Mel Watt

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, this bill puts us in a position of sitting here on this floor and getting into these kinds of irrelevant debates. I agree with my friend, the gentleman from Maryland [Mr. Hoyer]. We ought not exempt this one agency without exempting other agencies. We ought to exempt the entire American people from the effects of this bill. That is what the amendment ought to say. If we believe in the Constitution this demon bill, 666, ought to be withdrawn and go back where it came from and never see the light of day again. Give me the Constitution, drawn by the Founding Fathers, not some version of rights thought up by the Republican Contract for America. I will take the Constitution any day.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I hope my colleagues and the American people have been listening to this debate on the underlying bill. I do not want to deal with the amendment itself. I want to talk about the bill that has been offered, because what this bill forces us to do is exactly what we have seen happen on the Floor of this House for the last 2 days. It forces us to try to decide who is good and who is bad. If I hear one more time during the course of this debate that this is not about innocent people, that this is about guilty people, I think I will throw up. This is about the American people and the Constitution of the United States. It is about innocent people who own guns, who might have them in a closet somewhere and have their door kicked in, which is why this amendment was offered. It is about innocent people like the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Rush], who might have bird seed in their closet, and have their doors kicked in because some police officer thought he had some cause to do it and could not go down to the courthouse and get a warrant. It is about innocent people like the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder], who had a button, a campaign button in her house, and had her whole being violated by the FBI, who came in, in violation of her rights. It is about innocent people who own homes, who have the right to be secure in those homes. And we cannot afford as America to turn the questions about who is good and who is bad in our society over to a police officer on the street, whether that police officer is from the ATF, the FBI, the CIA, the Atlanta police, the Raleigh police, the New York police. We cannot make those choices, and the Constitution of the United States put us in a position where we did not have to make those choices. This debate points up exactly what point I am making, because here we are now talking about whether the ATF is good or whether the FBI is good, or whether this police department is good or that police department is good. But that misses the whole point. It misses the point that every citizen in this country is presumed to be good, presumed to be innocent, until they have had their day in court, and that we ought not allow a police officer in the heat of the moment to kick somebody's door in and make that decision on the spot. The first amendment, as I indicated yesterday, is not about people who engage in mainstream speech. It is about protecting the rights of the people to say what they want when we do not like what they are saying. The fourth amendment is not about protecting the guilty or the innocent. This is not about whether we like criminals or not. Nobody in this House likes criminals. I do not want the police officers out there on the street to decide on the spot whose door they are going to kick in and whose rights they are going to violate, even if they are 99 percent right and there is just that 1 percentage point of people out there whose rights they violated. Because that 1 percent, that 1.3 percent we have heard talked about here on this floor, is what the fourth amendment was designed to protect.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I move that these slanderous words be immediately taken down. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my motion.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I will not take a minute. I would just rise in opposition to this amendment and say that this bill already speeds up the appeals process. My amendment that I offered that would have tried to redeem people who come forward with evidence of innocence was defeated, and now we are going to rush to judgment without any stay, and this is just criminal. I urge strongly that this amendment be defeated.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. If the gentlewoman would yield, before he can ever get to the clear and convincing standard, he has to get into court by raising some constitutional claim, different from innocence. So the gentleman from Florida [Mr. McCollum] is right, that would be the ultimate standard, but it would not even be able to get into the court.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, it is my opinion that this bill is going to generate 200-plus more years of litigation, because the language justifying an objectively reasonable belief is no more precise than the language of the fourth amendment of the Constitution which exists currently. My colleagues on the Republican side would have us believe that they can wave a magic wand and craft some language that is so clear, so crystal clear, that there will not be any litigation about it. But, my friends, the crafters of our Constitution drafted this language, and I would submit to you that my colleagues on the other side are no smarter than the drafters of the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Mr. Chairman, I hope that we can fight to uphold the constitutional provisions. I do not know anybody in this body who can vote against this basic amendment. All it does is say we are going back to the fourth amendment of the U.S. Constitution. I hope anybody who will vote against this amendment will go home and look their constituents in the eye and say, ``I voted against the fourth amendment.''

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, it seems to me the only way one could conclude that this guts the bill is to say that the rest of the bill is somehow inconsistent with the fourth amendment. I am wondering whether that is what the gentleman from Florida is saying, because that is the only way I could see the actual language of the fourth amendment being inconsistent and gutting the rest of the bill, if the rest of the bill is somehow inconsistent with the fourth amendment.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I would be happy to take a look at it and, while the next speaker is speaking, see if we can get together on some language.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, nobody has proffered any language to me that they would be interested in being supportive of, and I would be happy to look at it and consider whatever language they are proposing. But right now the amendment speaks for itself.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I thank the minority leader on this committee for yielding time to me. I am not going to jump up and down about this bill, either for it or against it. I will probably vote for it, but I do think that we need to point out some things to the American people about this bill and some concerns that I have. No. 1, there is a provision in this bill that talks about when a person is on probation or parole and is not able to meet the restitution schedule, that probation or parole can be revoked, and I think that gets us dangerously close to being back to the point of the old aware that that provision exists in the bill. There is a process for going back into the court and getting the restitution order revised, but I think that process is going to be very, very difficult. So it causes me some concern. The second point I want to raise is the matter of due process under this bill. There is really no detailed way drawn out in the bill for due process to be given to the defendant in this case. The probation officer goes out and finds certain information, brings it back to the court, there is no process for a hearing at the initial level to decide whether the restitution is just or how much restitution will be awarded, and there are some concerns that I have about that. I simply thought that it behooved me to stand up and say that despite the fact that this bill generally moves in a good direction, there are some concerns. Those concerns were not addressed in committee because of the pace with which this bill was being moved, and I thought it would be remiss of me not to point out those concerns to the American public.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, the trouble I have with that provision, and that provision is fine and it contemplates a situation where the economic conditions of a defendant have changed and there is the time to do that, but I am not sure under this bill what court the defendant has the right to go back in front of immediately, before his probation is revoked, before his parole is revoked. There seems to be a disjoint between the process for raising that issue and the process of revocation of the parole and probation. That is the trouble I have with it.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I am reserving the right to object, and I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. It is my understanding also they were being put in the bill someplace different from all other defendants.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Further reserving the right to object, and I will not object if the sponsor of the amendment is satisfied, but it seems to me I cannot understand why we are putting corporate defendants in some separate section of the bill as opposed to putting them in with all of the other defendants.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

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

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object, let me just raise the issue of whether that same shortcoming does not exist under the other language in the bill, that there is a lot to be desired in this bill on the issue of identifying who has been injured and who is entitled to have restitution made to them. defendants, it seems to me that we ought also to be making that language broad enough to cover others.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. I thank the gentleman for yielding me the time. Mr. Chairman, I am beginning to wonder what happens when the Republicans' 1995 political contract comes into conflict with the people's 1791 contract with the American people, the Constitution. I thought the conservative approach was to uphold the people's contract under all circumstances. What I have found recently is that the Republicans are not willing to be conservative in their approach. They talk about being conservative but when it comes time to be conservative, they throw the most conservative document in the world out the window. When the Constitution conflicts with their beliefs, they are willing to either violate it or amend it, because they think they are smarter than the Founding Fathers of this country were. The 1791 contract leaves no equivocation. It says the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and so on shall not be violated. it does not say if we find some objectively reasonable standard, we will violate it. It says ``shall not be violated.'' ``No warrant should issue but upon probable cause.'' It does not say probable cause if there is some objective belief that there was probable cause. It says ``probable cause.'' Yet here we are trying to undermine that document. Since 1791 when this fourth amendment was put into the Constitution, there has been litigation. Case after case after case we have litigated what this fourth amendment means. Notwithstanding that, what did they come back with? Some more language, objectively reasonable standard, that we will have to litigate for 200 more years before we find out what it means. Mr. Chairman, this makes no sense. The gentleman from New Mexico [Mr. Schiff] says it is not in the Constitution. I beg to differ with him. My Constitution says, ``The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated.'' Nobody can tell me that there is any objectively reasonable standard in this Constitution. It says ``shall not be violated.'' And here we are, claiming that we are conservatives and all the while treading on the most conservative document we have in this country, treading on the rights of the people. This document was not written for the protection of the guilty. This document was written for the protection of the innocent. They can tell me all they want that only 1 percent or 2 percent of the cases that come up under this amendment are won by the defendant. Those are the people that this language was designed to protect. If we believe in the Constitution, we will leave it exactly like it is. In fact, we will vote for the amendment I plan to offer when the time for amendment comes on this bill.

Mr. WATT of North Carolina

Mr. WATT of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, reserving the right to object, I have consulted with the minority leadership, and they have advised me that notwithstanding the fact that this is contrary to the rule which prohibits voting in committee without being there, and contrary to the House rules, we are in agreement to it. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my reservation of objection.