conference.
  Why are we talking about guns and attacking people with guns? What 
about someone using a gun? Why not go after the perpetrator, someone 
who is going to pull the trigger? The gun is not going to go off by 
itself. If someone uses a gun in the commission of a crime, there ought 
to be a mandatory prison sentence.
  Also, there was a little loophole they found, a retroactive repeal of 
mandatory minimum penalties. You could have 10,000, up to 16,000, drug 
offenders back on the streets if this bill passes without change. 
People who have been convicted of serious drug offenses could be 
released early under this bill.
  So I just suggest there is still some time for compromise, and it is 
probably a little late. A lot of bipartisanship is better late than 
never. You generally start on bipartisanship at the beginning of the 
game, the takeoff, not after the crash landing, and it was a crash 
landing when the House did not approve the rule last week. Democrats 
joined the Republicans; 58 Democrats joined the Republicans. So it was 
bipartisan. It was a bipartisan protest of a bad bill.
  Here is the bill that left the Senate at $22 billion and then went up 
to $33 billion in conference; $11 billion was added, most of it again 
without any hearings, without even all the conferees in the room, and 
for a lot of social programs. Someone said that when you call 911, you 
are not going to get a policeman, you are going to get a social worker 
on the phone if this bill passes, because that is where most of the 
money is going to be spent.
  I hope there will be a conference. I assume it will come here next 
week. It is my hope that we take up the crime bill, that we see whether 
or not it is subject to a point of order and whether or not a point of 
order can be sustained. If not, it is open to amendment, and maybe the 
amendments will not be necessary. But then, after that, as I have been 
saying--and I see one of the chief architects of the mainstream 
approaching--I hope after we deal with the crime bill, and I said it 
was a real effort and I compliment all those who have been working so 
hard to pass it for not several days, but several weeks and in some 
cases, months.
  I hope we will have some time while we are waiting for CBO figures on 
the mainstream and other bills that we might be able to get back to our 
States and talk to our constituents about health care, and then come 
back in September and see if we can wind it up, because we made a lot 
of progress. As everybody knows, we finished all the appropriations 
bills, almost a record. They have all been completed. Conferences are 
going on, and most of the other--in fact, all the must legislation--has 
been completed except, I guess, the crime bill, health care, and some 
might say campaign finance reform. It depends on what shape it is in 
when it comes back. And maybe a few other things.
  So I conclude if there is bipartisanship on the crime bill, it will 
probably pass with a pretty good bipartisan majority. If not, then I 
assume the President will have to sweat it out tomorrow or sometime 
next week to see if he can squeeze out 218 votes on the rule.
  Mr. President, at today's news conference, I was pleased to hear that 
President Clinton has convinced himself that good-faith negotiations 
with Republicans may be the ticket out of the crime-bill morass. That 
is a positive development, but after listening to the President and 
Mrs. Clinton last weekend railing about procedural tricks and other 
political gimmicks, I must say they have a very odd view of 
bipartisanship.
  At the news conference, the President indicated that he now supports 
the public notification provisions of the Megan Kanka law. That's a 
step in the right direction, but the President must understand that his 
second proposal--a 10 percent cut across the board--is a 100 percent 
nonstarter here in the Senate. The focus should be on cutting pork, not 
on cutting prisons or police, as the President seems to have suggested. 
Any cuts should be from the social-spending account, and they should be 
in terms of billions, not millions, of dollars.
  Regrettably, the President also failed to mention some of the tough-
on-crime proposals that passed the Senate last year and should be part 
of any crime bill compromise: Mandatory minimums for those who use a 
gun in the commission of a crime; mandatory restitution for crime 
victims; Senator Simpson's proposal requiring the swift deportation of 
criminal aliens; and the provision ensuring the admissibility of 
similar offense evidence in sexual assault cases.

  And let's not forget the retroactive repeal of mandatory minimum 
penalties. As a result of this misguided proposal, as many as 10,000 
convicted drug offenders could be eligible for early release.
  Yes, there's room for compromise, but the President will have to come 
our way. That's what bipartisanship is all about. And, in the end, it 
may require him to do some heavy lifting within the ranks of his own 
party.
  Unfortunately, the administration has stood back silently through 
most of the crime debate here in Congress. It never had a crime bill, 
never sent one to Congress, never showed one to me. And, the 
administration was AWOL in the debate over the so-called Racial Justice 
Act. If the administration had early-on staked out a clear-cut position 
against this flawed proposal, months and months of delay could have 
been avoided.
  Now that the House has recommitted the crime bill to conference, we 
have a real opportunity to pass the kind of tough, no-nonsense crime-
fighting plan the American people deserve. But, as these negotiations 
begin, the administration should be on notice that a tinker-around-the-
edges approach just won't fly here in the U.S. Senate.
  I yield the floor.

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