Phil Gingrey: “I wanted to come and lend my support to my good friend, Congressman David Scott, my colleague from Georgia, and the John…”

“I wanted to come and lend my support to my good friend, Congressman David Scott, my colleague from Georgia, and the John R. Justice Prosecutors and Defenders Incentive Act. Congressman Scott and I both served in the Georgia senate, he for a while longer than I did, and with more power in the leadership there, but we had passed similar legislation in Georgia, this commonsense provision, to help give some relief to these young, brilliant attorneys who are willing to go into work to serve either as a prosecutor or a public defender. The reason I feel so impassioned by it, my daughter, Phyllis Collins, has been practicing in the Cobb County judicial system now for about 3 years. She came out of law school at Michigan State after graduating from undergraduate school with a microbiology degree from Georgia Tech. I thought she would become a doctor, but she became a darn good lawyer instead. She came out of that school with about $100,000 in debt, just as this bill indicates in the language we have read. That's just a typical situation that my daughter, Phyllis, is in. She took that job for about $60,000 a year, I believe. She served a year and a half as a prosecutor. Now she is a public defender.”