THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 28, 1994 TAG: 9408280028
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 127 lines
Here's how area members of Congress were recorded on major roll call votes in the week ending Aug. 26.
HOUSE
CRIME BILL: By a vote of 235 for and 195 against, the House approved legislation (HR 3355) to spend $30.2 billion over six years on crime prevention and punishment. Major outlays are $5.5 billion for social programs to steer youth away from crime, $1.4 billion to combat drug abuse, $13.5 billion for hiring local police and border patrol agents and $9.7 billion for building prison cells. About two-thirds of the cost would be paid through a trust fund financed by cuts in the federal work force over the next few years. Remaining costs will be added to the national debt unless Congress finds a means of offsetting them.
The bill outlaws 19 types of semi-automatic assault weapons and expands the number of federal offenses subject to the death penalty from two to 60. In addition to addressing the five percent of crimes that are federal, it uses the leverage of Treasury funds to bring about tougher state and local treatment of those who commit nonfederal crimes.
Supporter Don Edwards, D-Calif., said that ``in the last 30 years, I have never voted for one of these bills before. But I am going to vote for this bill. . . . Why? Because for the first time in a crime bill, we are reaching down in our society for the roots to cure the problems in our society that result in all of this crime. All of the other bills have been more prisons, more punishments. For the first time, we have a preventative program. . . . They will work because they will go into the drug problem in this country. The drug problem in this country is filling our jails.''
Opponent Henry Hyde, R-Ill., objected to the spending on social programs, saying: ``Now liberals who have dominated this country since the great days of FDR are bewildered by the unexpected explosion of criminality. . . . Their answer to the social pathologies that are the direct result of the excesses of the liberal welfare state is more of the same. Have you forgotten Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the omnibus crime bill and Safe Streets Act of 1968. It, too, was this thick; millions of dollars for the same programs, and the statistics keep mounting.''
A yes vote was to send the 1994 crime bill conference report to the Senate.
Herbert H. Bateman, R-Va. No
Owen B. Pickett, D-Va. No
Robert C. Scott, D-Va. No
Norman Sisisky, D-Va. No
Eva Clayton, D-N.C. Yes
H. Martin Lancaster, D-N.C. Yes
ALTERNATIVE CRIME BILL: By a vote of 197 for and 232 against, the House defeated an 11th hour bid by conservatives to head off passage of HR 3355 (above). Their measure sought to strip the 1994 crime bill of most of its spending for social and anti-drug programs as well as its outlawing of 19 types of semi-automatic weapons. Sponsor Bill McCollum, R-Fla., said the alternative ``puts all of the money into prisons and into real cops on the beat and not this phony thing that is in this bill, and does what is necessary to put swiftness and certainty of punishment back into our system again . . . to send a deterrent message . . . instead of doing the kind of social welfare spending junk that is in the main bill.''
William Hughes, D-N.J., said: ``There are two big interest groups in this country that are involved in this crime bill. . . . the National Rifle Association on one side and our police and our governors and our mayors and our county officials and our district attorneys on the other side. Members have a choice. . . . Are they going to stand with the NRA or are they going to stand with those that represent the public interest?''
A yes vote supported the alternative.
Bateman Yes
Pickett Yes
Scott No
Sisisky Yes
Clayton No
Lancaster No
CRIME BILL: By a vote of 61 for and 38 against, the Senate approved the conference report on the 1994 crime bill (HR 3355), sending the $30.2 billion measure to President Clinton for his signature. In part, the bill funds the hiring of tens of thousands of local police; requires life behind bars for those convicted of their third violent or drug-related crime, if the third conviction results from a federal crime; enables 13- and 14-year-olds to be tried as adults in certain circumstances, and funds programs to reduce violence against women such as spousal abuse. It also funds a variety of social welfare and anti-drug programs to prevent criminality.
Supporter John Kerry, D-Mass., said: ``There is not a criminologist in America worth his or her salt who would not say that this is the toughest crime bill and most comprehensive crime bill ever put forward in the U.S. Congress.''
Minority Leader, Bob Dole, R-Kan., said: ``We have spent trillions and trillions of dollars on the Great Society and the War on Poverty, and yet, during the past 30 years, violent crime has increased by a staggering 500 percent. Apparently, we still have not learned.''
A yes vote was to pass the bill.
John W. Warner, R-Va. No
Charles S. Robb, D-Va. Yes
Jesse A. Helms, R-N.C. No
Lauch Faircloth, R-N.C. No
PROCEDURAL HURDLE: By a vote of 61 yes and 39 against, the Senate achieved the three-fifths majority it needed to clear a procedural hurdle placed by Republicans in the path of the '94 crime bill conference report (HR 3355). The vote overcame a GOP challenge to the legitimacy of an off-budget trust fund to pay much of the bill's $30.2 billion cost out of savings from civil service job cuts.
Majority Leader George Mitchell, D-Maine, noted that the trust fund was widely popular in both parties when introduced last November, but ``many of the senators now . . . saying they are going to vote for the point of order praised this provision when it was first proposed. . . ''
Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, said: ``Raising a point of order under the Congressional Budget Act is the only tool we have to prevent . . . unlimited deficit spending. . . . So in the rush to get this crime bill to the president before Labor Day, I ask, have we forgotten the deficit and the debt?''
A yes vote was to move to final approval of the crime bill.
Warner No
Robb Yes
Helms No
Faircloth No
c: Copyright 1994, Thomas Reports Inc. by CNB