Political Quotes

“We are going to commit extra moneys, we are going to take money out of other sections of the bill and give it to build still more prisons without even having--we talk about local mandates, how people, once these prisons are constructed--who is going to pay for them? The local communities and the States are going to have to try to pay for them. You are right, many of them do not have the money to pay for them. It is interesting, I had gone back to the D.A.'s office during the congressional break, and they had listened to a lot of debate on the crime bill. And they said, ``Boy, we disagree with much of rhetoric that we heard. And it sounded like you guys were really getting a lot of rhetoric about getting tough on crime.'' Ninety to 95 percent of all crimes in this country are enforced, prosecuted on the local and State level. And I have been amused by the debate in the Congress about getting tough on crime, and we are going to require so many of this and so many of that. And the truth of the matter is, all this bill is about is giving local prosecutors, local police departments some help. And no bill has ever given this much help in the history of the Congress to local communities in hiring more police officers and actually putting them on the street. The other thing that I think is unfortunate is this bill passed with bipartisan support. This is not something that just Democrats should support or just Republicans should support.”