Political Quotes

“Madam President, in reserving the right to object, I worried this morning that the Senator from Arkansas was going to offer this unanimous consent request on the floor of the Senate this afternoon. I was a little bit surprised. I wasn't aware of this bill. We have been members of the same committee, the Judiciary Committee, for 21 months, and the Senator from Arkansas has not raised the bill during that period of time. But it is his right to come to the floor today and ask that it be considered. I would like to tell you why I am going to object to this. If you serve in Congress for any period of time, you become a student of the terrible drug problems of America. I recall a period of time in the House of Representatives when we had crack cocaine appear in the United States for the first time. It scared us because it was cheap; it was deadly; addictive; and for the women who were pregnant who had taken it, it did harm to the babies they were carrying. So we decided to make sure that we were going to do the right thing in our War on Drugs. What we said was--listen closely--the penalty for crack cocaine would be 100 times the penalty for the use of ordinary cocaine--100 times. The penalty for using cocaine in general was already serious. One hundred times, we said, for the War on Drugs. I voted for it. I thought, finally, a message will come from the Congress that, if you touch crack cocaine, you are going to be in for it.…”