Mike Collins: “Again, I have been on this side, and I would love to see more cooperation, especially since this is one of the areas I…”

“Again, I have been on this side, and I would love to see more cooperation, especially since this is one of the areas I do believe, Mr. Chair, we can actually have agreement on. The chairman and I have talked about this a great deal, and others, members of our Judiciary Committee. The FIRST STEP Act, criminal justice reform is something that I have been working on for many years. I think the issue of women incarceration is definitely something that needs to be looked at. Again, my concern with this program is the diversion of dollars that go through these programs to programs that already exist, and I am not sure how we are prioritizing these anymore. Even the numbers given were based over a number-of-years period, not a single-year period. When we were doing the FIRST STEP Act and doing some of the incarceration numbers, these numbers were a lot lower in the Federal prison of those actually pregnant at the time. So again, I don't, by any means, demean or try to talk badly about an amendment in the sense that it is not intended well. I think the problem is the underlying issues are already there. The underlying stuff is there. I appreciate her bringing that out. We just disagree that this would be the place to do this. There are other places we could work on this, and I think criminal justice reform is a great place to put this. I do commend the gentlewoman for bringing it. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.”