John Conyers

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, the new majority has succeeded in turning a silk purse into a sow's ear, in terms of our crime bill efforts. I would just like to take a few minutes to recall what the contract has been doing to us in the crime area. First of all, we have just said, as of this week, that law enforcement officers can kick the doors down on our houses at any time for any reason without a warrant. Magistrate requirement? Oh, yes; you go to a magistrate afterward to determine if the officer was acting in good faith or not, instead of going before to have it determined by an arbiter in the court. They have also created a system so that a defendant, a criminal defendant, can be executed even though he may have an appeal pending before he ever knows whether the appeal has been disposed of or not. Then the new majority, for partisan reasons, wants to eliminate one of the great features of the 1994 crime bill, namely the promise of 100,000 new community policemen on the beat, and replace it with a wasteful revenue sharing program that harks back to the eighties that has failed miserably. We have had so many horror stories that we understand why eventually the plug was pulled on that old program. Now that the Republican majority has actually done all these things, they are going to provide less money for prisons while trying to pretend that they are going to be providing more. How? Because the cumbersome truth-in-sentencing requirements in which the Federal Government paternalistically tells States how to run their criminal justice systems will tie the States up in such knots that they will not be able to qualify. It is to this point on prison funding that we will be examining this in greater detail. Mr. Chairman, study the new majority proposal closely. First, it takes away the $2.5 billion from the ``cops on the beat'' program and puts it into what is already a $10 billion pot for new prison construction. Only then it says to States, ``You can't have half of that unless you do it our way,'' which most States tell us they cannot. In fact, we cannot count more than three that can. So the Republican program decreases the money both for police and for prisons, so the truth-in-sentencing fiasco is in some ways the ultimate hypocrisy. At a time when there is wide consensus that we need to return power to communities, this bill says that the Federal Government in Washington will dictate to the local communities what to do with crime. Simply put, it is paternalistic. If the balanced budget amendment was the mother of all unfunded mandates, this prison proposal might be a close second cousin because the truth-in-sentencing requirements will create enormous costs to State Governments that are not offset with the $6 billion dangled in front of them in the name of truth-in-sentencing. And so we got it right when they proposed realistic truth-in- sentencing last year. We provided flexibility to States and allowed the truth-in-sentencing monies to roll over to a general prison fund in the event that it was not drawn down. This bill, however, forces States to make promises about how long prisoners will serve before they have served their entire sentence. How can a State prove that? And, puzzingly, it says that for States with indeterminate sentencing, that the average time served for violent crimes must exceed the national average by 10 percent. Only one problem: No such average exists. State criminal statutes define crimes differently. So we have ambiguities that would require sometimes dozens of criminal law changes in each State to qualify for this madcap scheme that is before us. But we on the Democratic side have a different program. We want to codify what the Supreme Court has said when it comes to the fourth amendment. We want to put 100,000 community police on the street. We want to tell the States that their judgment is the best on how to use their prisons and the scarce space that they need, and not tie them up with paternalistic dictates from Washington. And we want to replace the new majority revenue sharing program with a crime prevention program that we know works. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONYERS. Further reserving the right to object, what I am saying to the gentleman is that we can agree to this subject to the fact that there may be several that we would ask unanimous consent to move ahead. With that, Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. CONYERS. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Chairman, I understand what motivates the gentleman from Florida. I agree to it subject to the fact that there may be a couple of amendments on which we may have to ask unanimous consent to go a little bit longer than this.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt].

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, that is exactly what we intended.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is correct, absolutely correct.

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

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, the name that the gentleman will come to love is the National Institute of Justice for law enforcement technology programs.

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

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman says he has a problem with that.

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

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. What I would like to find out from my friend from Florida, if a very small amendment would be permissible by unanimous consent and it would read at the end of the last sentence, ``of such offense'' we would put a comma ``or to the Department of Health and Human Services for programs to prevent crime.''

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. CONYERS. Then I ask that we add the subcommittee of the Committee on the Judiciary, all Judiciary subcommittees, because we are all due here on the floor tomorrow. So, with that exception I would be willing to withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. CONYERS. Committee on Resources is out already?

Mr. CONYERS. Reserving my right to object, Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out to the gentleman that as to the Committee on the Judiciary and the Committee on Resources Subcommittee; we would ask that they both be removed form the list.

Mr. CONYERS. Yes, Mr. Speaker, I am continuing to reserve the right to object. Could I ask the gentleman if he is talking about eight committees?

Mr. CONYERS. To sit during the consideration of the crime bill?

Mr. CONYERS. Could I ask the gentleman where he got the impression that the minority had agreed to this previously?

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Just a minute, please. I will be happy to yield time. We have never considered this matter in this 104th Congress. It has never come up, was never the subject of an amendment. Mr. Chairman, I will give the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] a chance to correct anything he would like to correct. But this has never been put before the Committee on the Judiciary for a vote, and the gentleman from California [Mr. Cox] has never presented this subject matter before, and we are literally blind-sided in the last hour of this debate on this very important part where you have advanced the habeas part of the Contract With America, and now we have another amendment that goes in a completely different way.

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to proceed for 30 additional seconds.

Mr. CONYERS

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, this amendment is offered by myself, the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Volkmer], and the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Dingell].

Mr. CONYERS. I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts for yielding to me. Mr. Chairman, in the interest of comity, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment and that the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Volkmer] be recognized immediately to offer the amendment.

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

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Chairman, could I ask the gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Schiff], my friend, what the basis of his objection is? We have already worked in comity during this bill and during the committee. I am puzzled about this. This is a very small technicality, and would the gentleman just tell us what is on his mind?