Mark Souder: “I stand in somewhat of an unusual position today. I serve on the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families of…”

“I stand in somewhat of an unusual position today. I serve on the Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families of the Committee on Education and the Workforce and have worked with the gentleman from California (Mr. Martinez) and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott) on this bill, both in the last session of Congress and in this session, and on H.R. 1818, which is a part of this bill. And we were able to develop a bipartisan and important consensus that in reaching out to children, in particularly their juvenile period, that we need to try to reach these kids before they get to the level of serious crime and work through that problem; and that they deserve special set-aside counseling, both in prevention and after they have committed a crime. But this has been merged with another bill, Mr. Speaker, which I also support, which says that for certain actions, such as if a juvenile shoots somebody and kills them, if they rape someone, or if they commit armed robbery with a firearm, and they are 15 years of age, that person is just as dead, just as raped, or had their life just as threatened as if that individual were 18.”