[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 113 (Thursday, June 18, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3087-S3088]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                              JUSTICE Act

  In the context of police reforms, our friend Senator Tim Scott from 
South Carolina has introduced a bill which I have cosponsored, as have 
many other Members of the Senate. It is called the JUSTICE Act, and it 
will reform our police departments to provide much-needed transparency 
and accountability. It takes aim at a number of practices and policies 
that have led to a number of tragic deaths, that have united these 
nationwide protests and captured our conscience.
  To prevent these tragedies from happening in the first place, this 
bill emphasizes things such as deescalation training. As I looked at 
the video of the two police officers in Atlanta, waking up somebody 
asleep in a fast-food line, then interrogating him for 45 minutes 
before it then broke out into a violent confrontation, I thought they 
could have used some deescalation training. Maybe, just maybe, a life 
would have been saved. Maybe they would have said: Give us your car 
keys, take a cab, go home, and sleep it off. But that is not what 
happened.
  We also need training for police officers that otherwise haven't had 
that training or don't know to know when they need to intervene when 
they see another officer exert excessive force. We need more 
transparency--things like body cameras--and we need more information on 
things like use of force and no-knock warrants so that we can hopefully 
come up with a set of best practices that police departments all across 
the country should employ.
  To gain a better understanding of the problems that exist throughout 
our criminal justice system--and this is just one of them--the bill 
establishes two commissions, one to perform a top-to-bottom review of 
our criminal justice system and another to study the challenges facing 
Black men and boys.
  This legislation would also make lynching a Federal crime, it takes 
aim at the dangerous practice of choke holds, and it strengthens 
minority hiring. I could go on and on, but I believe these changes have 
the potential to create real and lasting change in America's police 
departments and begin to repair the broken relationship between law 
enforcement and the communities they serve.
  Beyond the merits of the bill itself, there is another quality worth 
noting, and that is it includes a number of

[[Page S3088]]

measures that have bipartisan support. In other words, there is a lot 
of overlap between what Democrats want to do and what Republicans want 
to do. We have to just learn how to take yes for an answer.
  We all want to get 100 percent of what we want, but as a practical 
matter, you need to follow the 80/20 rule sometimes. That is, if you 
can get 80 percent of what you want, that Republicans and Democrats can 
agree on, then you need to grab it. That is what we need to do here, 
not focus on the differences, but focus on the commonality, on the 
overlap.
  By the way, when I first got to the Senate, Teddy Kennedy was one of 
the great liberal lions here. I asked one of my conservative 
colleagues, the senior Senator from Wyoming who worked very 
productively with him, how they did it, one of the most liberal Members 
of the Senate, one of the most conservative Members of the Senate. 
Senator Enzi, our friend from Wyoming, said: It is easy. It is the 80/
20 rule.
  That is how they were so productive. That is how they got so much 
done. They didn't focus on what separated them; they focused on what 
they shared in common, and that is what we need to do particularly now 
at this time to demonstrate to America that we hear you, we understand 
the reason for the protests. We understand the reason for concern, and 
we share your anguish when innocent lives are lost.
  Madam President, as we prepare to debate the JUSTICE Act on the floor 
next week, finding that common ground is more important than ever, but 
I am worried that the same old partisan dysfunction which hijacks so 
many good ideas here in the Congress may dominate over our need to 
actually pass legislation.
  I hope our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will allow us to 
get on the bill, and hopefully, we will have an amendment process that 
will allow them to contribute, maybe even make the bill better. That is 
what we should do. That is what we used to do in the Senate. We had 
debates, we offered amendments, and then we voted.
  We didn't shut it down before we even got it started, which is what I 
know--at least based on press reports--Senator Schumer, Senator Harris, 
and others are considering doing, voting no and not allowing us to get 
on the bill in the first place.
  Well, this is an important moment. We will begin debating this 
legislation on the floor of the Senate next week, and we will 
demonstrate whether we have risen to the challenge, whether we have set 
aside political and partisan differences in order to find the common 
good or not, so I hope our discussions will prove more productive than 
what we have seen reported so far.
  As we continue to try our best to deliver for the American people, I 
encourage all of us to remember the importance of the 80/20 rule. There 
is a lot more that unites us than divides us. I know the news, social 
media, and maybe in our debates we seem to focus on who divides us, but 
that is not who we are, what divides us. We are what unites us. There 
is a lot more that unites us.
  Tomorrow, I will be privileged to be in the city of my birth, 
Houston, TX, with Mayor Sylvester Turner and a number of community 
leaders for a roundtable to talk about these very issues. I was in 
Dallas last week doing the same thing with my friend, the mayor, Eric 
Johnson, and it really a great opportunity to do something that Members 
of the Senate don't do enough, myself included, and that is to listen.
  I am excited to report on what we are doing here, but more 
importantly, I am eager to spend some time listening and learning from 
the people closest to the problem and then bringing that knowledge back 
here to the floor of the U.S. Senate so that we can deliver real 
results for the American people.