Mr. President, I send a motion to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair would advise the Senator we have a motion pending. Unanimous consent is needed to set aside that motion. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending motion be set aside temporarily. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. President, I send a motion to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will state the motion. Mr. President, for 6 years we have been trying to adopt a crime bill, and during that period we have passed some excellent bills in the Senate. We have passed some pretty good bills in the House. But what has happened to us every year is that when we have gotten to conference, when a few very senior Members of both Houses of Congress have sat down to work out the differences between the House bill and the Senate bill, what has happened is that we have ended up dropping the get-tough, grab-them-by-the-throat provisions, and we have often ended up with bills that look nothing like either the Senate bill or the House bill. I think probably the most stark example of this was the crime bill in the last Congress. In 1991 we passed a very strong crime bill in the Senate. They passed a fairly strong crime bill in the House. But, yet, when we went to conference to work out the difference between the two bills, systematically all of the tough provisions were dropped. For example, whereas we had changed the habeas corpus statute to make it easier to carry out the death penalty, that provision was dropped, and in its place 23 Supreme Court decisions which over the previous two decades had strengthened law enforcement, were overturned. And a bill was produced which the Association of State Attorneys General, an association made up of both Democrats and Republicans, called a "pro- criminal bill". As a result, many Members of the Senate voted against the bill, many Members of the House voted against it, and, ultimately, President Bush vetoed it. We are now going back to conference with another crime bill. I do not support every provision of the Senate bill. There are some provisions of the Senate bill that I strongly oppose. But, overall, it is an excellent bill. The House has passed what I believe is a fairly good crime bill. They were not allowed to vote on many provisions of the Senate bill because of their restricted rules, and because the decision was made by the Democratic leadership to prevent those votes from occurring. But, basically, we have two versions of the crime bill now going to conference. There are some things that were different in 1992. In 1992, there were still Members of Congress who were willing to stand up and say that they opposed mandatory minimum sentencing. There were still Members of Congress in 1992 who were willing to stand up and say that putting people in prisons for long periods of time was not effective. What has happened since 1992 is that public opinion has coalesced, and as a result there are only a very few Members of Congress who are willing to stand up and say the things that they were willing to say 2 years ago when we considered the crime bill. I am not convinced, however, Mr. President, that all of those people have changed their minds and hearts. I am very much concerned that when we go to conference with the House there will be real pressure and a real effort undertaken to gut the crime bill, to drop the funding mechanism so that we simply have a hollow authorization bill which makes a lot of promises, none of which we can fulfill. I am concerned that our minimum mandatory sentencing provisions will be dropped. As a result, I think it is important for Members to go on record now in instructing our conferees as to what we want to achieve in this conference. Basically, what I have done for the sake of saving the time of the Senate is, I have combined several items into a motion to instruct the conferees. Under the Senate rules, this motion to instruct can be divided. If any of my colleagues would like to see it divided, and see its elements voted on separately, I would be very happy to have the motion divided and to have them voted on separately. I would say to my colleagues that I have combined these provisions into one motion for the purpose of trying to save some time for some of our Senators, who I know are meeting with our Canadian colleagues in a very important meeting. What I have done is, I have taken several provisions and included them in one. But I wanted to let our colleagues know that if any Member of the Senate wants to divide the instructions and force a separate vote on them, that not only do they have the right to do it, but that I do not object to it. What have I tried to instruct the conferees to do? I have tried to focus on a series of issues. I am the cosponsor of other instructions that will be offered. The combination of all of these instructions produces a firm commitment to the Senate bill, to real funding based on a real procedure, to build prisons, to institute mandatory minimum sentencing, and basically is a commitment to get tough. Our bleeding Nation demands that we have action on crime. If this year, after all this debate, after all the public input, after all the statements by the President, if we do not produce a strong crime bill I think it is going to be an indictment of the democratic process itself. So I do not want that to happen. That is why I have offered this motion to instruct. But before going through this motion to instruct, I want to make several points clear. First of all, if we produce a bad crime bill, a crime bill that funds all these new social programs but does not make a commitment to put violent criminals in prison, I am going to strongly oppose it. Second, if we produce a mediocre crime bill that drops the get-tough provisions, it would be my intention to come right back and introduce those tough provisions again, and seek a vote in the Senate on the same day that we vote on the conference report. If anybody thinks that this Congress is going to adjourn without adopting new mandatory minimum sentencing, and truth in sentencing, I want them to know that I strongly disagree, and I believe the majority of the Members of Congress are going to disagree. So I am trying to make a simple statement, like the Fram oil filter ad: That one way or another, now or later, we are going to get this job done. I pray and hope that our conferees will get it done now. Now what does this motion to instruct do? First of all, it asks our conferees to stay with the funding mechanism that Senator Byrd offered. I was a cosponsor of it. It was a broadly supported, bipartisan effort that set in the law reductions in the size of the Federal bureaucracy and has an enforcement mechanism based on freezing the level of hiring in executive departments when we find that they are breaching the new limits on the total level of Federal employment. The net result is that by paring back the bureaucracy, we can save $22 billion that can go into our anti-crime trust fund. So the first part of this motion is to instruct our conferees to stay with our funding mechanism. There is no such mechanism in the House bill. The House bill spends far more money than we do, but it provides no way to pay for one nickel of that spending. As a result, it is all hollow promises which have no impact on the street, where violent crime is occurring. So the first thing I want our conferees to do is stay with our funding mechanism. It was endorsed earlier in the House and has been adopted three times in the Senate. Every time we have gotten down to the goal line, trying to make it the law of the land, it ended up being killed. I do not want it to die this time. Without it, there are no prisons, no additional police officers on the street, and no effective crime bill. We cannot put people in jails we do not have. I would like to stop building motels and calling them jails. The point is: Without a commitment to pay for these programs, we are simply making empty promises. The second part of the instruction has to do with minimum mandatory sentencing. There are three parts to it. I agreed, in the spirit of compromise, with the Clinton administration and with people representing their views here in the Senate, to grant a small amount of flexibility on mandatory minimum sentencing, but only in the cases where someone has no prior criminal record, where they were not carrying a gun, where they were not engaged in an act of violence, and where they were not financing drug sales. I am not for this provision, but in trying to work to come together on a crime bill that could be adopted on a bipartisan basis, I accepted this compromise. But it is very limited and it is very focused. What the House has done is adopt the President's original position, which would have repeat offenders, by the thousands, put back on the streets. The Senate provision is as far as I am willing to go. It is a compromise that we worked out on a bipartisan basis. The House provision is retroactive, and it allows people that already have had a criminal conviction to be exempt from mandatory minimum sentencing, and I think it flies in the face of what the American people want done. I am asking our conferees to stay with our provision with regard to exemptions for mandatory minimum sentencing. The next provision of mandatory minimum sentences has to do with selling drugs to a minor. We have adopted in our bill this year -- and every time we voted on a crime bill for the last 6 years -- an amendment that requires 10 years in prison, without parole, for adults who sell drugs to a minor, or who use a minor in drug trafficking. Really, the second item is of equal importance, because what is happening is that drug distributors know that minors are not being put in jail, so they are using minors to deliver drugs. They are putting minors in great danger. They are doing great damage to these young people by getting them involved in the drug industry at such an early age. I want these people to know that when we apprehend them -- adults selling drugs to minors, or using minors in drug felonies -- they are going to prison for 10 years, without parole, no matter how soft- hearted the Federal judge may be, or no matter how they think society has done them wrong, or no matter who their daddy is. And a repeat offense is life imprisonment. The final provision in mandatory minimum sentencing that I have in this instruction to conferees is 10 years in prison, without parole, for individuals possessing a firearm during the commission of a drug felony or other crime; 20 years imprisonment for discharging the firearm; and life imprisonment, without parole, for killing somebody with a firearm during the commission of such a crime. Of course, we have the death penalty in aggravated cases. As I said in the beginning, these are the items that I believe we need to instruct conferees on. This motion is divisible. If someone wants a separate vote on one part of it, I will be happy to have the separate vote, simply as a courtesy to my colleagues. None of these items are controversial, in my opinion. My guess is that we have 75 votes for any one of them, and rather than vote on them separately, I will be happy to vote on them together. But I have no objection whatsoever to having them separated out if someone wants a vote. So this is a straightforward motion to instruct. I hope it will be supported. I think it is important. I want a strong anti-crime bill. I do not want all of our effort to be derailed. I hope my colleagues -- especially those on the other side of the aisle -- will know that my effort in this motion to instruct is to strengthen our conferees. I am worried that, with 62 conferees in the House from 11 different committees, we are in for a tough, prolonged conference. I think it is very important to be clear up front that we in the Senate are not going to put up with a mediocre crime bill. I yield the floor. Mr. SIMON addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois [Mr. Simon], is recognized. Mr. President, this is wrong for two reasons, and I hope the motion by my friend from Texas will be defeated. It is wrong, first of all, because except for very rare instances, we should not instruct conferees. Conferees ought to be able to sit down and work out agreements, practical agreements. I have to say that my record is not pure on that. Occasionally, I have voted for instructing conferees, but rarely have I done it, because as a legislative procedure, it is wrong. Second, this is wrong in substance. He said we have to have a commitment to get tough on crime. You bet. We also have to have a commitment to get smart on crime. If we followed the philosophy of my friend from Texas, we would have the most crime-free society in the world today. In 1970, we had 134 people per 100,000 in our prisons, in jails. Now we have 510. What happened to the crime rate in that period? Every person in this gallery, every person in the Senate, every citizen of America knows what happened to the crime rate. It has escalated; 510 per 100,000. Do you know who is second? South Africa, with 311; Venezuela is third, with 157; Canada has 109; the Netherlands has 41. If putting people in prison stopped crime, we would be a crime-free society, indeed. But we had better recognize that is not solving our problems. Who are the people going to prison? Well, 82 percent are high-school dropouts. What if, in the State of California -- which is in the near future going to spend $10 billion on new prisons -- they spent half that amount on prisons and spent half of it to improve the educational product? Would we be doing more to cut back on crime? I believe we would. I believe any rational study suggests that. It just does not make sense. Drugs and alcohol are involved in a huge amount of crime. And what do we do? Well, we have had a drug program that up until this administration came in was all for locking people up, and too often people learned how to use drugs in prisons, instead of spending money on treatment and education. The majority of people in our prisons today were unemployed when they were arrested. You show me an area of high unemployment, and I will show you an area of high crime. Let us do something about getting jobs in rural poor areas and inner-city areas, and you are going to do something about crime. I read the Los Angeles Times op-ed piece by a Catholic priest. I cannot remember his name just offhand. He looked at our crime bill. He is an assistant chaplain of the State prison in California. He asked a class of 40 people in that prison, experts on crime, if you will, what we ought to be doing to cut back on crime. They came up with hardly any of the answers that we have. Their No. 1 suggestion was get jobs for people. And one of their suggestions was reduce the amount of guns in our society. We are doing something about that. But what if instead of $22 billion for more prisons, and things like that, we had a real jobs program for people? What if we really did something about education in our society where we have poor schools? Sweden, which does not have the income disparities that we have, spent 2 to 3 times as much in poor areas for those attending school as in the wealthier areas. We do just the opposite. Does it make sense? It does not make sense. Then the second thing that is part of the Gramm proposal is mandatory minimums. Let me say this to the credit of my friend from Texas, and I have observed this in the Judiciary Committee, when the Republicans were in power he saw to it that the nominees that came from him were much above average, and I give him credit for that. I voted for his nominees even when they were controversial. I voted for his nominees. But I think he ought to be listening to a fellow named Plato who wrote a long time ago. He said: Make sure you appoint good judges, and then leave the sentencing to the judges. My guess is, and I have not talked to any of those nominees of Phil Gramm, those judges would say that one of the worst things we have done is impose all these mandatory minimums. We cannot tell the kind of situations that you run into. Federal judges are just overwhelmingly opposed to mandatory minimums. Our present policies just do not make sense. We are compounding the problems where there are a lot of good things in this crime bill, but I confess I was one of four who voted against it because we are building on myths. My staff just this morning brought this to my attention, and I have to tell you I have not read it. The Cato Institute, which is not a liberal operation, has in their publication called Policy Analysis this, and the heading on the story is this: "Prison Blues. How America's foolish sentencing policies endanger public safety." The Gramm motion wants to build and compound the problems that we have with mandatory minimums. The House legislation does not do away with mandatory minimums. I would vote to do away with them tomorrow. Should people who are guilty of crimes of violence spend time in prison, and should we protect society? Absolutely. Sixty percent of those in Federal prisons today have not been involved in crimes of violence. We are wasting $20,000 a year to pay for each of them. I think we have to be more creative. I think we have to look at other countries. I think we have to do a better job. The Gramm motion just builds on our present folly, and compounds the present folly, and I think should be defeated. I yield the floor, Mr. President. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from Texas. Mr. President, there is not any Member of the Senate that I have a higher regard for than the Senator from Illinois. This is a case where we differ really for two reasons, I think. First, I think we have a different assessment of the facts; and second, I think we basically have a different theory and conception of human behavior. What I would like to try to do is just respond to the points that the Senator raised and then at least for my part, unless some other point is raised, to conclude the debate. First of all, I would take some issue with the thesis that there is no established relationship between crime and punishment. In fact, if you look at the trend lines, I would argue that you can make a case that in the 1960's and the 1970's we dramatically reduced the amount of time that people were spending in prison for committing violent crimes. When you consider such factors as probability of apprehension, probability of indictment, the probability of conviction, and then how much time in prison you served if you actually were convicted, I would argue that the expected cost in prison time for committing crime in America fell dramatically in the 1960's and the 1970's, and in the early 1980's we started to reserve that. As we started to reserve that, the trend started to change. Second, I wish we knew the root causes of crime. There is no doubt about the fact that a welfare system that creates hopelessness and dependence, that is a fertile area for child abuse, is a clear breeder of this problem. We are spending $301 billion a year trying to deal with those kinds of problems, and I want to find root causes. I am not positive that we have truly identified them. I do not buy the thesis that the reason people are criminals is because they are poor or because they cannot read. When I was growing up, I had uncles who did not read, I had lots of kinfolk who were poor. As far as I know none of them ever robbed anybody or ever beat up anybody or ever committed a crime or ever went to jail. Mr. President, will my colleague yield? I am happy to yield. Having said that, I think the Senator has to admit that there is some relationship to the fact that 82 percent of the people in prison are high school dropouts. That is totally at variance with the general population. So there is some relationship between their education and their being in prison, that they have found fewer options out there. If I might respond, I am certainly in favor of reducing high school dropout rates. Whether people drop out of high school or whether they do not, they have to be held accountable for their actions. While I do not know how to solve every part of the crime problem, there is one part of it that is very much on my mind and in my heart and I know how to solve it. That is we do not have to get up every morning and open the newspaper and read about some violent predator criminal who had been convicted 5 or 6 times for terrible crimes and he or she is back out on the street and has killed someone's child. We do not have to live with that. What my provisions are trying to do is to assure that when people are convicted of these crimes, when they get these long sentences they actually serve the sentences. Our colleague from Florida, Senator Mack, presented the other day in the crime debate an example of where Florida had struggled with this problem. The case he pointed out was a professional criminal who had committed some 60 violent crimes who had been convicted of 7 major felonies, who was out of prison on an early release program, who went to a quiet neighborhood, broke into a home, beat up a pregnant woman, and stole her car. They apprehended him, thank God, and they put him in jail, and they gave him life imprisonment, but 6 months later he is up for parole. That makes the criminal justice system the laughing stock of the Nation. So my point is I do not know how to solve each part of the problem, but there is part of it I know how to solve. I know that when people are on the other side of the bars, that if you are on this side of the bars they cannot do you any harm. I want to be certain that when people commit these violent crimes and they are apprehended and sent to jail, that they stay in prison for a long period of time, and that society is protected. There are a lot of people in prison. The problem is that they are in and out of prison. I do not know how many people commit crimes because they do not believe they are going to do the time that they are sentenced to and how many might be deterred if they believed that they really were going to spend a long time in prison. My law enforcement officials tell me in Texas that when they apprehend somebody for a drug violation, say, and that criminal finds out -- when they believe they are going to be sentenced in the State system, where they will serve a very small fraction of their sentence, they do not take the process very seriously. But when they find out that they have sold the drugs close to a school or that they violated some other Federal law and they are going to Federal prison where there is no parole, suddenly they take the process very, very seriously. So what I want to do is to be certain that if we say there ought to be 10 years in prison for selling drugs to a child, that people know, no matter what the circumstances are, that they are going to serve the 10 years in prison. I believe that will mean fewer people in prison, not more people, because I think we will deter the crime. Finally, let me say in terms of judges -- and I appreciate my colleague's kind comment. I think most Members of the Senate work hard in trying to appoint good judges. But as I have looked at data from the sentencing commission, what I have found is that when judges have discretion, the sentences that are being handed out are not substantially different from the minimums that are required. If someone has committed a drug felony and they had a gun, and I look at the sentencing commission data, I do not find that use of the gun results in more jail time for these people. I find, around the country, tremendous variability in sentences. So what I am trying to do in these provisions is to simply eliminate the uncertainty by saying that if you are convicted of these crimes -- for example, possessing a firearm during the commission of a violent crime or drug felony -- that you know you are going to get 10 years in prison and you are going to serve every day of it. If you discharge the firearm, you are going to get 20 years. If you kill somebody, you are going to spend your life in prison or you are going to be put to death. That is something people could understand. Since I do not want people to carry firearms, I do not want them to discharge a firearm trying to shoot people, and I do not want them to kill people, I want them to know with certainty what the penalty is going to be. And the same with these other provisions. So I think this is a straightforward motion. It simply supports the bill that we adopted overwhelmingly. I hope my colleagues will accept it. Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware. Mr. President, I do not want to take a lot of the Senate's time, because we had an opportunity in November to debate. As my friend from Texas pointed out, we voted on a lot of this stuff a number of times. But I would like to make a few comments. As usual, I find myself somewhere between the Senator from Texas and the Senator from Illinois on these issues. I do think there is a relationship between punishment and crime. I do think there is a correlation. I do not think that poverty dictates criminal behavior. Although I will acknowledge that, statistically, there is a higher rate, that may be because they cannot afford good lawyers. And it may be as complicated as they are in a very different circumstance that caused them to do that. For example, it is true that 85 percent of the people in State prison systems are high school dropouts. But the truth also is that the vast majority of high school dropouts never commit a crime. So I do not want to get too overwrought by the statistics, except to make three or four basic points. First, all of the examples my friend from Texas has mentioned and others -- Democrats and Republicans alike -- about the person who commits a heinous crime after having been convicted and sentenced in a previous crime, having served only a small part of their time and having been let out, they are all State prisoners. They are not Federal prisoners. I am sure there is a Federal prisoner who has served his or her time and gotten out and committed a heinous crime. But I have yet to hear one example on the floor of the U.S. Senate since I authored, with one other person, a bill that became known as the sentencing commission. I am the guy who originally -- with Senator McClellan and Senator Kennedy, way back then, and with others in the 1970's -- wrote that bill. And it works. The irony is we have a Federal system that works pretty well. The Senator from Texas is right. You get convicted in a Federal court, you go to jail. And you go to jail based on the sentencing guidelines which drastically limits the discretion of a Federal judge. Because the Senator from Texas is right. You look around the country. What happens is, you get convicted of the same crime in, say, Delaware or Arkansas or California or New York, and you will find wildly varying sentencing, and wildly varying amounts of time that are actually served. So, first point: It does make a difference that you have certainty in the system. The Federal system has certainty and the Federal system works well. And, to quote a former President who was quoting someone else, I guess, but a phrase that was a favorite phrase of his, "If it ain't fixed, don't" -- "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I always have trouble remembering everything Ronald Reagan said, and I had trouble with that, as well. He used to say, all kidding aside, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The Federal system is not broke. It can be improved, but it is not broke. We have prison space. Our folks are going in prisons when they are convicted. We are providing more money for more prison space. We can argue whether it is fast enough or ahead of the curve enough or not, but we have space. Also, when we put folks in the Federal prison, they stay in the Federal prison. When they get convicted in a Federal court, they go to prison. Now, the problem is, my friends from the Dakotas and Texas and Delaware and everywhere else are frustrated, and they are frustrated because their States do not do such a hot job -- not very good, not as good as the Federal Government. That is a strange thing to hear said on this floor. But they are not as good. And so, what they do is, on average -- and I will not take the time to go down every State, because I do not want someone suggesting to me that I am in any way violating the rules of the Senate by maligning the State; and I am not maligning anyone, because these are just facts. The average amount of time a person convicted in a State court in any State in America -- not "any" -- most States in America, because some have truth-in-sentencing, but you get convicted of a crime and the statute book says you can get up to 10 years, and the judge stands there and says, "I'm going to send you to jail for 5 years." So your sentence is 5 years. In all the States, on average, that person is only going to go to jail and actually serve time in jail of about 2 years, roughly, 43 percent of the time to which they have been sentenced after having been convicted without having received the maximum. This is not 42 percent of the time they could have been sentenced to. This is 42 or 43 percent of the time they were actually sentenced to by a judge. Say they are now sentenced to serve 5 years in the State penitentiary. They only get 43 percent of that time. If a Federal judge says, "You are now sentenced to 5 years in the Federal prison," you serve that 5 years. You get good time off, which is minimal. And the other side of it, the Federal judge has the ability to increase or decrease your sentence 15 percent, either because of extenuating, mitigating, or aggravating circumstances. We left them a little discretion when we wrote that, but not much. Now, that is frustrating to everyone. So one of the provisions the Senator from Texas has -- and I know the Senator from North Dakota also feels strongly about -- is this truth in sentencing. It says, we, the Federal Government, are going to tell you, every State in America, that you have to adopt the way we do it federally or we are not going to give you any money for prison construction. As I have said before, I am for that. I think that is a good thing; if it will work if the States will actually go out and do what they have to do to qualify for this money. But let me tell you, let us assume that the Presiding Officer is the Governor of Connecticut or the Governor of Texas or the Governor of California. I walk up, and I am your administrative assistant, and I walk in and say, "Good news, Gov, you know that prison population problem we have? The U.S. Senate and the U.S. House just passed a bill and they sent it to the President. There are $6 -- $ 8 -- probably closer to $8 or $10 billion -- $6 or $8 billion in there for prison construction for the States." And you go, "Wow, boy, I dodged that bullet. I do not have to go to the legislature now to ask for a tax increase to build more prisons to solve our problems. The Federal Government is coming to our rescue." "Wait a minute. That's the good news. The bad news is, in order to even put in an application to get any of that prison construction money we have to prove to the Feds that we are keeping our prison population in jail for 85 percent of the time, like the Federal Government does -- 85 percent of the time for which they have been convicted." Even for a very slow Governor -- and the Senator from Connecticut would be a very quick Governor -- even for a very slow Governor it does not take long to calculate that in his mind or her mind. If they are only having their folks serve 43 percent of the time now, and they have to serve 85 percent of the time -- unless they pass a law saying no more crime in Texas this year, we will have a moratorium on crime, unless that happens, if the crime rate continues roughly at the same rate, the Governor has to go down to the State legislature and say, "Ladies and Gentlemen of the House and Senate of the State of Texas, Delaware, Connecticut, North Dakota -- we have a chance to get money, Federal money to build prisons. But before we can get a penny we have to double our prison budget, build twice as many cells as we now have, so we can keep the people we now have in jail for 85 percent of the time, which is twice the time they are now serving. And you have to go to the taxpayers -- of Connecticut or Delaware or New York or California -- and tell them I am going to increase your taxes to do that before we can get any Federal money." I think Governors should do that. I think they should be honest with you. I think they should be honest with the American people and say, "We have a problem here in the State of X. We have prison overcrowding. We are letting our folks out of jail early. It should stop and I am going to raise your taxes by $500 million, $1 billion" -- whatever the size of the State. I call that truth in legislating. We are doing that here. We are telling the American people exactly what everything is going to cost and exactly where we are going to get the money to pay for it. It was a long time in coming but we are doing it. That is what Governors should do. But my worry is here is what will happen. Maybe I am wrong. But I just want to get it on the Record. I am worried that if we attach the string requiring 85 percent of the time be served for those sentenced, one of two things is going to happen. Either the judges in the State are going to cut drastically back on the amount of time they sentence people to, people who deserve to be in jail a long time, or the State is not going to apply for the Federal money because in the Senate bill there is, for example, only $3 billion for State prison money -- it is called regional prisons -- Federal money that the States can use to put away their State prisoners. In order to qualify for that $3 billion over 5 years, the States collectively have to go out and first spend $60 billion -- $60 billion. I am not making this number up. So the States would have to spend $60 billion to have the right to qualify to compete for $3. I think that is fine. If they do it. But I make a prediction to you, and I have been proven wrong before and occasionally been proven right. I will make you a bet. I will make you the following bet. I will bet you that if this provision requiring 85 percent of time served stays in the bill relating to any portion of the prison money, that the States will not build new prisons. That money will sit there and not be spent. Or, if it is spent, it will be spent in the following way. The county jails -- and a lot of counties have the responsibility of taking care of the jail system -- in wealthy counties will go out and they will spend the money and they will get the money. And the very place we need the increased prison space, in the high crime rate areas, will not have more prisons, and the very place we do not need it will get the prisons built if any are built at all. So, what I would rather see us do -- and I just offer this as consideration for my friend from North Dakota and my friend from Texas and others, and keep in mind I am for certainty in the prison system. Again it used to sound almost heretical to suggest, but a Democrat wrote that bill -- this guy -- Biden. So I am all for it. My bona fides have been proven for 12 years on this subject. I am for certainty, and keeping you in jail to serve your time. But I would rather see us say something like the following, which I think we might be able to get agreement to on the House side: That a State, in order to qualify to get this money, would have to submit to the Attorney General a plan that would demonstrate and in fact require that over a period of time they would move to meeting the requirement of having people serve up to 85 percent of the time for which they are sentenced. Because I want prisons built now. I do not want them built 5 years from now or 15 years from now. Last year 30,000 violent offenders, convicted in a court of law by a jury of their peers, for a violent offense -- 30,000 of all those convicted of violent crimes never served a day in jail; 30,000 never saw the inside of a jail after being sentenced or heard the clank of the bars behind them. These are not first time nonviolent offenders -- they may be a first-time violent offender, but they are not first time nonviolent offenders. I want those folks in jail. The Senator from Texas, I know he understood it, he could have cited the statistic which I have been citing for 10 years on this floor, that roughly 6 or 7 percent -- depending on which study you take -- of the criminals in America commit somewhere between 65 and 80 percent of all the crimes. Did you hear what I just said? An infinitesimal -- a very small percentage of the criminals commit most of the crimes. Those of you who are schoolteachers, those of you who live with school-teachers, those of you who know school teachers, ask them, with discipline problems in their school -- different than crime now -- if they could go into a school of 1,500 people, how many people, if they could arbitrarily remove the troublemakers in the school to change the nature of the way in which the school was run -- how many kids would they have to kick out of a school of 1,500 to restore some semblance of order? I will lay you 8 to 5, go home and ask anybody who teaches, I bet you they tell you for a school that size, they will give you a number from 30 to 75 kids max. That is human nature. It is the same way with criminals, the same principle. Almost 6 million felonies were committed last year -- crimes committed last year, and how many of these people commit them over and over and over again? Do you know how many crimes are committed on the average by an addict? A heroin addict? A cocaine addict? And most of them are polyabusers, they are heroin and cocaine and everything else. Do you know how many crimes a year they commit on average? One hundred fifty-four crimes a year. We have identified in the United States of America 2.7 million addicts; not users, addicts. Now figure it, you found those 2.7 million and assume that the number is off by 50 percent. Assume they commit 100 crimes apiece, and you can get them all off the street or all cured. Big impact. The point I am trying to make is this: We need more prison space. I think, although well intended, this is counterproductive to send me to a conference and tell me that I cannot bring back a bill that does not have a requirement of 85 percent of the time having been served. It seems to me you are sending me on a mission impossible, based on what the House has done. And even if I pull it off, and we have the votes to do it, you are being counterproductive. I want more prison money. I put in the Biden crime bill a total of $6 billion. I like the House's provision even better. They have $13 billion. We cannot afford that much, relative to the other, but they have no strings attached, basically. They allow the States to build these prisons now. Now. Not wait for regional prisons, not wait for any signoff. They allow them to start now. I see my friend from North Dakota is standing to speak; I will yield to him in a moment and then I will come back to the rest of the motion of the Senator from Texas. But I respectfully suggest we be somewhat more innovative. There is a guy named Henry Fulsom, who is a fine Republican elected official, the most honorable, decent man I have ever known, whom I served with on the county council in New Castle County, DE. Henry Fulsom was the first guy I heard say -- which I have heard many times since and I am sure it was said several hundred years ago -- he said politics is the art of the practical. I want a practical solution here. I want those 30,000 people last year who were convicted of a violent offense in the State prison system to go to jail. And to paraphrase my friend from Texas, although it would be best to keep them in jail 85 percent of their time, at least while they are in 45 percent of their sentence, they are not marauding my mother, my family, my constituents, my people. So it is better than nothing. I am afraid the alternative is nothing. I think we should use this as a wedge. It is not inappropriate like some of the other things in this amendment are totally inappropriate, in my view. It is not inappropriate to say to the States, "Look, you want Federal money, here's the deal: You have to do it this way." But I really think the 85 percent requirement makes it almost impossible for it to work, although I have no argument with the utility of that action if it were taken because, as I said -- again, I do not say this to keep pointing out I wrote a bill, but I say it for my own bona fides. This is not someone who is up here who really is not for tough prison sentences, who is not for flat-time sentencing, who is not for keeping people in jail. I am not a liberal in conservative clothing on this thing. This is real, live stuff. I am the guy who wrote the bill with others. The Federal system works well. The States would do well to emulate the system. But it seems to me if you insist that they immediately go to 85 percent, the cost to them and their taxpayers is so gigantic in order to qualify for such a small piece of money, that they are not going to do it. I respectfully suggest that all my colleagues or their staff just pick up the phone, call your Governor back home -- Democrat or Republican -- and ask them what they think, whether they can go to the legislature now and ask for an additional tax increase to build a number of prisons immediately to demonstrate that they are keeping people in 85 percent of the time. I am delighted to yield to my friend. I thank him for his patience. My friend from North Dakota knows a great deal about this subject and feels strongly about it. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota. Mr. President, I listened to the discussion by the Senator from Texas and the discussion by the Senator from Illinois. I had the same reaction as the chairman of the committee. The Senator from Illinois makes the point that if we do not do something about the causes of crime, then we are not going to resolve this problem. There are not enough bricks in the country to build enough prisons to respond to America's crime epidemic. Much of it is for reasons that we do not even begin to understand. Let me just describe, by reading you one piece from the Detroit News, about the death of a poor woman named Elizabeth Alvarez: These boys were 10 and 14 years old. We do not even begin to understand what is happening in this country. Would we have read this 10, 20, or 40 years ago? Things have changed, and those who say things have not changed do not understand what is happening on the streets in this country. This system does not work in this country. Walk a block from this building and look at any residential building and you will find bars on the windows. A block from the Capitol a building cannot be sold without bars on the windows. Is it to keep those residents in the buildings? No, not hardly, although you wonder who the prisoners are. It is to keep out those who would threaten the people living on the residential streets just blocks from the U.S. Capitol. I suppose all of us come here with individual experiences that cause us to look at the criminal justice system in a different way. Etched in my memory forever is a late night phone call telling me my mother had been killed in a high-speed police chase by a man who was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with 5 years suspended. And, of course, he was out in a fraction of the 5 years. I will probably never in my life overcome the anger I have at the criminal justice system. When you get involved in that system, especially if a loved one is affected, you understand that victims are not treated fairly. It is just a fact. They just are not treated fairly. There is a lot of anger all across this country because everyone now worries about becoming a victim to the increasing epidemic of violent crime. There is fear in this country that we did not have 10, 20 and 30 years ago. Last year, 24,000 murders, 110,000 rapes, 670,000 robberies, 1.1 million assaults. That is in a free country. We are the murder capital of the world. The question is, Why? The Senator from Illinois asked that question. I wish I knew the answer. If I or my colleagues knew the answer, I suspect we would spend all of our time constructing the kind of solutions that are necessary to respond and diminish the amount of violent crime in our country. But the fact is we do not know the answer. We know some of the causes, and we must begin to address some of those causes. But in the meantime, I support the instruction offered by Senator Conrad from North Dakota and Senator Mack from Florida. They propose to instruct the conferees that the crime legislation which comes back to us include the provision that if you are convicted of a violent crime, you serve 85 percent of your sentence. I come here to support that today, although it is not enough. It is the best we will get, but it is not enough. I this week introduced legislation which I expect to have considered over the next year or so, and I hope eventually will be passed, that does something much different than that. I want people convicted of violent crimes to be sentenced, and when they are sentenced they serve their entire sentence -- no fractions, no percentages. If you commit a violent crime, when you are sentenced, you serve your sentence. Now, how do you get States to do that? I have offered a bill that some will say is very difficult to support. Not for me. Some who do not know much about the Constitution will say it is unconstitutional, but in my judgment clearly it is not, and there are court decisions that support my position. What I suggest is this: States should have in place a policy that says, if you are convicted of a violent crime, you will serve your entire sentence -- no time off, no good time, no deciding that after watching cable television for several years we will let you out early. If you are sentenced for 7 years, you serve 7 years. If States elect not to have that policy in place and they decide for their own reasons -- in order to save money, because of overcrowding, or other things -- they decide they want to let people who have committed violent crimes out early, then I say make them responsible for the cost of that decision. We spend a lot of time talking about cost shifting in the health care system because some people are covered and some people are not; some people do not have the resources so somebody else has to pay for it. I tell you where there is shifting going on -- in the criminal justice system. Somebody says we cannot afford to keep somebody in prison, so we let them out early even if they are a violent criminal. Do you think that is not a cost to society? What about the next victim in the next month? Is that next victim not a cost, not only in terms of human tragedy but in income and property? The fact is this is simply cost shifting. Violent criminals let out early go out and commit more and more and more crime. My legislation very simply would say, if a State makes the decision to let a violent criminal out early, and that criminal then goes out and commits another violent crime during the time when he or she would have been in prison, the victim has the right to sue the State that let them out early. I want the jurisdiction that decides to save money by letting violent criminals out of jail to be responsible for that violent criminal's next act. I want the victims to be able to sue the State for not keeping that violent criminal in jail. Tough? Sure. Radical? Maybe to some. Right? Absolutely. The fear about the epidemic of violent crime in America is clear. It does not take Dick Tracy to understand who is going to commit the next violent act. It is going to be the person that committed the last violent act. For example, Polly Klaas in California, the young girl who was abducted from her home in the early evening and killed. I have in my briefcase the rap sheet of the man who abducted her. It is over 3 pages, single spaced, arrest after arrest, conviction and incarceration. And State incompetence after incompetence because the criminal justice system knew this criminal was dangerous and did not keep him locked up. And because that person was turned out on the streets, this young girl is now dead. Well, my point is we have to do things better and we have to do things smarter. I want to put as much pressure as we can on all those in charge of incarcerating people to get them to keep violent criminals in prison for their full sentence. I say to my friend from Delaware -- and I compliment him enormously for this bill -- we have to be a lot smarter about the way we incarcerate people. A criminal is not a criminal is not a criminal. We have over a million people in jail. Half of them are nonviolent. We do not need to build giant brick and mortar edifices to keep in prison offenders who are nonviolent. If the Senator will yield, he knows in the Biden crime bill there is $3 billion for just that, $3 billion for boot camps for nonviolent criminals. I was about to say that, and this is a demonstration of what I think we can do on a much larger scale. We can make room for 100,000 violent offenders now by turning nonviolent people out of those cells, and putting them in incarceration facilities that cost one-fifth of what it costs to build these giant prisons. That is the point. We have to be much smarter. I am simply saying the energy you see in the Chamber from Senator Conrad and Senator Mack is an energy that comes directly from the American people. The American people have decided that we do not want to be victims of crimes committed by criminals who should have still been in prison but were let out because States decided they could not afford to keep them in prison. They could not afford it, but the victim is going to have to afford the costs of being a victim of crime. Let me just again compliment the Senator from Delaware on this bill. However, I intend to come back again and again and again to try to effect a change in which we not only address the root causes of the crime epidemic but we also try to keep those who we know are violent behind bars for their full sentence so that they are not out victimizing other Americans. Mr. BIDEN addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware. I thank the Senator from North Dakota. We have no disagreement on the answer. It is the means to accomplish the ends. Let me be a bit facetious and suggest the following. A better way to assure that North Dakota would do what the Senator wants, if it does not already, or California or Texas or any State would do what the Senator wants would be to say, "You do not get any highway funds again unless you incarcerate people for 85 percent of the time," because they care about the highway funds. They do not have to raise more money in order to do that. They do not have to build anything. They are in a situation where that would have more impact. But to say now my theory is this: You get no money to keep people in prison unless you spend, if it is not twice the money, if it is 30 percent of the money, unless you spend a lot more money than you are going to get -- everyone would have to agree to that -- unless you spend a lot more money than you are going to get, you do not get any money to build prisons, I predict to you it will have the exact opposite effect my friend from North Dakota wants. More of those people will be out of jail -- not fewer, more. Before I ask unanimous consent here, I will conclude by suggesting to you we do not have a Federal problem. Running the risk of seeming like I am being a little too facetious, my friends who dare do this should go home and run for Governor. That is the place you should be. Run for Governor. And you be the one to go tell the people of your State you are going to raise their taxes. I hope you do. You should. But it gives Governors and State legislators a way out in order to ask for the money. They are going to have to go to the people in this antitax era and say, "Let me raise your taxes." You know how they lecture on balanced budgets all the time. I love those gubernatorial lectures on balanced budgets. They say, "Come down here." And they pass two amendments when the National Governors Conference meets. They have two resolutions to send to Congress. The first one is, "Congress, balance your budget like we do." The second one is, "And, by the way. Send us more money because we don't want to do our job and go to the people and tell them we need more money." Ninety-six percent of all the crime committed in America is committed solely within the jurisdiction of a Governor, a mayor, a county executive, or a local person -- 96 percent. We should help. And we are going to help. We are going to provide billions of dollars of help. I do not mind telling the American people where we are going to get the money to pay for this. Here is how we are going to pay for it flat out. But let us at least raise the money so they will spend it on what we want them to. Mr. President, I yield the floor. Mr. HATCH addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah. Mr. President, what drives the emotion of the distinguished Senator from Florida and his counterpart on the Democrat side of the floor is that people out there are tired of the average sentence time served in the States being 40 percent. And they are specifically tired of it when it comes to violent criminals. When a murderer gets a sentence of 15 years on the average, and serves less than 7, the average murderer in this country, it does not take many brains to realize that there has to be something done to keep these people off the street. When the average rapist gets sentenced to 8 years in prison and serves less than 2, a rapist -- our daughters are at risk -- it is not hard to understand why some of us would like to see those sentences, at least 85 percent, carried out. That is what the truth in sentencing is. Whether it should be triggered by the regional prison concept or some other concept, it is almost irrelevant to me. But we want to get the violent criminals, and lock them up and throw away the key for at least 85 percent of that time that they are sentenced. If they use a gun, then they ought to get it doubled. That is the way to stop the unwise, the unlawful, and the dirty, rotten use of guns in this society, not some ridiculous, idiotic, 5-day waiting period that has caused almost everybody to go out and buy their guns now -- the typical liberal solution to things. "Let us have a 5-day waiting a period. That is going to solve all of our problems." All that has done is increased gun sales like 300 percent across this country because people could not wait to go out and get their guns now that they are going to have to wait 5 days. These liberal solutions have never worked. Of course, now they have Brady II. Brady I was supposed to do everything for us. It has not done a doggone thing. In fact, it is going to undermine law enforcement in this country. Now they want an assault weapon ban. They are going to ban 19 weapons. But they have defined them in such a way that over 100 will be banned, but they are going to exclude, exempt, 650 that have basically the same firing mechanism as these so-called 19 -- to take away the rights of American citizens, as defined in the second amendment to keep and bear arms, which is certainly more than a militia right as defined by some today. That is the national guard right. That is not what the Founding Fathers meant. That is not what they meant when they wrote that amendment. The militia was every American citizen who felt inclined to support our country. So we can moan and groan about truth in sentencing all we want. But that is what the American people want. They want the violent criminals put away. I happen to agree with the distinguished Senator from North Dakota that we should not be spending all of our expensive jail time for those who are not violent people. I happen to agree with the Senator from Delaware that boot camps may be a solution for people like that. We should not make prison a very nice time for people. Unfortunately, our do-gooders on the liberal side of the equation want to make sure that everybody is treated beautifully in prison. Frankly, I think it is time to get tough on these people. I have another part of this I would like to spend a few minutes on. Mr. President, the two Houses of Congress are soon going to go to a conference on the crime bill. I regret to report that the crime bill passed by the other body contains several billion dollars in ill- defined social programs -- I might say ill-defined 1960's Great-Society- style social spending programs in the guise of anticrime legislation. As such, these wasteful social spending boondoggles will rob the people of Utah and every other State of scarce resources which would be aimed at fighting crime, building prisons, hiring local, State, and Federal law enforcement officials and officers, and similar law enforcement measures. Take, for example, the Local Partnership Act contained in the House bill. This program will give local governments $2 billion for fiscal years 1995 and 1996 to use for four purposes: education to prevent crime, substance abuse treatment to prevent crime, coordination of Federal crime prevention programs and, job programs to prevent crime. There are no other standards in the House bill. That is it -- those four broad-based standards. We just have these four general purposes. In plain English, this is just Federal money for local government social programs with the crime label put on them for cosmetic purposes. By slapping the phrase "to prevent crime" on these purpose clauses, this provides the cover to hijack $2 billion of precious crime fighting resources for anything at all that localities will label "education to prevent crime," or for drug treatment, or for more Government jobs programs. The $2 billion would be much better spent in really fighting crime by spending it on prisons, law enforcement officers, and equipment. Let me take another example of wasteful social spending in the House bill, the Model Intensive Grant Program. This program allows the Attorney General virtually total discretion to spend $1.5 billion over 5 years in grants for up to 15 chronic high-intensive crime areas to develop comprehensive crime prevention programs. This money apparently can be spent on anything that can arguably be said to attribute to reducing chronic violent crime. The House bill says this includes but is not limited to youth programs, "deterioration or lack of public facilities, inadequate public services such as public transportation," substance abuse treatment facilities, employment services offices, and police services, equipment, or facilities. I believe in spending wisely on crime prevention, although most of that funding should not come from the crime bill, where we should focus very heavily on enforcement. But this open-ended Model Intensive Grant Program allows spending on just about anything that can be remotely described as crime prevention, however tenuously, including public transportation. We are supposed to be sending the President an anticrime bill. Let the Department of Transportation offer some of its existing funds for transportation services for preventive crime. Let us not take it out of our crime bill. Mr. President, you can bet that conferees from the other side of the aisle will propose inadequate funding for new prisons in the crime bill. We will undoubtedly need to spend more on prisons. We need to spend more on prisons for two interrelated reasons. We can talk about ensuring that children do not go astray, and we should be concerned about that. But we have many vicious criminals right now who are not serving enough of their sentences. And speaking of crime prevention, one of the best things we can do to prevent crime right now is to take violent criminals off the streets for long periods of time so that they cannot commit anymore crimes. Another social spending program in the House bill is $525 million for a Youth Employment and Skills Crime Prevention Program which funnels cash to State and local governments for job training and make-work programs. This is a duplication of the programs I have just mentioned, except this one is run by the Department of Labor. Despite the fact that there are already over 150 Federal job training programs at a cost of over $20 billion a year, the Attorney General announced this week that the administration supports this program and has asked that Congress increase the program to $1 billion. Frankly, the best crime prevention program is one that ensures swift apprehension and certain and lengthy incarceration for violent criminals. The more than $4 billion in these three boondoggle programs in the bill the other body sent belong in prison construction and other measures. These social spending programs are neither tough nor smart on the fight against crime. We can and must spend our moneys more wisely, and in the process we have to move to truth in sentencing. I want to point out a little bit about just how these programs work. This lists seven Federal departments who sponsor 266 programs which serve delinquent and at-risk youth -- 266. These are already existing programs. This is Federal departments on this side and the number of programs each department has. The Department of Education has 31 programs already in existence without the crime bill. The Department of Health and Human Services has 92 programs already in existence. We are doing a lot in this area without the crime bill. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has 3 programs; Department of Interior, 9 programs; Department of Justice, 117 programs; Department of Labor has 8; Department of Transportation, 6, for a total of 266 Federal programs for at-risk youth. Yet, we would add $4 billion more. In other words, every time you try to do something about crime, those on the liberal side of the equation load the bill up with more social spending programs that are not working anyway, rather than do the things that have to be done against violent crime in our society. So I repeat this. The GAO recently reported to Senator Dodd, who heads our Family and Children Subcommittee on the Labor Committee, that there are 7 Federal departments fostering 266 prevention programs which currently serve delinquent or at-risk youth. Like I say, of these 266 programs, 31 are run by the Department of Education, 92 by HHS, and 117 by the Justice Department. GAO found that there already exists a massive Federal effort on behalf of troubled youth," which spends over $3 billion a year. GAO went on to report that: That is in the GAO report, Federal Agency Juvenile Delinquency Development Statements, August 1992. Despite the findings of the GAO, the House crime bill throws even more money at State and local government under the prevention label, while failing to acknowledge our ongoing efforts. Listening to the House bill supporters, one would assume the Federal Government has done nothing in the area of crime prevention. They load up the House bill with almost $10 billion of prevention. I believe there are some legitimate areas where we can do something about prevention, but I have to tell you right now that we are doing plenty without loading up this crime bill with more than we need. We need the prisons; we need the police; we need to get tough on crime; we need the mandatory minimum sentences; we need the beefing up of Quantico, of our DEA, of our FBI, of our Justice Department prosecutors, rather than cutting back on them. We need tough antirural crime initiatives, antigang initiatives, violence-against-women initiatives, the scams on the senior citizens, against telemarketing fraud. All of that in this bill would make a difference against crime in our society. Mr. President, I have to say that we have a lot of problems in going to conference on this crime bill, not the least of which is the gun ban and, of course, not the least of which is this racial justice act, which would virtually outlaw all implementations of all death penalties in our society today, and would cost the American taxpayers billions, if not trillions of unnecessary dollars, as the whole capital punishment system would come to a screeching halt and be embroiled in all kinds of litigation, all kinds of statistical analysis, all kinds of social welfare work, to the point that people will throw their hands up in the air and say we really cannot get tough on criminals, especially those who commit willful, violent, heinous murders against the public. Mr. President, I wanted to make a couple of these points during this debate today, because I have to go back to the truth-in-sentencing provisions. If we do not get tough on the violent criminals, we are not going to make headway in this society. All of the prevention programs in the world are not going to help us. With that, I yield the floor. Mr. President, I thank my friend from Utah. Look, Mr. President, we are debating old ground here. We have been through it a number of times. I have made my case as it relates to truth-in- sentencing. I am willing to take a chance if my friends are. I want to be able to say -- I should not say it this way -- I told you so. I am going to wash my hands of this one. I want to make it clear that I want more prison space. I think the States need the help. I think to do this to the States and insist this is the only way they can do it, they will not build the prisons needed, they will not spend the money we are going to appropriate for the States. When it turns out that we pass this big bill with prison money in it, if truth-in-sentencing is in here the way it is, do not come back to me 2 years from now and say we have a prison shortage in America. I do not want to hear it. If it turns out the States do all this, then I will, as I have done at least on one other occasion on the floor, come to the floor and say, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. Forgive me, I was wrong. I would be delighted to stand here and say I was wrong. The States are going to spend $60 billion over 5 years, and we are going to spend somewhere around that area over the next several years. We are going to spend between $3 and $6 billion over the next several years, and we will build all these prisons and America will be safe. If that happens, the pages looking at me, who will be 5 years older, and will all be in college, I will remind them and everybody else, I will come to the floor and say I was wrong, mistaken. I am told this is cleared by my Republican friends. I ask unanimous consent that the vote on Senator Conrad's motion to instruct occur at 6:30 p.m.; that upon the disposition of that motion, the Senate vote on Senator Gramm's motion to instruct; that these votes occur without any intervening action or debate; that no amendments be in order to either motion, and that no other motion to instruct the conferees on H.R. 3355 be in order after 4 p.m. today. Reserving the right to object, Mr. President, and I do not believe I will object. We do have this other resolution we would like to get in on. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we vote -- -- We do not need a vote on it. I will accept it. Let me make sure I understand what I am accepting. I am accepting the motion to instruct that calls for a big room and the press present. The last time -- in the last conference -- they called the conference on a Sunday in the middle of a Redskins game; they put it in a small room, or a relatively small hearing room, foreclosed anybody from the public from viewing what was going on, including the media. It turned out to be a fiasco. I really believe that it is in the best interest of the Senator from Delaware and all of us, to have this in the largest room we can find in the Senate -- one of the three caucus rooms -- or have it in open forum and allow anybody in the public to come, including the media, so they can see what we are doing about crime in this. It is not going to be a fun conference or a beautiful thing to behold. It is going to be a mess. I think it is time for the general public to see what it is like, the games that are played, sometimes maybe by both sides. So I think it will just be a thing that will benefit all of us. I am really cheered by the fact that our distinguished chairman on the Judiciary Committee is willing to accept that resolution. As soon as we get it typed up, we will bring it to the floor and get it passed. Mr. President, this is a little revisionist history here, but let me point out I do not think whether there is a Redskins game on or the Super Bowl we should not have a conference. I would like to point out I do not want to get in a big fight here that after months and months my Republican colleagues not allow me to go to conference. They did not want a crime bill because it had gun legislation in, number one. No. 2, we held the conference in the Judiciary Committee room which is almost as big as the Senate floor. No. 3, to the best of my knowledge the press was there. Under the sunshine law there is not an ability to tell the press they cannot come into the room. To the best of my knowledge, the press was there; the TV was there; people were there. As a matter of fact, there were a couple of interesting stories written, to put this in perspective, about how I ramrod the Republicans, and they watched it. Why did I do that, by the way? I did that because they filibustered a crime bill for 2 years, and I will do it again if they try to filibuster it for 2 more years. I want the public there to see it, too. I promise you the public will be there. I promise you I will agree to whatever room they want to have it in, if we have it on the this side or if we do not have it on this side. I am all for everybody watching it. If you want to add the possibility of putting it in RFK stadium, I will add RFK stadium if you want. Keep in mind, the Biden crime bill we were trying to pass for 4 years. So I am anxious to pass it. I want everyone to be there. I want everyone to see it. I am ready to go. I will accept it even without it being written, even without seeing the language. I trust my colleague so much, I will accept his assertion that it be in a big room with television. I cannot, obviously, dictate to the Rules Committee which room they give us, but I promise you we will hold it on the lawn if we have to in order for everybody to be able to come and see it. And we will sell tickets if you want. So I will accept the motion, sight unseen. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Campbell). The Senator from Delaware is in the process of seeking a unanimous-consent request. Does he seek to revise that request? No. I withdraw the request. Mr. President, we will certainly agree with the request if we can. Just to straighten the Record out, though, the reason for the delay the last time is we were in a fight over the ratio of conferees. Finally, we got rolled on it. No question about it. The only reason I remember the Redskins game is because that was the only game I think I was permitted to go to in years, and my good friend from Wyoming was with me. It was not a very good game because they were losing. We did not mind coming to the conference, and we both left. The fact is it was a rollover of the other party conference that occurred behind closed doors, without the public having any idea about it and without anybody seeing what was going on, and with an attempt by maybe both sides trying to gain private advantage -- frankly, we felt on one side, but nevertheless I am sure the other side probably felt, both sides, so I will even agree to that. The fact of the matter is at this time it should not be, and I think it plays in the distinguished chairman's best interest, and certainly it does in our best interest, to make sure that we sit down and do it in an open forum so that everyone can see what is going on. On this side this year, in a rather large room, one of the three caucus rooms, either S. 325 in the Russell Building, or the Hart 216, or 106 in the Dirksen Building, whatever the large caucus room is. Mr. President, I doubt anybody would object to that. I have never yet found a Senator who was not willing to have television cameras in a room, particularly a big room, and particularly a big undertaking. I am happy to do that. I might add, somewhat facetiously, if the new rules we passed relative to the last week's debate are in place, no one will have to worry about a Redskins game interrupting anything. So we are going to be fine. Mr. President, I would renew my unanimous-consent request and acknowledge to the Senator I accept the motion. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, and I will not object, I do think that it is appropriate to say that Senator Biden and Senator Hatch have worked very closely together. Surely we have our disagreements. But they have been accommodating to those on Senator Biden's side and on our side of the aisle. This is a very difficult issue. It is about money. It is about partisanship. It is about police. It is about prevention. It is about punishment. But I think we can get it done, and I think it is very important. Senator Hatch has expressed it very clearly, that even though there was a filibuster -- there were threats that there were -- it was still a conference that took place in a shoe box, and they just kind of wadded people in on the sides. I was there. I was a conferee. It was not a pleasant thing, because it is never pleasant when you get rolled. But when you are in the minority you do get rolled. I understand. That is politics. That is fair. I have no whine about that. I think it will be good because I want the people -- not to see how the Senate does its work, the Senate does its work, I think, in a very open way, at least these two managers have -- I want them to see how the House works, where they took two motions to instruct from the U.S. House of Representatives that passed by votes of 260 to whatever and just sat and smiled and rolled their own House. I remember that very well. It was with a great deal of high glee. And some of the people who were in there when the House instructed the conferees to stick with the provisions -- I think there were at least two provisions by big votes, this group of conferees from the House just, as I say, in an arrogant way just closed the book. This is the House that gives us lectures on the filibuster and says that we over here are an evil group who do an ugly thing called filibuster. Yes, we do. It helps a minority within the minority, regardless of what party you are in. Over there they just run it with an iron fist and hang people out to dry, take their amendments, put someone else's stamp on them, and ship them down the road. I want the public to see that it is really something to see, to give them a whole new view. That is why I think the motion to instruct will be appropriate, and not to reveal any chicanery in the Senate, but to show how blatant are these House conferees. It is the same stacked deck. It is the same stacked House conference. Just take a look at it. And here we go. I know them. I like them. They were pleasant persons. But they play a version of hardball that makes us now look like we are wandering around with our hands and feet covered with Band-Aids. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there further objection to the request of the Senator from Delaware? Without objection, it is so ordered. The Senator from Delaware. Mr. President, I send a motion to the desk and ask for its immediate consideration. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair will tell the Senator there was a motion currently pending. Does the Senator seek unanimous subsequent to set that motion aside? Yes. I unanimous consent to set aside, I believe it is the Gramm motion. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. The Gramm motion is set aside. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion will be stated. Mr. President, a lot of the motions we have heard and will hear, although very important to individual Senators and maybe even important to some aspects of the bill, are not the heart and soul and guts of this legislation. The reason this is such important legislation is not merely that it spends a lot of money, we do that lots of times on things that are not important. But it is important because it is the first time, as I said, we struck a balance here on the floor, liberals and conservatives alike, with notable exceptions. I believe that we have to deal both with the violent criminals who are out there, those people who are already convicted of a crime, with tough sentencing and penalties, more police, et cetera, at the same time trying to prevent crime as well, people from getting into the crime stream. As I said, the motion to instruct, so far by and large, has been about fighting crimes in the margin. Only some 5 percent of the violent crimes, only 5 percent are prosecuted at a Federal level. And yet my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and some on my side, would have us believe that tough Federal penalties are critical parts of this bill. I am for the tough Federal penalties, but let me just assure you and anyone listening, if only 5 percent of all the violent crimes -- 5 percent -- are prosecuted at the Federal level, and we toughen that 5 percent, does anybody believe that is going to affect crime in America? So it is kind of important we put this in focus. I agree that tougher penalties for violent offenders are important. That is why in the Biden bill that I introduced -- the original bill here, now the Biden-Hatch bill that passed here -- we included the largest ever expansion of the Federal death penalty to cover some 50 crimes that included over 60 additional penalties, primarily covering drugs and drug traffic. But stiff Federal penalties will not be the dam that stops the river of crime from flowing through our country. Far more importantly, this crime bill will help the States do their job, which is to investigate, prosecute, try, and incarcerate the 95 percent of the criminals who are terrorizing our streets and neighborhoods within State jurisdictions. And that means, first and foremost, that we have to make sure both sides of the crime fighting equation add up. On the one hand, we have to provide the States with the resources to punish violent criminals. We must also reach out and prevent would-be criminals from coming down the path in the first place. As I have already said today, I do not want to waste any more time debating what I believe are the marginal options to instruct. So, without any further talk, I have sent to the desk a motion to instruct which directs the conferees to agree upon a balanced, comprehensive crime bill, which includes all the key building blocks that we passed in this Senate and that are truly effective crime- fighting strategies. In my opinion, I believe we should direct the conferees to, one, include in the conference report the Violent Crime Reduction Trust Fund. We must guarantee to the American people we have the money and we are going to spend the money on crime. I think it is the single most serious domestic as well as foreign problem that faces this Nation. And we should set aside a trust fund to guarantee the American people, for the next 5 years we are going to meet the commitment that we say, that the money is available for vital programs, ranging from prevention to punishment, that is authorized in the Biden-Hatch crime bill. It directs the conferees to provide adequate funding to put 100,000 cops on the street over the next 6 years; in our case, 5 years. But 100,000 cops. The House bill only has 50,000 cops that we provide the money for at the local level. These police officers will be on the streets of our neighborhoods and local communities in community policing programs. For if we know one thing about crime, we know that there is less crime that occurs on a corner where a cop is standing at that moment. We do not know a whole lot more, but we know if a cop is on the corner, and if a cop is not on the other corner, there is going to be crime committed on the other corner more likely than where the cop is standing. We know that. This is a tough bill we passed out of the Senate to provide the States to hire 100,000 new cops. There are now only 544,000 cops in all of America. So we are almost increasing by 20 percent the number of local police officers in this bill. And we should instruct the conferees to hold fast on my 100,000 number, not the 50,000 number the House has. My motion also directs the conferees to provide sufficient funding for secure prison facilities for violent offenders and tougher penalties to keep violent offenders where they belong -- behind bars. We should be instructed that we go back and not come back here with a conference report that does not have sufficient money in it for prison construction. I also want to help the States build and operate boot camps, jails, and other low- and minimum-security facilities, in line with what my friend, Senator Dorgan from North Dakota, was talking about. These are for nonviolent, less serious offenders. The House does not have any money in there for boot camps. You can do it at about 40 percent of the cost. We should stick with the Senate position to have that $3 billion in there for boot camps. My motion also instructs the conferees to heed the other side of the ledger and provide sufficient funding for State and local government crime prevention programs, including prevention programs specifically aimed at children most at risk to drugs and crime. Under the leadership of people like Senator Dodd, Senator Domenici, Senator Danforth, and many others on our side of the aisle and on both sides, we have included such provisions in the crime bill. They are an important and balanced piece of this legislation. So, Mr. President, I hope there is no argument about what I have just suggested. This crime bill is made up of four major components. One, there is a trust fund. Two, there are real, live, hard dollars for States to build boot camps and prisons. Three, there is in this bill 100,000 cops -- 100,000 cops. And, four, there is in this bill the Violence Against Women Act, which I also included and that my friend from Utah has cosponsored, that deals for the first time in a concentrated way with the abuse heaped upon women through violence in American society, and identifies it as not a unique but an identifiable and clearly able-to- be-dealt-with problem. And the last part of this bill we passed out of here which we should have instructions on is to do what Senators Domenici and others have instructed on the Republican side, as well as my friends on my side, and that is to balance it off with general, serious prevention efforts that we know work, by giving States money to set up these programs which we know work, to prevent children from moving into the crime and drug stream in the first place. Will the Senator yield? Yes. I think the Senator has a good motion here. I wonder if I may ask my dear colleague to consider adding three additional matters to it. He has agreed to these before, so I do not think they would be a problem, but I think it would strengthen the motion. One is, of course, the Senior Citizens Against Marketing Scams Act. I will agree, Mr. President. Make that No. 8. Then, No. 9, title 14 of the Senate bill, which responds to rural crime, which all of us are concerned about. I will agree with that. No. 10, section 1031 of the Senate bill, which improves the training of law enforcement and provides technical automation. It is basically the Quantico part of the bill. Mr. President, I agree with that, as well. Then I certainly am going to agree to this particular motion, and I compliment my good friend and colleague for having done so. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Delaware seek to modify his motion to include those measures? I will seek to modify the motion to include the three additional measures mentioned by my friend, Senator Hatch. I agree with him. I seek to so modify. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator has that right. The instructions will be so modified. The motion, as modified, is as follows: (5) Tough penalties for violent criminals. Mr. President, let me make it clear. The only reason I did not include those -- and they are very important -- in the Biden crime bill was the rural provision -- actually, they are all in that crime bill. I am for that. But the thing I do not want us to be the least focused on here are the big ticket items: 100,000 cops, billions of dollars for prisons and boot camps, prevention money that is real, that the States can use, and the trust funds. They are the great-big-ticket items that make this a bill with real teeth in it, real teeth. We can pass everything else in that bill, but if we do not pass those four things, this bill, although helpful, is not one-twentieth as valuable as legislation with those major provisions. And they are in disagreement with the House right now, so it is helpful to me. Again, I want the Record to show, so there is not any misrepresentation or mischaracterization when we come back with the conference report -- and I thought it interesting, my friend from Utah said or my friend from Wyoming said, "It's going to be a difficult conference." My instinct was to say, "Tell me about it." This is going to be a difficult conference. The Presiding Officer, who served with distinction in the House of Representatives before he came to the Senate, knows that in the House side they already have appointed 62 conferees, the core conferees for the bill. But the House is very, understandably, fastidious about jurisdictional breakdowns. So anything that affected the Labor Committee or the Ways and Means Committee, they have conferees assigned as well for that portion of the bill. It is like operating with a committee of the whole. Two conference bills before the last one, which was already filibustered to death, I remember sitting in a large room as the only Senator sitting there with waves of House Members coming in. I felt like I was in a tag-team wrestling match and I had no one to tag. For an hour I would sit down and debate with six or seven House Members who were on this subcommittee. Then they would leave and I would catch my breath and there would be five from another committee. Because they are very fastidious -- I am not criticizing -- they are very fastidious, as the Presiding Officer knows, about their jurisdiction. So this will not be easy, but I am confident it will be done. Because the American people will not stand in my view for any further delay. Anybody who dares filibuster a bill when it comes back, I think they are going to have heaven to pay from the voters when they in fact go home. I think that everyone has to understand now that these instructions equip me to make a case. Essentially, they are not binding. They are not binding. They cannot be binding because I cannot guarantee what the House will do or not do. So I will commit to go to the House with these in hand. But Lord only knows what we will be able to come back with. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the vote on the motion to instruct occur without intervening action or debate immediately upon the disposition of Senator Gramm's motion to instruct and that no amendments be in order to my motion, and that it be in order to have the order of the yeas and nays en bloc on my motion and the previous two motions to instruct. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second. Mr. President, it is my hope that there are not any more motions to instruct. I do not know that there are. Essentially, what we are going to end up doing -- I understand why -- but everyone is going to instruct that we be for the Senate bill. I am for the Senate bill. I wrote it, the underlying bill, anyway. But I suspect people are going to come over. This is kind of an interesting thing. It must be interesting for people watching us. Essentially what is happening here, for the first time in my experience in 22 years here, is that there is a negotiation going on, on the floor of the U.S. Senate right now through these motions, to try to, in effect, renegotiate the position of the Senate before we get to sit down to negotiate with the House. I am willing to do that but I am not sure any of this means a whole lot. We already know where the Senate stands on these things. But I would ask Senators if they have any motions to be reminded that there is a unanimous consent that if they are not here by 4 o'clock to introduce that motion, the motions will not be in order. One of the things I think the Senate will find interesting, and maybe people watching will as well, is the Senator from Utah and I agree on this stuff. Probably we disagree on some things, like federalization of every handgun law. Then I received a letter directly, from John F. Gerry, who is chief judge and chairman of the executive committee of the Judicial Conference of the United States. He sent me a letter which takes strong opposition to several provisions in the Senate bill which I also am opposed to. It says: And then reading further it says: I think we should listen to this. It says: I ask unanimous consent all three of these be printed in the Record at this point. Mr. President, the point the judges go on to make is the point which we have made a number of times. That is that one of the purposes of the Federal court system is not only to handle Federal crimes but to handle very complicated criminal actions, major stings, major drug cartels, major moves on the mob and so on. And one of the things everybody says, either directly or by implication here, is the Federal system is working pretty well. Nobody is in here worrying about the Federal system. Federal judges work, the judiciary works, the Federal prison system is by and large working. The Federal prosecutors are working. The Federal FBI, and DEA, and Federal agencies are doing their jobs. Now what the judges are saying is you come along and take the bulk of the crimes that are committed by street gangs and punks, serious crimes, and put them into the Federal courts which only have 5 percent of the resources to handle 95 percent of the crimes, you end up with real problems. For example, nationwide there were 544,309 State and local police officers in 1992. Federal police, DEA, FBI, U.S. Marshals and Border Patrol total 20,400; 20,400 versus 544,000. We are going to add 100,000; so versus 650,000 local cops. Why are we moving them into Federal jurisdictions? The way to deal with these crimes is to put more cops on the street. That is why we are going to spend $9 billion to put more cops on the street. Local cops. At the State and local level there are over 23,000 prosecutors trying criminal cases. At the Federal level there are 3,000. Do you realize that the district attorney's office in Philadelphia, PA, handled more criminal cases last year than the entire Federal system? One DA's office, than the entire Federal system. Federally, the judges, there are 9,600 State trial court judges to hear felony and serious misdemeanors. In the entire Federal system there are 629 district court judges to hear these cases: 629. Let me do two more statistics. In 1992, there were 48,366 criminal filings in the U.S. district court. That same year, there were 4 million criminal filings in State courts of general jurisdiction. That means that felonies and serious misdemeanors, 82 times as many as in Federal or State court. Indeed, between 1955 and 1991, a total of 1.3 million criminal cases were filed in the Federal court system, U.S. district courts. So in 36 years, there were only one-third of the number of cases filed in Federal court as there were in any 1 year in the State courts. And today, there are about 1.3 million prisoners in State jails, in county jails; 84,000 in Federal jails. Why did I tell you all these statistics? For a simple reason: If we go forward and bring back a crime bill that is enacted into law that federalizes all gun crimes where the gun crosses a State line -- according to the Justice Department, offenders armed with handguns at a State and local level committed over 900,000 violent crimes in 1992 -- if the provision in the bill that Senator Gramm wants to instruct us to keep prevails, that makes eligible 900,000 cases that are not now in Federal court to be eligible. Obviously, they will not all get caught. Obviously, they will not all be brought to Federal court. But 900,000 would be eligible. Keep in mind now, for the last 36 years, adding up every criminal case tried in the Federal courts, there are only 1.3 million. So in 1 year, we are making more cases eligible when States already have jurisdiction, and we are providing somewhere around $15 billion to $20 billion to the States in Federal money in this bill to deal with their local crime problem, and we are going to put these into Federal court? You know what will happen, Mr. President, whether it is in your State, whether it is in Denver or Boulder, wherever it is. Prosecutors are going to send them to the Federal level. Again, we have something that works. The Federal system works. You did not hear anybody on the floor of the Senate complaining about the Federal system. Go back to President Reagan. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The place we should fix is the State system, and we provide money for them to do that. So on the Gramm instruction -- Senator Phil Gramm, of Texas -- I really think that for us to insist that there be concurrent jurisdiction, up to another 900,000 offenses, just because a gun was used, seems to me to make it very difficult for any Federal prosecutor to sit there and decide what case he or she is going to handle. They will be swamped with cases that now go before the court. Let me be a little cynical, if I may, and hopefully my cynicism is not well founded. In local communities where they are having serious budget problems and they have increases in crime, what do you think they are likely to do when, in fact, their case load is high? Do you think they are likely to go back to their mayor or their county executive or their Governor and say, "We need more prosecutors," or "We need more judges, in addition to the billions of dollars the Federal Government has already sent us"? Or are they likely to say, "No, we're not going to move this. Let the Federal Government move it." It seems to me the way to do it is the way we have done it, Mr. President; and that is, to send those localities who need help -- and they do need help -- send them the money to hire local officials, local prosecutors, build local prisons, hire local police, so they can get this done. Do not shift it all to the Federal level. I will not even take the time of the Senate because they have heard me too many times make this case, but I will not even get to the issue of the notion of federalism and the proper allocation of power within the Constitution envisioned by the founders. I will leave that for another day. But for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the National District Attorneys Association, a group that is quoted often on the floor -- and I have great respect for them -- who is opposed to the racial justice provision and other provisions, they also oppose this provision of the crime bill that I am being sought to instruct to keep in the bill. I see two of my colleagues are on the floor. They have to get their provisions in. I have one more thing before I yield, and I will not take the time to read this. Senator Hatch, in his comments, made reference to the impact of the Brady law. I ask unanimous consent to print in the Record a copy the Thursday Final Edition of the Washington Post, a story that reads: I also ask unanimous consent that a USA Today article dated April 15, 1994, "Bonus: Background Check Turns Up Criminals," be printed in the Record. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be recognized in morning business to make a short statement and to introduce a joint resolution. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered. I thank the Chair. (The remarks of Mr. Stevens pertaining to the introduction of S.J. Res. 194 are located in today's Record under "Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.") I thank the managers of the bill and the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who seeks recognition? The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York [Mr. D'Amato]. Mr. President, I rise to send a motion to the desk on behalf of myself and Senator Domenici to instruct the conferees to follow its contents. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the motion. Mr. President, before I address the motion that Senator Domenici and I have sent to the desk, the motion to instruct the conferees to accept very specific language, let me talk to one other issue which I am not going to ask the conferees to be instructed on because the Senate voted overwhelmingly last week, 58 to 41, that those provisions known as the racial justice provisions not be accepted by the Senate. I think it is quite clear what the sentiment of the Senate is, and I hope that those provisions will be dropped in their entirety because it is too important a matter to have conferees dabble with, then come back and possibly jeopardize the passage of this bill or certainly impede passage of the bill. That would be a mistake. If we are going to debate this, then let us debate it fully as to what should or should not be, to see that there is no discrimination, that the laws apply equally. There is not one Senator in this Chamber, Republican or Democrat, who would disagree that we want to see that the laws are applied fairly and equally as it relates to the imposition of all penalties, and certainly the death penalty. But to trivialize it in such a manner without full debate of this body and to have this body then have to accept that on the basis of there being no hearings -- no hearings that were conducted on this issue, no debate but, rather, to take it because the House on a very close vote, 216 to 214, accepted it, that would be a mistake. That would be wrong. I hope the conferees understand that notwithstanding that this Senator is not going to ask for a motion to instruct that they delete all of those provisions, they not try to come back with some pablum and say, well, we have dropped out the retroactivity part of it. That is not going to be sufficient. This Senator will then be forced to oppose the adoption and move that we recommit it to conference. I do not think it would be helping the justice system to have us in a needless delay. Mr. President, the motion which I offer to instruct the conferees, sent to the desk on behalf of Senator Domenici and myself, is one that has been voted upon by the Senate and passed by a margin of 58 to 42. My colleagues have repeatedly commented that this is one of the toughest crime bills they have ever seen. I really want to keep it that way. I want to see to it that we are not just giving it lip service and rhetoric. The fact is, Madam President, there is very little in the way of new money to do what we are talking about. We talk about building regional prisons. There is no money to do that. There is very little money if any. And my distinguished colleague and ranking member of the Budget Committee will talk to that. But I do not know where the money is going to come from to hire the 100,000 police officers. And now we understand it is going to be somewhat less than 100,000. So this bill, for all of its good provisions, has a lot of rhetoric in it and it does not do very much. Now we get into the subject of licensing guns. We say that is important. Somehow that is going to stop crime or it is going to cut down on crime. Look, I would like to know why and how it is, the logic of having a bill that contains new provisions for the control of guns when the ultimate control we need is on the use of a gun. The thing that people are crying out for is safety. They are saying my kids are being savaged; we are being held hostage in our own homes; our neighborhoods are not safe. Forget about going to the parks. Forget about using mass transportation in the off-peak hours. We want some civility. So what do we do? We pass gun registration provisions. The only ones who are going to listen to the gun provisions are the law-abiding citizens; they are the ones who are going to go out and get fingerprinted and do so 7 days ahead of time. The crooks and criminals are not going to do this. What about the guns coming over State lines? Ninety percent of the guns used in violent crimes cross State lines. And I daresay that 99.9 percent will never be registered. Do we forget about those? If we are going to say it is a crime if you do not register a gun, and the Federal Government mandates this, regardless of States rights, then why not protect the people of this country and why not say if you take a gun across State lines and use it to commit a holdup, kill somebody, that the Federal courts will have jurisdiction as well. Why not say if you are going to come over and rob somebody, shoot down a little merchant, whether it be here in Washington, DC, or in New York City or in the hamlets and byways of our great country, that it is a Federal responsibility to provide for the domestic tranquility and local governments and court systems are broken down, where they do not have room for these people, then why not say it? Why do we not have the courage to say if you use a gun, we think it is so important if you use a gun in the commission of a crime, 10 years in prison -- 10 years. Does it make sense? Sure. What we have is the judiciary saying, "You are going to flood our courts." I could not give a darn. I could not give a darn. Tell that to the people who are dying out on the streets: "Oh, that is a local matter," they say. What we are doing is trivializing this whole matter of crime. Oh, it is great political rhetoric. We take a poll. We find out people are serious. We have to do something. And what do we do? Pablum. Oh, we are tough. So we pass all these death penalty provisions. You are a chicken inspector and you get shot and they go to jail, or a postal inspector, or you commit some exotic crime, those are not the crimes that are savaging cities. (Mrs. MURRAY assumed the Chair.) What about the guy who gets a gun, goes across the State line, comes in and holds up the mom and pop and shoots them? And then he plea bargains, plea bargains, because the courts over here do not have room, they do not have capacity, no prison space. Why should the prosecutors prosecute? Why should that not be a Federal crime? Why should we not do that? I tell you something. In New York they could certainly use that help. I would like to see the district attorney who would turn it down when he has an overcrowded calendar, overcrowded courts, overcrowded prisons. And that is why they have the average person in New York who commits a robbery with a gun getting a year and three months. That is all he serves. What do you think happens? He is back out on the street. He is doing the same thing. We can say all we want that it is a local responsibility, but you know what? They are copping out. They are not doing it. They do not have the money. They do not have the resources. They do not have the appropriations. That is a fact. That is a fact in New York. I think it is a fact that most of our major urban centers -- we say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I agree. But it is broken. Our local court systems are broken, and we are not going to give them the money to fix them. If we give them the money, the exigencies of politics being what they are, they will not direct it to the right areas. And we have to say, "You commit a crime with a gun, 10 years. You shoot the gun, 20 years. You kill somebody, the death penalty." Now you are talking seriously. Then we will see whether we can get this great, august, group of the Congress to begin to put up the money to back up these actions. There are 200,000 gun cases. They are not going to take them all. But if you have a local Federal prosecutor who wants to help the local district attorney, he can. We are not trying to trivialize the Federal courts. They are important. I think they should be involved in the most important battle for civility in this country. We are losing that battle. We are losing that battle. I think it is worthwhile. I tell you, OMB has drafted some figures here. They say the courts only have to take 2,300 of those cases. Again, I think that this is something that the people are crying out and yearning for. It is for domestic tranquility, so they can live without fear that they or their families or their loved ones will be victimized by this violence. And you are never going to get this under control unless and until people understand that we are serious about using a gun to commit a crime. I do not give two hoots and a holler about whether you register it. But if you use it in the commission of a crime, by gosh, you ought to go to jail, and you ought to go for 10 years. Will the Senator yield for a question? Certainly. I ask my friend from New York, the Senator on the one hand says -- I think he is right -- that the States and localities, for whatever reasons, have not met their responsibility. This is No. 1. No. 2 that if we send them the money to handle these additional cases, and also to hold people more accountable, keep them in jail, instead of the horrific statistic that I just heard -- that violent crime with a gun, 1.3 years in New York City or New York State -- that if we send them the money, I think his quote was the "exigencies of politics" will result in it not being spent to do that. So that leaves, it seems to me, only one choice. If we take on this responsibility at the Federal level, we have to meet the need. Is he willing, as I calculated, to join with me in a piece of legislation that will quadruple the number of Federal judges so that we have 2,800 Federal judges instead of slightly over 700 Federal judges, and quadruple the number of Federal attorneys, prosecutors, and quadruple the budget of the FBI? Just leave those out. Just leave prosecutors and judges. Because, even if only 100,000 additional cases go to the Federal court system, even if only 30,000 additional cases result out of the 900,000 offenses committed with a gun, even if only 30,000 get sent to the Federal level, that will mean that criminal cases in the Federal courts will almost double in 1 year. Right now the entire criminal docket filings in the District courts, all of the District courts, in the Nation, Federal, is 48,366. Even if only one-sixth -- it would be less than that -- 900,000 eligible, 30,000 go and get prosecuted, get filed in the Federal court, you are almost doubling the number of criminal cases. Federal courts have to try. As we all know -- because the Senator knows the banking area better than I do, knows the security industry better than I do, knows the white-collar crime area better than I do in terms of what needs to be done -- the lawyers in New York, Wilmington, Washington, Washington State, and the State of New Mexico are saying their civil cases are not getting heard because of the criminal docket. We are going to double at least the criminal docket, and we are not going to add any judges. So I would suggest that if we end up doing this -- which I do not think is the way to go, based on the principle of federalism -- I want everybody to know who votes for it that I am going to be back here asking the number of Federal judges to be increased to close to 3,000 and the number of Federal prosecutors to be. Right now the total number of Federal prosecutors we have in the United States of America is 3,000; total number in the entire United States of America. That is what we have. So if we just increase by 30,000 the number of criminal cases, as a consequence of this, and there are 900,000 cases eligible -- we just increase by 30,000 -- right now that gives every one of these prosecutors out there a significant additional burden. So I would think we would have to move somewhere around 9,000 or 10,000 prosecutors. I might suggest that those numbers are way out of proportion. We have a graph from OMB, and it indicates that possibly there would be something like 2,300 cases. Let us suppose we took on 30,000 cases. Will the Senator put that in the Record? I do not doubt the number. I just wonder how they got the number. We will put this in the Record. But let us assume you took 30,000 violent cases, and you are going to take the important part of the cases that locals do not have the capacity, or want to share with the Federal Government. In many cases you are going to have local prosecutors who are designated as special prosecutors. That is done oftentimes. Second, the convictions in these cases, in most cases under the Federal rules, are much easier. Third, let me say as it relates to what the judges -- whatever the increase in judges is necessary to keep our judicial system from breaking down, this Senator will vote for it. The same with the prosecutors, the same with prisons. Let us take some of the abandoned bases that we have and begin to convert them into regional prisons. It is going to cost money. My gosh, if we get these violent predators off the streets, we cannot invest money in a better way. Forget the rest of this nonsense; if we spend money on programs, that the people would gladly say, "Cut them out, if you are going to make a safer place for me and my kids to live." That is what this Senator is advocating. Will the Senator yield for a unanimous consent request? Yes. I have a unanimous-consent agreement that has to be made before 4 o'clock. It will only take 30 seconds. It relates to an agreement I made with my Republican colleague on a motion to instruct that I agreed to accept. But I am told it was never sent to the desk. It must be done by 4 o'clock. I send a motion to instruct the conferees, a motion to instruct, submitted by Senators Hatch, Simpson, Dole, and Biden, and I ask for its immediate consideration. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection to setting aside the preceding motions? Without objection, it is so ordered. The motion to instruct conferees is as follows: Madam President, is the motion adopted? I urge the adoption of the motion. I ask unanimous consent that the motion be agreed to. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? Without objection, it is so ordered. The motion is considered, and agreed to. I yield the floor. I do not know if I have to ask for the yeas and nays. But before yielding to my distinguished colleague from Arizona, may I ask for the yeas and nays? The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second? There is a sufficient second. Madam President, the Senator from New York raises really what I think is the crux of the problem, not so much in his resolution which I see no problem for voting for, because I voted for it before, and he knows how I feel about it. So I understand the resolution. But the point is we need some more money. Where do we get it? If we start to enhance the court system, as the Senator from Delaware points out -- and I happen to agree with him that we are going to have to, maybe not quadruple, but double the judges in my estimation, and the prosecutors -- where are we going to get the money? It is not just the salaries of the U.S. attorneys, the judges, and the U.S. marshals. But you have to have, as you said, the prisons, you have to have courthouses, you have to have transportation. We are talking about billions of dollars. The money is not there, and the problem is that we do not have the courage here to vote for the money. We cannot cut the space station. We cannot cut defense any more. We cannot cut whatever else somebody feels important here, Star Wars or what have you. We will not raise taxes, when it comes down to it, somewhere at some time. I will not be here next year when it all comes down. But you all will have to vote to raise some revenues. You will have to raise some revenues if you really want to, in my judgment -- and I generally ask the Senator. Does he agree that we have to have some money, and it may mean some taxes, if in fact we cannot cut entitlements, we cannot cut the space station, or anything else? I do not see how else you protect the people of this country without spending some money, either from cuts, which, yes, we pay for or cannot do, or taxes. Otherwise, we are not going to do it. Would the Senator agree? Let me answer, and then I will yield to my colleague from New Mexico for a question. You say there is no doubt that we are going to need additional resources -- money. We say "resources." We do not want to talk about money. We need more money. If you are going to successfully engage the battle against the career criminals, against the people who are ravaging our cities, our States, our communities, our neighborhoods, all the rest of this business, and even this crime bill, which has wonderful provisions, you do not have the money. So this Senator says let us create a situation where we are forced to allocate the resources. By gosh -- and I want to tell you something. If it means we have to cut some good programs, you will see that the people will say, "Yes, if you are going to put the money in and really make a safer community, and we are going to take the predators off the streets and keep them off the streets." You had better believe they will support that. I would support it if it means increasing revenues, taxes. If we are going to apply it to really going after criminals and locking them up and prosecuting them and seeing to it that the system works, I would vote for that. But I am not going to vote to increase taxes for more social programs. I will not do that, because the people will not want that. We have been kidding the people. We have abdicated our responsibility because we have seen the neglect, benign neglect, taking place in urban America, but it has happened. We have an obligation to do something. I yield the floor. Madam President, I say to the Senator from Arizona, I suggest after the adoption of the D'Amato-Domenici amendment, now the subject matter again of this motion to instruct, the Senator from New Mexico, in this crime bill, put an amendment together recognizing that if this became law, there would be some additional money needed by the Federal judiciary and Federal district attorneys. We authorized an additional $1.25 billion over 5 years in this body; it was accepted. Let me tell you where the money will come from. First of all, the judiciary got $280 million; the Justice Department got $575 million over 4 years; the FBI got $230 million; the U.S. attorneys got $140 million. Frankly, when we did this, before us was a trust fund. The trust fund was $22 billion. It was set aside for crime prevention under this bill. That is the way the language read. This bill is the subject matter of this motion to instruct. Frankly, I will tell you that I do not think you can get out of that $22 billion, with everybody's wish list -- $1.2 billion to enhance the capability of the Federal criminal judicial system -- unless you can go before the subcommittee that puts the money up and say we have just built into the law of the land, finally, a really effective tool for the U.S. attorneys and U.S. judges and U.S. juries, to put some of those committing violent crimes with guns in jail. I believe if we pass that jurisdictional change, we would find this money within the $22 billion. Will the Senator yield for a question? Can I make my case for this and then yield to the Senator? Well, I will yield now. Madam President, the Senator raises the point -- and the only question I have is he believes, and I do not agree with him -- that if we had this mandatory sentencing and the things he is talking about, we in that Appropriations Committee would come up with that $1.4 billion out of the State, Justice, Commerce subcommittee on which you are the ranking member. I do not think we would do it, because we will not cut foreign aid to Russia; we cannot cut these aids anyplace else under foreign operations; you are not going to cut the State Department; you have not hired an FBI agent for 2 or 3 years. So my point is: Is the Senator not really saying that if we do not have the will to cut -- which we do not -- the only way to get revenue is from other sources? And that means, as the Senator from New York says, taxes. Is that not what we are talking about? We ought to go to the people and say: Folks, the reality is we cannot get the money from the cuts. We can talk about it and wish, but I think the Senator will agree that we are not going to get it from cutting down there -- only if we are going to raise taxes and put that money in a trust fund that will go to pay for the judges and prosecutors. Does the Senator agree? No; I do not, Madam President. I understand my good friend from Arizona was a prosecuting attorney -- not at the Federal level -- and he understands a lot about this. Let me suggest that if, in fact, the trust fund stays in the bill, and the chairman of the committee that is going to conference told the Senate before lunch that it would, I gather that the $22 billion, taken out of the capped amount -- that is the way it reads: You take it out of the money available to all these committees, and essentially you cut them by $22 billion over 5 years and put it over here in a trust fund just to be used for this. Frankly, is that going to happen, even if the trust fund is adopted? It looks like Chairman Byrd is following it for the first year. It looks like there is 2.4 in budget authority, and about $700 million in outlays you might attribute to the trust fund. I do not know, if the trust fund is in place, what we are going to do the second year. It is the law. It says the caps have been reduced and moneys taken out of all those discretionary accounts, taken out and put in this trust fund. So when you spread the money around, you have already cut effectively $22 billion, and they will have to struggle as to what programs they cut. I want to make a point about what the American people have finally arrived at in their minds after discussions about a crime bill since last November. They have finally come to the conclusion that the United States Government, its courts, its juries, its U.S. attorneys, and its new laws, have very little, if anything, to do with the crime and violence going on in their streets, in their schools, in their subdivisions, in their shopping centers, on the mass transit systems, and in cars that drive up alongside each other. I read in the paper that a man barely had a grin on his face when he drove alongside another car, and the occupant of the other car did not like it, so he just shot him. Will they finally come to the conclusion that we have nothing whatsoever to do with any of that? That is why many of them are saying crime is the big issue. Is the Federal Government going to do anything about it? They are beginning to say, well, we do not know. It is not because they think we are not going to pass this bill. It is because there is nothing in this bill that says we are going to help with the crime that is occurring on the streets and in the manner that I have described, that you have described, and that the Senator from New York has described. So it seems to me that this amendment, adopted overwhelmingly in the Senate, if it comes back out of conference sends one final, good, positive signal to the people of this country. It says: Yes, we are going to build more prisons; yes, we are going to help our States if they want to join us in joint prison construction. But it also says the U.S. attorneys and Federal judges have the jurisdiction -- that means authority -- to go after the violent criminals who are using guns that have been transmitted in interstate commerce in the commission of a crime and mandate some sentences for them. Frankly, I think it is a slight ray of hope. It is a ray of hope that we are going to do something rather than leave it all up to the State attorneys, to the district attorneys, to the courts. I visited all of the justices of our district courts, and I saw all 18 in the city of Albuquerque. They are befuddled with the caseload. They are overwhelmed with the number of juries, overwhelmed because our State prison will not hold enough of them. And they are saying, "What are you all going to do about it?" They want help, and I hope that in this bill, we help them. I think we ought to help them with this approach. Will the Senator yield? I am pleased to yield. Mr. KERREY assumed the chair. Mr. President, the Senator from New Mexico is talking to the choir here. The Senate already passed this by 58 or 60 votes. The House has not. The House has not. To me, it is an insult to the conferees, in a way, and to the chairman -- maybe he does not feel that way -- that we are going to go in there and give this away. I anticipate to be a conferee. I am not going to give it away. I may be voted out; maybe I will be voted down. If there is someone here who thinks, as to the message sent by the Senator from New York, we want to say ditto, fine; let us not stand here and say we have not done anything. We might not be able to cure the crime problem in the neighborhoods and shopping centers, but I think the body went on record with a decent crime bill. I did not imply we did not. I get the feeling here we are going to sell out over here, and in the conference we are going to sell out to everybody there. I hope we do not get a crime bill if, in fact, we sell out. Will the Senator yield? I will. I still have the floor. The Senator still has the floor. Frankly, what I am saying is that the public has not been hearing very much about this issue as it is presented here on the floor. They have been hearing about more jails and prevention, and today we are trying to refocus attention on a provision in the Senate bill which the Senator from Arizona supported. He just indicated he is going to support it again. He supported tough measures like this for a long time, with additional task forces to go after certain kinds of criminals. I have been with him on those amendments. He has done a great job. But what has happened is we never made them law. It is nothing like this. We have never put anything like this in law other than illegal drugs. And believe you me, the druggies know if the Federal Government is involved in something, after that they are going to jail. This sort of says the same thing. Mr. President, will the Senator yield? Yes. This is in the bill, right? It is in the bill. Yes. We are asking the conferees and the Senate here tonight to once again confirm by overwhelming vote that we want to extend the jurisdiction of the Federal courts a little in behalf of the American people. I want to close by saying I do not just say this on the floor. I say to my friend from New York, I had two Supreme Court Justices in the Appropriations Committee, and I say this to the Senator from Arizona, they were there to seek their budgets and the budget of the circuit courts. They were Justice Kennedy and Justice Souter. They made the case that they did not want the Federal courts -- these are Supreme Court Justices, entitled to great deference and respect -- to be turned into police courts, I say to my friend, police courts. So I said: "Mr. Justice, with the greatest respect, is trying someone who used a pistol to shoot six kids, and that pistol went across State lines in a robbery, a police court case? It was used to rob over there, and brought across. Now we are going to try them in one of our Federal courts with a Federal jury. Mr. Justice, is that a police court case?" Of course, you know, the Justice said what anyone would say: "I did not mean that, Senator." But some people speak about the Federal courts as if, if we asked them to do anything in this war on crime that they are not currently doing, that we are going to ruin them. Is that right? Right. I tell you, if civil dockets have to wait some more while we put 15,000 or 20,000 people away who are using guns, transmitting them across State lines, and shooting people, little kids, if we have to use them and put the civil docket off for a while, so be it. I think that is what the people like to hear anyway, and like to see happen. I will vote for more money for them so they will not have to do it. I yield the floor. Mr. President, I make an observation. The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from New Mexico yield the floor? I yield to the Senator from New York. I will yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York. Mr. President, let me say this, because I think it is important that we say this publicly. There has been no greater fighter and champion in the area of taking on the druggies, of involving this country on a national level and on an international level, and attempting to interdict, setting up a special task force in our housing projects in New York City, in particular, which made a great difference and brought civility to one project that I know of, in particular. When we talk about a project, we are talking about a large housing complex where thousands of people live and many of them were held before we sent in a strike force to open that place up and get rid of the guys with the guns, et cetera. My good friend and colleague from Arizona, Senator DeConcini, has done a great job. We worked together. I am privileged to have worked with him, as he championed so many of these things and made a difference. I am sorry, and I do not want to be partisan in this, that there are some in both administrations, the prior administration and this administration, who do not share the sense of urgency that my colleagues on the floor, Senator Domenici and Senator DeConcini, have demonstrated -- not rhetoric -- by making tough decisions and finding it and making a difference. I see a lot of the work that the Senator has undertaken that, quite candidly, is being paid little attention in some areas almost being dismantled. I think it is wrong, and I think we are going to come to regret that kind of activity. But again I say this was across the line. It happened in the previous administration and it happens in this one. So it is not partisan politics. My friend did raise a question about why the need to do this. I am very much concerned that the conferees, Republicans and Democrats, in an attempt to get the bill passed, will let this provision drop and will not fight for it. They do not really understand there are some of us who really do believe that this is maybe the kind of last hope we have before things get so bad that we then have the cries for the National Guard, et cetera. In certain communities, I hear Congressmen and the opposition in the party, the other party, calling for and suggesting that maybe the National Guard be brought into some communities. I do not think we should try to reach that point. I think where we have the code of civil judicial law in the Federal level, that can be indicated with our local people. That makes much more sense than that. I know a Congressman -- I am not going to say who -- in New York who has actually called on a number of occasions for the use of the National Guard in his community. Let me tell you, that is how bad things are. Are we really going to begin to think, if you think of the tragedy of having young men, 18, 19, 20, and 21-year-old Guardsmen out there, they are now going to become involved in trying to keep civil order? That is rampant with all kinds of horrible ramifications. We do not need that. We do not want that. By gosh, people have a right to have the Federal Government in this fight for civility, and I do not think some of our colleagues share it. They have not shared it with us in the past, and I said us. They have not shared with the Senator from New York the compassion to recognize now what is going on, and stand up and make a determined fight to make a difference. They have not. We have been there. We have been voted down. We voted to build prisons, and they voted us down. We voted for more people, and they voted us down. This is a ray of hope, and we have to say to our colleagues: We do not want you to give this up. We want you to say to the House: You put some stuff in there; we put this in there. We want this provision. We think that it will be a beginning. And, frankly, my colleague said it. He said it is a ray of hope. It is not going to change the whole thing. There will be some prosecutors on the local level with district attorneys, with Federal people, who use them and have some success, and maybe people will catch on. And maybe, as we had in New York -- I remember when we had our mayor, who was a prosecutor. He had Drug Day one day, and he worked it out with the local jurisdictions. One day each week was designated as Federal Drug Day. So on those days, when drug arrests were made, guess where they were taken? They were taken to the Federal court. I have to tell you, when the druggies found out when Drug Day was, it started in the morning, and that afternoon, they stopped. They did not want to wind up in a Federal court, because it meant they went to prison. It did not mean they had a plea bargain and they were back out on the street. I am suggesting maybe there is a ray of hope. Maybe they will take the Federal guys seriously on gun crimes, robberies, et cetera, if they set a Federal jurisdiction, a Federal day, and give some hope. I do not say it will cure all. I guess I am coming down and making this plea again with my colleague, Senator Pete Domenici, because I think my colleague from Arizona may have hit the nub. Maybe we do not feel, notwithstanding the 58 or 60 of my colleagues in the past who fought for this, and the conferees indicated, I think they might care so much with the overall of politics of the crime bill that they lose the passion to say: By gosh, let us try to make a difference. I do not say that to my colleague. I know he has been there; he has done it. But for some of our colleagues, that is a question. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona is recognized. Mr. President, I thank the Senators, both from New Mexico and New York. We have worked on a number of things, and I thank the Senator for the compliments. But the Senator from New York, particularly up in his State, and serving on the Treasury-Postal Committee that deals with that area of customs and ATF, played a major role in that task force, as did the Senator from New Mexico, in getting those designated in the drug strategy. My talking here, I hope, is not interpreted by anybody, nor the Senator from New York, thinking I think he is not sincere. I know he is sincere. What bothers me is we are being in conference, and it really bothers me, and I have to tell my friend on the other side of the aisle that it troubles me, we are not over there now confronting those who may want us to pass a soft crime bill. The sooner we get there, the sooner we are going to know, and the sooner you are going to know, because Senator Hatch from Utah and others are going to be there and they are going to be arguing for a tough crime bill. And it is going to be part of the public pressure. That is what I think is there. My problem is, you know, I hope we do not spend too much time here, because I could offer an amendment. I could become a convert on the assault weapons ban. This body adopted it. I hope we do not give that away. The House does not have it in there. The Senator from New Mexico may hope that we do give it away. But there are a lot of strong feelings here that this is a tougher bill and we ought to move ahead with this bill and I hope we can do that today. Because I think we are losing time. I think signals are sent here. I think if we do not deliver the package, that is when we are going to be criticized by the public. I intend to do all I can, assuming I am a conferee on this bill, to stick with the Senate's position. I do not have to have a crime bill. The chairman may have to have a crime bill. I do not have to come back with a bill that to me does not have any community policing. I think that is good. It does not have the death penalty. I think that is good. It does not have the racial justice. On the other hand, I am not going to hold out for one single thing. This particular point I think is right. I am glad the Senator offered it on the bill. As he knows, I support it. Mr. President, this crime bill that we have before us is, I truly believe, the most comprehensive crime bill that has passed the Senate in my short term here of 17 years. It is not going to cure the problem. It is not going to make safe streets in Phoenix and Tucson and Flagstaff, AZ, by passing this bill and having the President sign it. The Senator from New Mexico raises the point, or perhaps the Senator from New York as well, are we going to pay for it? We set up a trust fund. There has been criticisms of trust funds before around here, as we all know. We use them some when we think it is convenient and then they are good and other times they are criticized. The point is, I think this is a valid trust fund. At least it sets aside the money. It is going to be up to the appropriators to come up with that money out of these caps without raising the caps. Now, that is not going to be easy. It is not going to be easy at all. I do not know where we are going to get the money. But, in the long-term, if we are going to have a trust fund of over $20 billion over 5 years, it seems to me we are going to have to raise some revenues or what is going to happen is we are not going to fund whatever we ultimately pass on the crime bill, whether it is 75,000 community police or 110,000 community police, because we are not going to do it. Another thing I am very pleased the chairman from Delaware has indicated to me. There is a sense-of-the-Senate provision in this bill that we will not, as a Congress, reduce overall law enforcement. Because the problem of adding community police and then reducing Federal police is really ludicrous. I think it is very vital here that we not let that happen. Because if that happens, we are subject to severe criticism that we in the Federal Government are augmenting the police. And the effort to bring order to the Federal system through the FBI, DEA, ATF, Customs, and what have you is not going to be easy to do. Because the administration, on one hand, wants 100,000 police and we have created a trust fund to try to fund it. On the other hand, under the trust fund that creates the over $20 billion, they are cutting 35,000 police, Federal police. We cannot have it both ways in my judgment. I have already talked to the chairman. He feels very strongly that we have to resolve that in the conference. So, this is not going to be an easy conference. I do not think we should go to the House with anything but determination, not only on the amendment of the Senator from New York that he added to the bill, but on the assault weapons amendment. That is an important amendment. There is a majority in this body that supports that, and yet you do not see a resolution yet to instruct the conferees to stick to it. I think the reason is because those of us who want the assault weapons bill in, we want to get down to business. We want to sit down and start working and trying to grind out a bill. I think the chairman of this conference is one of the most able Members of the Senate. He is a good match for the House conferees. He is not one that gives in. He is not one that takes every amendment on the floor. You know how many of these we voted on during this crime bill. And we know stories here of other chairmen who just say, "Come on. I will take your amendment," and then give it away. Not Senator Biden. Sometimes he even opposed a few of these. But I have seen him in the past go and fight with those conferees, stay up late at night, say "no bill" because he would not give in. And so I think it is only appropriate that we vote on this, get it done, get it to the House, get the conference started, and see if we cannot put together a bill. I believe we can. I yield the floor. Mr. GORTON addressed the Chair. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington is recognized. Mr. President, among the provisions of the Senate bill are those contained in sections 841 through 844 of title 8 of the bill having to deal with sexual predators. During the course of the debate on this proposal last fall, I offered that amendment, paralleling the provisions of a statute of the State of Washington which deals with a peculiar shortcoming in the way in which our criminal justice system operates. Sexual predators are, fortunately, frequently apprehended and frequently convicted. They do not, generally speaking, get sentences of such time that will take them simply out of an age in which they are likely to engage in sexual predation. Very few of our criminal justice experts feel that many of them actually can be rehabilitated. And so, more often then not, they are released to the community and far more often than not they are recidivists. Often when they go to communities in which they are known, they strike fear into the hearts and the minds of many of the women and children of our society. And yet, more frequently than not, when they are released, there is no notice of that release and the first notice that it has taken place comes with the first offense in another series of sexually predatory activities. The legislature of the State of Washington relatively recently passed a very wide-reaching sexual predators law, one part of which actually allowed certain evaluations of these individuals and their retention in confinement if there was no assurance that they were not going to repeat their offenses. That was somewhat controversial in the State of Washington and was clearly controversial here on the floor of the Senate. The tracking provisions, however, were not. The tracking provisions caused, in the State of Washington, notice to be given to communities to whom sexual predators are released, whether it is a community in a State from which they originated or some other community in the State. It alerts local law enforcement officers to their presence in their community so a reasonable eye can be kept on them. And it alerts the neighborhood in which they are going to live, sometimes causing great apprehension, but at the very least causing people who might be their victims to be more careful. After a relatively brief debate, these sexual predator provisions were included in the Senate bill by a unanimous vote and with the enthusiastic support of the distinguished Senator from Delaware, the chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary. I have discussed this matter with him informally and he has assured me that he is in favor of those provisions and will do what he can to save them in conference with the House. The House simply did not take up the subject. It did not come up in the Judiciary Committee proceedings and it was not proposed as an amendment on the floor of the House. So we certainly do not have a record that Members of the House of Representatives were opposed. I am convinced they would have passed it as overwhelmingly had they had the opportunity, as did Members of the Senate. I can assure also that the distinguished senior Senator from Utah, [Mr. Hatch], is an enthusiastic backer of those proposals. I would ask the Senator from Delaware, when he returns to the floor, to respond to my query and my request, my sincere request, that he do the best he possibly can in retaining these extremely valuable sections in a final version of the crime bill. The protection of our children and the protection of our women from repeat sexual predators must be as high a priority as we can come up with. There are many, many victims of these activities. They are usually defenseless victims, and so frequently they are victims of people who already have criminal records and who have been released, unknown to the community, back into that community. What we would do by these provisions would be to take a statute and make it national in nature. We could cause release across State lines to be recorded on law enforcement computers. The FBI would keep a record of those in Federal custody. States would notify other States when predators had been released and had gone to a second State. It will take a good idea and make it a national idea. It will be a wonderful protection for both women and young children. I thank the Senator from Delaware for his private assurances of support, and I hope that, during the course of the rest of the afternoon, he will make those assurances public. Mr. President, while I was necessarily absent from the floor, my colleague from Washington State, Senator Gorton, took to the floor and asked a question of whether or not I, as the Chair of the conference on the Senate side, would stand by the Senate position in subtitle F, entitled "Sexually Violent Predators," sections 841 and 842. The short and direct answer is yes, I will. The House bill does not have such provision in it. I will do whatever I can to get the House to yield to the Senate position on subtitle F, sections 841, 842, 843, and 844 of the Senate-passed crime bill. I will do my best to get the House to recede to the Senate position on that issue. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum. The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.