Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, guess which State in the Union has the most aggressive juvenile justice laws? The State of North Carolina. If we measure it based on who tries and convicts more juveniles as adults, it is North Carolina. One-fifth of the juveniles tried, convicted, and sentenced as adults are in North Carolina. The Republicans talk about do the adult crime, serve the adult time. We do it in North Carolina. But guess what? Under this bill, North Carolina would not qualify for funds under this bill. They say they want us to be aggressive, lock them up. But, no, they will not give us any funds under this bill. In fact, of all the 50 States, 39--at least--of the States do not qualify for funds under this bill, including North Carolina, which has the most aggressive laws. Now, why? Because in North Carolina the judge decides whether somebody is going to be tried as an adult rather than the prosecutor deciding, and the Federal Government under this bill would require that the prosecutor make that decision rather than the judge making that decision. So we are going to be deprived of funds unless we change our laws to comply with the Federal law. Does that make any sense? What we have found out is that one of the few States under this bill that would qualify is the State of Florida, which is the State of the sponsor of this bill. In fact, once we keep investigating, we may find that the only State in the Union that will qualify for funds under this bill is the State of Florida, the State of the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum]. What everybody ought to be asking themselves is, does my State get anything under this bill? The answer is going to be no for at least 39 out of the 50 States. We ought to reject this bill. Reject the rule. Send it back and let us do something worthwhile.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, for the first time in this House I am going to speak from the Republican side, because I want to remind my Republican friends of a few things. Mr. Chairman, let me put this bill in historical perspective. Go back through the whole history of America. At the Federal level, we have never, ever had a Federal juvenile judge. Never have we had a Federal juvenile probation officer. Never have we had a Federal juvenile facility. The reason for that is that all throughout our history, juvenile justice has been a matter of State and local law. Yet, my conservative Republican colleagues all of a sudden have decided that we are going to federalize juvenile justice in this country. We do not even do a good job of criminal justice for adults, yet we are going to federalize and tell the States what they are going to do in the arena of juvenile justice. Mr. Chairman, something is wrong with that. Something is also wrong with the fact that only 11 States, at most, will be eligible for any kind of grant under this bill. My State, where one-fifth of the juveniles have been tried and convicted and incarcerated as adults, in the whole United States the State of North Carolina still will not be eligible for funds under this bill. Why? Because we do not have open juvenile records; because our judges decide who gets prosecuted as an adult if they are a juvenile, not our prosecutors deciding it. We do not have a law that holds parents, sanctions parents if they do not closely supervise their children. Three out of the four requirements to get funds under this bill we do not meet in North Carolina. We have the most aggressive juvenile justice system in America in North Carolina. Guess what States qualify for funds under the bill? The principal sponsor, his State qualifies. I would encourage all of us to look at what States qualify and defeat this bill.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. If the gentleman will yield further, Mr. Chairman, the gentleman's State is going to have to do all these crazy mandatory things before this challenge thing is going to give him a dime worth of money.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I just want the gentleman to know I am well aware of the self-sufficiency program at Earl Village. I know it personally. Let me assure the gentleman that there is not a mandatory requirement for work without being paid. Let me assure the gentleman from New York of that. He is simply wrong.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I want to make my point quick, because I made this point in committee. I do not doubt at all that our chairman has fought within the Republican Caucus for what we are talking about, but I do not know why we would not as a committee go on record in support of the Kennedy amendment that allows bipartisan support for this, both Republicans and Democrats. The gentleman from Iowa should not be fighting this battle in only the Republican Caucus. We should be taking this battle to the full House, and we should be doing it together. That is what I said earlier, everybody is saying the same thing, everybody agrees we need this money, and both sides ought to be saying it together, not just in a Republican Caucus.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I am having a little trouble following this debate because it sounds like everybody is saying the same thing, which is that we need more money. At least every once in a while I hear somebody on the other side acknowledge that we need more money, when they are running away from the notion that they are advancing that money will not solve the problem. And so that kind of has my head spinning. Maybe my head is spinning because it is so late tonight, but I keep hearing inconsistent philosophies from my colleagues here. We were talking about opening new slots for working people and public housing so that working people could rotate out of public housing, and so we went around in a circle on that issue, and then we were talking about we always want to do what the President does, but the truth of the matter is the President does not even support this bill and the President has asked for additional funding for this purpose and our authorizing committee will not even ask for additional funding, even though we all acknowledge that we need the additional funding if we are going to rehabilitate public housing. We were talking about more flexibility for local housing authorities, and yet the bill keeps dictating various requirements from the Federal Government on local housing authorities. So we are going around in circles that way, and now we are back here saying, hey, we are not going to ask for any more money because we are looking for credibility, and I do not know. What kind of credibility are we looking for? We got 16 million people out here that need housing, we got 4 million units, and nobody is saying we are going to build 12 million more housing units, but surely we need some more housing units and we need to rehabilitate the housing units that are not in good condition. And how are we going to do that if we on the authorizing committee do not take the fight and go to the appropriators and say we know we have got competing demands, we know we got budget constraints, but we need more money for housing in this country because we got 16 million housing families that need housing and we got only 4 million units? We have got bad housing, which all of us acknowledge, and we need to rehabilitate it, and it seems to me that all of us on both sides have acknowledged that, and why Mr. Kennedy's amendment would not be deemed a reasonable and good idea in that context I simply do not understand. Maybe it is too late at night for me to understand. Maybe I have heard too many inconsistent rationales that I cannot understand. Would the gentleman like for me to yield the balance of my time to him? Maybe he can explain it to me.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for continuing to yield. This whole notion that somehow we should just turn our backs on the poorest people in this country and let them go to the street, then I guess the next thing beyond this policy that is in this bill is they will be back in here a couple of years from now saying, well, we put all of these people on the street now, and now it is your fault because we were all trying to do something good. Well, all of us are trying to do something good here. All of us are trying to do something good, and this holier than thou attitude, we have the right bill, we have the right cause, we are wrapping ourselves in the flag, is just ridiculous, and we should not be going through that in this body.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, let me just take a minute and commend the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Davis] for the powerful words that he has spoken and for the manner in which he has spoken them. A lot of us have been involved in this debate for 2 or 3 days now, and some of us may be losing perspective, but the gentleman was right on point. I am fascinated by the argument that our chairman of the subcommittee has used with this chart here, because as I recall, all of us supported what we call scattered-site housing. To hear my Republican colleagues now come back and say that by encouraging scattered-site housing and the movement out to the suburbs, all of a sudden we have created the problem now where we have public housing that has an over-concentration of the very poor, is amazing to me. We did not create this problem; the problem got created because we have too many poor people in this country and not enough public housing, not enough housing for people whether they are very poor or whether they are the working poor.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman yielding. There is a long, long waiting list to get into public housing, very poor people. What does the gentleman propose to do with those people? The gentleman is saying that he does not want them condemned to public housing. The alternative is to condemn them to the streets.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman yielding. The gentleman was talking about all of this local flexibility we are giving. I would ask the gentleman, where was that argument when we were talking about the local flexibility that we were trying to give them under the last section of the bill?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. So I mean what are we arguing about here? The question is are we going to give working poor people a little more help and let some people go out on the street and increase homelessness, and that is what this bill does, or are we going to cut the equation some other way, as Mr. Kennedy's amendment would do it, and I do not like either approach. But, Mr. Chairman, as between the two I certainly support Mr. Kennedy's approach.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, let me spend a minute or two kind of putting this in perspective for my colleagues. First of all, they got this issue of pitting the very poor against the working poor. If my colleagues were in the process of expanding the number of public housing units or low-income housing units available throughout the country, I do not think anybody could argue with a policy that would say it would be beneficial to have an economic mix in the new housing units. But we are not expanding public housing, we are not expanding low-income housing under this bill, we are not giving a dime of new public housing or low-income housing under this bill. They have a fixed number of units that we are dealing with. And so the question then becomes, ``Do you give that fixed number of units to the poorest of the poor, or do you give some of those units to the poorest of the poor and some to the working poor?'' But however we cut this up, they are pitting the very poor against the working poor, and so they have got an argument being made here that they can never win. We cannot win this argument. Sure the working poor need subsidized housing, but the very poor need subsidized housing also, and if they do not get subsidized housing, they do not have any alternatives but to be put out on the street. So the question then becomes are we going to serve less of the very poor and more of the working poor, or are we going to serve more of the very poor to keep them from being on the street? Now that is kind of like saying to me, look, I got a class of students who cannot read. Sure, they will be better off if we put them in a class with some people who can read a little bit better than them, but for those spaces that they are giving to the kids who can read a little bit better than those who cannot read at all, we do not have any place for those people to go. It is a no-win argument, and that is what this bill does. It puts us in a no-win situation. And all the amendment offered by the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Kennedy] is doing is saying, look, we buy into the notion that it is a good thing to integrate housing economically, to have a mix of economic incomes in this housing; that is a good thing. But what are they going to do about those people who are forced out of public housing or subsidized housing who do not have anywhere to go other than homelessness? And that is what this is about. We are in a no-win situation. We need to be allocating some more dollars to subsidized housing. We do not have enough. The numbers said that what are we serving; but what is the number of housing units, Mr. Ranking Member, that we are underserving?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding this time to me. I just want to make this point quickly distinguishing between this provision and the last provision we were debating. The volunteer mandate requirement is a bad idea which was wasteful. This is a wasteful idea and therefore is bad. If we are going to require local governments to do something wasteful, at least we ought to be paying for it, and that is the point I want to make. There is a difference between being bad and therefore wasteful. This one is wasteful and therefore bad.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I do want to make the distinction between things that emanate from the community that people buy into, they get together. They decide what they want to do. That is a form of their volunteerism. But mandating it is a whole different issue, in my opinion.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, let me first say I understand that the chairman is sincere. I know, I have the utmost respect for the chairman. I know he would not represent anything that he did not believe in. I respect that and I want to say that publicly. But all of these things that the gentleman described are things that emanated from a community. They were not mandated by the Federal Government. I will tell the gentleman that that is a substantial difference. The Federal Government has no such policies, and if we get on this slippery slope toward this, there is no way to cut it off, no way with integrity to cut it off.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding to me. I do not want to get emotional about this. But there are some concepts in this country that we cannot wrap in the flag and hold up the flag and defend them and say, we are doing something that is uniquely American. This is not uniquely American. I hope that everybody on both sides of the aisle will understand that. This is not an American concept. It is not something that has parallels in other areas of our life. I just hope that my colleagues will not put our country through this.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Let me just say, Mr. Chairman, that we have been debating this issue now since last week. The public has been debating it. It has been in the newspapers. The public understands this. My colleagues are going to make every single effort they can to wrap this debate in the flag. They are going to say it is uniquely American to have a barter system, it is uniquely American for people to volunteer. All of the flag enhancement kinds of things are being put in the backdrop of this debate. Let me tell my colleagues, this is not about a barter arrangement, it is not about volunteering to volunteer; this is about mandating that people provide services without working, without being compensated. That is what this debate is about. We can make it sound all tidy and American and pretty if we wanted, but there is something about this that is just not right and we know it. We know it. It brings back images that some of us never want to have brought back in this country. It is just not right, Mr. Chairman. My colleagues ought to understand that. The public understands that it is honorable for people to work and be paid for it. We understand that. But it is dishonorable to say to somebody, you go out and we force you to work and we are not going to pay you for it. That is not an American concept. It is inconsistent with the American dream. It is inconsistent with the principles that we stand for in this country. I just cannot stand here and listen to my colleagues make it sound like somehow this has some kind of American history motive. It is wrong. It is inconsistent with our American history. In the final analysis my colleagues, I hope, will understand that and adopt this amendment. All we are saying is, if you are going to have people work, please pay them for the work that they provide; and if you want to turn around and get them to pay for their housing, do it, but do not force them to work without compensation. I thank the gentlewoman from New York [Ms. Velaquez] for yielding.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Under my amendment, Mr. Chairman, these people would pay taxes just like everybody else because they would be receiving at least the minimum wage, so I am where the gentleman is on this. If we can get people to pay taxes, let us do it. They cannot even pay taxes on the voluntarism.