Jon Kyl

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the Senator from South Carolina has asked that I ask unanimous consent, on his behalf, that he may yield his hour of debate to me.

Mr. KYL. First of all, the Federal statute applies to Federal crimes which constitute about 1 percent of what we are talking about. Even if you could put good teeth in the Federal statute, you would be dealing with 1 percent of the cases. That leaves, what, 59 percent to go, by my calculation. Second, these State constitutional provisions are very well written. The one that we have in Arizona was adopted with between 70 and 80 percent of the vote, the one that has been adopted in California and these other States--they are very good. It is not that they are not well written. The question is, Why should you have to have a penalty for somebody, for a judge who fails to provide the notice, for example? Why should we deny Federal law enforcement support when everybody knows that is really needed? It is not a good enforcement mechanism. The best enforcement mechanism, of that which we consider to be fundamental rights, is the recognition that they are embodied in the U.S. Constitution and nobody wants to deny those. If 40 percent of the people who should get notice under State constitutional provisions get notice, something is drastically wrong. Until you put that in the U.S. Constitution, it is not going to change.

Mr. KYL. I am sorry?

Mr. KYL. Certainly. We plan to be here for however much time the Senator feels is necessary to take on this motion to proceed. We are willing to listen. We are willing to offer comments in reply. I would say Senator Feinstein may have roughly 20 or 30 minutes. I am prepared at that point to allow the minority to proceed with whatever comments they may have.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I will be delighted to respond to the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee. It was my intention to introduce Senator Feinstein today. She was on her way over. I knew that. She has some prepared remarks she would like to give. At the conclusion of that, I am fully prepared to allow the Senator from Vermont and the Senator from West Virginia to proceed. I know they both have statements they want to make. It is true it is much better if we are here. The Senator from Vermont yesterday had to step out while I was making some remarks. I understood that completely. He noted we had to step out while he was speaking.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I remind my colleagues of the status now of business on the Senate floor. It has been a little confusing, I know, particularly for those who might be watching who aren't familiar with Senate procedures. But sometimes we take something up and then lay it aside, take something else up, and then go back to the original matter, and so on. That is what we have been doing. Yesterday, you will recall that we began the debate on S.J. Res. 3, which is an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would provide rights to victims of violent crime. Senator Feinstein of California and I are the primary sponsors of that resolution. At the end of yesterday, we went to other matters. We are now going to resume debate on the motion to proceed to this resolution. The Senate procedure is that we first have to decide to proceed, and then we can proceed. So later on this afternoon, hopefully, the Senate will vote to proceed to formal consideration of this constitutional amendment. Technically, for a while this afternoon we are going to be debating on whether or not we should proceed. I am hopeful our colleagues will agree, whether they support the amendment or not, that they should permit us to proceed to make our case so they can evaluate it and decide at the end of that period whether or not they want to support a constitutional amendment. I think it is a little difficult, given the fact that there hasn't been a great deal of information, for people who are not on the Judiciary Committee to decide what their position is on this until they have heard arguments. Yesterday afternoon, Senator Leahy primarily, but several other members of the Democratic side and one Republican, came to the floor and discussed at length, I think for at least 3, maybe 4 hours, reasons why they thought that constitutional amendment should not be adopted. Certainly there are legitimate arguments that can be adduced on both sides of this proposition. But I would like to begin today by explaining a little bit why we believe that it is important, first, to take the amendment up, and, second, why we believe, if we do take it up, it should be supported by our colleagues. Senator Feinstein will be here shortly, and she will begin her presentation by discussing a case, the Oklahoma City bombing case, that in some sense is a metaphor for this issue generally, because in the Oklahoma City bombing case victims were denied their rights. Families of people who were killed were not permitted to sit through the trial. They were given a choice over a lunch break during the trial either to remain in the courtroom or to leave if they wanted to be present at the time of the sentencing and to say something to the judge at that time. There was enough confusion about the matter that many of them gave up their right to sit in the courtroom in order to be able to exercise their right to speak to the judge at the time of the sentencing. Congress was so exercised about that it actually passed a law--it was specifically directed to the Oklahoma City bombing case but it pertained to other similar cases--so that victims have the right to be in courtroom, and they shouldn't have to make a choice between the trial and sentencing. They should be able to appear at both. Senator Feinstein will discuss in a moment the details of how that case proceeded and why it stands for the proposition that we need a Federal constitutional amendment. The bottom line is that even the Federal Government passed a statute designed to pertain to this exact case which was insufficient to assure that those people could exercise what we believe is a fundamental right to sit through that trial. They were denied that right. What is worse, because the case was taken up on appeal, and because the U.S. Constitution clearly trumps any Federal statute, or any State statute, or State constitutional provision, it wasn't possible to argue that this Federal statute trumped the defendants' rights if those were bases for the rights asserted. So you have at least seven States, or thereabouts, in the Tenth Circuit that are now bound by a precedent that says this Federal statute doesn't work, to let you sit in the courtroom during the trial. That has to be changed. There is only one way to change it. That is with a Federal constitutional amendment that says to the courts, from now on, these are fundamental rights and courts must consider these rights. As Senator Feinstein will point out, supporters of this amendment include a wide variety of people who had family and friends involved in the Oklahoma City bombing case. One is Marsha Kight, whose daughter was killed. Marsha has been a strong supporter of the victims' rights amendment because she had to sit through all that. That is what Senator Feinstein will be talking about. We listened to arguments yesterday from Senator Leahy and others about the amendment. I understand they wish to talk this afternoon. I will be paying attention to what they have to say and try to respond as best I can. The arguments fall into two or three general categories. One notion they presented is that this is a complicated amendment, it is too long--even longer than the Bill of Rights. It is not longer than the Bill of Rights. We have counted the words. I will have my staff tell Members exactly how many words are in the Bill of Rights and how many words are in this amendment. The point is, to find defendants' rights, one has to look all over the Constitution. We have amended the Constitution several times to give people who are accused of crime different rights. If you added up all rights of the accused and put them into one amendment, it would be much longer than the amendment we have for victims' rights. We have all of our rights in one place. I don't think it should be an argument against providing victims of crime certain fundamental rights because it takes up several lines of the Constitution. We either mean to give them fundamental rights or we don't. Defendants have all of the rights now. That is fine. We take nothing away from the defendants. But this should not be based on whether there are more words describing the defendants' rights than there are describing victims' rights. One reason we take a little longer to describe victims' rights-- although it is shorter than the defendants' rights if we add them up-- we have described them with great precision. They are very limited. Defendants' rights are expressed in broad terms. Defendants have a ``right to trial by jury.'' Does that mean in all cases? Does that mean just in felony cases? What kind of a jury? Defendants are protected from ``unreasonable search and seizure.'' What does that mean? There is a basic ``fair trial'' right, and a right to counsel. All of these are expressed in very general terms. There are thousands of pages of court decisions interpreting what ``unreasonable search and seizure'' means. I suppose the Founding Fathers could have written 10 pages describing exactly what they meant by ``unreasonable search and seizure.'' They didn't do that. In our proposal, we have described these victims' rights with great care so that there could be no argument the rights took anything away from defendants. That is why some of the wording is apparently a little bit longer than our friends on the other side desire. I guarantee if they were shorter, if they merely said victims have a reasonable right to attend the trial, their argument would be: We haven't nailed this down; This is too broad and subject to interpretation. You have to state exactly what is meant or it might conflict with the defendants' rights. Those who oppose this will argue it either way. In effect, we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. We have tried to word it carefully. I have the exact number of words for anybody who is interested. Without the technical provisions which concern the effective date, the amendment is 307 words. The victims' rights are described in 179 words. Defendants' rights in the U.S. Constitution consume 348 words. OK, so if this is all about how many words there are, we win. However, that is not what this is about. Let's get serious. The other argument from the opponents was, we have written 63 drafts of this amendment. Yes, indeed, we have. In fact, we are proud of it. We have been making the point that this isn't some unthought-through proposition, written on the back of an envelope. We have written draft after draft after draft, as a good craftsman would polish a fine piece of furniture over and over and over until it was absolutely smooth and shiny. We have done the same thing with this amendment. We have talked to prosecutors. We have talked to the U.S. Department of Justice. They have written a very nice letter complimenting the changes we made about concerns they expressed. We have accommodated many of their concerns. We talked to law professors; we talked to victims groups; we talked to lots of different people. As a result of all of these conversations, we have continued to modify the amendment to take into account their wonderful suggestions, to take into account concerns they have raised. We are rather proud of the fact that we have been careful; we haven't just tried to slide this through. For 4 years we have been working on this through 63 different drafts. We now have a very carefully crafted, honed constitutional amendment. Frankly, we have written more drafts here than the Bill of Rights. People think that is a pretty good document. Of course, I would never hope to compete with our Founding Fathers. Understanding how much thought they put into their amendments, we have tried to be as careful in what we have written. I daresay arguments can be made against our proposed constitutional amendment. There are some legitimate points to make. However, it is not legitimate to say we have tried to hurry this through, or we have not given it enough thought, or we have not had enough input, or we have not been willing to make changes. I think the fact we have gone through this number of changes illustrates the fact that we have been very open in the process. That is why the amendment passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee with a very strong bipartisan vote of 12-5. Getting anything through this Judiciary Committee in the form of a constitutional amendment, I think all of my colleagues would agree, is a pretty sound testament to the care with which we have crafted this particular provision. While there are arguments that can be made about the constitutional amendment, it is not fair to say we shouldn't do it because of the number of words in the amendment or we shouldn't do it because we have taken the pains to go through 63 drafts. We have tried to be very careful in what we have done. Those were two of the arguments raised against this yesterday. A third argument was that we ought to give some time to allow a statutory alternative to work. With all due respect, it was in 1982, when President Reagan convened a group that was concerned with protecting victims' rights, that the proposal for a constitutional amendment was first made. It was in 1996 when President Clinton held a ceremony in the Rose Garden with the Attorney General and many others expressing his strong support for a Federal constitutional amendment to protect the rights of victims of crime. He said: We have experimented with State statutes, Federal statutes, and State constitutional provisions long enough. They just don't work to secure the rights of victims. Well meaning prosecutors and judges have tried hard. In fact, the cause of victims' rights has gained a lot of support over the years. Victims are much better treated in the process now than they were many years ago. I read yesterday statement after statement by President Clinton, by Attorney General Reno, by associate attorneys general, by law professors, by Laurence Tribe, a respected professor from Harvard, district attorneys and judges, all of whom say, unfortunately, when a right is not expressed as a fundamental right in the U.S. Constitution, it just isn't protected with the same degree of care and consideration and energy as those rights that are protected in the U.S. Constitution. That is why, according to a recent study, 60 percent of the victims who are supposed to get notice of their rights don't receive notice. One cannot exercise a constitutional right if one is not aware of it. With respect to defendants, we have made it the Holy Grail that they will be advised of their rights. This is what the Miranda warning is all about. Defendants have a right not to speak and a right to an attorney. Victims ought to at least get some reasonable notice of their rights. It does not mean you have to track them all down and stick a statement right in front of their faces and tell them orally, but it does mean you at least have to keep them on a mailing list or phone list. Computerized telephone messages now can be sent. We have had testimony. For example, the county attorney in the sixth largest county in the country by population has testified it is just no problem to notify victims of their rights. He says the entire cost of taking care of the victims' rights is about $15, from beginning to end. It just is not a valid argument that it is going to be a real problem for prosecutors or the court system to provide this notice and to provide these rights to victims. I have one final comment, since I think Senator Feinstein is now ready, and I have given the introduction for her comments, I say to Senator Feinstein, so our colleagues will be prepared to hear what she has to say. But I have a final comment about these rights. There is a culture in the legal community that has built up over the years that bends over backwards to protect the rights of defendants. We have no quarrel with that. Law school courses, Law Review articles, everything is oriented toward that. When you go to law school and you are a second- or third-year law student, you can participate in a legal clinic representing indigent defendants and so on, but there is no similar culture to protect the rights of victims. That is one reason why you have people reflexively saying: We have to make sure we protect the right of defendants. If we are going to protect the right of victims, we just do not feel real good about that because it might hurt defendants. As we pointed out yesterday and as I think Senator Feinstein is about to point out today, nothing in our proposal takes away a constitutional right of a person standing accused of a crime. We would not permit that and we are willing to include language that makes it clear that the rights we enumerate here for victims do not in any way abridge the rights of the defendants. That should be clear. So this culture that has grown up in support of defendants' rights should not be an argument against the protection of victims' rights, which, after all, involve people whom society has failed to protect in the first instance. If there is anyone we want to help through the criminal justice process it is these people, these victims of violent crimes. I think that is a shorthand summary of the arguments against some of the things that were said yesterday. I am very pleased, though, that Senator Feinstein is here, as I said, to present information that specifically responds to an argument that was made yesterday with respect to the Oklahoma City bombing case. There is a great deal of misunderstanding about that. If she is prepared at this time, I ask her now to supplement what I have said in the presentation of her remarks in that regard.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, if you count all of the informal meetings and various meetings back and forth with staff, certainly it would be well over a dozen.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support of the Committee on Armed Services be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 26, 2000 at 10 a.m., in open session to receive testimony on acquisition reform efforts, the acquisition workforce, logistics contracting and inventory management practices, and the Defense industrial base in review of the Defense authorization request for fiscal year 2001 and the future years Defense program.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be authorized to meet for a hearing on Medical Records Privacy during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 26, 2000, at 10 a.m.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Indian Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 26, 2000 at 9:30 a.m. to conduct a business meeting on pending legislation (TBA), followed immediately by a hearing on draft legislation to reauthorize the Indian Sections of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The hearing will be held in the committee room, 485 Russell Senate Office Building. Those wishing additional information may contact the committee at (202) 224-2251.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Rules and Administration be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 26, 2000, at 9:30 a.m., to receive testimony on citizen participation in the political process.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Securities of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 26, 2000, to conduct a hearing on ``Competition and Transparency in the Financial Marketplace of the Future.''

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on International Relations be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, April 26, 2000, at 3 p.m. to hold a hearing.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I thank the Senator for that question because people not familiar with the process inside a courtroom may wonder if this amendment would permit a victim to cause a big scene in court, thus disrupting the trial and working to the disadvantage of the defendant. Of course, as the Senator knows, a judge has total control of the courtroom and has the ability to set whatever rules are necessary to maintain decorum and dignity within the courtroom and certainly to ensure the protection of the fair trial rights of the defendant. That is why a judge can always say--and we have seen it on TV hundreds of times--``order in the court,'' in effect saying, if you can't sit there quietly and unemotionally watching what is occurring, then you have to leave. Because in the court we cannot have undue displays of emotion. So the judge has within his total authority the ability to control either the defendant from his or her outbursts or any emotional outbursts of anybody else in the courtroom, including victims.

Mr. KYL. I thank the Senator. I am pleased to do so. I think she makes three very important points. One very important point she made is that if you have a Federal statute, you are only dealing with 1 to 2 percent of the victims of violent crime--those 8 million victims each year. Of course, that is the number of Federal crimes. There aren't very many serious Federal crimes that would carry the penalties necessary to invoke this constitutional provision. A Federal statute would be very small and of no comfort to the millions of victims of crime involved in State court proceedings. Secondly, there are occasions when, as in the Oklahoma City bombing case, a defendant's rights are asserted based on an amendment to the Constitution. Sometimes, for example, the judge will say: Well, I am going to exclude witnesses. I will exclude victims from the courtroom because the defendant thinks it will create undue emotion, that it will jeopardize his right to a fair trial if the jury sees the victim or the family of the victim. That was the case in the Oklahoma City bombing case and in scores of others Senator Feinstein has brought to the attention of the Senate. Of course, the defendant and his family are permitted to sit there all dressed up and supportive of the defendant at the time of sentencing and to stand up and say what a fine fellow he is. The judge takes that into consideration. We are simply saying the victims ought to be able to stand before the judge and recount the horror, the tragedy, the weakness, the loss they have suffered for the judge to take into account as well at the time of sentencing. If the defendant's constitutional rights are deemed always to be superior because they are embodied in the U.S. Constitution and the victim's rights are always secondary, then the victim's rights will be honored in the breach rather than the observance, to quote one of the people I quoted earlier. That is why the third point is so important. Even when there isn't a direct conflict--and there will rarely be a direct conflict--the primary situation will be presence in the courtroom at the time of trial. But in most situations there won't be the direct conflict between the defendant's right and the victim's right. It simply is a matter of inertia. Perhaps Senator Feinstein can find the quotation she read before. I think it was Professor Tribe whom the Senator quoted, who talked about judicial indifference, inertia. Well-meaning judges and prosecutors don't mean to deny victims the notice of the proceedings and the right to be present, but it becomes a secondary matter. We give the Miranda warning to the defendant. We make sure the defendant has legal counsel that people hire on his behalf, and we make absolutely certain that none of the defendant's rights are intruded upon, because if they are, the case will be overturned on appeal. And that is as it should be. But because of that attention to the constitutional rights of the defendant, we forget the victim. It is in that sense that the victims' rights are simply not being honored, why 60 percent--even in the States with good provisions--of the victims do not even get notice. That is a horrible statistic. What if we said 60 percent of the defendants didn't get their court-appointed lawyer, that it was too inconvenient or too costly? Sixty percent is a pretty good percentage. Clearly, we would find that inadequate. Fundamental rights are fundamental rights and they need to be protected. So I think the Senator from California is correct that even though we don't mean to deny these rights, either because of the attention paid to the defendants or simply because of the fact there are other things more important to do than make sure victims have notice of these proceedings, they are denied their rights and the ability to participate. A final point. There has been the contention that somehow it is going to become very expensive if--as we do with defendants--society has to pay for their rights. We do that for defendants; we pay for their attorneys, for their transcripts, and everything they need for their appeals. What we did here was not guarantee that victims have the right to attend the trial. For example, as are most of the provisions of the Constitution, we have said that the Government may not deny them the right to participate. They have to get there. They have to get there on their own. It is just that the Government can't deny them the right to sit on the bench in the courtroom if they show up.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, let me take a few minutes to respond to the distinguished ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Senator Leahy. He is absolutely correct that constitutional amendments should not be rushed. We have taken a long time to get to this point--4 years. As a matter of fact, in the Judiciary Committee alone we have heard from 34 witnesses and have had 802 pages of testimony and submissions. In the House, there have been hearings. They have had 32 witnesses and about 575 pages of testimony and submissions. In other words, there have been about 66 witnesses and nearly 1,400 pages of testimony. I commend the report of the Judiciary Committee to anyone who would like a really good read on this entire subject and the reasons why we need a Federal constitutional amendment. The bill passed out of the Judiciary Committee 12-5. We took our time getting it to the Senate floor to make sure everybody had their say. The distinguished ranking minority member needed additional time to file his comments to the report. That was granted. He did so. We agree there should be adequate time for the debate of this constitutional amendment, but we disagree that there should be a filibuster to use unnecessary time of the Senate. Senator Leahy talked about a lot of things. He talked about abortion, gun control, a balanced budget amendment and Ronald Reagan, the juvenile crime bill, nursing home fraud, and term limits. I would suggest that we ought to stick to the subject. We all know one good way to defeat a good idea is to talk it to death and threaten to delay other business of the Senate. I would suggest we stick to the exact question before us, and that is whether there should be a constitutional amendment protecting victims of crime. Senator Feinstein and I have laid out the case for this. As I heard Senator Leahy, there was only one fleeting reference to an argument in opposition. That was that the Senate had acted with alacrity in dealing with the problems that the victims of the Oklahoma City bombing case were suffering because the judge there did not permit the victims to attend the trial. Basically, he gave them a choice, over a lunch hour one day, saying: You can either attend the trial or be present at the time of sentencing and speak to that issue, but you cannot do both. Take your pick. What a Hobson's choice. The prosecutor really could not help advise the victims. Some of them chose not to attend the trial. Others chose to attend. Senator Leahy is correct about one thing. The Congress did act quickly to pass a law basically telling the Federal judge that they did have a right to attend the trial and the right to attend the sentencing and to speak at that time and that he should not deny them that right. We passed that. The day after the Senate passed it, the President signed it into law. We were so concerned that these victims of that horrible tragedy have their rights protected that we passed a Federal statute--exactly what Senator Leahy is suggesting as an alternative to the Federal constitutional amendment that Senator Feinstein and I have presented. What has happened? What has happened is that we are worse off than we were before we passed the statute. The judge did not apply the statute to protect the victims of crime. In effect, what happened was that the defendant's right to exclude them, based in the U.S. Constitution, trumped the Federal statute which, of course, is subservient to the Federal Constitution. If that was the basis on which the court ruled, it would have been a correct basis. If he really felt the defendant's rights required that the victims not be present in the courtroom, and that those rights are in the U.S. Constitution, then he would be correct that that would trump a Federal statute--the one that the Congress passed. Clearly, the Oklahoma City bombing litigation leaves no doubt about the difficulties that victims face with mere statutory protection of their rights. For a number of the victims, the rights afforded in the act Congress passed in 1997 and the earlier victims' rights bill were not protected. They did not observe the trial of the defendant in that case, Timothy McVeigh, because of lingering doubts about the constitutional status of the statutes. The interesting thing is that because that case was later taken up on appeal, the case of these victims, and the Tenth Circuit ruled in that case denying the victims the rights notwithstanding the Federal statute, you literally have a situation in which it would have been better if Congress had not acted by statute because there is now a precedent on the books. This was the first time victims sought Federal appellate review of their rights since the Victims Bill of Rights was passed in 1990, the underlying statute on which the 1997 statute was based. Quoting now from Professor Paul Cassell: The undeniable, and unfortunate, result of that litigation has been to establish--as the only reported federal appellate ruling--a precedent that will make effective enforcement of the federal victims rights statutes quite difficult. It is now the law of the 10th circuit that victims lack ``standing'' to be heard on issues surrounding the Victims' Bill of Rights and, for good measure, that the Department of Justice may not take an appeal for the victims under either of those statutes. For all practical purposes, the treatment of crime victims' rights in federal court in Utah, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Wyoming have been remitted to the unreviewable discretion of individual federal district court judges. Professor Paul Cassell of the University of Utah Law School concludes: The fate of the Oklahoma City victims does not inspire confidence that all victims rights will be fully enforced in the future. . . . the Oklahoma City case provides a compelling illustration of why a constitutional amendment is necessary to fully protect victims' rights in this country. The sad truth is that Congress's efforts to protect the rights in a very specific case by Federal statute not only didn't protect their rights but made matters worse. The statutory alternative Senators Kennedy and Leahy have proposed is not the answer. There has been no refutation of the point I tried to make in my original 10-minute statement that authority after authority after authority--the Attorney General, the Governors, the attorneys general--have all said that despite their best efforts, the statutory and State constitutional remedies simply have not worked to provide protections to victims of violent crime. After 18 years of experimenting, of trying, of doing their best, it is obviously now necessary to move forward with the next step, which is to elevate these rights to the same Constitution that protects the rights of the defendants. Nothing less is going to work. I submit the arguments that Senator Feinstein and I made have not been refuted. If the only response is that we are going to have to take a long time talking about extraneous matters, then my suggestion is that there is no real argument by those who oppose this amendment. There is no real substance to the notion that we shouldn't move forward. I reiterate, I am pleased that Senator Leahy will encourage all of his colleagues, as I certainly will encourage mine, on both sides of the aisle to support the motion to proceed. We do need to proceed. When we proceed, we can have that debate. Senator Feinstein and I will renew our offer to continue to meet with the Department of Justice to get more suggestions from them. We have, in fact, incorporated many of their suggestions into the current text of the amendment. But it is time to move on. We can't keep putting it off. That is why we filed the cloture motion. That is why we want to proceed. I appreciate what Senator Leahy said, but I suggest that we need to move on with the debate on this amendment. Senator Feinstein and I are prepared to do so.

Mr. KYL. In terms of specific letters of support and so on, we will hear about that at a later time. I conclude my statement by saying it has been a great pleasure for me to work on a bipartisan basis with Senator Dianne Feinstein who, as have I, has spent the better part of 4 years honing and crafting this amendment, working with victims' rights groups, visiting with fellow Senators, Members of the House of Representatives, representatives of the White House, the Department of Justice, and many others in an effort to ensure that the amendment we present to the Senate today is the very best possible product we could present. We are always open to more suggestions. We have never closed the door to additional suggestions by people who in good faith wish to make sure this amendment will do what we want it to do, without, of course, taking away the rights of defendants. We remain committed to that proposition. Over the next several days, obviously, we will hear from opponents. We are delighted to hear their comments and to visit with them about suggestions they may have. At the end of the day, as all of the statements I have read suggest, there is no alternative. There is only one way to protect the victims of violent crime; that is, through adoption of a Federal constitutional amendment.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 25, 2000, to conduct a hearing on ``Delays in Funding Mass Transit.''

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on Water and Power of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, April 25 at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a hearing. The subcommittee will receive testimony on S. 2239, a bill to authorize the Bureau of Reclamation to provide cost sharing for the endangered fish recovery implementation programs for the Upper Colorado River and San Juan River basins.

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Subcommittee on International Trade and Finance of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, April 27, 2000, to conduct a hearing on ``The International Monetary Fund and International Financial Institutions.''

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be authorized to meet to conduct a hearing on Tuesday, April 25, 2000, at 9:30 a.m., in SD-226.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. Mr. President, the proponents of the crime victims' constitutional rights amendment, as I understand it, have about 6 minutes remaining. Senator Feinstein has asked that I conclude our portion of this opening debate. People who are viewing this might wonder what the last 35, 40 minutes have been about. This wasn't supposed to be about abortion. How did that get involved in the crime victims' rights amendment? Perhaps Senator Leahy began this trend when he first spoke this morning about the possibility of gun control, abortion, and the balanced budget amendment. I think the point is that people who are not motivated to adopt a constitutional set of rights for crime victims are willing to try to use our hard work, our efforts, and our energy to bring this proposed constitutional amendment to the Senate--which is very difficult to do-- as a means of trying to tack on their favorite proposal, or to delay the Senate action on the crime victims' rights amendment to the point that we will have to move on to other pressing business. Either of those possibilities, I think, would be very sad. Let me recount what has happened here. For almost 4 years, Senator Feinstein and I have worked very patiently to bring forward a crime victims' constitutional rights amendment. It is very difficult to get a constitutional amendment to the floor of the Senate. We have had 66 witnesses appear at hearings, with I think something like 15 pages of testimony transcript. We have had hearing after hearing. We have gone through 63 different drafts to make this as perfect as we could. We have gotten it out of the Judiciary Committee on a strong, bipartisan vote. Then we got the majority leader to give us some floor time, which is very precious. In other words, we put a lot of work into this in support of victims of violent crime in our society. Throughout this building, and in others, there are scores of victims and victims' rights organizations around television sets watching these proceedings, having finally gotten what they hope to be their ``day in court''--an argument about the crime victims' rights amendment and a vote on that. What is beginning to emerge is a very disturbing tactic by those who oppose us, and that is either to try to delay this to the point that the majority leader will have to move on to something else, by offering all kinds of extraneous amendments, or by seeking to achieve what they have never been able to achieve through the normal legislative process, by using our proposal as a vehicle to attach their idea onto--in this case, perhaps, abortion. What better way to kill ours while getting some time to discuss their proposal. Some of these same proponents are those who argue most vigorously against so-called riders to appropriations bills. They say, well, you should not have an extraneous amendment on an appropriation bill. If you are going to bring something to the floor, you should not debate something else. You should not amend it with something extraneous. We are willing to allow germane amendments to victims' rights in an effort to resolve how to best protect victims' rights. But what I fear I have seen here is a tactic either to defeat what we are trying to do or to use what we are trying to do to advance an entirely different agenda. That would be wrong. The people watching this debate must be saying: There they go again. What are these Senators doing? They had a proposal to bring forth a crime victims' rights amendment to the floor, and, by procedural legerdemain, is that going to be prevented, overcome by an abortion amendment or something of that sort? We hope not. The bottom line is that there is a reason all of the people who support this amendment have said it is now time for a Federal constitutional rights amendment. As we have seen this morning, States have been unable to protect the rights of crime victims with State statutes and their own State constitutional amendments. Attorneys general and prosecutors support this. Law enforcement supports it. The Attorney General of Wisconsin, Jim Doyle--a very respected Democratic attorney general--said this before the Judiciary Committee: I believe that most prosecutors strongly support victims' rights. He notes some of the concerns of prosecutors. He said: I believe these concerns are more than adequately addressed in S.J. Res. 3. The bottom line is that we have support from victims' rights groups, prosecutors, attorneys general, and Governors, and it is time now to decide whether we want to protect crime victims or not. We have an opportunity by bringing this matter to the floor. At 2:15, we will have a vote on what is called a cloture motion on a motion to proceed. If 60 colleagues agree, we will be able to go forward and debate the motion to proceed, which I assume will be adopted later today. Then we can proceed with debate on the constitutional amendment itself. We look forward to that. If people want to bring forward relevant amendments to that, so be it. That is what the process is about. But I fear what will happen if, instead, we get a series of nongermane amendments or attempts to delay this, to the point that we run out of time and, in effect, a filibuster has killed any hope these crime victims have of protecting their rights in our courts. We have waited too long. Eighteen years ago President Reagan's Commission on Crime Victims recommended the constitutional amendment to address these rights. Eighteen years is long enough to wait. I hope when we finally have an opportunity on the Senate floor, that opportunity is not snatched away by people who want to pursue other agendas.

Mr. KYL

Mr. KYL. I wanted to note that I am sure the majority leader will be happy to respond to all of the elements the distinguished minority whip has raised when he is able to reach the floor.

Mr. KYL. Before we begin, I will also ask unanimous consent that Senator Specter address the Senate for 10 minutes on an unrelated matter.