Political Quotes

“Members of the House, the 11th hour has come for consideration of the crime bill, and I, who am the author of some of the provisions in the crime bill, and one who has always been tough on criminals, as I view it, and on repeat offenders and violent offenders especially, am constrained to vote against the very crime bill which I helped to craft in some of its important provisions. Why? Because there are important flaws that are built into the crime bill that may make it absolutely useless. No. 1, it has as one of its major provisions gigantic additional spending programs for programs that, under the Great Society Program, failed and failed miserably and now are being reintroduced as part of a crime bill. We want tough measures, not money measures just for the purpose of prevention, rather for being tough on criminals. Second, it is possible that the Federal Government, through this crime bill, will be mandating local authorities to spend some of their money when we do not provide it for them, unfunded mandates. We may not be able to support this crime bill.”