Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2016
Floor Speech
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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chairman, I thank Mr. Fattah. I join with him in opposing this amendment.
Legal Services is funded at $375 million this year. This budget cuts it $75 million to $300 million. That is a large cut. That is over 20 percent. It has been cut and cut and cut over the years.
Nationally, 50 percent of all eligible potential clients are turned away from Legal Services because of a lack of funding. In my district in Memphis, they have lost $300,000, and the staff has been reduced from 50 to 38.
Mr. Chairman, when we travel overseas, one of the things that almost every individual you meet up with tells us about America is, We envy your justice system. They envy our justice system because people have access to the courts to settle our differences.
But if you are poor and/or uneducated and you don't have a lawyer, you don't have access, really, to the legal system; the other side will. If you are a domestic violence victim and you need an attorney and you don't have one, you are subject to further domestic violence. If you are a tenant in an apartment building and you are being run out, the apartment people are going to have attorneys and you won't, and you will be on the street.
So we are talking about victims, domestic victims. We are talking about people being homeless. We are talking about individuals, American citizens, who won't have access to the courts, the envy of people around the world when they look at America, and we will be taking it away from them.
I would ask the gentleman to find moneys for the FBI from somewhere else. The FBI helps bring about justice. But to take it away from an area that gives poor people of America justice--even though it does give money to the FBI to find criminals and hopefully bring justice to them on the criminal side, which is important--this is not the right place to take the money.
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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
This amendment would increase by $4 million the bill's funding for grants to address the backlog of sexual assault kits at law enforcement agencies.
DNA analysis has been revolutionary in helping to catch criminals and prevent crimes from occurring because of DNA evidence. This evidence does us no good if it remains untested and sitting on a shelf in a lab somewhere.
Despite progress over the last few years, and much progress most recently, there are still thousands of rape kits that remain untested--potentially hundreds of thousands. That is potentially hundreds of thousands of victims whose assailants are never brought to justice left to prey on yet more women.
Last year, my hometown paper, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, highlighted the tragic need to end this backlog once and for all. It described a serial rapist who was finally caught by police in 2012. He could have been stopped nearly a decade earlier if only his first victim's rape kit had been tested, but that kit wasn't, and, instead, he was able to attack five more women over the next 8 years.
Missed opportunities like this happen all across our country every day. The trauma inflicted on victims of rape can be compounded when they know that their assailants run free while critical evidence goes untested.
Fortunately, efforts are underway to reduce the backlog, and they are making a difference. In Memphis, our backlog reached more than 12,000, but police have now opened 488 investigations and issued 90 requests for indictment.
But testing rape kits cost money, more than local law enforcement can afford. I appreciate the chairman's and the ranking member's commitment to eliminating the backlog and the funding that the committee has provided in the bill, but we need more.
This amendment would increase by not quite 10 percent, an additional $4 million, and would take it from the Drug Enforcement Administration, a $2 billion agency that receives a $40 million increase in this bill. DEA would barely notice the difference.
Moreover, DEA has been alarmingly irresponsible with money Congress has given it previously. An inspector general report recently found that DEA agents had ``sex parties'' with prostitutes funded by drug cartels in government-leased living quarters. And this followed an inspector general report that found the DEA paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for information from Amtrak that they could have obtained for free.
I think the choice is clear: we should stand with victims of sexual assault.
I urge my colleagues to pass this amendment. It is so important that these kits are tested, that the assailants are brought to justice, and that additional women are not attacked by what are known to be serial rapists who are out on the streets.
I would like to say a thank you to my partner on this amendment, Representative Carolyn Maloney, who has been a tireless advocate on this issue as well.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chairman, I just want to thank the chairman, particularly, and the ranking member as well, for their help and their hard work on getting the moneys passed and for helping on this amendment.
These rapists don't know State lines, and they cross State lines, so it is most appropriate that the Federal Government help the locals in finding people that perform these dastardly acts all over our country.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
We just had an amendment on the floor and the amendment took $25 million from Legal Services. I had several amendments to file, and they went from $5 million for legal services up to $35 million. So what I thought might be the equitable thing to do would be, instead of going with the $35 million, which would have just been half of the cut, take the $25 million that Mr. Pittenger wanted to take away from them, take it away from the amendment that would have been best, the $35 million increase, and go for a $10 million increase, which would, in essence, be Mr. Pittenger's amendment against the amendment which would be a best practices that I would have recommended increasing $35 million.
This amendment would restore $10 million to the devastating cuts to Legal Services. Legal Services in 1995 was funded at $400 million. Just on inflationary dollars, today, that $400 million would be $600 million; yet, in this budget, Legal Services would be funded at $300 million, half of what it would be based on 1995 figures adjusted for inflation.
We are proud of our legal system, and we are known for it all around the globe, but it can be complex. With all of the problems we have with the legal language, let alone just languages that we have in this Nation, it is too difficult for people to represent themselves in court.
There is a saying: ``He who represents himself as a lawyer has a fool for a client.'' People need professional legal aid to get through the maze of the justice system. If you are poor in this country--and most people are--if you are uneducated--and many are--and scared when you go to court, you are not going to be able to successfully work against a private attorney on the other side. It just takes away from the whole idea of equal justice under the law.
I talked earlier about domestic violence. There are ladies--and sometimes men--who need protective orders from abusive partners or seniors who have been victimized by fraudulent lenders as well. Legal assistance is vital to ensuring that these parties are treated fairly and are aware of their rights. That is why I am a champion of the Legal Services Corporation, which helps fund legal aid programs throughout the country.
This bill, as I say, cuts $75 million, which would make many people in the Nation not have representation and unable to pursue justice. Nearly 50 percent of all eligible potential clients are turned away from legal services nationally, and it has hurt people all over this country.
The attorneys do heroic work, and there are serious consequences for reducing the funding to these folks. Unless we ensure legal assistance, we effectively shut the courthouse doors to many who won't be able to protect their rights.
The decrease would come from the DEA. Again, the DEA has had numerous, numerous problems with agents who have gone rogue and have done things that you shouldn't do anywhere, least of all when you are a DEA agent representing our country. The funding in the hands of Legal Services could change the lives of thousands of people who need legal representation.
This amendment is $25 million less than what I would have like to have gotten with the $35 million amendment, but I will take that. If we can get the 10, hopefully, Mr. Pittenger will be happy with the 25 cut from the 35 that we should have gotten, in my opinion, on top to restore the 75 that we have lost.
Representatives Quigley, Castor, Schrader, and Joe Kennedy have all helped on this.
Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Kennedy).
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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chairman, let me be clear. This does not cut the DEA. It only reduces the amount of money it was increased by in the budget, and it was increased by something like $40 million in a $2 billion budget. It would take $10 million, which would make a big difference to Legal Services.
Once the Rohrabacher-Cohen-Farr amendment passes, they won't be messing with States that have legalized medical marijuana, and it will give the DEA a lot more time to do the right things they need to do in northern Mexico and in other failed states; and as for the states that haven't failed, stay out of them.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. COHEN. Mr. Chairman, I am doing something I would rather not do. But the gentleman from Texas was so nice on my rape kit amendment, and we did save Texas and have Davy Crockett, a predecessor of mine, in Congress.
I ask unanimous consent that my request for a recorded vote on the amendment I offered that the chair was against, that it be withdrawn, to the end that the amendment stand disposed of by the voice vote thereon.
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Mr. COHEN. I appreciate the time, and I appreciate all of the work that Mr. Rohrabacher and Mr. Farr have done, and I am happy to join with them.
Mr. Chairman, Justice Brandeis said the States are the laboratories of democracy. That is what they are doing here. Some of the arguments we have heard are ``Reefer Madness'' 2015. It is over. One of the gentlemen said children are doing marijuana at age 12. That will show you how good the laws are doing right now.
If we had more money going into heroin and not marijuana, we could stop people from dying, and that is what we should be doing. Tell Montel Williams, who has MS, that marijuana doesn't work. Tell cancer patients that it doesn't help them with nausea. Tell people that it doesn't work.
It works. It helps. It is the States.
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