 [4] AEN News (1:375/48)  AEN_NEWS 
 Msg  : #3305 [75] + 3923                                                       
 From : Al Thompson                         1:231/110       Sat 23 Jul 94 16:03 
 To   : All                                                                     
 Subj : Crime Bill news                                                         

AP 07/22

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- House and Senate conferees will resume their
efforts to write a compromise crime bill on Tuesday after a
five-week delay.
   Rep. Jack Brooks, D-Texas, who chairs the conference and the
House Judiciary Committee, announced the resumption. "It is time to
move forward, reach accord and move promptly to a vote on the floors
of the House and Senate," he said.
   Brooks called the crime bill "the most ambitious crime punishment
and prevention package developed by Congress in the past 50 years."
   Gun-control advocates had feared that Brooks would force further
delays in an effort to get rid of a ban on assault-style weapons.
   The Senate passed its crime bill last November, including the
firearms ban. The House passed its version in April, and voted
216-214 the next month for the firearms ban as a separate measure.
   Ban supporters want it in the crime bill, surrounded by things
that gun enthusiasts support such as the money for police, prisons
and federal law enforcement, plus some 60 new death penalty
provisions and life sentences for third-time felons.
   The ban would affect 19 named types of assault-style firearms and
dozens of copycats and other rifles, shotguns and pistols that the
government determines meet certain characteristics attributed to
assault-style weapons. At the same time, it would exempt 650 named
firearms as well as all guns legally owned when the law took effect.
   Brooks did not say whether he would try to get his alternate gun
proposal into the final bill. It would eliminate the popular AR-15
from the 19 specified banned weapons. It also would drop the
provision on characteristics letting the government ban other rifles
and shotguns. However, it would retain a similar provision for
pistols.
   Asked about the proposed ban as passed by the House and Senate,
House Speaker Tom Foley told reporters, "I anticipate it will remain
in the bill ... with some changes perhaps."
   Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who authored the ban in the
Senate's crime bill, said earlier Friday that Brooks' alternative
"would effectively gut the bill."
   "I have no reason to believe that this is anything other than
holding up a crime bill, because if you hold it up long enough,
someone is going to relent," Feinstein said in an interview. "I
think it is really a dastardly thing to do."
   Brooks, in a statement, said, "It is absolutely correct that I am
adamantly opposed to the ill-conceived assault weapons ban, a
punitive vendetta which passed the House by two votes. ... I can
assure you that before this conference is over, the American people
will know what the so-called assault weapon ban is really about."
   Rep. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Judiciary's
crime panel and a coauthor of that chamber's assault-style weapons
ban, said Brooks "has always been very fair in letting gun
legislation come to a vote, even though he fights hard against it."
   Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., said he
was pleased Brooks was reconvening the conference committee.
   "The American public has been waiting long enough for a crime
bill, and it's about time we started to deliver on this promise,"
Biden said.
   President Clinton said he was heartened to know the coinference
committee was beginning its final work. "I am confident members will
act quickly on the conference and that we will see a final bill
passed," he said in a statement.
   The crime bill, as envisioned by Brooks and Biden, would
authorize spending $30.2 billion over six years.

   It would devote:
   --$10.9 billion to state and local law enforcement, including
almost $9 billion for 100,000 community police officers.
   --$8.4 billion for state and local prisons.
   --$1.9 billion for federal law enforcement.
   --$7.6 billion for prevention.
   --$1.4 billion for drug courts, which the House bill considered
   prevention.

   It would be financed through a trust fund using the money saved
from reductions in the federal bureaucracy.
   Gun control advocates blamed Brooks for delaying the conference
for more than a month after House passed the ban.
   The conference met once, June 16, where Brooks was elected chairman.
   Meetings the following week were canceled over a House-passed
provision called the Racial Justice Act that would let defendants
use statistics as evidence of discrimination in death penalty cases.
   Senate Republicans vowed to filibuster any crime bill that
included such a provision that was backed by the Congressional Black
Caucus.
   A compromise last week that would have affected only federal
capital cases still failed to garner enough Democratic support to
overcome such a filibuster, despite White House lobbying. The White
House said it was at least 12 votes short.
   The White House has offered to impose an executive order that
would implement part of the compromise and to appoint a blue-ribbon
commission that would study the problem and report back promptly,
sources say.


--- GEcho 1.00
 * Origin: Gun Control=Criminals & Gestapo vs. the Unarmed. (1:231/110)

 [4] AEN News (1:375/48)  AEN_NEWS 
 Msg  : #3306 [75]                                                              
 From : Al Thompson                         1:231/110       Sat 23 Jul 94 16:04 
 To   : All                                                                     
 Subj : Senate funds Crime Bill                                                 

AP 07/22

   WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Senate approved a huge funding increase
for anti-crime efforts on Friday in legislation that would begin to
pay for President Clinton's law enforcement programs.

   In an appropriations bill approved by voice vote, senators
boosted the Justice Department's budget for next year by $2.9
billion -- a 30 percent increase over this year's spending.

   "This bill truly is the crime bill," said Sen. Robert Byrd,
D-W.Va., chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "It
contains 82 percent of federal spending for law enforcement."

   The measure is a first installment payment on a six-year, $30
billion anti-crime bill that is now the subject of House-Senate
negotiations and is due to be completed in the next few weeks.

   Included in the spending package is $350 million for border
states to reimburse them for costs of crime committed by illegal
aliens, taking the money away from U.S. peacekeeping dues paid to
the United Nations.

   "Taxpayers in our states should not have to bear this federal
burden," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who is running for
re-election this year. Her colleagues agreed 52-44 on an amendment
that added the money.

   "We do tend to step up for people in emergencies in other
states," Hutchison said, citing federal disaster aid for California
earthquakes, Florida hurricanes and floods in the South and Midwest.
"This, too, is an emergency crisis."

   The money would flow to Texas, California, Florida, Arizona and
other states that incur costs of jailing aliens who cross borders
illegally and commit crimes in the United States. It would be paid
for by cutting a proposed $2 billion payment to the United Nations
for the U.S. share of current and past peacekeeping operations.

   The Clinton administration proposed such a reimbursement system
earlier this year, but the House declined to go along in its version
of the bill.

   Florida, Arizona and California have sued the federal government
to recoup the costs of caring for illegal immigrants, and Texas is
preparing to do so.

   Opponents said the action was premature because the federal
government cannot identify which foreign-born prisoners are in the
country illegally, and who thus represent a federal responsibility.

   "We should not get into the business of doling out federal monies
on the basis of disputed evidence," said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va.

   The $27.8 billion measure that contains the crime-fighting
provisions also pays for other operations of the departments of
Commerce, State and Justice over the year that begins Oct. 1.

   The bill's primary feature, however is the increase in funding
for the Justice Department.

   The spending bill also includes:

   -- $1.3 billion for community policing, aimed at helping states
      and localities put 100,000 additional officers on the beat.
      The move would be a step toward fulfilling a promise Clinton
      made during his 1992 campaign.

   -- $100 million to help states upgrade their criminal history
      records, to facilitate implementation of the new Brady handgun
      control law.

   -- $299 million for an immigration initiative, including hiring
      700 new border patrol agents and constructing new border
      stations and a new computer database for aliens.

   -- $86 million for grants to combat violent crime against women
      and aid victims; $100 million for grants to local drug courts
      to provide treatment and supervision as alternative punishment
      for young, nonviolent drug offenders; and $175 million for
      states to develop and expand correctional facilities,
      including military-style boot camp prison programs.


--- GEcho 1.00
 * Origin: Gun Control=Criminals & Gestapo vs. the Unarmed. (1:231/110)

