Political Quotes

“I was a member of the majority that voted to put the gentleman's language into the bill to make it perfectly clear that drug courts are an important part of this legislation, and the funding is available. In fact, any community that wants to use all of the funding made available to that community for drug courts can do so under their bill, and, in fact, we have almost $2 billion per year made available so conceivably, if drug courts are the preference of each locality in the country, all of the money could be spent on drug courts. I think they are a fine program. Some of the localities in my district are starting them and want to have this money available. Other communities in my district do not feel they need drug courts, and I think, as a result, we should make it plain that this program does have it available, the bill does that, but it does not sequester any funds in this program for any specific program. I think if we are going to give the localities the flexibility to handle fighting crime at the local level in the manner they see best fit, we should leave the bill as it is with the specific language allowing drug courts, but nothing more.”