Zoe Lofgren: “I think that this vote on this amendment is the most important vote that we have faced this year. You know, I have two…”

“I think that this vote on this amendment is the most important vote that we have faced this year. You know, I have two small children. They go to a little inner-city elementary school, and none of the reasons why I ran for Congress was to make a difference in what they are facing and what their classmates are facing. A watershed moment for me was a year ago October when I took my third-grader to school and they had found a dead body across the street, and the perpetrator was still loose, and I knew that if we did not do something different in this country that my children would not be safe and the other children would not be safe. I knew something then, and I know it today, that part of the answer is prevention. As my mother used to tell me, and as our mothers told us all, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. We know that there is a Federal interest in safety or else we would not be doing this crime bill at all, and I think it is important that prevention of crime be part of this package throughout the country. You know, when children get off on the wrong track early, we know they are going to get in trouble. We know they are going to cause pain to victims and their families, and we know that there is something, sometimes very little things, that we can do with children when they are 5 or 6 or 7 so that they will get on the right track. Those are the investments to make. I believe that every locality needs to make them.”