Dick Durbin: “I thank the Senator from Utah not only for his leadership on this issue but for the fact that we have been able to work…”

“I thank the Senator from Utah not only for his leadership on this issue but for the fact that we have been able to work together on an issue that is not considered to be simple in nature. It is challenging, complex, and controversial in some respects. As the Senator mentioned at the outset, we have done it on a bipartisan basis. If one looks at the cosponsors of the Smarter Sentencing Act, they span the political spectrum. I was standing at our press conference--as the Senator from Utah was speaking--next to Senator Ted Cruz. Some said: Durbin and Cruz are on the same bill? As the saying goes around here, obviously one of us has not read it. The fact is that we both read it, and we both understand the importance of this undertaking. Our criminal justice system in America is in crisis. The United States of America holds more prisoners, by far, than any other country in the world. The Federal prison population has grown by 750 percent since 1980 and our Federal prisons are approximately 30 percent over capacity. Over the past 30 years, spending on Federal incarceration has increased more than 1,100 percent. Our exploding prison population now consumes a quarter of the Justice Department's discretionary budget. These runaway expenditures are undermining other law enforcement efforts. The U.S.…”