Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I am reserving the right to object.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just wanted to reemphasize the point that I simply do not understand why there would be opposition to this amendment. There is nobody, I think, on this floor or in this Congress who thinks that the purpose of this bill is to improve roads, highways, or streets. And yet the language in the bill, improving public safety, is clearly broad enough to cover that kind of activity. For the life of me, I cannot understand why we make an issue of this simply to send a message to the public. I guess that we have crafted the perfect bill, and our language cannot be improved; surely, the proponents of this bill, the sponsors of this bill, do not believe they have crafted a perfect bill, and I just for the life of me cannot understand the opposition to this amendment. I would ask my colleagues to, please, be sensible about this. Make this clear. There are enough loopholes and gaps in this bill without leaving this loophole and gap for local communities to drive through. I can tell you that in some areas traffic is the major issue that is affecting the people, and there is no problem with addressing the issue of traffic. But let us do it in a transportation bill, in a roads bill. Let us not leave open the opportunity to address that concern in what we are calling a crime bill in the name of just the sense that they have some perfect bill here. It is not a perfect bill. There are all kinds of problems with this bill, and this is just one of them. We ought to at least close this one gap.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Well, perhaps I should select somebody else of another hue to offer the amendment. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Perhaps I should let the gentleman offer the next amendment. than the gentleman is.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. That is correct.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I thank the chairman for recognizing me for 5 minutes. I normally do not take a vote on an issue personally, but I think I need to say some things to this body. Mr. Chairman, I came earlier today and offered the amendment that just failed to the leadership on the majority side in an effort to try to work with the majority leadership to improve this bill. There is not a person in this House who believes that this money should be used to build streets, roads or highways. There is not a Member of this House who believes that the funds under this bill ought to be used for highways, roads or streets. And I tried to offer this amendment in such a way just to clarify that issue. And I won the voice vote. During the course of the debate on the rule, I pointed out to the Members of this body and to the American people that the time required to come over here and vote on an amendment is included in the 10 hours of public debate time that is allocated for this bill. Immediately before I had offered my amendment, the other side had just agreed to an amendment similar to this. So I am beginning to wonder here what is going on in this body. We are marching in lockstep, doing things that make no sense in the context of public policy, denying Members that right to clarify the wording of a bill, maybe taking out personal animosities and concerns from last week on the content of this bill, because this vote makes no sense in the context of what we are doing here. I want to just make it clear to my colleagues over here, if this vote is designed to send a message to Mel Watt, which I am inclined to think that it is, as I speak here, I will tell them that I will send a number of amendments that they will not like for their consideration. If they want to single me out and discipline me by calling for a vote on something that everybody in the House agrees to and tell their soldiers to march, contrary to public policy, contrary to what everybody in this House knows the intent of this bill is, then somebody have enough nerve to come to my face and tell me that. Because if they want to declare war, then I am up to it, and I will tell them that I am ready to start the war right here. But I will not be personally insulted. I will not be personally singled out. And I will not have them march like toy soldiers on issues of public policy without exposing what they are doing to the American people.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I appreciate the gentleman yielding, and I want to make three quick points in response. First of all, the one instance the gentleman has referred to where there is a reference to reducing crime and improving public safety is on page 2. But I would point out to the gentleman that on page 6 there is a provision dealing with maintenance of public safety which is not connected with reducing crime in any way, and there are other examples in this bill where improving public safety is used. So I think the gentleman is mistaken in that respect. Second, I have made no argument about lighting. My amendment goes to streets, roads, and highways, and if there is something in last year's bill about lighting at bus stops, I would not think that would related to either roads, highways, or streets, and if we are superseding last year's crime bill, then I am not sure why we would be debating that issue anyway. Because this language, I would think, goes beyond last year's crime bill.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I am surprised to hear the gentleman concede that funds under this bill could in fact be used to improve roads and highways and streets. I thought clearly that was not a purpose of this bill. point?

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, a real problem I have with this bill has been illustrated by the last amendment which was adopted, and that is the question of how the bill is drafted. It leaves the field wide open for interpretation of about anything at the local level to be eligible for funding under this bill. The particular place which this amendment is designed to address is throughout the bill where amounts are to be paid to units of local government for improving public safety. There is no definition in the bill for what improving public safety means. In my congressional district there are some cities is that when we talk about public safety the first thing that they go to is not crime in the neighborhoods, police on the streets, or something of that kind, but public safety has the connotation of increased traffic, roads, streets, something that will help to improve the flow of traffic in and around the city. Let me make it clear that I do not have any problem with improving subject safety by building more streets or improving highways or improving roads, but in this particular bill, which is a crime bill, there should be no question that these funds should not be eligible for being used in that way. So I thought we better have something in the bill that gave some definition to this concept of improving public safety. I thought about trying to come up with a definition for improving public safety, and I really had some serious problems trying to draft the language that would cover that issue without creating more problems than I solved. So instead of trying to craft a definition for improving public safety, I at least thought we ought to back out this one element that could be interpreted as a means of improving public safety. In fact, it does improve public safety to improve the streets and roads and highways in a particular city. And I do not have any problem with that. But I could not come up with a crafted way, an ingenuous way to define improving public safety, which is really one of the problems that I have with this bill. I do not think the local officials are going to be able to, we are not going to be able to tell the local officials at the local level what improving public safety means any more than we can define that term in the bill. So, we have this broad, open, three words, ``improving public safety'' that we could about convert to any kind of construction or definition or interpretation that local government officials want to put it to, and that is a serious problem in this bill. At least if this amendment is adopted it will be clear that it is not a traffic bill that we are dealing with here, it is serious crime, or crime unrelated to traffic, even though there is nothing here in my amendment that would remove the funding from drunk driving or criminal activity other than traffic offenses. But I would just say to my colleagues here that as the bill is drafted now, traffic offenses and trying to solve problems of traffic in cities could just as easily fall under the category of improving public safety as criminal conduct, and I encourage my colleagues to please support the amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. It is not Mr. Chairman.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, let me speak for a minute or two about what this debate and this bill is not about, and then talk a little bit about what it is about. Mr. Chairman, we have heard in this debate that this is about whether the local government has control of this situation or whether the Federal Government has control of the funds. I think the debate that we will engage in shortly, Mr. Chairman, as we try to amend this bill, is about what will be effective in the crime-fighting context. If we really think about it, Mr. Chairman, I have never seen any local government official or State government official who would refuse funding from the Federal Government, whether it has some strings attached to it or whether it has no strings attached to it. If we ask a local government official ``Would you rather have money that does not give you any guidance about how to use it,'' they will say ``Give me the money.'' If we ask that same local government official ``Would you take some money that gives you some guidance about how to use it,'' they will say ``Give us the money. We need the money because we have a crime-fighting problem.'' Therefore, the real issue here is not about whether we give the money to the local government, with some constraints or guidance, or no constraints and guidance. It is about having some mechanism for accountability. Mr. Chairman, the real issue, as the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott] has indicated during the course of this debate is whether we are going to have some programs that are dedicated to prevention and some programs that are dedicated to putting additional police officers on the street. By knocking down the wall between the prevention programs and the police programs and saying we are just going to give you block grants, not only do we give more discretion to the local officials, and they will love it and say ``Thank you; we do not want you to tell us anything about how we should use these funds,'' but what we are also doing is eliminating the opportunity we have for accountability for those funds at our level. Mr. Chairman, it is our responsibility to build in some accountability in this process. My point, Mr. Chairman, is that we should have had in the last crime bill and we should have in this bill a process for evaluating and forcing local government officials, or if we retain last year's programs in place, the Federal Government, to have an evaluation process. Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers].

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I would advise the other side that we have no other speakers other than myself.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, would the Chair advise me how much time remains on each side?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Ms. DeLauro].

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Speaker, I think this will be the first time I have ever debated on the House floor about the content of a rule. The Committee on Rules is one of those committees that is stacked pretty heavily in favor of the majority and generally when they decide on a procedural matter and that matter comes to the floor, it just kind of goes right through on a partisan vote. So in some respects it is kind of banging your head against the wall to come and speak. I am not speaking generally on the content of this rule today but only on one particular aspect of it that I think my colleagues and the American public need to be aware of. Mr. Speaker, this rule provides for 10 hours of debate, they say. What they do not say very loudly is that included in that 10 hours is voting time. I think the American people need to understand what that means, because if there is a recorded vote on the floor of the House, every recorded vote takes 15 minutes. Under the Speaker's policy announced earlier he has extended that recorded vote to 17 minutes. So that if there are 10 votes, 10 amendments on this bill, then that is 2\1/2\ hours gone to voting on those amendments. If there are 20 amendments on this bill, that is 5 hours gone just in the time that it takes to vote on those amendments. So we are left not within 10 hours, as the majority would have the American public believe, but then we would be left with half of that time because all the rest of the time would be spent in the voting process, not in the debate process. Mr. Speaker, I am on the Committee on the Judiciary, and I will tell you that we had over 20 amendments being offered in the Committee on the Judiciary on this bill. In that body, we do not even have one-tenth of the membership of the House of Representatives. There are 435 Members of this House. Mr. Speaker, I just want my colleagues to do the basic arithmetic on this. If 2 percent of the Members of this House have a sufficient interest in this important bill to come and offer an amendment, that is over 10 votes, or approximately 10 votes. If 5 percent of the 435 Members of this House have a sufficient interest in this important bill to want to offer an amendment, then we have already used up more than half of the 10 hours of debate time simply on the voting process. So, my objection to the rule does not really have to do so much with the 10 hours, but the allocation of that 10 hours or a substantial part of it simply to the voting process. And I will tell Members that last week we got to the point just to keep Members from offering amendments that they had on a bill, that they started asking for votes so that Members would not even have the time left to offer the amendments because the voting time would take up more time than the debate time. America, that is no way to run a democracy. That is no way to run a democracy. We ought to at least have time to debate these issues. This is an issue, this is a bill that the President of the United States indicated over the weekend he has a personal interest in, a political interest in. So we know it is going to be a heavily debated issue, and yet we will spend our time walking back and forth and using up our time in the voting process. I think we ought to defeat this rule and let us have some real debate in this House.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, since very early in this session of Congress, I have been addressing on a number of occasions the process by which we deliberate and consider laws for this country. I debated and took issue with the cutting off of debate on an important bill in the Committee on the Judiciary. I have debated on a number of occasions on this floor the process by which we consider issues. It seems to me that we have now gotten to the point where it is not the process of debate or the process for reaching a reasonable result that is at issue but simply reaching that result because some Contract With America or contract on America was made with the people. Our primary obligation, Mr. Speaker, is to deliberate and study the issues that come before us and to debate those issues for the American people. The value of this body is the diversity that we bring to this body and the ability to hear the various perspectives of people from throughout this Nation that 435 Representatives bring here and offer in the debate. If there is not sufficient time to debate, then that diversity cannot be honored. Mr. Speaker, I call on my colleagues to reconsider this issue. Give us ample time to debate it. Do not tell the American people on one hand that we are opening up the process and having a deliberative form of government, that we are going to have 10 hours of debate while we count the voting time, 15 minutes for each vote, so if we offer 10 amendments, more than 2\1/2\ hours will be gone just in the amendment and voting process. Let us be honest with the American people, and if we are going to tell them that we believe in an open society, believe in open debate, let us demonstrate it here on the floor of the House and have open debate, and have unlimited time for the debate of these issues.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. How much time remains, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. I agree with one thing that the gentleman said. This is the explanation they gave for this provision in committee; that is true. The explanation in committee was wrong. The explanation they are giving on the floor today is wrong. The wording of this bill specifically says the 30-day provision applies in any civil action with respect to prison conditions in which prospective relief has been granted. So he has got a 30-day provision for that, and he has got a 180-day provision where retrospective relief has been granted, but in both of those cases relief has been granted. Now let me just say to my colleagues and to the American people that yesterday or the day before yesterday--I am losing track of time now with all of these bills that keep coming at me--we set up a different standard of law with respect to aliens than we set up with respect to gunowners as far as the fourth amendment is concerned. Under that provision we are treating one part of our population differently than we treat other parts of our population. Here we are today setting a lower standard again for the rights of other citizens simply because we do not like those citizens. I would say to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Canady] and to all of my colleagues, We can't set a different standard of law and decide in advance who is a bad guy and who is a good guy. Our whole criminal justice and court system is designed to make those determinations. We can't make those determinations on the floor of the Congress of the United States. It's the courts' responsibility to make those determinations, and when we start with moving the courts' authority, we are undercutting our rights, and this makes no sense, and I hope my colleagues will join me in opposing it.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, would the gentleman yield just so I can make a point?

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. The issue is not whether the courts will micromanage prisons. The issue is whether Congress will micromanage the courts, and that is what we are doing by putting this provision in the law.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This simply requires the States to have a process for collecting reliable statistical data regarding the impact of grants that are being made under sections 502 and 503 of this bill on the incidence of violent felonies and reporting that statistical information to the attorney general. Mr. Chairman, on yesterday afternoon, the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott] offered an amendment which would have taken a small amount of funds and allowed a process to be put into place at the Federal level to monitor the impact of these programs on crime. I offered and then withdrew a more aggressive amendment than this one which would have denied funds unless there was a showing that the increased sentencing and the truth-in-sentencing legislation was having some impact on crime, and I withdrew that amendment. This simply asks the States to have a process for collecting data on the impact that these moneys are having on the incidence of violent crime. I should point out that on the next bills that are coming, the prevention bills, I intend to offer the same kind of language. One of the concerns that I really have is that because of the outcry of the public to do something about crime, we are trying to respond legislatively to that outcry, and I commend my colleagues for trying to do that, but in the haste of doing it, we are not providing any process for determining what things are having an impact on crime and what things are not having an impact on crime. So even if we end up reducing the incidence of crime, we are not going to know which programs we should continue to support and which programs we should be pulling back from and withdrawing our support from. What we should be doing is trying to get some handle on what kind of programs, whether they are Federal programs, State programs or local programs, are in fact having an impact on crime, whether it is prevention, whether it is increased sentencing, whether it is building more prisons, I do not care. All of those things need to have an assessment process built into them and all of them need to have some process for assuring the collection of statistical data that at least allows the government, either State, local or Federal, to make an assessment of their impact. This begins in that direction with respect to the grants only that are made under sections 502 and 503 of this bill, but I would say I am not trying to attach this only to these programs. I will be offering a similar amendment on the prevention programs, on the cops programs. We ought to be trying to assess what is working and what is not working. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. body that we still continue to operate under the 10 and 10 rule, 10 in favor, 10 opposed.