Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2004

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, whatever any one of us thinks about the merits of the specific language, it does not belong in a defense authorization bill. If these provisions were introduced as a freestanding piece of legislation, they would have been referred to the Committee on the Judiciary; and that is where they should appropriately be dealt with, not in a conference on a wholly unrelated topic.

Second and more importantly, let me address the merits of the proposal before us. All of us, as the gentlewoman from California pointed out, all of us deplore hate crimes. The perpetrators of such crimes deserve the harshest punishment under the law as the law allows. The evidence indicates that they are receiving such punishments under the current law in a wide majority of the cases.

However, this really is misnamed as a hate crimes piece of legislation. What it ought to be called is an unequal protection proposal, because what this bill basically does is to say that the dignity and the property and the person and the life of some Americans gets less protection under the law if we pass this amendment than other American lives. That sort of unequal treatment is exactly what the 14th amendment was designed to prohibit, in my view.

I completely understand the positions of those who want this legislation, but I fear they have not fully thought through the potential consequences of adopting this legislation.

When someone is murdered because the killer does not like the color of their skin, that killer deserves harsh punishment; but the killer deserves it because the victim is a human, not because of the killer's hateful thoughts.

We must honor the victim's humanity and do justice, irrespective of the race, gender, the sexual orientation, or any other given trait. It is the victim's humanity that matters here. Nothing that the killer has thought about the victim can alter the value of that human's life which has been taken.

This proposal does not target hate crimes; it just specifies certain types of hate crimes for special treatment. I think we go down the wrong road here when we value certain lives differently because of race, gender or other factors, and believe that the hate crimes provisions tend to do that. That road leads to all sorts of mischief that I do not like to think the well-meaning sponsors of this proposal intend to accomplish.

So I ask that we continue to honor the value that all human life is precious, and value it no matter what the person's skin color is, no matter what some vicious criminal thought of that person's skin color.

Justice ultimately ought to turn on the fundamental worth of the human being and not the thoughts of the specific criminal. Article XIV of our Constitution guarantees equal protection under the law. But in this regard, I would ask what about other groups that have not been targeted for special protection under this piece of legislation? What about children? What about senior citizens? What about the infirm, disabled, teachers, seniors, mailmen, women, veterans, and even public servants who may be the victims of the ultimate hate crime, terrorism?

The same spirit that hate compels a criminal to commit a crime due to one's race, gender or religious persuasion also may compel him or her to commit a crime against anyone in these and many other groups. Yet these others are excluded from protection. Under this hate crime proposal, they are protected and they are treated unequally.

So we oppose the inclusion of these provisions. The so-called hate crimes provision is a political feel-good statement that is anti- prosecution and anti-law enforcement and makes it less likely that violent criminals will ultimately be convicted and punished.

The bill will make it easier for criminals to create a shadow of a doubt and evade conviction for certain types of crimes if the prosecutor decides to roll the dice and include the necessity to prove the burden of intent based on race or the other special categories set out in the bill. It increases the burden on the prosecution to prove one additional element, and it increases the opportunities that criminals and their defense attorneys will have to create that certain shadow of a doubt and ultimately escape justice altogether.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, before I yield, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the esteemed gentleman from Missouri's comments. I happen to agree that in terms of sentencing, there ought to be consideration of certain aggravating factors like hate and bigotry, as he expressed.

I believe that under the current Federal sentencing guidelines for virtually all, if not all Federal crimes, that is exactly what the guidelines permit now, but they do not create the burden of a separate element.

Madam Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Jones).

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Madam Speaker, in addition to the other arguments that we have put forth saying that it is just wrong to treat people unequally in terms of the protection we give victims, focusing on victims, I want to tell my colleagues a lot of us believe very deeply that, as with respect to every individual American before the law and before God, we are equal and ought to be treated equal and certainly our laws ought to include that.

What we oppose is the fact that what this bill does is specifies certain people for extra protection under the law. It necessarily says other people are not going to get that extra protection, and it tends to do the very things that a lot

of my friends on the other side say they do not want to do. It tends to divide Americans. It tends to Balkanize Americans. It tends to separate Americans. It tends to put hyphens in front of all Americans, because if one does not have a hyphen in front their name they are not eligible for protection under this piece of legislation.

Once again, this is misnamed. This is not a hate crimes proposal. This is an unequal protection under the law proposal.

Madam Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank).

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

No, but I will support my colleague when he files the bill to take away the special protections of Members.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his question.

The point of this is that we should not be giving certain people special protections that we are not giving all Americans, and the gentleman earlier stated that he thinks it is very different for a thug to come along and batter, for example, somebody because of their race or their color or their ethnicity than it is to beat up somebody just on the street because of the fear it creates.

Madam Speaker, I can tell my colleagues that a lot of senior citizens, a lot of little old ladies carrying their purses from and to the market, one example, who are not protected by this bill live in fear every time they have to go out on to the streets. All of us deserve equal protection.

What we want to do in opposing this is make sure all Americans get the equal protection they are entitled to under the law.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I agree with the gentlewoman from Wisconsin that the Americans she cited ought to be free from the fear of violence whether it is because of their color, their ethnicity, their race, their religious beliefs. But what about American veterans? Should they not be free from the fear of violence? What about senior citizens? They are not protected by this bill. How about America's children as they come to and from school every day. Is there anything in this that gives same protection it gives the special treated classes? Is there anything that protects our teachers in this bill and then protects the police officers that patrol our streets in this bill? Is there anything that protects a lot of Americans who have served their country and are just going about their business every day?

Madam Speaker, it is the position of those who oppose this unequal protection proposal that all Americans deserve equal protection under the law.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 9\1/4\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bachus).

Madam Speaker, I am glad to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), my great friend.

(Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).

Mr. Speaker, just as a parliamentary inquiry, does the gentleman from Michigan have the right to close?

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, to close in opposition to this motion, I would say again that the arguments against this proposal being added by the conferees are very strong. This is a Department of Defense authorization bill. It is about defending our country, and we are interjecting an extra issue that we should not be dealing with here. This needs to go to the Committee on the Judiciary.

Number two, States can and often do prosecute these types of crimes. We ought to preserve the 10th amendment and allow traditional State crimes to be prosecuted at the State level.

Number three, this gives enormous prosecutorial discretion. Prosecutors could add this as a bargaining chip to threaten that they are going to bring a hate crimes allegation when in fact really are just trying to impose a stiffer sentence through the plea bargaining process.

Number four, we have not discussed how freedom of speech, as the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence) so eloquently argued, can be tied up in who should be charged with a hate crimes allegation and who should be charged with just a typical crime allegation. Often it is political correctness that determines who gets punished and who does not.

Finally, the most important reason is this is misnamed as a hate crimes proposal. This is an unequal protection proposal.

Since before 1868 in this country, since before the 14th amendment, sadly some Americans got less protections under the law than other Americans. Fortunately, since 1868 we have made a lot of progress in that regard.

What this proposal does is to give certain Americans more protections than others, exactly what we tried to do in 1868 with the 14th amendment. This does nothing to give protection to children, veterans, teachers, police, or to our many seniors throughout the country; and that why it is fatally and morally flawed, despite the best of intentions by the proposer.

This proposal divides America. It hyphenates America, it balkanizes America, and you get special protection if you are a member of a special class under this bill.

Mr. Speaker, criminals are like wolves. They are like lions. They prey on those who get the least protection from the herd. If we say children and seniors and veterans should not get the same protection, we need to be aware what the criminals will do. They will prey on those left unprotected.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, the way to fight hate in America is to teach, it is to preach, it is to love, and it is to respect. It is not to divide, to balkanize, to hyphenate Americans and to grant special privileges and protections.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I thank the chairman for the time, and let me start by saying that we all are opposed to hate crimes. They are a terrible thing, and any legislation that had a positive effect on stopping hate crimes I would be here supporting.

I sincerely believe by looking at this legislation that this legislation could not only interfere with our ability to, as a practical matter and in an effective manner, prosecute hate crimes; it

also would have some serious consequences for our enforcement of other laws which now exist.

I say also say that, first of all, there is already Federal hate crime legislation on the book, and I think it is well and narrowly drafted and takes care of the situation. So saying that, let me give my colleagues reasons why I feel that this legislation is a step back, not a step forward.

Look at this legislation. Hate crime, the language is so overbroad that hate is not even required. Nowhere in the legislation does it talk about hate. What that would do is that hate or any other type of animus is not even an element of this so-called hate crime legislation. It is not even in here. So if someone commits some certain broadly defined acts, and it says because if someone commits an act because of someone's race, sex, disability or sexual orientation, it violates this vague law.

If someone commits a crime because of someone's race because of someone's sex, is not all rape committed because of someone's sex? Could not that argument be made? So are we suddenly saying that all rape cases, almost all rape cases will be federalized? I mean, only a few rapists at the very most are indifferent to the sex of their victims. So we would be federalizing all rape cases.

Even assume that there is a need for a Federal hate crimes law. This is a poorly drafted bill. It should be debated. It should be amended significantly in committee before it is considered by the full House and the Senate because of this one thing, because we are fixing to federalize all rape cases.

Second, I believe that this actually could have a negative effect on our national security. Let me tell my colleagues why I believe that. This proposed legislation would swamp Federal law enforcement responsibilities; and in doing so, it would certainly distract them from some of our national goals. Now, more than ever, Federal law enforcement officers and prosecutors must concentrate their scarce resources on combating national threats or uniquely Federal crimes, and hate crime, there is not anything uniquely Federal about that. Those that commit them are doing it because of hate, not because of some Federal jurisdiction.

Terrorism, we have got our hands full of terrorism. On the Federal level with kidnapping cases, with auto theft, with espionage cases, to divert all our resources over to hate crimes and take them away from our State and local prosecutors and our State prosecutors is a tremendous redeployment of our resources.

I also fear that Federal officials might selectively enforce the law. The only other option for Federal officials other than seriously abandoning their other vital responsibilities is to enforce hate crime laws in a highly selective way. That increases the risk of politicizing prosecutions. If we federalize all these vague types of crimes, like all rape cases, they are going to have to pick and choose which ones they prosecute. Using the criminal enforcement agencies for political or ideological purposes, picking and choosing which cases to prosecute, by its very definition that is tyrannical.

A very important point, I think this legislation is going to undermine State and local criminal enforcement. Because of the broad expanse of Federal hate crime laws in this definition, I think it undermines State and local efforts to fight crime in several ways. It would undermine the morale of our frontline State and local law enforcement officials because it tells them they cannot handle this traditional role that they have been handling, prosecuting rape cases, prosecuting murder cases, prosecuting assault cases.

All of the sudden we are telling them this is such a serious problem, they are doing such a lousy job, we are going to take jurisdiction away from the State, and only the Federal Government has the ability to prosecute these cases. As I said, there is already a narrowly and well- constructed Federal hate law, and I have looked at this. Every one of these acts, and maybe the gentleman could respond to this, defined in this already constitutes hate crimes and are prosecuted by State courts today. Not a one of these things is a new crime.

I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Madam Speaker, I think that is actually predictable and let me tell my colleague why.

Some States, but not all of them, but some of them already have hate crimes statutes, and they can already prosecute these cases; but all States, all of them, prosecute murder cases. They all prosecute assault cases. They all prosecute assault with intent to murder cases. They all today prosecute a battery case as a battery, assault as assault, rape as rape, murder as murder.

What this would do is it would expand the jurisdiction. In every one of those cases, a person could go to Federal court or State court, every one of them, and, yes, the States are strapped for money. The counties are strapped for money. Sure, they would like for us to come in and pass a law that suddenly says that every crime out there, even armed robbery with a pistol or robbery, all of those, but particularly rape, murder, assault, battery cases, assault with intent to murder, suddenly these are all Federal cases, yes.

I mean, from a money standpoint, how many Federal courts are we going to build? We would have to double the size of the Federal court, and sure, there are States that would just as soon take all these responsibilities away from them. There are other States, other law enforcement agencies, that think that their States are doing a good job.

As I said, all of these acts defined by this thing are today prosecuted by the States and prosecuted in State court. The only difference is we are going to let all of them go to Federal court now, and I do not think that is a good idea. Maybe this is an indictment saying the State courts are doing a horrible job. I do not know which States are doing a horrible job.

Final point. Murderers who face the death penalty under State law, now listen to this, murderers who face the death penalty under State law are not going to be deterred by an additional Federal hate crime law, especially a proposed Federal law that does not have the death penalty.

We are going to pass this, and we are going to end up with somebody being prosecuted in Federal Court that could have gotten the death penalty in State court and we will not be able to give the death penalty in Federal Court. Now, a lot of Members think that is just fine because it does away with the death penalty in a number of cases. It does in this.

And last, it is no less horrible for someone to be molested or murdered because the murderer liked him or her or than because the murderer hated him or her. If somebody kills me and they liked me, or at one time they were a friend of mine, I am just as dead. And I do not think that part of every case ought to be a day or two where we determine how much hate there was involved in the case.

Let us prosecute and convict them and get them off the streets and quit this tremendous shift to Federal jurisdiction.

Madam Speaker, I am torn. I cannot decide which argument has less merit. There was the gentleman from Florida who said, do not take it up on this bill; it is in the jurisdiction of the Committee on the Judiciary. It is in the dungeon of the Committee on the Judiciary. I envy the gentleman's ability to say that without smiling. This bill is introduced, and it is sent to the Committee on the Judiciary. And that committee, of which he is a member, consistently refuses to take any action on it. Of course, it would be better if the Committee on the Judiciary did its duty and had a markup and let us vote on the bill.

The Committee on the Judiciary tyrannically refuses to deal with the bill. That is bad enough. But it literally adds insult to the democratic process to injury of the democratic process to refuse to act on the bill, and then complain when people find another way around. This is like locking somebody up, and she escapes through your backyard, and you charge her with trespassing. We have found a way out of your prison, and that bothers you. How can anyone seriously argue that, having refused to let the bill be subjected to the normal processes, we are the ones who are at fault because we have found another way to bring it up?

And then we have the gentleman from North Carolina who said this is a violation of free speech. I guess it is easy when you do not read the bill. This bill criminalizes actions that consist of violence against individuals. It allows the Attorney General to enter under certain limited circumstances, if it is a Federal crime of violence under the Federal U.S. Code. It allows certain other things if there is an act of bodily injury or an attempt to cause bodily injury. Nothing in here criminalizes speech. In fact, when people start talking about Sweden, it is a pretty good indication that they do not have anything to talk about with regard to the law that we are voting on in America. By the way, America, unlike Sweden, has a first amendment, and the Supreme Court would have banned that if anybody tried to.

Finally, to refute that argument, which is without any merit whatsoever; I mean, sometimes we get close questions here. That one has no merit. There is nothing remotely in this bill that threatens anybody's speech. But here is the proof of it, and it also is a sign of the gross inconsistency of those on the other side. We are not starting down any path today, except the path of their illogic. What we are doing is adding a category to existing Federal categories. There are already on the books laws that create hate crimes. It is not the case that every crime is treated equally.

By the way, there was one category of people, and violence against them is much more seriously treated than violence against anybody else. If you are so offended by that, where is your motion to amend the law and take away the statute that says it is a super Federal crime to assault one of us. If a Member of Congress and a private citizen are walking down the street and they are both assaulted, it is a much more serious crime against the Member of Congress. Where is your consistency? If you mean what you say, why have you not gone after that, or is it okay if you are protected, Madam Speaker?

And then we have race on the books, and we have religion. Has anybody ever found a case where they say, well, once you do this, someone's free speech will be impugned? Are you telling me there are no racists in America? Are you telling me that no one makes racially offensive remarks? People do. And none of them, none of them have ever been prosecuted for hate speech.

So, in fact, you deny the reality, Madam Speaker, when people say this, that there are already on the books certain categories that are treated as hate crimes. None of them have led to there being any impugning of people's free speech.

Then the question is, why do we want to do this? In the first place, no one is saying that if you were violently assaulted, you will not be protected by the law. Why do we add an additional element if it is a hate crime? And here is the reason: When people are going out and singling out people because of their race or their color; and, by the way, if people who are white are being assaulted by people of another race because of their race, that is a hate crime, and it ought to be treated as such. I do not share the view that that is a bad thing. It is wrong for thugs to tyrannize people because of that, and it is worse than another crime for this reason.

If some individual is walking down the street and is randomly assaulted, he or she is traumatized. But if another individual is singled out because of her race or religion or sexual orientation or gender, then it is not simply the individual who has been assaulted but others who share that characteristic who are put in fear.

We do have a particular problem. The gentleman said, well, you are saying gender instead of sex. Yes, there are people who are transgendered in our society. They are sadly often victimized. They are often victims of violence. Yes, I think it is a good idea to come to their aid. And if the gentleman thinks it is a mistake to go to the aid of people who are transgendered who are more often than others victimized and who are put in fear for that, then we do disagree, and I welcome the chance to vote on it.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the time.

Does he then seek to undo the Federal law that singles out race and religion currently for a protection of this sort? If he thinks it is wrong to do division, does he oppose the existence of those laws and do we expect to see a law repealing these?

Well, why not race and religion?

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

This is an issue, I think, that moves some of us to come to the floor to talk about it, because it sends us down a path that is awfully hard to get back from.

One of the questions that we need to answer here before this Congress is, what is a hate crime? And that question seems real simple, but the answer to that question is almost always, any crime committed against any individual, especially a violent crime, which requires a certain amount of hatred or jealously, a certain kind of emotional attachment or emotional reaction from the perpetrator towards the victim. I do not know how you could assault or murder or rape someone without having anger or hatred or fury in you.

So I will say that any of these crimes here that we are talking about with regard to this are all hate crimes.

The question is, what is not a hate crime? I do not have much of an answer to that, unless it be a crime against property rather than people, but I do not believe you can commit a crime against people and not feel an emotional effect one way or another on their personality.

So we have two significant cases here that were mentioned by the gentlewoman, the Minority Leader, the James Byrd case and the Matthew Shepard case. In both of those cases, there were murders committed in a most violent, hateful fashion. Also, there have been many other murders committed in this country in a violent, hateful fashion, but the perpetrators of those crimes, the murderers of James Byrd and Matthew Shepard, were quickly apprehended, prosecuted and sentenced to death. What more would we choose to do to people who have committed hate crimes than sentence them to the ultimate penalty, which I believe they deserve most vigorously?

Another misconception that I believe is here is that the list of those categories that would be used to define hate crimes, that list is: actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability or sexual orientation of any person. That list sounds suspiciously like title VII of the Civil Rights Act, except it has been amended in a couple of places. In one place, it has replaced the word ``sex'' with the word ``gender.'' Gender is what you think you are; sex is what you physiologically are. So only the person who is the bearer of gender can know what their gender is, and anything else that can be an independently verified, immutable characteristic is what sex is. Sexual orientation is another thing. That is self- identifying.

So we would put people in jail or potentially execute them for crimes committed when they may not even know the circumstances. Those two words are not legally sustainable, and they send us down a very dangerous path.

There is a question of federalism. The States are to be reserved everything that is not specifically designed in the Constitution, and yet we are reaching into the States' province here and stepping across them and saying, but we know better here in Congress, better than you know in Wyoming, better than you know in Texas, better than you know in Iowa. I believe it is better off left up to the States. But I would oppose hate crimes in the States because they are discriminatory in their nature. They discriminate in favor of certain groups and against other groups, and sometimes, they backlash.

If we look statistically, and I have seen some of those in my internet blog searches, about how the hate crimes have backlashed, and there are more Caucasians now, American whites, that are using hate crimes against minorities. Where you have a prosecutor who is willing to go down that path, you are going to see this happen. There will also be the backlash on the prosecutor. When that prosecutor chooses to prosecute a crime and call it a hate crime, some of the people in the public will say, no, that is racist, that is bigoted for one reason or another. Or, if he chooses not to, there is going to be the challenge that he decided not to for discriminatory reasons. It opens up a whole other world here.

I would just boil it down to this, that we are all equal under the law. This Nation is a nation of equal rights for individuals. When God created us, he did not draw a distinction between us, and neither should we in our Federal law.

Mr. Speaker, in the 1 minute that I have, I would like to seek to illustrate what goes wrong if hate crimes legislation is implemented into law.

One example would be just a little over a week ago I used the phrase ``cultural continuity'' on the floor of this Congress. Within hours, there was a press release out declaring I was a racist. Now cultural continuity does not define anything other than this great unity of America, but the Members on the other side leaped to that conclusion, and I would ask the body would people who simultaneously pass public judgment be the same kind of people who would decide a case of hate crimes as jurors. If that is the case, I submit that prejudice is so great there cannot be an objective decision made.

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to yield such time as he may consume to the distinguished gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton), the ranking member of the Committee on Armed Services.

(Mr. SKELTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Speaker, this is the only civil rights measure that we will be considering in this Congress, and it is the first civil rights measure, as distinguished from voter rights, that we have handled on this floor since 1968 when 18 U.S.C. 242 was amended.

Please, let us understand that we have witnessed a dramatic increase in hate-motivated violence. The definitions are very clear. To my friends who have wondered what a hate crime is, there are 8,000 hate crimes each year.

I want my colleagues to know that we have already approved of this. The House has voted on this measure. The Senate has voted on this measure. And now, we are doing the same thing again.

For all of my colleagues who want to know where law enforcement stands on this, please know that the Police Foundation endorses the measure. The National Sheriff's Association endorses this measure. The International Association of Chiefs of Police endorses the measure. The Police Executive Research Forum likewise. So we have law enforcement realizing that we need a comprehensive law banning hate crimes, and what this bill essentially does is modify the Federal nexus that is connected with it.

Please, let us understand that this is the only opportunity we will have to go on record to show that we want to assist States in prosecuting their hate

crimes by re-endorsing and re-supporting this measure.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank), a senior member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to yield 2\1/4\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Baldwin), an excellent member of the Committee on the Judiciary.

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin), a former Secretary of State in his State.

Madam Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Madam Speaker, I just wonder if the gentleman is aware that many States have asked for this assistance; that this merely amends the Federal nexus that already exists; and that the civil rights organizations and more than half a dozen police and law enforcement organizations have all strongly supported the request and the Department of Justice has not taken the point of view that is brilliantly argued by my friend from Alabama?

Madam Speaker, I am delighted to yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the whip of the Democrats, who has been a strong civil rights advocate throughout his career, and who I have been pleased to work with.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Tauscher), a civil rights leader from California.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) who has worked with the civil rights community in her State and Nation since she has come to Congress.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I want to assure the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King) that his position is a perfectly legitimate one, and for anyone to attack him as a racist on that regard I would take issue with. I want the gentleman to know that would not be the sentiments of anyone I know here in the Congress on this side of the aisle, and we apologize for any misunderstanding which may have resulted from that.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the debate we have had here today. I close with a reminder from the International Association of Chiefs of Police in the United States: this is not a door-opener for State prosecutors to get rid of cases or get into the Federal jurisdiction. They can only bring these cases if the Department of Justice agrees that they can be brought. Without that, the Department of Justice wants to make sure that they need this help and in some cases will grant programs to the State and local law enforcement to cover the costs of investigating and prosecuting.

So this hate crimes law will greatly assist law enforcement officers in investigating hate crimes.

Mr. Speaker, 175 organizations, law enforcement, civil rights, Hispanic national law groups, the Presbyterian Church, the Episcopal Church, Anti-Defamation League, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, National Council of La Raza, American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee, National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium, Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Task Force, Human Rights Campaign, the American Association of People With Disabilities, and the National Center For Victims of Crime pray that we will take action today.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.