Date: Sun, 29 Jan 1995 21:34:23 PST From: jsage.ES_CP8@xerox.com To: xerox_gun_club.all_areas@xerox.com, best-rkba@mainstream.com Subject: excerpts from Klingon speech Sorry, folks, this one got to me, despite the hour I just had to pass it on. Jim ==================================== THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _____________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release January 27, 1995 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT IN MEETING WITH U.S. CONFERENCE OF MAYORS Old Executive Office Building 4:36 P.M. EST [stuff deleted] And finally, let me say some things about the crime bill. I very much hope that we will be able to work through, in this session of Congress, a good faith carrying forward of the crime bill that was passed last year. It became unfortunately embroiled in politics -- you know that better than I do. And I think you also know that the prevention programs that were passed were programs that were recommended to us in the strongest possible terms not only by mayors, not only by community leaders, but by the leaders of the law enforcement community; and that a lot of those prevention programs that were later labeled as pork were cosponsored, the first time they came up, by people who later said they were pork. Well, all that's behind us now, and the only thing that matters now is, what is the best thing for the people of this country? What will keep our streets safer? What will reduce the crime rate more? What is the most likely approach to actually make the American people feel more secure? We must enhance our security at home. At the end of the Cold War, I think it's fair to say that most Americans put their children to bed at night more worried about their security concerns at home than abroad. So what we should seek to do without regard to party or region of the country is that which is most likely to make us most safe and to lower the crime rate. Many of you -- I'll bet even a majority of you here -- have recorded declines in the crime rate in the last year or so because of the strategies that mayors are adopting with community policing, with prevention programs, with using citizens to work with law enforcement to do things that will reach people in ways that will prevent crime as well as catch criminals more quickly. We have to take these lessons into account. So as we enter into a second round of debate about the crime bill, I would say there are two or three things that we ought to keep in mind. First, as I said in my State of the Union Address, we should not repeal the assault weapons ban. We should not do that. (Applause.) This issue, as you can hear from the response, is not a Republican-Democratic issue, it is not a liberal-conservative issue, it is overwhelmingly an urban-nonurban issue. And what we have to do is to convince all the people I grew up with -- (laughter) -- that we don't -- we don't want to fool with anybody's hunting rifles. We don't want to stop anybody from going to shooting contests. We don't want to interfere with anybody's legitimate pursuit of happiness in the exercise of their right to keep and bear arms. But there is nothing in the Constitution that prevents us from exercising common sense. And people who live in urban settings know that the mortality rate in the emergency rooms of urban hospitals from gunshot wounds has gone up dramatically in the last 15 years because the average body has more bullets in it when it's wheeled into the emergency room. You do not have to be a genius to figure out what's happening. And so I hope that we can put an end to this war. This is a phony war among the American people. And those of us that respect people's right to hunt and to engage in other appropriate conduct, those of us that enjoy it ourselves, we ought to be able to ask each other again: What's best for America? And what good is it to pretend that it's a matter of principle to maintain the right of a bunch of teenagers to have uzis on the streets of our cities. So I hope you will talk about this in a nonpartisan, nonpolitical way and realize this is one of those cultural problems that's gripping America. We got too many of them. They're keeping us apart. But we need to say to the nonurban folks in our society, this is something that -- we've got to work this out. This is a fair deal. This is a balanced bill. There are 650 weapons enumerated in this bill that cannot be infringed on by the government in any way, shape or form. And so let's let this alone and go on about the business of the country. I also think we ought to emphasize that at least the Attorney General is doing her dead-level best to make sure that the administration of the Crime Bill that passed is non-bureaucratic, nonpolitical and efficient. If you look at what's happened so far, in October, not even two weeks into the new fiscal year, we had already funded 392 policing grants that went unfunded last year. Last month, at your recommendation, we gave 631 larger cities the go- ahead to begin recruiting and training more than 4,600 officers. So they know the money will be there when their applications are handed in. For the smaller cities, we've streamlined the application process, allowing them to apply more quickly for police with a simple one-page application. I don't know how many one-page applications we've got in the government now, but I know you can ask for an SBA loan or a policeman with one page. You ought to be able to do more things with one page. This cops program has now helped more than 1,000 communities to put more than 10,000 more police officers on the street in all 50 states. Within a week, when the announcement is made of the winners of the COPS FAST program, that total will be close to 15,000 -- well on the way to the 100,000 goal of the crime bill. That would be a 20 percent increase of the strength on the streets. Now, the crime bills now being considered in Congress have some things that I think may be superficially appealing, but need to be thought through. If you scrap the $8.8 billion cops initiative, as some suggest, and replace it with a $10 billion block grant which also has to include prevention programs, the good news is, you'll have a block grant. The bad news is there'll be a lot less money in it than was provided for. And keep in mind -- to all those who say it wasn't funded, we did not raise one red cent in taxes to pay for the crime bill. We did not take one red cent away from any other program. We simply dedicated all the savings to be gained from reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy to giving it back to local communities to use to fund the crime bill. That's what was done. Now, to make matters worse, some have suggested that the $10 billion block grant to fund police and prevention could only be funded if we first fund $10 billion in new prisons. So that's a decision that some would make against the unanimous advice of every police officer in the country who has testified. So that -- if we make that decision, that would be like people saying, we don't care what lowers crime; we don't care what makes people safer; we don't care what people in law enforcement who vote Republican and Democrat say; this is what we're going to do. It will make us a feel better and we can claim that it was the best thing to do. We should not do that. This ought not to become a political issue. That crime bill had a balance of police and prevention and prisons. We shouldn't take all the prevention money away through the back door and put it into prisons. And we shouldn't say that the prisons are more important than the police and the prevention. I had no objection to getting into the business of helping states with their prison construction, even though it was totally unprecedented, but there is no evidence that that is the way to lower the crime rate. The American people want to be safer at night; they want their kids to be safer on the streets and at school. And we ought to be driven by what is best for the American people. (Applause.) I would also say, just parenthetically, that even last year I was concerned when the crime bill passed that the conditions on getting that federal money for prison construction were so restrictive and required such a large state match that a lot of that money might never be used. We cannot permit a cruel hoax to then be written into the law saying, well, you can get this block grant for police and prevention, but only after the prison money is spent and then have conditions on spending the prison money so strict that it will never be spent in the first place. So I urge you to just go up there without regard to your party or region and say, look, let's do what will lower the crime rate; let's do what will keep people safer. The American people will figure that out. They will trust their local leaders; they will trust their local law enforcement people; they will trust them. We can share responsibility now. There need be no characterization that is negative when this process is over. There need be no name-calling. There needs to be no anything. We just need to do what is right to lower the crime rate. And all of us have worked so hard on this. Again, I would say this is like the assault weapons issue. We've got big issues to deal with. This unfunded mandates is one. Welfare reform is another. How we're going to lower the deficit and provide tax relief is another. There are major positive issues that we're going to have to face. We don't need to reopen an issue and make it worse. So I ask you to help us on that.