Newsgroups: alt.president.clinton,alt.politics.usa.republican,alt.politics.usa.misc,alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater Date: Tue, 13 Sep 94 10:25:46 PDT From: Proj Republican Future Subject: Crime Bill: A Republican Victory X-Newsreader: NEWTNews & Chameleon -- TCP/IP for MS Windows from NetManage MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII ---------------- Project for the Republican Future ---------------- September 13, 1994 Memorandum to: Republican Leaders From: William Kristol Subject: The Crime Bill: A Republican Victory Today, in a ceremony made possible by the foolish defection of a few "moderate" Republicans, President Clinton will sign the crime bill into law. We will undoubtedly be treated to a new round of rhetoric about how, as the president put it when the legislation first passed, "this crime bill is going to make every neighborhood in America safer." With all else crumbling around them, the White House and Congressional Democrats will seize ever more desperately on the crime bill as their main "achievement" before the November elections. But this effort shouldn't work (and won't) if Republicans build on the extraordinary *success* of our fight against the crime bill. We think Republicans should aggressively reiterate our case against it and commit ourselves to rewrite it next year. President Clinton hoped the crime bill would prove him a "New Democrat" and boost his popularity; George Mitchell hoped it would make Democrats seem "the party that's tougher on crime." Neither hope has been realized. The president's own poll numbers have continued to decline. A Harris poll from two weeks ago found that a clear majority of Americans agreed that "the crime bill contains too much unnecessary spending on social programs and crime will not be reduced." And last week's CNN/Gallup survey shows Republicans moving *back ahead* of Democrats as the party that would do better on crime (by 43 to 39 percent, a reversal from 34-42 six months ago). In other words, Republicans lost the vote but won the national debate on the "crime bill," despite the attractiveness of that label. And we did more. By exposing much of the social spending as "pork" that has little to do with reducing crime, we laid the groundwork for a more sweeping assault on such programs. By demonstrating the bankruptcy and irrelevance of Democratic "anti-crime" initiatives, Republicans won a clear field for the advancement of genuine anti-crime efforts focused on prosecution and incarceration. And by focusing attention on the log-rolling, debate-limiting character of "omnibus" Congressional legislation, Republicans succeeded in reminding the American public why they dislike Congressional business as usual. Republicans should stay on the offensive in all of these areas. And where the now-enacted crime bill is concerned specifically, Republicans should welcome -- not shrink from -- fall election campaign discussion about it. These are the salient points to make: >The crime bill won't reduce crime. Even "The Washington Post" agrees on this point: "What the president calls the toughest, smartest crime bill in federal history is unlikely to have a traceable effect on the national crime rate, and some of the toughest-sounding provisions could perversely end up weakening rather than strengthening the ability of local and state officials to fight crime." Republicans should make this point as forcefully as possible now; we will be well-positioned to say "I told you so" later. >The crime bill won't "put 100,000 police on the streets." At most, the bill promises funding that would support approximately 20,000 police positions, the equivalent of roughly one new round-the-clock beat officer in every police department in the nation. And the bill does not require that all this police funding be used to hire police. >The crime bill won't build prisons as advertised. The bill's "prison construction" funding is likewise not required to be used for construction of prisons, though there is overwhelming evidence that a substantial portion of violent crime is caused by a relatively small group of repeat, violent offendors. These offendors, on average, serve less than half their sentences -- and then only if they are sent to prison in the first place. And 30 percent of all violent crime today is committed by those on pretrial release, bail, or parole. The crime bill's "prison funding," on the insistence of Democrats, is actually designed in large part to encourage "alternatives to incarceration" -- which too many violent criminals already enjoy. >The crime bill still allows billions for pet "member items" and social-welfare programs. True, some of the wasteful pork-barrel spending contained in the crime bill conference report was cut. But plenty remains, as every detailed newspaper and think-tank analysis makes clear. >The crime bill's promise of federal funding is false. The bill does not appropriate a single federal dollar; rather, it "authorizes" federal spending in the future, *if the money is available.* That money is to come from a "trust fund" build on theoretical savings from removing 250,000 workers from federal personnel rolls -- primarily through early retirement and attrition. Past experience is clear: such "cuts" and "savings" rarely take effect -- and neither do the programs they are designed to pay for. >The crime bill allows big-city mayors and police chiefs to shift their responsibility for reducing crime to the federal government. That's the most important reason why so many of them were so eager to support the bill. Democrats promised that the bill's funding would only be "seed" money for police, prisons, and prevention measures. When promised federal crime money doesn't materialize at all, the mayors can blame their crime problems on the federal government. And any future effort to stop the flow of what "seed money" *does* materialize will be denounced. The Democratic crime bill contains a little of almost everything Americans hate most about Washington today. It is a long string of false promises that insult the intelligence of the electorate. It is a waste of tax money. And most of all, it will make a problem that Americans are concerned about worse, not better. Republicans should be sure the American people remember the crime bill this fall -- and remember, in particular, that it was the Democrats who manufactured it. We should also commit ourselves to *fixing* the bill. Two proposals in the forthcoming (September 27) House Republican "Contract with America" deserve special attention in this respect: a law enforcement block grant initiative designed to permit allocation of police and prevention resources by *local* officials, and truth-in-sentencing and prison funding reforms that would ensure the incarceration and incapacitation of violent offendors. In sum, Republicans should use the ground we gained in the crime bill fight to broadly discredit the governing ideology of the current Democratic Congress -- and lay out a sharp alternative for a future Republican Congress. ----------------------------------------- Project for the Republican Future (202) 293-4000 1150 17th Street NW - Fifth Floor Washington, DC 20036