John Conyers: “We have received the quotations from President Clinton and former Presidents, but let us look at what the gentleman from…”

“We have received the quotations from President Clinton and former Presidents, but let us look at what the gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Hyde] is talking about. He is proud of the fact that we implement the convention on marketing plastic explosives that was noncontroversial. Restrictions on biological and chemical weapons, hooray, that was uncontroversial. We got in the bill mandatory victim restitution. Do you remember anybody ever quarreling with that? Not hardly. Mr. Speaker, now we come to all of the Barr provisions that were killed out of this bill by 246 votes, a majority. Remember that? That was not such a great day on the floor, because the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Barr] thought we should not strengthen the criminal alien deportation procedure, so he kicked it out and it won. The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Barr] thought that we should not expedite the deportation of terrorists, and it won and we kicked it out. The gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Barr] thought that there should not be a ban on fundraising by terrorist groups, and he won and we kicked it out. Now in the conference we got pieces of it back in. I am very happy that the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary wishes that we had wiretap authority for terrorists, not for stealing cars, not for hijacking, not for simple felony crimes, but terrorism, this one thing that we are dealing with so completely here this afternoon.”