John Conyers

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes. What we do here is try to deal with the problem of 13-year-olds in this juvenile justice bill. This is really a crime bill. The only reason this is called the juvenile bill is because we are dealing with kids. But the whole idea is to bring them into the criminal justice process. In a word, what we try to stop the McCollum base bill from achieving is to allow the prosecutors to determine which 13-year-olds will be prosecuted for any felony, any felony. I stand here as one that says there are some crimes that 13-year-olds should be prosecuted for, but not any felony. And therein lies the difference. And certainly not to let the prosecutor unilaterally determine who is going to be tried. Where is the judge? And so for that reason, I merely strike the provisions in H.R. 3 that would allow 13-year-olds to be tried as adults at the discretion of the prosecutor for any felony. For goodness sakes, what is going on here? Why do we need this? Judges and prosecutors can try 13-year-olds now under the Federal law, under the Federal crime bill of 1994. The gentleman from Florida passed it. It was his bill, so he knows what is in it. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, the motion to recommit is essentially the Conyers-Schumer substitute which we will now offer as the motion to recommit. It is both smart and tough. We have almost brought juvenile justice law to the point where the only thing left on the other side was to offer an amendment abolishing the distinction between juveniles and adults in our system. Because of a determination on germaneness made by the Speaker and the leaders, we have taken out the child safety lock provision. Sixteen children are killed every single day in the United States of America, and that provision now cannot be debated or voted on in any provision, neither the base bill or the substitute. The funding, great, $1.5 billion; but only five States meet the qualifications. Five States. It will be years before anybody will ever receive any money at the State and local level in this regard. Then, of course, we take the question of whether juveniles should be prosecuted as adults out of the judge's discretion and given to the prosecutors; great day in America in fighting juvenile crime. We have, most importantly, the only meaningful prevention in a juvenile justice bill, meaningful prevention based on research, which is cost-effective and which provides States and local governments maximum flexibility. It rejects the Washington-knows-best approach. It is smart and tough and compassionate, and I urge Members to join us in the motion to recommit. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record a letter from the National Conference of State Legislatures expressing opposition to H.R. 3. The letter referred to is as follows: National Conference of State Legislatures, Washington, DC, May 7, 1997. Dear Member of Congress: We are writing to express our opposition to mandates in H.R. 3, the Juvenile Crime Control Act of 1997. Mandates in existing law require that states deinstitutionalize status offenders, remove juveniles from jails and lock-ups, and separate juvenile delinquents from adult offenders. Under H.R. 3, the federal government would apply new rules nationwide relating to juvenile records, judicial discretion and parental and juvenile responsibility. These present new obstacles for states that need federal funds. States are enacting many laws that attack the problem of violent juvenile crime comprehensively. Many have lowered the age at which juveniles may be charged as adults for violent crimes; others have considered expanding prosecutors' discretion. Without clear proof that one choice is more effective than the other, Congress would deny funding for juvenile justice to states where just one element in the state's comprehensive approach to juvenile justice differs from the federal mandate. The change of directions ought to make Congress wary of inflexible mandates. For example, until federal law was changed in 1994 states were forbidden to detain juveniles for possession of a gun--because possession was a ``status'' offense. The federal response was not merely to allow states to detain children for possession, but to create a new federal offense of juvenile possession of a handgun. (Pub. L. 103-322, Sec. 11201). The advantage of states as laboratories is that their choices put the nation less at risk. This bill would make the nation the laboratory. NCSL submits that the proposed mandates, however well- intentioned, are short-sighted and counter-productive. We urge you to strike the mandates from H.R. 3. Sincerely, William T. Pound, Executive Director. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New York Mr. Charles Schumer, former chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. If my colleagues think as I do, we will leave the Federal law alone, which already allows the enumerated crimes in the Federal crime bill of 1994 that now gives the prosecutor the option on major crimes, murder, attempted murder, possessing firearms during an offense, aggravated sexual abuse, robbery, and bank robbery. We already have those crimes. Now, what is the point? Is giving 13-year-olds adult sentences at the discretion of the prosecutor going to reduce juvenile crime in the United States? Well, I guess if 13-year-olds are reading the Federal criminal statute and realize what the McCollum provision will do, quite likely some of them will not do it. Please, why are we going to this clinical obsession with getting kids? For what purpose? For what satisfaction? For what national Federal objective? For what purpose? To reduce crime in America? Well, of course, there is not any. By what authority do we even dare bring this provision up? Any quotes, any reports, any studies, any Department of Justice? None. It is just that the chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime feels this would be a good way to get more 13-year-olds. Try them as adults. A questionable theory in and of itself. And that way, then give the prosecutor. What about the judge? Federal judges, what do they know? Give it to the U.S. prosecutor and let him build his rep and in that way we will fight juvenile crime in the United States. I think that is not sick, but not healthy either. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, given the growing concern of American citizens over the juvenile crime problem, we need to carefully examine this issue and its root causes and look for ways not just to punish juvenile offenders, but for ways in which we can prevent children from becoming criminals in the first place. Some of my colleagues believe that the very least we must do to address our juvenile crime problem is to lock up violent juveniles. I have no argument with incarcerating violent offenders, but to my mind, the very least we must do is to attempt to stop these kids before they become violent offenders. Locking up more and more kids is not the answer. We cannot afford it and eventually these kids will get out. And what will happen when they do get out? We will have a group of young adults who have spent many of their formative years in jail. What can we logically expect them to have learned there except for how to be better and more dangerous criminals? Yet now, in the current political climate where no penalty is ever considered too severe, many of my colleagues want to treat kids as adults and lock them up for longer and longer periods--even though study after study has shown that this approach is totally ineffective. Traditionally, juvenile court judges have given juveniles longer sentences than the judges in adult courts. The worst offenders at the juvenile level may often appear quite tame compared to what the criminal courts see every day. Anyway, all of the talk about treating younger and younger offenders as adults misses the point. It is too little too late. We need to deal with kids before they become violent offenders, not after. The Rand Corporation--hardly a bastion of liberalism--has recently issued a report demonstrating that crime prevention efforts aimed at disadvantaged kids are more effective than tough prison terms in keeping our citizenry safe. Since this study doesn't play that well politically, I guess we are just going to ignore it. As adults, we need to take more responsibility for our country's juvenile crime problem. Children are not born criminals, we make them into criminals either through our neglect or our mistreatment or a lack of economic opportunities. We are treating juveniles more harshly at the same time as we are spending less on their education, less on after-school and development programs, and less on child protective services. We are also allowing our children to be exposed to more and more violence, not only on television, at the movies and in popular music, but in the streets, at school, and even in their own homes. A significant majority also refuses to stand up to the National Rifle Association and acknowledge the danger guns pose to our youth, despite the large number of teenagers (not to mention adults) killed by gun violence every year. In fact, at the juvenile crime meetings Chairman McCollum convened around the country last Congress, without fail at every one of those meetings--in Philadelphia, in Atlanta, in Boston, in Chicago, in Dallas, and in San Francisco--local officials have noted the problem of juveniles and guns and urged Federal action on this front. Yet Mr. McCollum's bill does absolutely nothing to limit juvenile access to handguns. I guess the Republicans are only interested in addressing juvenile crime in ways that pass NRA scrutiny. Although the 1994 crime bill authorized funding for numerous prevention programs, since the Republicans gained the majority, none of that money has been appropriated. Therefore, it cannot be argued that prevention has failed. We haven't even begun to try prevention programs. Before we lose an entire generation to the criminal justice system, we have an obligation to make every effort to assist children in making the right choices and to offer them meaningful alternatives to crime. As with guns, at Chairman McCollum's juvenile crime meetings around the country, local officials stressed the importance of prevention programs and Mr. McCollum professed to agree that prevention programs are a necessary part of the effort to stem crime. Yet the bill we consider here today offers little in the way of prevention. The lock 'em up approach taken by H.R. 3 will do little if anything to stem the rising tide of juvenile crime with which the majority professes to be so concerned. Once again, we are trying to fool the American public into thinking we are doing something about crime when we are actually only politicizing crime. If this bill becomes law and the juvenile crime rate fails to decrease, we will have only ourselves to blame for the further public disillusionment and cynicism about politics as well as for the escalating juvenile crime problem.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I will not lecture my distinguished colleague from Ohio on the rules of the floor. Please do not interrupt me when the chairman of the committee has yielded time.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, that is the second time the gentlewoman has done that. Now, this is a rehash. I emphasize, this is the same old stuff. Go back and read the Record. Point of Order

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. CONYERS. I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I just want to explain to the gentleman from California, [Mr. Hunter] that he has had 5 minutes. I get 3. I am not giving him any more time. I am not yielding. Mr. Chairman, I object to this amendment. This amendment contains a number of restrictions on how the tradeoffs can operate, including the types of search files the office should use, the amount of training examiners should receive, where and by whom the patent application should be examined. It imposes restraints on executive branch negotiations with other nations on patent law. Is this serious? We are going to, in an amendment that all debate concludes on in 8 minutes, we are now going to limit the executive branch of Government's ability to negotiate with other nations on patent law. This would eliminate the operational flexibilities and management stability of the Government corporation which would be created in H.R. 400. I guess that means it guts the bill. So here we go. We have had about 4 amendments. I am not impatient with this mode of debate and the secret agreements that nobody knows about, the conspiracy that is motivating the movers of H.R. 400. But it is a little trying.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, to the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher], our distinguished colleague, it has just been discovered that there is no secret conspiracy.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, let me say that the subject of this discussion has been dealt with already under whoever's name we care to put it. It is not new information. It is the Record of last week that is spread with this. As my subcommittee chairman has said, the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Coble], this brings back playing possum; right? This brings back submarining; right? Oh, well, if it does, how does that happen? Because in the gentlewoman's amendment, the Kaptur amendment, at lines 8, 9, and 10: shall not be published until a patent is issued thereon, except upon the request of the applicant. This now allows small business and universities to indulge in submarining, if they choose; it exempts publication, and that takes us back to where we came in. That is what the new base bill of the committee, after several years' doing, is all about. Mr. Chairman, I would say to my colleagues, please, we do not need to be going back into this. We need to stop submarining, and this is in the interest of small businessmen. Final point, and I will yield my time back to the Chairman. If the universities needed this, they would have asked us. We have had innumerable hearings, and not one university witness has ever said we need the Kaptur amendment or any language like it. For those reasons I humbly approach the membership to ask them to reject the amendment. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

Mr. CONYERS. I will not yield, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] for yielding. If Members feel that they may have heard this debate before somewhere, they are absolutely correct. This is precisely what we spent several hours doing on the Rohrabacher amendment last week. We did it upsidedown, backward, there were short speeches, long speeches, ferocious speeches, timid speeches, but it was the Rohrabacher amendment. We are now back into it again. We are now rehashing the Rohrabacher amendment.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment offered by the gentlewoman from Ohio [Ms. Kaptur]. Mr. Chairman, first of all, I would like to establish my credentials of defending small businessmen and working people as much as anybody that is on this floor at this moment. That being said, I want to point out that this is not in the interests of small business. So we have a little bit of a definitional problem as we approach the Kaptur amendment. That is that we both support working people and small businessmen except one thinks that this amendment will help small businessmen, and myself thinks that it will not help small businessmen, and I am going to try to explain for all those in this body that want to help small businessmen why the Kaptur amendment is not good, it is bad. It is bad for this first reason: One, what she has cleverly put into this, or somebody, from lines 6 to 11 is to bring back the current law that we are changing. The bill currently on the floor helps small businessmen. This changes it back namely by saying that of the Higher Education Act entitled to reduce fees from such section shall not be published until a patent is issued thereon except upon the request of the applicant. This just went back into the bill that we voted on last week and lifted up this current law language. This allows submarining. Sub- marining, now known to everybody, is bad. We do not want bad stuff in the base bill. This would allow submarining and those who would indulge in that, and they are not all big businessmen. The businessman on the cover, the picture of the businessman who was the No. 1 submariner in the country on the Wall Street Journal, was not representing a multinational corporation. He was a small businessman. Point No. 2: Why do we have an amendment exempting institutions who do not wish to be exempted? Why? In whose great wisdom, not on the committee, have we decided that universities need to be exempted? Who is asking? The answer: Nobody. But it is thought to be a pretty good deal. It is not a good deal, but not only is it not a good deal, it is not desired. So for those reasons, the three that I mentioned, I respectfully urge a very strong and overwhelming rejection of the amendment of my good friend from Ohio's amendment.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. No, I will handle this. The gentleman is not familiar with it, and it just came on the floor. It was brought forward at the Committee on Rules hearing yesterday that the gentleman attended with myself and the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I hate to reveal my inclination at this time, but there has been nobody that has requested it.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman would yield, I have never yielded a Republican Democratic time in that large amount.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Lofgren], in whose district there are an incredible number of inventors and biotech people.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. I did not think so. I thank the gentleman. The second most important part of the manager's amendment, from my point of view, is the exemption of the small inventor from the necessity of publication if he chooses to do so. And so, here this exemption from publication for the small inventor is that they do not have to publish until 3 months after the second patent and trademark action, which is usually the final decision regarding a patent. That has great merit because it gives the protection to the small inventor. Ladies and gentlemen, those who are against GATT and NAFTA, listen up. This is precisely why I am supporting the bill and the manager's amendment because we provide additional protection to the small inventor, we give him the option of publishing 3 months after what is called the second PTO action, which is almost always the final decision regarding the issuance of a patent. There are a number of technical amendments to the Coble manager's amendment. It is 18 pages long. The provision that I am referring to that exempts small inventors starts at page 10, line 1. Please read it. It is not complicated language. It is not any more complex than anything we handle every day in the making of laws for the United States of America. It is pretty straightforward. It should not create any problem to anybody that is interested in protecting American inventors who are not corporations to give them the option that they require that they have never had before which does not subvert the patent process, it makes it stronger and is why we are here on the floor with this bill after several years.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the manager's amendment offered by the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Coble], the subcommittee chairman. Mr. Chairman, I would point out that the two major items in this amendment is, one, to completely separate the operational function of the Patent and Trademark Office from the policy responsibilities of the Patent and Trademark Office, thereby making it most efficient. I presume that most everybody is for that. I do not recall much objection to it.