Political Quotes

“Madam President, I would like to talk for a few minutes about the crime problem we have in America today, the dramatically increasing problem of heroin abuse. Over the last week, we have had a lot of discussion about this crisis, which I am afraid we are just on the cusp of. I think it is going to get worse, based on my experience and my best judgment, but the effort to understand and address it has been going on for a while. In January, we had a good hearing on this issue in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I want to mention a few things I think we ought to keep in mind as we address this very important problem. Just as background, I served 15 years as a prosecutor, 12 as a U.S. attorney, a Federal prosecutor, and 2\1/2\ as an assistant U.S. attorney. So that was my background when I came here. I was very active and studied the drug and crime problem in America, and I learned some things. There are cycles in this, and people wrote about it over the years. I think we are, unfortunately, moving into another cycle, and we have to be very careful. It is so painful to have a large prison population. We don't want to have that.…”