Steven Schiff: “I rise to invite my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to cosign a letter with me to our colleague, the gentleman…”

“I rise to invite my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to cosign a letter with me to our colleague, the gentleman from Iowa [Mr. Smith], who is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, State, and Judiciary of the Committee on Appropriations. The purpose of this letter is to ask Mr. Smith not to follow the administration's recommendations in the Justice Department's proposed budget that would actually reduce the number of Federal personnel devoted to fighting crime. In the administration's proposed budget, there is a recommendation to lose personnel in the criminal division of the Department of Justice, to lose permanent positions in the Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation, and even in the number of criminal prosecutors in the U.S. attorneys' offices around the country. At the same time, the administration proposed increasing the number of personnel in the antitrust division. Now, I have no opposition, of course, to prosecuting antitrust cases, but the President of the United States has very correctly and very strongly emphasized the need to prosecute the violent criminals in our society. And the President will not be able to do so without the tools to get that job done, both under the current law and under any new crime bill that we might pass.”