[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11729-11731]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         SPORTSMEN'S AMENDMENTS

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, we are back for another week of work, but 
the playbook hasn't changed.
  Once again the majority leader has prevented 98 Senators from 
offering amendments to improve a bill he chose for us to debate. I 
would like to speak for a few moments about some of the amendments the 
Democratic leader prevented us from voting on this week.
  First, I have been working on amendments with Senators Bennet, Flake, 
Risch, Sessions, and Thune to allow bows and archery equipment to be 
transported through the national parks. This bipartisan effort is 
necessary because some bow hunters need to travel across national parks 
to get to land where they intend to hunt.
  It is also important for our archery competitors who currently have 
to go out of their way to avoid national parks to get to their 
tournaments. A lot of people don't realize that Yellowstone National 
Park, which is in the upper left-hand corner of Wyoming, is about the 
size of Connecticut. To get to Idaho, sometimes you have to go 250 
miles out of your way if you can't go through the park. There is a lot 
of competition between Wyoming and Idaho when it comes to archery and 
vice versa. The same can happen getting into Montana.
  This is just a commonsense amendment because it provides parity for 
bows and firearms. In 2009 Congress passed a law to prevent the right 
of individuals to bear arms in units of the national park system and 
the National Wildlife Refuge System. This body considered it a 
commonsense provision before. Language on this issue was included in 
the Sportsmen's Act of 2012, S. 3525, but now the Senate won't even get 
a chance to vote on whether to add this language to the Bipartisan 
Sportsmen's Act of 2014. This is the appropriate place for sportsmen's 
issues to be brought up.
  Second, I offered an amendment with Senators Lee and Thune to ensure 
that those traveling with a properly secured knife are not prosecuted 
under local or State laws which banned certain knives. This amendment 
is necessary because there is a broad patchwork of State and local laws 
regulating knife possession.
  For example, 36 States allow civilian possession of automatic knives 
to varying degrees. But there are no restrictions at all in 22 States, 
and in some States possession is a serious crime. This can be 
incidental, again, just passing through a State.
  The current situation with knives is similar to the circumstances 
that existed for gun owners before the passage of the Firearm Owners 
Protection Act of 1986. That law protects law-abiding gun owners from 
an inconsistent patchwork of laws, and my amendment provides parity 
between knife and gun owner. This commonsense amendment uses language 
similar to that used in the 1986 law.
  I have also filed an amendment with Senators Barrasso, Crapo, Hatch, 
Lee, Murkowski, and Risch to require the Department of Interior to 
suspend for 10 years the listing decision in States with approved or 
endorsed sage-grouse management plans. Wyoming has an endorsed and an 
approved plan, and sage-grouse is coming back. A new report on numbers 
just showed an increase. The amendment allows States to manage and 
conserve sage-grouse in a manner that protects their jurisdiction over 
State wildlife and takes into account local stakeholders.
  I believe it is related to the underlying bill because of the 
substantial impact a sage-grouse listing would have on sporting and 
recreation in Western States. Incidentally, even though they say there 
is a sage-grouse problem, the bag limits for hunting them have not gone 
down.
  I have also cosponsored some amendments that would improve this bill. 
One of these amendments by Senator Barrasso would prevent the EPA from 
regulating all bodies of water--even ones that are dried up, even ones 
that are seasonal--no matter how small and regardless of whether the 
water is on public or on private property.
  Mark Twain once said: ``[In the West] Whiskey is for drinking; Water 
is for fighting over.''
  So for States such as Wyoming, water is scarce, and we try to save 
every drop. One-size-fits-all Federal control like the EPA wants to 
impose won't work, but Senator Barrasso won't get a vote on his 
amendment.
  Another amendment by Senator Wicker, which I have cosponsored, would 
allow folks to carry firearms on Corps of Engineers recreational 
property. This is another parity amendment. But in this case, we would 
allow law-abiding gun owners to carry firearms on Corps land just as 
they can carry firearms on national park and National Wildlife Refuge 
lands, but Senator Wicker won't get a vote on his amendment.
  I am also supporting an amendment from Senator Tester to make cabin 
user fees more affordable and predictable, allowing families to keep 
their cabins on Forest Service land on which some have been for 
generations. Wyoming cabin owners shouldn't have to worry about the 
Forest Service trying to drive them off with ever-increasing fees--
sometimes a 300-percent increase in a single year.
  Incidentally, the Federal Government pays taxes in lieu of private 
ownership of the land. Those don't go up by 300 percent. It seems to me 
that if the value of the land went up by 300 percent, the Federal 
Government's payment in lieu of taxes would go up by the same amount. 
It doesn't happen. Wyoming cabin owners shouldn't have to worry about 
the Forest Service trying to drive them off with ever-increasing fees.
  This amendment provides a consistent, fiscally responsible formula 
for how the fees are calculated so families can spend more time 
enjoying the outdoors instead of worrying about the uncertainty of next 
year's fees, but Senator Tester won't get a vote on his amendment.
  These aren't the only good amendments to this bill. There have been 
80 amendments filed on this bill--about a third filed by the majority 
party. Many of the amendments are bipartisan, but it sounds as if only 
the one chosen by the majority leader is going to get a vote.
  I am sad to say no one should be surprised by this because it has 
become par for the course. In 2005 and 2006 the Senate voted on almost 
700 amendments on the Senate floor. In 2011 and 2012 it was about half 
that, around 350 amendments. In the past year the majority leader has 
allowed only 11 Senate Republican amendments. Let me repeat that. In 
the past year the majority leader has allowed votes on only 11 Senate 
Republican amendments. Over that same period of time the House has 
voted on 169 Democratic amendments. How can the House, which has more 
constraint than the Senate, have that many more votes for the minority 
party--169 to our 11? The majority party in the Senate isn't faring any 
better. I am told the majority leader has only allowed his own party to 
have seven amendments voted on since July of last year. In fact, my 
friends on the other side of the aisle haven't gotten a vote on one of 
their amendments in over 100 days--and they are in control.
  To prevent us from offering amendments, the majority leader has used 
a tactic called filling the amendment tree. In the last 8 years he has 
used this tactic 90 times. By comparison, the last six majority leaders 
combined only filled the tree 40 times in over 16 years. So the last 8 
years, 90 times; the previous 16 years, 40 times.
  Almost half of the Senate has been here less than 6 years. Forty-five 
of the 100 Senators are in their first term, so they may think this is 
the way the Senate does business. I say to those Senators, there is a 
better way. We need to be able to vote on amendments. We need the bills 
to go to committee. We need to have bills come to the floor. We need 
amendments both places. All 100 Members of the Senate should have an 
opportunity to improve the bills we consider because each of us looks 
at every proposal from a different point of view and different 
experience. When all

[[Page 11730]]

the decisions are made by the majority leader, the vast majority of 
Americans get shortchanged. This won't change unless those who are here 
exercise our rights.
  It is time for the 99 Senators who are being denied the opportunity 
to represent their constituents to stand up to the leader and insist on 
amendments. We should all demand that we be allowed to do our jobs. 
That will show up in votes, and it has shown up in votes. When our side 
doesn't get amendments, we don't let the bill pass. We have that 
capability, and the minority needs that capability in order to get 
control of situations such as this.
  We need to be able to vote on amendments. It has been the process of 
this body for the history of the United States, with unlimited debate 
in the Senate. Occasionally, when the debate has gone on for 2 or 3 
days or 2 or 3 weeks, there has been the exercise we see here but not 
at the start of a bill so that no amendments can be voted on.
  It doesn't take very long to vote if you get to vote. But what we are 
going through is a process of negotiations to see if the majority 
leader can pick the votes for the minority party. That is not right. 
That hasn't happened, and we don't intend to let it happen.
  It is time that we have our amendments, particularly amendments that 
are relevant to the bill. This is the sportsmen's bill. I am talking 
about the right to take archery equipment through a national park. We 
can do that with guns, but we can't do that with bows? Some of those 
parks are pretty big, and you have to go 250 miles out of the way to 
get around them. That shouldn't be imposed on sportsmen. They ought to 
have the right to do that, and we are going to be denied that vote and 
all of the others that I mentioned this morning.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor and reserve the remainder of our 
time.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I rise to speak about our Nation's broken 
criminal justice system, a system that has taken an unimaginable and I 
believe unsustainable toll on our Nation.
  The United States remarkably is home to between 4 and 5 percent of 
the entire globe's population, but we have 25 percent of the world's 
prison population. This phenomenon is unacceptable, that the land of 
the free would have 25 percent of the globe's imprisoned people. What 
is startling about that is the majority of those people are nonviolent 
offenders. In fact, the majority are nonviolent drug offenders.
  This phenomenon has largely emerged since around 1980, a period 
during which the Federal prison population has grown nearly tenfold. 
Since 1980 we have seen a 10-time increase in our prison population. 
Again, if we were locking up violent offenders, people who are 
terrorizing our streets or inflicting vicious and violent harm on our 
communities, then ridding our streets of such dangerous criminals would 
be understandable and it would be a price worth paying. But that is not 
the story of this unbelievable explosion of our Federal prisons and our 
Nation's incarcerated people. The reality is that nearly three-quarters 
of Federal prisoners are nonviolent and have no history of violence 
whatsoever.
  What is worse and what is anguishing is that once they are convicted 
of a crime, American citizens then face daunting obstacles to 
successfully rejoin society, to being able to raise their family, put 
food on the table, provide for themselves. As a result of that, our 
State and Federal prison exits have now become revolving doors, with 
two of every three ex-offenders getting rearrested within 5 years. Two-
thirds of those nonviolent folks leaving our prisons come back within 5 
years.
  When ex-offenders return to prison again and again, they are not just 
paying a price; we all are paying the price. We are contributing so 
much of our national treasure to rearresting the same people over and 
over, to reincarcerating the same people over and over. A recent Pew 
report concluded that if just 10 States cut their recidivism just 10 
percent, it would save taxpayers $470 million--money this Nation 
urgently could use either to keep in the pockets of taxpayers or invest 
in things such as lowering the cost of college or in our roads and 
bridges or our crumbling infrastructure.
  As hard-working, taxpaying Americans have increased the fund for our 
prisons, funding more and more, there have been fewer and fewer 
resources left for these other crucial parts of our society--fewer 
resources for law enforcement, fewer resources for rehabilitative 
programs, fewer resources for proven investments in children that help 
prevent crime in the first place. The result has been a cycle of 
spending and incarceration that has led to the ballooning of this 
Federal prison bureaucracy, more than one-quarter of a trillion dollars 
a year from our economy going to unproductive and even 
counterproductive uses.
  Our country's misguided criminal justice policies place an economic 
drag on local communities and on our Nation's global competitiveness. 
Remember, if we are putting 25 percent of the globe's prison population 
in our American prisons, paying the price for that, our competitive 
democracies, our competitive economies aren't paying that price, we are 
paying this egregious price, and it is not making us any more safe. In 
fact, I would say it is making us less safe as a community.
  Many of my colleagues in this body, I am proud to say, recognize the 
urgent need for reform and have already put forth pieces of legislation 
that seek to improve various parts of this broken system. I am grateful 
and I applaud the bipartisan efforts that exist in this body amongst my 
colleagues--Senators Leahy, Flake, Durbin, Lee, Whitehouse, Landrieu, 
Franken, and others--who stand up to say: We have to save taxpayer 
dollars, we have to elevate human potential, and we have to make our 
streets safer.
  So to build off the momentum of these leaders in the Senate, I join 
with Senator Rand Paul to introduce today the Record Expungement 
Designed to Enhance Employment--or REDEEM--Act. This bipartisan 
legislation will establish much needed, sensible, pragmatic reforms 
that keep kids out of an adult system in the first place, protect their 
privacy so a youthful mistake can remain a youthful mistake and not 
haunt young people throughout their lives, and help make it actually 
less likely that low-level nonviolent offenders reoffend.
  Among other measures, our bill incentivizes States to raise the age 
of original jurisdiction for criminal courts to 18 years old. Trying 
juveniles who have committed low-level, nonviolent crimes as adults is 
counterproductive. They don't emerge from prison reformed and ready to 
reintegrate into a high school. The criminal record they have won't 
help them as they try to get a job. We need a system that treats 
juveniles toughly but fairly and with an eye toward a productive 
adulthood, with an eye toward restorative justice.
  For kids in the dozen States that treat 17- and even 16-year-olds as 
adults, no longer would it be likely that getting into a scuffle at 
school would result in an adult record that could follow an individual 
for the rest of their life, restricting access to a college degree, 
limiting employment prospects, and increasing the likelihood of 
engaging in further criminal activity. It is time that we empower our 
children to succeed, not undermine their long-term prospects for life's 
success.
  The REDEEM Act also enhances Federal juvenile record confidentiality 
provisions and provides for automatic expungement of records for kids 
who commit nonviolent crimes before they turn 15 and automatic sealing 
of records for those who commit nonviolent crimes after they turn 15.
  It will also ban the very cruel and counterproductive practice of 
juvenile solitary confinement that can have immediate and long-term 
detrimental effects on youth detainee mental and physical health. In 
fact, the majority of suicides by juveniles in prisons happens by young 
people who are in solitary confinement. Other nations even consider it 
torture.
  For adults, this legislation offers the first broad-based Federal 
path to the sealing of criminal records. A person who commits a 
nonviolent crime will

[[Page 11731]]

be able to petition a court and make his or her case.
  Furthermore, employers requesting a background check from the Federal 
Bureau of Investigation will be provided with only relevant and 
accurate information thanks to a provision that will protect job 
applicants by improving the quality of the Bureau's background check.
  Think about this: 17 million background checks were done by the FBI 
last year, many of them for private providers, and upward of half of 
them were inaccurate or incomplete, often causing people to lose a job, 
miss an economic opportunity, and be trapped with few options to 
address the basic economic security that could lead someone to reoffend 
in order to feed a child. The REDEEM Act lifts a ban on receiving 
Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits. These 
benefits were conceived in a way that should empower people when they 
have to leave, and those convicted of drug use or possession having 
paid their dues now have a path to the reinstatement of those benefits 
so that they can get their lives together so they can be empowered and 
successful.
  Taken together, these measures will help keep kids who get in trouble 
out of a lifetime of crime and help adults who commit nonviolent crimes 
become more self-reliant and less likely to reoffend.
  The time to act is now. We cannot afford to let our criminal justice 
system continue to grow at the rate that it is. We cannot afford to sap 
billions of taxpayer dollars from a broken system that is locking 
people up and then doing nothing to empower them to succeed. We are 
wasting human potential and human productivity. We are hurting our 
economy, and by trapping people without options, we often end up making 
our communities less safe.
  We have seen how other individual States are doing things to address 
this issue and are actually lowering recidivism and lowering their 
prison population and on top of it lowering actual crime in their 
States. It is time that the Federal Government act to do the same.
  I urge my colleagues to support the REDEEM Act so we can make our 
communities safer and stronger and truly be a nation that savors and 
values freedom and empowers its citizens to live productive, strong 
lives of contribution.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I note the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican whip is recognized.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would ask unanimous consent that the 
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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