Ted Poe: “Mr. Speaker, during this debate, on which we agree this legislation should be passed, we have talked a lot about…”

“Mr. Speaker, during this debate, on which we agree this legislation should be passed, we have talked a lot about victims. The victims that we have talked about are more than statistics. They are real people. Before I came to Congress, I spent over 20 years on the criminal court bench in Houston, Texas. I saw about 25,000 people come to the courthouse who were charged with the most serious crimes in our society. Along with those defendants came other people who didn't want to be at the courthouse either, but they were there because they were chosen by defendants to be prey, in many cases, and those were victims of crime. They came to the courthouse. They were all races, all ages, of both sexes, and of all philosophies, but crime does not discriminate against who the victim may be.”