[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 135 (Friday, August 11, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S12426-S12427]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                     HORROR IN THE NATION'S CAPITAL

  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, too often today, when we read and hear about 
the unspeakable violence that occurs on the streets of our country, we 
simply shrug it off as the price we pay for living in a free society. 
In a very real sense, we have begun to tolerate the intolerable.
  This past weekend, however, a crime occurred just several city blocks 
from this building that, I believe, would send shivers down the spine 
of even the most jaded observer.
  Three employees of a nearby McDonald's restaurant--18-year-old Marvin 
Peay, Jr.; 23-year-old Kevin Workman; and a 49-year-old grandmother 
named Lilian Jackson--were all shot dead while working the late shift. 
One of 

[[Page S 12427]]
their co-workers was fortunately spared.
  Here is how the Washington Post described this brutal crime:

       Because Kenneth Joel Marshall was a trusted co-worker, the 
     four men and women working the closing shift at the 
     McDonald's on the eastern edge of Capitol Hill opened the 
     door for him when he showed up shortly before 2 a.m. * * * 
     Minutes later, police said, Marshall pulled a gun, forced the 
     manager to open a safe, herded his co-workers into a basement 
     freezer and pumped bullets into the heads of three of them, a 
     woman and two men. Bent on leaving no witnesses, police said, 
     he turned to the fourth worker, a woman. Twice, he allegedly 
     aimed his gun at her head and squeezed the trigger. Twice, 
     the gun clicked but did not fire.
  Apparently, the person who committed this unspeakably evil act fled 
the crime scene. He was subsequently arrested by the D.C. police 
department. According to newspaper accounts, the killer also had a 
prior criminal record, having been arrested by the D.C. police at least 
seven times since 1987 on both drug and weapons charges.
  Mr. President, it is, of course, impossible to make any sense out of 
such senselessness.
  I simply want to take this opportunity to express my own outrage at 
what has befallen three of our citizens--citizens of the Nation's 
Capital--and I know I speak for all my colleagues in the Senate when I 
extend our prayers and heartfelt sympathies to the families of the 
victims.
  Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, all too often in our political discourse, we 
concentrate on the differences separating the two parties, rather than 
emphasizing those areas on which there is agreement or at least the 
potential for agreement.
  Last week, the Democratic leadership council--through its think tank, 
the progressive policy institute--issued an important paper outlining 
its views on affirmative action. Although I do not agree with every 
point made in this paper, it does suggest that there is ample room for 
Republicans and openminded Democrats to forge a new consensus on the 
meaning of equal opportunity.
  I have three observations about the DLC paper that I would like to 
share now with my Senate colleagues.
  One. The paper calls for the ``phase-out'' of mandatory preferences 
in contract set-asides, public jobs, and hiring by private firms that 
do business with the Government on the
 grounds that these preferences ``put Government in the business of 
institutionalizing racial distinctions.'' The DLC says that these 
distinctions are ``hardly a good idea for a democracy held together by 
common civic deals that transcend group identity.''

  This position is very similar, if not identical, to the principle 
underlying the Equal Opportunity Act of 1995, which I introduced late 
last month with Congressman Charles Canady of Florida and more than 80 
other Congressional Republicans. The Equal Opportunity Act would 
prohibit the Federal Government from granting preferences to anyone on 
the basis of race or gender in three key areas: Federal employment, 
Federal contracting, and federally conducted programs.
  The DLC apparently supports this proposition, but wants a gradual 
phase-in of any ban on group preferences, not their immediate 
elimination.
  In other words, our difference is one of timing, not one of 
principle.
  It is my hope, however, that the DLC will come to understand that if 
discrimination is wrong, it is wrong today as well as tomorrow, and 
ought to be ended immediately.
  In fact, the DLC goes much further than the Equal Opportunity Act by 
calling for the outright repeal of ``Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Executive 
order requiring Federal contractors to adopt minority hiring goals and 
timetables.'' In its paper, the DLC argues that these guidelines 
``encourage employers to hire women and minorities on a rigidly 
proportional basis,'' a
 statement that is directly at odds with President Clinton's own 
affirmative action review.

  In my view, it is appropriate for the Federal Government to require 
Federal contractors not to discriminate in employment. That was the 
original purpose of Executive Order 11246. Unfortunately, bureaucratic 
implementation of the Executive order has converted it from a program 
aimed at eliminating discrimination to one that relies on it in the 
form of preferences.
  Our first priority should be to restore the original meaning and 
purpose of the Executive order, not to repeal it, as the DLC has 
suggested.
  Second, the DLC argues that we need to replace Government preferences 
for groups with new public policies that empower individuals to get 
ahead regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity. The DLC argues that an 
empowerment agenda is critical to ``striking a new bargain on racial 
equality and opportunity.''
  I happen to agree that we need to forge a new civil rights agenda for 
the 1990's, one rooted in policies that are relevant to the needs and 
challenges of our time. I do so, however, not as part of a bargain, as 
if one should be defensive about opposing discrimination in the form of 
preferences.
  I support a new civil rights agenda simply because making Government 
policy by race is not only wrong, but a diversion from reality, an easy 
excuse to ignore the very serious problems that affect all Americans, 
whatever their race, or heritage, or gender may be.
  Nearly 30 percent of our children are born out of wedlock. Only one-
third of our high school graduates are proficient readers. And children 
routinely kill other children.
  These are the realities
   of our time, and this is where our focus should be.

  That is why Congressman J.C. Watts and I recently took the step of 
offering a blueprint for a new civil rights agenda. This agenda 
includes: strengthening the family by reforming a corrupt welfare 
system that has substituted Government dependence for personal 
independence; investing crime-fighting resources in our inner-city 
communities and ensuring that those who commit violent crimes stay 
behind bars where they belong; giving low-income parents the 
opportunity to choose the school, public or private, that they consider 
most desirable for their children; removing regulatory barriers to 
opportunity; and, or course, enforcing the anti-discrimination laws 
that are already on the books.
  Finally, the DLC has joined me and other Republicans in taking issue 
with the Clinton administration's position in the Piscataway case. In 
this case, the Justice Department has turned the principle of equal 
opportunity on its head by arguing that a school district may legally 
fire a teacher, solely because of her race, in order to maintain 
workforce diversity. The DLC is correct to point out that the Justice 
Department's position, taken to its logical extreme, would ``sever the 
increasingly tenuous link between race-conscious remedies and specific 
acts of discrimination and wipe out the distinction between preferences 
and quotas.''
  Mr. President, I welcome the DLC's contribution to this debate. We 
may not agree on every point and on every issue, but we both agree that 
the group-preference status quo is no longer tenable.
  Race should not be a wedge issue. If we keep our voices low and our 
intentions good, I am convinced that this long-overdue debate can, in 
fact, serve as a catalyst to unite the American people, not divide us.


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