Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, when you ask for the courts to review it, that is so it can be considered in the courts with all the evidence, not in the political branch. It is better to leave it to the sentencing commission and the courts than to floor amendments in the House of Representatives. If this is such a good idea, then let us do it through the regular order. Let us have some hearings, subcommittee markup, committee markup, and then we can slowly and deliberately consider such an amendment. The purpose of the sentencing commission is to get away from the floor amendments and the sound bites so you can have intelligent sentencing. We have had situations where you have had sentences that are way out of proportion to crimes that are just as serious, or less serious, totally out of context. That is why we try to get away from it, so that serious crimes get serious punishment, lesser crimes get lesser punishment. That is the purpose of the sentencing commission. You cannot do that with floor amendments in the House of Representatives. That is why we would hope this amendment could be defeated. We could get a clean Amber Alert bill passed so we can get that enacted and not have to get bogged down in consideration of amendments such as this.”