Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today I wish to discuss the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act that has been voted out of the Judiciary Committee. There is much debate about the wisdom of this bill. That is, like most bills we discuss in this Chamber, a judgment call. But there cannot be debate over the facts of this bill. We have to be very clear on what this bill, by its own text, is designed to do. Proponents of the bill often invoke four phrases to describe the felons to be released under the terms of the bill: ``first-time,'' ``nonviolent,'' ``low-level,'' ``drug possession'' offenders. Yet none of these four terms is accurate. By its text, the bill will apply sentence reductions not to first- time offenders but to repeat offenders--some many times over. These are felons who have made the conscious choice to commit crimes over and over. By its text, the bill will not just apply to so-called ``nonviolent offenders'' but to thousands of violent felons and armed career criminals who have used firearms in the course of their drug felonies or crimes of violence. By its text, the bill will reduce sentences not for those convicted of simple possession but for major drug traffickers--ones who deal in hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of heroin and thousands of pounds of marijuana. And let's be clear. Drug trafficking is not nonviolent, as the bill's proponents often claim.…”