Barney Frank

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, that was debated on the floor last year.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Under the gentleman's bill, if you sentence them to 10 years and they serve 3, there are two ways you can qualify. You can make them serve 8 or 9, or you can cut the sentence to 4. The gentleman's bill does not require you to increase the time served. It simply says it has got to be 85 percent of the sentencing. So the gentleman's bill is flawed even in trying to do what he says he is trying to do.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. That is true. That is true. Therefore, it seemed to me, it behooved me to give credit where credit was due. But the point I would make is that, yes, we have had some categorical programs. We have never claimed or pretended that we were against some direction to the States. It is the gentleman on the other side who had made that point, and it is that point which they are directly, blatantly, and thoroughly contradicting today. If I could make one last sentence, I will give the gentleman one more credit. He began by saying if the States were doing the right thing. Yes, that is exactly the point. This is a bill from people who do not agree with choices the States are making, and they are going to coerce them to make other ones. That is valid. But do not pretend to be the Articles of Confederation when you are in the process of doing that.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. The gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Schiff] is trying too hard to reconcile the irreconcilable, but he is unsuccessful. He says it is inconsistent just to even talk about prison grants. What he is apparently arguing is that either you say that everything the Federal Government provides to States goes in one undifferentiated huge revenue-sharing pot, or else you have no difference between categorical programs and specificity in the categorical programs. In other words, we have generally said there was general revenue- sharing, then there were categorical programs which say ``for health,'' which say ``for prisons,'' et cetera. The question then becomes do you overprescribe in the category. It is one thing to say, ``We will give you money for prisons and we will give you money for crime fighting.'' It is another to say, ``We will give you money for prisons if, in fact, you do 85 percent and if, in fact, you do all these specific things.'' The gentleman is wrong when he says this is meant to encourage the States. This does not encourage, this says to the State, ``You will meet the rather contorted definitions we have or you get nothing.'' That is much more than encouragement. That is coercion, and it is a perfectly valid point. However, to say, as he has said, ``Well, under the amendment of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Schumer], we will go back to the revolving door'' is to say that the State legislatures and Governors of this country cannot be trusted, because what the amendment of the gentleman from New York does is to leave it up to the States. When we say that is going back to the revolving doors, as the gentleman says about this amendment, as his amendment said, ``You cannot trust the States, they will not do it right, we know better,'' that is a perfectly valid position, but take off your Thomas Jefferson costume when you are saying it and put on your Alexander Hamilton mask.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I would not want to get between the Speaker and his troops, Mr. Chairman. If the gentleman so instructed them or advised them, that is his prerogative. We should be very clear, though, that this bill is premised on the notion that, left to their own decisionmaking process, the States of this Union will not adequately deal with violent criminals. not only prescribe, prescribe foolishly; tell them that they must have 85 percent of the sentence served, no matter what that length of time is. I hope the Schumer amendment is adopted and sense prevails over partisanship.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I yield to the gentleman from New York.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, for those who doubt that there is progress, they should have been at the Committee on the Judiciary markup on this bill. Because there is the most blatant, glaring, irreconcilable inconsistency in approach between this bill, which dictates to the States, which assumes that the State legislatures are not smart enough or courageous enough or courageous enough to deal with sentencing, and we have heard Members on the other side say, in effect, we cannot trust the State legislatures to do this on their own so we have to tell them how to do it. That is a total inconsistency between this and the bill we will see on Monday, where in fact they say, we will give things to the States and we should not proscribe anything because that would be an interference with States' rights. At the committee session, the best answer we got to that was the chairman citing Ralph Waldo Emerson that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, which I pointed out is a remark everybody says when they get caught in an inconsistency and cannot come up with an answer. They have had a few days so they have elaborated a rationale to try to explain it. But it makes no sense. Today they will be telling us that we cannot trust the State legislatures, the we must dictate to them and dictate to them, it seems to me foolishly, as I will get into. Then on Monday they will tell us that we must give everything to the States and make no Federal proposals. What holds these two together, and I think it is very clear, what motivates the Republicans here is clearly no consistent philosophy about deferring to the States, because they will dictate to the States today and denigrate their capacity for self-determination. And then on Monday they will defer to it. What they have in common is this. Last year, over the opposition of most of the Republicans, the Democratic Congress and the Democratic President passed a good, tough crime bill that had sensible prevention funds, that had money for prisons, that had money for police. Now, when the Democrats do something that is wrong, my Republican friends are a little unhappy. But when the Democrats do something that is manifestly right, they are very, very unhappy. They cannot tolerate the notion that we would have been as successful as we were. And, therefore, they have come forward with legislation which would interrupt a process that is well along of getting crime fighting funds out to the States. They are doing it today, and they will do it on Monday. They will take absolutely inconsistent positions. They will be Federalists today and States' rights people on Monday. And the only common thread is that they want to undo what we did last year. Having lost last year, they are not prepared to abide by that, and they will disrupt the processes. Police officers who are being hired will now face an uncertain future if their bill passes and becomes law, because they do not like the notion that the Democrats might have gotten credit for putting out more police. The States will be told, and here is the degree of proscription, it says to a State, you get money if you have increased the extent to which you were sentencing violent criminals. So if you are a State which had already been sentencing violent criminals to long sentences, you will lose money to a State that still sentences them to less than you do because they have gotten more less than you do. If you have been doing it for 10 years and they have been doing it for 6 and they get up to 8, 8 will be more than 10 by the peculiar arithmetic that the Republicans have been driven to by their desire to mess this thing up. Because what they will measure is not how long you sentence people but whether or not you increased it. Similarly, they will be told that they have to serve 85 percent of their sentence. If in fact people are sentenced to 15 years and serve 10 of those 15 years, that is only two thirds, they do not qualify. But if they were in fact sentenced to 8 years and serve 7 of the 8, that will be more than 85 percent, and they will qualify. They use meaningless items. States that in fact have tougher sentencing will manifestly lose out under this bill to States that have less sentencing because the Republicans needed to come up with a way to undo what we had done.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, I will not engage the gentleman on the merits, because I think he has some points, although I disagree with him. My point is that it is precisely this kind of thoughtful debate that we have not been able to have on the floor. I would like to have a chance to explore all the issues, but by the procedure that was used, the whole issue was kept off the floor, and it is that procedural objection, not the substantive one, that I am making.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Will the gentleman yield, Mr. Speaker, just to respond to the gentleman from Illinois?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I understand that the gentleman does not want members shook up on certain issues. Fortunately, he does not have the power to stop that. The amendment the gentleman offered in committee is not going to be not give them a waiver and there are other waivers in this bill. The notion that the rules cannot be waived is silly. There are four waivers in this bill. There are not five. Because the fifth would have been embarrassing. So four waivers they can give, but the fifth they cannot give because, as with the Social Security relevance to the balanced budget; as with frequent flier, it would be troublesome. Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge that the gentlemen are very clever about it. They do not get caught restricting the rules when there is no political problem, but as soon as the issue gets tough, down go the bars.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. That they are in fact using their power to restrict debate a little bit more technically than we did. We did tend to overuse it. The gentleman on the other side only shuts off debate if it is going to be embarrassing to them, I acknowledge that. Where in fact nothing turns on it and there is no problem, they will have debate. But where we talk about restricting frequent flier miles used with public funds for personal purposes, a pet project of the Speaker's, apparently, then, no, we cannot debate that. Where we talk about separating out Social Security in the balanced budget, no, we cannot debate that. Where the gentleman from California had an amendment that passed in the Committee on the Judiciary that would give us a chance to give to California and other States the relief the Speaker says he wants to give them, the Committee on Rules makes that impossible. So, in fact, we have a pattern.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. ``Inaccuracy'' is a perfectly acceptable word under the rules. The first point I would make is that the balanced budget constitutional amendment was not the only bill we considered under a restricted rule. We considered on the first day a statute dealing with compliance of Congress with the laws which was considered under a totally closed rule.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Not from Boston. That is a lesser inaccuracy. Under the circumstances, let us get to the more substantive ones.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I just want to congratulate the gentleman for the nimbleness with which he skipped away from his error, in which he said that you had to do midnight basketball when in fact you do not.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Permissive.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Not as I understand it.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I thank the gentleman for yielding. But I must say I was disappointed when the gentleman from Illinois said under the bill we passed last year, if you wanted part of the $50 million pot, you had to do midnight basketball. That is not in the bill. It was permissive, just as it is in their bill that they are going to bring up on Monday. Midnight basketball was an option. To say that under the bill we passed you had to do midnight basketball is simply a misstatement.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I agree. I had thought, just as the gentleman did with me, I had thought that the gentleman on the other side was talking about how much better they would be. The point is----

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I just asked the gentleman if he wanted me to yield and I will.

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. I would have to disagree with the gentleman. First of all, Members should understand that, yes, there was a motion to recommit, which the minority has, which allowed for 10 minutes of debate rather than what would have been an hour. And the minority was not able to present that view. Second, it has been my information, with the ranking minority member, that we did ask that my amendment be made in order. And the fact is that the Committee on Rules did not want it made in order. When we dealt with the compliance bill, what was kept off the floor was the question of frequent flier miles, because the Speaker does not want us to be able to vote on preventing Members from using frequent flier miles for personal purposes when they are acquired with Government funds. On the balanced budget, the majority did everything it could to keep the minority from voting and fully debating the Social Security question. The amendment that got the most votes in committee, in fact the one amendment that drew some Republican support, was given by the majority the shortest shrift possible. We did choose to use the recommit for it, but that is, as I said, a 5-minute debate on each side as opposed to an hour. So the record is very clear that when the majority anticipates that an issue will be troublesome, they do what they can to keep it off the floor. They are perfectly willing to have us debate issues that are not going to be troublesome to them politically. Finally, I want to agree with what the gentleman from California said when he talked about the haste, and we have a majority operating under a self-imposed campaign promise of 100 days to bring out a large amount of legislation. It is proving harder for them to do than they had anticipated. They are running in strains. They are running into strains in the committee process. They are running into strains on the floor. Yesterday we had the bill on habeas corpus amended with the author of it, the chairman of the subcommittee, agreeing that he had made a major error in the bill he had brought forward and agreeing that it had to be corrected. We do not know what other major errors are there. To meet a political pledge, the majority is doing violence to the procedures, in many cases, and committee meetings have been cut off without amendment process action, and the open rules have not been open. A 10-hour limitation on some of these major things is not a completely open rule and is intended, in fact, to cut down on the debate. And we have had more need for the majority itself to amend and correct its own legislation on the floor. There are strains that have gone on in virtually every committee, in the Committee on Government Reform and Oversight, in the Committee on Science, in the Committee on the Judiciary, there have been these problems. So what Members should understand is that we have got a series of difficulties, procedural and substantive, because of this haste. I will repeat again, to my knowledge, there are two issues I wanted to see fully debated on this floor, separating out the Social Security receipts and outlays from the balanced budget, and the Committee on Rules would not allow that as a freestanding amendment, required us to do it only in the recommit because they could not stop that one. They would have liked to, and we only had, of course, a very small amount for debate. And the compliance bill came out in a form in which the Speaker was able to keep us from debating the question of whether or not Members should be restricted from, with public funds, acquiring frequent flier miles and using them for their personal advantage. And so, in fact, the pattern is this, where nothing turns on it, where there is no potential embarrassment, the majority will be for an open rule. But where they have something that might be politically troublesome, they are going to do what they can to try to restrict the debate.