Joe Biden: “Today, I introduce a bill which will re-authorize the Violent Crime Reduction Trust Fund for an additional five years. I…”

“Today, I introduce a bill which will re-authorize the Violent Crime Reduction Trust Fund for an additional five years. I firmly believe that re-authorization of the Violent Crime Reduction Trust Fund for another five years is the single most significant thing that we can do to continue the war on crime. In 1994 when we introduced the Biden Crime Bill, which eventually became the crime bill of 1994, some people disagreed with certain aspects of the bill. But, we all agreed that crime control is a place where the federal government can and should play a key role. We can all argue about how much we should be involved in education or welfare, but no one can argue about the requirement of the government to make our streets safe. That is the starting point for all ordered society. So, I, along with the Senior Senator from Texas, Mr. Gramm, and the Senior Senator from West Virginia, Mr. Byrd, worked to set up a Violent Crime Reduction Trust Fund. The way we did that was not to raise taxes--it was to cut the size of the federal government and use the money to fight crime. And so we agreed to let 250,000 Federal employees go. Then we took the paycheck that would have been used to pay John Jones and Sue Smith and we put it into a trust fund to do nothing but deal with violent crime in America. And guess what--it worked.”