[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 167 (Thursday, October 26, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15971-S15972]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS

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                COMMERCE, JUSTICE, STATE APPROPRIATIONS

 Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, I would like to take this time to 
explain my votes on various amendments to the Commerce, Justice, State 
appropriations bill which passed on September 29.
  The Specter amendment sought to strike the language from this bill 
that prohibited the use of Federal funds for abortions for women in 
Federal prison except where the life of the mother would be in danger 
if the fetus were carried to term or in the case of rape.
  The House and the Senate have repeatedly upheld the position that 
when taxpayer funds are used for abortions, the abortions should be 
restricted to those pregnancies which are the result of rape or incest 
or which pose a risk to the life of the mother. I do not think these 
restrictions should be expanded for women in prison and, therefore, I 
voted to table the Specter amendment.
  Senator Kerrey offered an amendment to provide $19.8 million for the 
National Telecommunications and Information Administration's 
information infrastructure grants by cutting a like amount from the 
Justice Department's travel account. I opposed this amendment for 
several reasons. First, many of the NTIA's duties are duplicative of 
those carried out by the Federal Communications Commission. The 
underlying bill moves us toward a unified telecommunications entity, 
and I believe it is the correct path to take. Second, the 
infrastructure grants are an unauthorized program that have little 
relation to the job of regulating the telecommunications industry. 
Legislation I have sponsored to terminate the Department of Commerce 
would also eliminate the advisory and grant making functions and 
transfer the management duties to the FCC.
  I also opposed a Domenici amendment to eliminate provisions in the 
bill which would, in my opinion, vastly improve the Legal Services 
Corporation.
  The Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill in the Senate 
eliminated the Federal Corporation and block-granted to the States-
Federal funds for the provision of legal services to the poor. The 
Domenici amendment to this bill would have restored the Federal 
Corporation and provides additional Federal funding for the 
Corporation.
  I support eliminating the Federal Corporation and block-granting 
funds 

[[Page S15972]]

for legal assistance for the poor to the States. The Corporation itself 
provides no legal services to the poor, but rather grants Federal money 
to local organizations that give legal assistance to the poor. This is 
a function the States can perform at least as effectively as the 
Corporation has.
  I also opposed an amendment which was sponsored by Senators Kohl and 
Cohen which took $80 million from funding for the FBI to combat violent 
crime and terrorism and put it into $30 million for local block grants 
for various social programs such as boys and girls club, more palatably 
dubbed by the sponsors of such measures crime prevention programs, $30 
million for additional grants made by the Office of Justice Assistance, 
and $20 million for additional grants for ``Weed and Seed'' programs.
  The initiatives the sponsors sought to fund may well be worthy. In my 
judgment, however, many of them have no proven record of helping with 
the fight against crime, the purpose for which Federal crime money 
should be reserved. To be sure, the sponsors designated between 2 and 3 
percent of the money for evaluation of these programs. But in the first 
place it is unlikely that serious evaluation can be performed with that 
budget; and in the second place, in my view, we should evaluate the 
programs before giving them additional funding.

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