Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the EQUAL Act which eliminates the discriminatory sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. I want to thank Chairman Nadler for his leadership in bringing this bill before our committee and its quick passage. And, of course, I thank Chairman Jeffries and Mr. Armstrong and Chairman Scott for their leadership on this issue. As you know, Mr. Speaker, 35 years ago, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, which created this drastic sentencing disparity between two types of cocaine; the same substance, just in a different form. And as has been explained, under the disparity you needed 100 times the amount of powder cocaine than crack cocaine to get the same sentence. There was no scientific basis for this, no empirical evidence that there was any difference. The harm that this caused was devastating to so many. For more than three decades defendants have suffered under this disparity with highly disproportionate impacts on communities of color. That has led to mass incarceration and, as I said, the destruction of so many lives unnecessarily. In 2010, Congress changed the sentencing disparity from a 100:1 to 18:1. And while that was some progress, in 2018, we improved on that even more under the extraordinary leadership of Mr. Jeffries by making it retroactive. But while it was a step in the right direction, making the disparity smaller did not make the sentencing fair. And today we finally do that.…”