Kay Bailey Hutchison: “the letter from the District Attorneys Association looks at an earlier version of the bill which had a $14 million…”

“the letter from the District Attorneys Association looks at an earlier version of the bill which had a $14 million pricetag and the pricetag on this amendment is $5 million. So with that caveat I submit the letter, because the points the District Attorneys Association makes are very valid except for that one error of the amount of money. However, let's talk about the $5 million. Is it the priority of the Justice Department to have a national commission that purports to go into State and local governments and look at their criminal justice systems at a time such as this? They are taking the $5 million from the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs administrative account. That is the account that administers the following grant programs, all of which I will not read, but they include: the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Byrne-JAG grants, the National Sex Offender Registry, the Bulletproof Vest grants, the National Stalker Database, and it goes on and on. So the Senator from Virginia wants to take $5 million from the administrators of this account and put it into looking into the criminal justice systems of our 50 States and whatever local governments they would choose to look at. The Senate position is already $118 million for that account, which is $64 million below the fiscal year 2011 levels. The House has put $79 million in this account.…”