Patrick Leahy: “I believe the Hatch-Leahy juvenile justice bill is a firm and significant step in the right direction. The passage of…”

“I believe the Hatch-Leahy juvenile justice bill is a firm and significant step in the right direction. The passage of that bill showed that when Senators roll up their sleeves and get to work, we can make significant progress. And we did. Senators were on the floor, they were in conferences in the cloakroom and off the floor. We worked extremely hard to come together. We had some false steps at the beginning, but we finally came together when we passed a piece of legislation 73 to 25. That took a lot of work. We had conservatives and liberals and moderates holding hands on a number of issues to make it work because we cared about the children of this country.”