Orrin Hatch

Mr. HATCH

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that following the debate on amendment No. 324, the Gregg amendment, that amendment be set aside, and Senator Robb or his designee be immediately recognized to offer an amendment, the text of which is amendment No. 323, and that there be up to 30 minutes of debate. I also ask unanimous consent that at the conclusion or yielding of time, the Senate resume the Hatch- Biden-Sessions amendment No. 322 and the time be limited to 30 minutes equally divided; following that debate, the Senate proceed to vote on or in relation to the Gregg amendment, to be followed by a vote on or in relation to the Robb amendment, to be followed by a vote on or in relation to the Hatch amendment; and no other amendments or motions be in order prior to the three votes just identified. Finally, I ask unanimous consent that following those votes, Senator DeWine be recognized for up to 20 minutes, and then Senator Leahy be recognized to offer an amendment, and no amendments be in order prior to a motion to table.

Mr. HATCH. That is correct.

Mr. HATCH. That is my understanding. That is right. Will the Senator yield back the time?

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, as I understand it, we will now proceed to the Robb amendment. Amendment No. 325 to Amendment No. 322 (Purpose: To provide resources and services to enhance school safety and reduce youth violence)

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, we have $1.1 billion a year in this bill, for law enforcement, for prevention, for safe schools, for parental empowerment. The distinguished Senator from Virginia wants to add each year an additional $1.4 billion on top of that. This is another marathon Federal bureaucratic solution to a local problem. The first title creates a so-called National Resource Center for School Safety to the tune of $100 million. The director of this center is appointed by the head of the Department of Education, the Attorney General, and the head of Health and Human Services. This sounds to me very much like we are creating another Federal agency in a way that is duplicative of what is going on at the State level, something we have been trying to avoid in the whole 2 years we debated the juvenile justice bill. For example, the funds of this center include such things as: No. 1, an emergency response to do such things as helping communities meet urgent needs such as long-term counseling for students, faculty, and family. No. 2, a national anonymous hotline. Many local areas are already establishing hotlines to accept calls from local students and other parties. Why on earth do we need a Federal hotline on top of the local community hotlines, a Federal hotline which is supposed to then relay the urgent messages to the local hotlines and officials? We are going to spend $100 million of taxpayer money in this bill for something already taken care of. Why not help the States establish their own hotlines, if they even need that help? This bill does that. No. 3, training and assistance. This proposal has this new $100 million Federal bureaucracy helping local agencies develop a school safety plan--as if they can't do it themselves. First, most local agencies already have school safety plans and they know how to provide for school safety a lot better than the bureaucrats here in Washington or, I might add, anybody standing or sitting here in the Senate. Most local agencies, since they already have school safety plans, don't need help from us. Second, if a national model is needed, the Department of Education can identify a local education agency's particularly affected plan and send it out to the local jurisdictions so they can carry it out. That way, we have 50 State laboratories or in every school district a State laboratory rather than bureaucrats back in Washington telling us what to do. That ought to cost just a few thousand dollars compared to $100 million provided in this particular instance. No. 4, the new $100 million Federal bureaucracy is supposed to act as a clearinghouse for research and evaluation. This information is readily available on the Internet. We do not need a Federal bureaucracy to administer this. The bottom of this chart lists the number of Federal programs we already have in each of these particular areas: Training and assistance, 62; counseling, 62; research and evaluation, 55; violence prevention, 53; parental and family intervention, 52; support service, 51; substance abuse prevention, 47; planning and program development, 47; self-sufficiency skills, 46; mentoring, 46; job training assistance, 45; tutoring, 35; substance abuse treatment, 26; clearinghouse, 19; and capital improvement, 10. There are similar services in several department and agency programs funded in fiscal year 1998. The source of this information is the General Accounting Office as of 1999. Under title 2 of this amendment, as I read this, this is a marathon new grant program to the tune of $722 million for areas such as educational reform. As you can see, we are already doing that. ``The review and updating of school policies.'' Can you imagine that? Why would anybody want to do this, when the State and local school board directors know exactly what they are doing? Why would we spend $722 million more on this? I might add, ``to review for the review and updating of school policies,'' whatever that means. Title 3 in this bill includes alcohol and drug abuse prevention. That is already part of our bill. We have worked on this for 2 solid years. We have made every dime count and we have added plenty of money for prevention. Better than half of this bill is prevention money. It makes you wonder; you would never be able to outspend some of these people around here. It doesn't make any difference what is in the best interests of taxpayers; it is what is in the best interests of the political people who push these things. Mental health prevention and treatment and early childhood development is something they want to do. This proposal includes a grant to address violence-related stress. Another element includes grants to ``the development of knowledge on best practices for treating disorders associated with psychological trauma.'' Mr. President, mental health treatment is a very important area and one in which a lot of Members, including myself, have done a lot of work through the years. However, I have a concern about using this bill on school violence for a major new Federal mental health system at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars when we have better than half of the bill now going for prevention purposes. The final title of this bill is a $600 million increase in afterschool programs. I am not categorically opposed to directing more Federal resources to promote afterschool programs. I am concerned that this section is overly bureaucratic. We can better help schools by freeing them up from regulatory hoops. I think that is what we ought to do instead of doing this. I have been around here for 23 years. When committees work 2 solid years on this matter, the way we have, and we work with a leader on crime issues such as Senator Biden and with others on the committee in a bipartisan way to come up with prevention moneys that actually exceed the money for law enforcement itself, and do so to the tune of well over a half billion dollars a year, there is no need for this type of amendment which is just ``let's throw money at it'' and call it nice things--general things at that, if you will--even though almost everything this amendment proposes to do we already do in our bill and we do it in a fiscally responsible way and in a fiscally restrained way. I am almost amazed that this amendment has been brought forth. At first I thought I might support it, because I thought they were talking about doing these things within the framework of what we have already done. But when I look at it and read it and understand it, it is just another way of throwing more money and beating our breasts, saying we have done something for prevention in the juvenile justice area when in fact we are doing plenty for prevention. It needs to be known there is already $4 billion in the pipeline on prevention now, without the bill we have brought to the floor, the bipartisan bill we have brought to the floor. Now they want to add another $1.4 billion for these generalized programs that, literally, the States are taking care of in most instances, and if they have not, we have taken care of them in the underlying bill. So I hope my colleagues will vote against this amendment, and at the appropriate time I will make a motion to table. Mr. President, I yield the floor.

Mr. HATCH. There were 2 extra minutes taken on our side.

Mr. HATCH. Will the Senator yield on this point?

Mr. HATCH. Let me respond to my colleague from Massachusetts. Fifty- five percent of the $1.1 billion that we already have in this bill-- keep in mind there is already $4.4 billion out there for prevention--is for prevention, and one of the major uses, discretionary uses, is mental health. What I do not want to do is create a whole bunch of new bureaucracies back here that are just duplicative with what is already going on. That is where I have my difficulty with what the Senator from Massachusetts does.

Mr. HATCH. I will be happy to, but let me make one more comment. Go ahead. I yield.

Mr. HATCH. Right, and we have well over one-half billion dollars for these purposes now.

Mr. HATCH. No, discretionary use. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration is to be reauthorized this year. As I understand it, Dr. Frist, Senator Frist from Tennessee, and Senator Mikulski----

Mr. HATCH. And I am sure Senator Kennedy will be helping, too. These people have been working on a bipartisan bill----

Mr. HATCH. S. 976, the SAMHSA reauthorization, is cosponsored not only by Senators Frist and Mikulski but by Senators Jeffords, Kennedy, Dodd, DeWine and Collins. Now, S. 976 is the bill to consider these changes on substance abuse and mental health. I do not want to see juvenile justice go down because we start tinkering around with it here, when we have mental health as one of the permissible uses of this money, by throwing another $1.4 billion at it.

Mr. HATCH. I ask unanimous consent that the distinguished Senator from Minnesota be given 2 minutes, and then we will move on to the next amendment.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, if the Senator will yield, I am proud to have her as a cosponsor.

Mr. HATCH. I am happy to yield to the distinguished Senator from Vermont.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, there are three of us who are going to speak as proponents of the Hatch-Biden-Sessions amendment: Senator Biden, Senator Sessions and myself. This amendment contains three major provisions and reflects a hard fought, bipartisan compromise among Senator Biden, Senator Sessions and myself. It demonstrates that S. 254, the Violent and Repeat Juvenile Offender Accountability and Rehabilitation Act, is a bipartisan bill in every sense of the word. Before I describe the amendment, I remind the Senate of other provisions in S. 254 that are also the product of compromise and concession. For example, in title I of the bill we included the reverse waiver provision in section 5032, at Senator Leahy's request. This provision ensures that Federal district judges have the ultimate authority to decide whether a juvenile is tried as an adult in Federal cases. Another major compromise is the juvenile delinquency challenge grant in title III of the bill. This block grant provides $200 million a year to the States for prevention programs. This provision was included in S. 254 to satisfy demands from some Members for additional funds for prevention programs. Another compromise in S. 254 concerns the juvenile felony records provision. Last year's juvenile crime bill, S. 10, required States to improve and share juvenile felony records in order to qualify for the accountability block grant. At the urging of Senators Biden and Leahy, we removed the recordkeeping provision as a requirement for the accountability block grant. Instead, there is a separate grant for juvenile criminal records for States that choose to upgrade and share their juvenile felony records. The first provision of the Hatch-Biden-Sessions amendment earmarks 25 percent of the accountability block grant in title III for drug treatment and crime prevention programs. These drug treatment funds will complement and reinforce the drug testing provisions in the accountability block grant. In addition, this earmark provides funds for additional prevention programs, such as afterschool activities and gang prevention programs. This amendment, by earmarking 25 percent of the accountability block grant for prevention and drug treatment, demonstrates our commitment to prevention funding and ensures a balanced juvenile crime bill. The second provision of the Hatch-Biden-Sessions amendment provides a $50 million grant to the States to hire prosecutors to prosecute juvenile offenders. The hiring of juvenile prosecutors was a permissible use of grant funds in S. 254 since the bill was introduced. Our amendment merely provides a guaranteed source of funds for State and local prosecutors to target juvenile crime. The third and last provision of the Hatch-Biden-Sessions amendment extends the Violent Crime Reduction Trust Fund until the year 2005. By extending the Violent Crime Reduction Trust Fund, we will ensure that the Federal Government continues to provide valuable assistance to the States in the war against crime. Programs such as the truth-in-sentencing grant, the local law enforcement block grant, the COPS program, are funded from the Violent Crime Reduction Trust Fund. I am proud to propose the extension of this trust fund. I want to personally thank Senator Biden for the hard work he has done on this bill and in working with us in a bipartisan and good way. I am very proud to have him on this bill, because he has been a major participant in every crime bill since I have been in the Senate, as have I. I just want to make that clear on the record. I also particularly express my gratitude and appreciation to Senator Sessions, the Youth Violence Subcommittee chairman. He has done a great job on this bill, and I believe he has more than earned his spurs with regard to his work on anticrime matters. Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?

Mr. HATCH. When we get the yeas and nays on the Robb amendment, the amendments will be voted on, first the Gregg amendment, then Robb, and then Hatch-Biden-Sessions?

Mr. HATCH. I move to table the Robb amendment and ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. HATCH. As I recall, I have 11 minutes remaining.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.

Mr. HATCH. Mr. President, so everybody will know, I ask unanimous consent that the remaining votes in this series be limited to 10 minutes each in length.

Mr. HATCH. Also, so everybody will know, immediately after the ending of the votes, Senator Leahy will call up his amendment. That will be the pending amendment we will start on tomorrow. Vote on Amendment No. 325

Mr. HATCH. As I understand it, I have 11 minutes remaining.

Mr. HATCH. Let me say, prior to sending my amendment to the desk, I had agreed to drop some change that was of concern to the Appropriations Committee. The amendment at the desk does not contain this technical change. Amendment No. 322, As modified