Louie Gohmert: “I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this previous question because in doing so we can finally take care of a…”

“I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this previous question because in doing so we can finally take care of a matter that should have been taken care of long before now that I understood was a bipartisan matter. Both sides of the aisle wanted to help address the tremendous backlog of DNA rape kits that needed to be analyzed. The Debbie Smith Act, as my friend from Arizona indicated, was previously passed and reauthorized, and now we need to reauthorize it again because even though there are 641,000 DNA cases that were processed, there is still so much that needs to be done. In addition to crime scene evidence and rape kits, the Debbie Smith funds also are utilized to process offender DNA samples to ensure evidence from unsolved crimes can be matched against our database. So the funds provided by the act are incredibly critical since they will help solve crimes and get criminals off the streets. I know from my friends across the aisle and in our hearing that was just going on that I just left in Judiciary that there is an effort to, as one Democratic witness said: Gee, we are here just to ask you to do something. Rather than taking guns from law-abiding citizens as is being proposed, I would submit a better answer is let's get the criminals off the street. I know there is a big effort to get criminals out of prison, but how about if we get criminals back in prison for crimes they have committed that have not been adjudicated? This needs to be addressed.…”