Political Quotes

“Reclaiming my time, and I thank the gentleman from Texas for making those points. We the people have vested our authority in our government, and that's how that transfer takes place. But I remember clearly the bailiff saying, ``The State versus,'' and that rang my bell; and I looked back through history to understand the root of that. I would point out also that the $82,000 for a rape victim, I believe, was quantified in this way--loss of work, medical treatment, psychological treatment; that kind of impact that was just simply the economic impact on her life, not the emotional impact and the trauma. But even still, to quantify that--and the Department of Justice has quantified crime also with different values. And I don't recall them well enough from that chart, but I know there's a 1992 Department of Justice study that laid some values out. I think it would be a plus for us, even though pain and suffering and the loss of life is immeasurable in a dollar form, if we could quantify it in a way we begin to understand what crime does to society. That would be helpful if we could move down that path. It's been a long time since there's been a real broad study done in this country that laid out the complete loss of all of the crimes in the United States that are committed. I would think it's in the billions of dollars. We accept it because it's a victim here and a victim there. It's not like they're all coming together in one large group. It's scattered out across our society.…”