Barbara Boxer: “I take to the floor today to call attention to an alarming trend that I see happening in this country. It is a decline…”

“I take to the floor today to call attention to an alarming trend that I see happening in this country. It is a decline in the quality of life for our people in this country. It is beginning. I am concerned it will continue. Clearly, I am not talking today about the tragedy that hit on 9-11. Of course, that had an impact across the board in terms of worrying about our children and concern for our communities. I am setting that aside. What I really want to talk about is the business of this Government that is keeping our people safe from a couple of things. One is crime in the streets. The other is the quality of our air, our water, our neighborhoods in terms of this environment that we so cherish. I am very concerned we are beginning to see fallout from policies that are occurring in this administration that has been in power now for 17 months. We first get the alarming news that after 9 years of decline, there is a very large change in the crime rate. We see increases in the murder rate. We learn of increases across the board from reading the newspaper. We have an expert, Patrick Murphy, who basically worries that we have eliminated the COPS program because this administration does not support it. It has put 100,000 police on the beat. We need to do more. That is having an impact. Also, we are seeing cuts in aid to States and localities in the criminal justice area. We are seeing these cuts because this administration just does not have that as a priority.”