Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

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

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman for yielding, because he has made the very point I have been trying to make. We really are not opposing enhancements of sentences for people who commit crimes against vulnerable people. I do not think there is anybody who really opposes that, and certainly not the Sentencing Commission opposes that. What we are talking about is public policy and how we set it. I think it is appropriate to read the last few lines of the letter from the Sentencing Commission to us and remind ourselves and let it resonate as we try to close this debate. This is what they say. It says, The Commission was designed to take the politics out of sentencing policy and to bring research and analysis to bear on sentencing policy. This bill sets a bad precedent for the Congress with respect to the Commission. There are other ways for Congress to speak on sentencing policy while still maintaining the integrity of sentencing reform as embodied by the Sentencing Reform Act. That is it.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, is the gentleman aware that the Sentencing Commission did in fact respond to what we asked them to do and made some major adjustments in the process for evaluating whether to enhance or not?

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, this amendment simply would request the U.S. Sentencing Commission to review this matter and make recommendations about enhancements for the areas that are covered by this bill. Mr. Chairman, it is time for us to get a grip. It is time for us to get a grip. We have taken a bill which should never have come to this floor, and it has gone from the ridiculous to the sublime, as somebody used to say to me when I was growing up. We have added a new Federal crime for crossing State lines to engage in sexual acts or sexual abuse of a child under age 12. We have added sex crimes against women. We have increased the enhancement from five levels to six levels. I do not know what the rational basis for that was, if there, in fact, was any. But everybody was afraid to vote against it, so it must have been a good idea, because politically, it is expedient. We have added environmental crimes when they do violence. We have added mail order sale of body armor, and police officers. We have added laser sighting devices. We have refused to add the most vulnerable populations in our country, those who live in low-income areas, but I submit to the Members that that was no less or more rational than any of the others. In the process we have illustrated, time after time after time, how slippery this slope is. We have illustrated, time after time after time, why on a bipartisan basis Republicans and Democrats alike joined to establish the U.S. Sentencing Commission and to give it authority to study the issues, to make very difficult judgments, to make our sentencing policy consistent, to take testimony outside the political context, and to rationalize something that ought to be rational, rather than irrational and political. Mr. Chairman, I beg of my colleagues to get a grip and give this authority back to the Sentencing Commission. I know this is an election year, but our ultimate responsibility is to make sound public policy. We are making a joke of it this evening, because this is a slippery slope we cannot get off. Mr. Chairman, I ask my colleagues to please pay heed and pass this amendment. let us get a grip and give the authority back to the body that we set up long ago to make these difficult decisions. Let us play public policy, not politics.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, we have had a series of amendments that illustrate faithfully how absurd what we are doing is, and this one is no worse. It is simply designed to point out to my colleagues that we cannot get off of this slope once we get on it, and that is why we gave the responsibility in the first place to the Sentencing Commission. We have got to be rational about this, and, my colleagues, we cannot be rational about it playing politics with it.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I just want to make it clear to the gentleman that his amendment is just as rational as the underlying bill. I am not singling out his amendment. If I had to think of crimes that I would want to include on this, this would probably be one of them. But it illustrates, again, how irrational the process is we have embarked upon when we start down this slippery slope. There is no way to get off of it. I hope the gentleman understands that this does not have to do with his amendment. It has to do with the process, which is what I have been talking about all night.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Then, Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I will not take the 5 minutes. I will simply say ditto, here we go again, and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I wish I could do imitations because if I could, I would imitate former President Reagan when he said, ``Here we go again.'' Because we are on this slippery slope and we cannot get off. We keep adding things that make no sense. And with all respect, this makes as much sense as everything else. But the point I want to make is that we should not be doing this in the context of this bill. This bill should not be here. We should be allowing the process that we have set up and have followed for a long, long time to get the politics and irrationality out of sentencing, out of the process. We should be allowing the Sentencing Commission to do exactly what we set up the Sentencing Commission to do. And despite that, here we go again. As President Reagan would say, ``There you go again.'' We are going to add any kind of conceivable thing and the reason we are going to add it is because politicians like politically to be viewed as tough on crime. I do not have any problem with that. But we need to have some rational underlying basis by which we are proceeding, and this bill now does not have that. It did not have it when it first started out, and every time we have added some new violation that triggers this kind of vulnerable mentality, then we have made this more a mockery. We are now doing an injustice, a severe injustice to public policy. There are a bunch of vulnerable people, and we could add all of them to this bill. There is really no place to cut is off. That is why we gave this responsibility to the Sentencing Commission, to get it out of the irrational political, reactionary process that we are now following this evening. Mr. Chairman, I hope my colleagues will come to the realization that what we are doing is just bad, bad, bad public policy and will reconsider this entire bill and allow the Sentencing Commission to continue the job it has been set up to do.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the reporter be allowed to read back my arguments on the Slaughter and Conyers amendment so that I do not have to repeat them on this amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I just want to take a moment to express my utter dismay that a Member of this body would come on this floor and say, ``I believe this bill, this amendment, is unconstitutional, yet if you put me to a vote, I'm going to vote for it.'' That is just absolutely, that is exactly the reason we ought not be dealing with this in this process, because then it becomes only politics.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, the gentleman is absolutely right. That is the way the process is supposed to work, away from the cameras, away from the politics of it. Rational decisionmaking. We still get a shot at it. We will still get our shot. It might be next year, when we are not running for office, and that is the way it should be. That is exactly the way it should be. We ought not be making these very important, very intricate, very difficult decisions haphazardly. Some years ago, on a bipartisan basis, Republicans and Democrats came to the conclusion that we ought to give the responsibility to the Sentencing Commission. I move that we send it back there. announcement by the chairman

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I think my colleagues now should begin to understand exactly why we gave jurisdiction for these decisions to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Once you get on this slippery slope, once you start on the House floor, we are going to have maybe 435 Members of Congress coming in saying, hey, we ought to enhance penalties for this offense, that offense, against this vulnerable person, against this vulnerable group, and there is no way to get off of the merry-go-round. Exactly the reason that we gave the authority to the Sentencing Commission away from the politics and cameras and give-and-take of having to run in political contests, to go in and spend the time that it takes to make reasonable judgments about sentencing policy, that is exactly the reason we gave the Sentencing Commission this job. And here, my colleagues, they do not know how to deal with this because this amendment, the truth of the matter, got offered by a Democrat. That is the only difference it is. It is politics now. As long as it is offered by the other side, it is good public policy. But let a Democrat come up with the proposal, all of a sudden it is politics. We do not know where to draw the line, or it is unconstitutional, or any irrational basis for making the decision that we should have, should not even be discussing in the first place. We ought to take this whole bill, with the Frost amendment, with the Slaughter amendment, with the Chrysler business that we started with and send it over to the Sentencing Commission to do their job with it. They can hold extensive hearings. They can solicit public comment. They can analyze how this compares with other sentencing decisions. They can rationalize the process. They can tell us, hey, somebody ought not get a double sentence just because they assaulted somebody who is 65 years and in good health than they would get for someone who is 64 years, 364 days, and in terrible health, even lying in a bed in a hospital. It makes no sense to do this. That is exactly the reason, my colleagues, that we gave this responsibility to the Sentencing Commission. that is exactly the reason I am going to give Members an opportunity to vote on giving it back to them, so that they can make some rational decisions, because the decisions we are making right now do not make one iota of sense.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I just want to express my thanks to the gentleman for deferring to my political rhythm. I hope he is going to vote with me on this.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I just think it is important for us to understand exactly what the Sentencing Commission is saying about this, so I want to read some selected excerpts from what the Sentencing Commission has said. It says, first of all, ``The commission takes very seriously its responsibilities to promptly and fully implement any directives enacted by Congress.'' In response to this directive in the crime bill encouraging or directing them to review this and to increase penalties, it says, In response to this directive, the commission analyzed available sentencing data and relevant statutory and guideline provisions. The commission also solicited the views of interested parties on needed amendments in the relevant guidelines. All commentators asserted that in their view the existing guidelines sufficiently account for the congressional concerns apparently embodies in the directive. Nevertheless, the commission identified two ways in which it believed the guidelines should be amended to more fully and effectively address concerns that those who harm child and elderly victims are appropriately punished. First the Commission clarified the commentary and then they did some other things. Then the Commission in its own letter to us says, Currently the commission's chapter 3 adjustment for vulnerable victims requires an increase in the defendant's sentence if a victim of the offense was unusually vulnerable due to age or was otherwise particularly susceptible to the criminal conduct. Then they go on to say, For example, the proposed threshold age enhancement would require a defendant who assaulted a 65-year-old victim to be sentenced almost twice as severely as a defendant who assaulted a 64-year-old victim. That is what we are doing in this bill. And then finally and most importantly on a policy basis, the Commission, says, If the Congress feels that additional measures need to be taken in this area, it should direct the commission to take them without micromanaging the commission's work. And then here is the kicker: The commission was designed to take the politics out of sentencing policy and to bring research and analysis to bear on sentencing policy. So here we are doing exactly the opposite of what we set up the Sentencing Commission to do, inserting politics into this, playing politics, political posturing, giving our colleagues something to go home and run on because this is an election year, and saying the heck with the public policy that is involved here. That is what the problem is here. This is not about sentencing. The Commission has done what we asked them to do. This is about politics.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member for yielding me this time on general debate. Mr. Chairman, I am not real sure what this is all about, since the Sentencing Commission seems to have done what this Congress requested them to do, and one suspects that it may be more about election-year politics and beating oneself on the chest about how hard we are on crime than it is about the actual penalties that go for these kinds of offenses. Having said that, I mean I think there is nobody who can argue with the notion that penalties should be more severe for bullies who beat up on young people and the elderly. I do not think anybody in this body disagrees with that. What we do disagree with, Mr. Chairman, however, is that the Sentencing Commission and the policy underlying the establishment of the Sentencing Commission is that we want to get politics out of making a determination of what appropriate sentences should be in criminal cases. The primary purpose of having a sentencing commission was to create a fair and equitable set of sentencing guidelines free of political considerations, and, notwithstanding that, we have several times in the context of this Congress made an effort to undermine that primary purpose and to make ourselves appear harder on crime and, presumably, make ourselves more electable. So what I intend to do at the point in which we get to the amendment process is to try to correct the real problem with this bill. If we want sentences enhanced, we have a process by which that can happen. It should happen as a matter of policy through the U.S. Sentencing Commission. They ought to make an orderly evaluation, as they apparently already have. They ought to enhance the penalties, which they already have enhanced the process, for getting to a more stringent penalty when the offense is against young people and elderly people, and we ought to let them do their job and stay out of the way. Mr. Chairman, I hope that we can overcome our desire to gain political points and, hopefully, we can send a request to the Sentencing Commission to review this matter again, if that is what we want to do; that is what my amendment would do. However, let us not forget about the underlying public policy rationale for setting up the Sentencing Commission in the first place, that public policy rationale being to accept politics and our desire to appear tougher on crime, sometimes irrationally, sometimes rationally, but the objective should be always to have a rational decision made about these things outside of the context of political considerations; and in that way, a consistent set of principles can be applied without all of the emotion that sometimes gets us inflicted in the political process. Having said that, I will wait until I offer my amendment to discuss this matter further.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding time to me. Mr. Chairman, again, this is one of those bills that the general purpose one finds hard to argue with but, again, the drafting leaves some of us shuddering at the potential consequences of where we might end up. I want to point out two or three different concerns that we have with the bill. I had considered the possibility of trying to offer some amendments to address some of these items, but given what happened on the last bill, I do not want to tax the patience of my colleagues, so I just want to point these things out so that Members will know some of the concerns about the bill. First of all, Mr. Chairman, I think the bill is unnecessary. There are underlying statutes which already provide severe penalties for witness or jury tampering and retaliation. Section 1503 provides for a penalty of up to 20 years and a fine for jury tampering. Section 1512 provides for the death penalty for murdering a witness to prevent his or her testimony at trial. Section 1513 provides the death penalty for murdering a witness in retaliation for his or her testimony at trial. So there are already severe penalties in the law for jury tampering and witness tampering, and for retaliation. However, the more troubling aspect of this bill is that it would hold a violate, or a person engaged in jury tampering or retaliation, liable for a crime that he or she had absolutely nothing to do with and no connection to, and it would do it in a way that really fails to distinguish between people who engage in serious misconduct and people who do not engage in serious misconduct. This is not your typical co-conspirator kind of situation. If you are involved in a conspiracy, you are already a part of the underlying crime. The link here is that we are going to give you the same penalty that is charged in the underlying crime if you try to get involved with a jury or a witness in that case, and sometimes that just may not be justified. Mr. Chairman, let me kind of play out the example that is an extreme example but a realistic example of what could happen under this bill. Let us assume that we have a criminal case in which there are two defendants. One of those defendants is charged with some small offense. The second defendant is charged with a very, very serious offense. Both of these defendants may be tried together at the trial of the underlying offenses. If I, having no connection with either the minor offense or the major offense, decide that I would like to help my brother who is charged with the minor offense by trying to encourage a witness not to testify against my brother who is charged with the minor offense, or if I tamper with the jury to help my brother who is charged with the minor offense, then I end up being subjected to the same penalties as if I had tampered with the jury or tried to influence a witness in connections with the major offense. So, Mr. Chairman, there is absolutely no distinction in this bill for very different kinds of conduct for which there should be distinctions drawn. If I engage in jury tampering or witness tampering by sitting in the courtroom and casting a dirty or intimidating look at somebody, the prosecutor has the discretion to charge me with an offense that could subject me to life imprisonment, I think actually would subject me to the death penalty, even though the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] denies that this bill is intended to do that. So there are serious drafting problems in this bill, and we tried to address those in the committee. We tried to offer amendments that would have made the kinds of distinctions between somebody who is tampering with a jury or tampering with a witness in a case which is a minor offense as opposed to someone who is doing the same thing in a case that might justify the death penalty or life imprisonment. My colleagues on the other side say, ``Well, we don't care about that. We just want to be hard on crime. We want to have that reputation for being hard on crime. This is a tough year.'' So we are back here with one of these bills that superficially is a good idea but is drawn in such a way and so broadly that it ceases to be rational in its potential application. Apparently we just do not care. Mr. Chairman, my colleagues on the committee rejected amendment after amendment that would have made this a better bill, that would have allowed there to be bipartisan support, or strong support for this bill. They simply did not care. So, I cannot let this go without expressing severe reservations I have about this bill, not the general underlying intent of the bill, which I think is good; but its failure to discriminate between bad actors and worse actors and not-so-bad actors is contrary to sound public policy. My colleagues need to be aware of that.