Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill. I am not an expert on all of these issues, but I do know quite a bit about criminal justice. It is important to recognize that a lot of things we are talking about in these bills are delivered at the local level, whether it is criminal justice, whether it is education, whether it is any of those types of things. This isn't about percentages and data points. This is about communities, and this is about people. But at no time in history have we been better able to collect information in a more usable way. When I served in the State senate in North Dakota, I was the chair of what we call our Justice Reinvestment Committee. And what we found out very shortly was that our data was all over the place. In order to make smart, effectuating change and provide localities and States and communities with the proper information so they can target where they can really do the most good--oftentimes on strained budgets and just different areas--it is important that studies like this come out because there are things we can do in Congress. To be quite frank, we are behind the game. Conservative and liberal States all across the country have started on this, and they started before us--States like North Dakota, States like Colorado, States like Mississippi. It is our job to get in the game. It is our job to provide them with the information we can.…”