Political Quotes

“I want to talk about the juvenile justice conference. Last year, in response to the terrible tragedy at Columbine, we passed a bipartisan juvenile justice bill through the Senate. Something like 73 Senators of both parties voted for this bill. We had weeks of debate. We had a number of amendments that improved it and a number of amendments that were rejected, but we had a full and open debate and a number of rollcall votes. As I said, it passed with 73 Senators voting for it. That was last year. I urged before school started last year that we have a conference and work out the differences, if there are differences, between the House and the Senate; that we vote up or down. The conference is chaired by a Republican Senator, and we have not had anything other than a formal meeting to start the conference the day before the August recess in 1999. We have not met since then. We went off to our summer vacation and came back to schools starting all across the country. We just returned this week from this year's summer recess and we still have not had a meeting of the conferees.”