National Defense Authorization Act For Fiscal Year 2017

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I rise today to speak about amendment No. 4083, submitted by a dear friend and respected colleague of mine from New Hampshire whom I must in good faith disagree with. This amendment increases already existing mandatory minimum sentences on offenses related to fentanyl and would not make our communities safer. It would redirect funds away from the kinds of investments we need to truly end the opioid abuse and heroin use epidemic.

Today we face a deadly reality, a community-shattering reality--an opioid epidemic in America. I know what this epidemic is doing to our communities.

In my home State of New Jersey, the heroin death rate is more than three times the national average. The heroin overdose rate in New Jersey now eclipses that of homicides, suicides, car accidents, and AIDS as a leading cause of death. Over the past 10 years, we have lost over 1,500 people under the age of 30 to heroin overdoses in New Jersey alone.

I know that nationally death rates from prescription opioid overdoses have tripled in the last 20 years. I know that the opioid epidemic knows no bounds. It crosses geographic lines, economic lines, and racial lines. This is an epidemic that is tearing apart families, individuals, and communities.

This is an American epidemic, but this amendment is not part of the solution.

First of all, mandatory minimums themselves have proven to be ineffective in making us a safer Nation and stopping the drug war.

Secondly, this amendment and ones like it will divert critical resources that could be, that should be, that must be invested in real solutions, in supporting preventive and education efforts, in supporting law enforcement, in supporting treatment programs.

We have seen a rush like this toward mandatory minimums before. In the 1980s and 1990s, we piled on mandatory minimum sentences and ``three strikes and you're out'' laws in response to the growing drug problem in the United States, but these laws did not prevent this epidemic. It didn't work then, and there is no reason to expect it to work now.

What did the war on drugs do? Well, it increased our Federal prison population by 800 percent since 1980 alone.

The laws ended up increasing the costs in our Federal prison system from $970 million annually in 1980 to $6.7 billion in 2013, a close to 600-percent increase in the use of taxpayer dollars.

According to Pew, the Federal prison system uses $1 in $4 spent by the Department of Justice. This is unacceptable.

In fact, in my first meeting with then-Attorney General Eric Holder in his office after I was elected Senator, he shared with me how the Bureau of Prisons budget had become so bloated that he had limited resources to put toward other Department of Justice programs-- initiatives such as hiring FBI officers and support for programs that we actually know will make our communities safer.

What is more, these laws did not work. They didn't target those whom they were supposed to target. Mandatory minimum sentences weren't responsible for reducing crime. The work of law enforcement and the utilization of data-driven policies are what have done that. A report from the Brennan Center found that ``increased incarceration has been declining in its effectiveness as a crime control tactic for 30 years. Its effect on crime rates since 1990 has been limited, and has been non-existent since 2000.''

Experts have found that mandatory minimum sentences have no demonstrable marginal effect on deterring crime, and it is also the reason why police leadership across the country are speaking out against increasing these mandatory minimums. Former New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik spoke out earlier this year to say: ``The reality is that the federal mandatory minimum sentences established in the early 1980's has had little, if anything, to do with the various state and city violent crime and murder statistics in America.''

I know this. I ran a police department as a mayor and oversaw the functioning of an incredible group of professionals. Had we had more resources from the Federal Government--instead of going to mandatory minimums--to actually hire more police officers, to put more of them in the streets, had we had more resources for drug treatment, had we had more resources for doing things such as reentry programs, we could have better fought crime, rather than wasting more money on ineffective mandatory minimum sentences.

Since 1990, as the onslaught of these mandatory minimums have come, illegal drug use in the U.S. has actually increased.

To pay for the overincarceration explosion, Congress has increased spending on Federal prisons by 45 percent since 1998. But over that same period, Congress has cut spending on State and local law enforcement by 76 percent. In fiscal year 2015, the Federal Government spent over $2.3 billion warehousing people who received lengthened mandatory minimums, and that is money that could be invested elsewhere.

Mandatory minimums, if we remember our history, were created to go after drug kingpins. However, the U.S. Sentencing Commission has found that they too often apply to every function within a drug organization, from mules and couriers to low-level street offenders. By the way, when low-level offenders are arrested and given these mandatory minimum sentences, they are simply replaced by other low-level dealers. The strategy does not work in making us safer, but it is costing us so much money.

This is contrary to the original vision of mandatory minimums. They were created to go after serious drug traffickers and kingpins. The U.S. Sentencing Commission found that mandatory minimums are often applied too broadly, set too high, and--what is worse--that they are unevenly applied. In other words, people who can afford lawyers, people who have resources and means, can fight against those laws, and people who cannot afford the best defense often are the ones who get mandatory minimums.

Who is going to get mandatory minimums? People on college campuses, such as the one I attended, or people in the city I now call home.

Understand this: The amendment that is being proposed reflects the old strategies that haven't won the war on drugs but, in many cases, have actually made things worse, especially by diverting so much money into our prison system and away from strategies in our communities, such as treatment and law enforcement, which we know work.

What have these laws done? They have caused an 800-percent increase in our Federal prison population over the last 30 years. What have these laws done? They have imprisoned too many nonviolent Americans for decades for nonviolent, low-level drug crimes.

What have these laws done? They have imprisoned people such as Sherman Chester, who with two prior nonviolent drug arrests was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for a third nonviolent drug crime. At his sentencing, Mr. Chester's judge said: ``This man doesn't deserve a life sentence, and there is no way that I can legally keep from giving it to him.''

What have these laws done? They have imprisoned mothers such as Alice Johnson, who, after losing her job and filing for bankruptcy, began to associate with people involved in drug dealing. She was arrested for her participation in transporting drugs as a go-between. When 10 of her coconspirators testified against her for reduced charges, she was sentenced to life in prison without parole for 25 years for that nonviolent drug crime.

What have these laws done? They have imprisoned people like Dicky Jackson, a father who was so desperate to save his 2-year-old child who needed a bone marrow transplant that, after exhausting his options-- including community fundraisers--he began transporting meth in his truck. A year into his work, he was arrested for selling a half pound of meth to an undercover officer. He was found guilty of possession with intent to distribute and was given three life sentences without parole.

The Federal prosecutor assigned to Mr. Jackson's case remarked: ``I saw no indication that Mr. Jackson was violent, that he was any sort of large-scale narcotics trafficker, or that he committed his crimes for any reason other than to get money to care for his gravely ill child.''

What these laws have done is make sure that these nonviolent offenders and too many more like them will die in prison for their crimes--taking money from our communities and imprisoning people into their fifties, sixties, and seventies for nonviolent crimes. They are redirecting taxpayer dollars from strategies in our neighborhoods, in our cities, and in communities that we know work and will actually get to the problem of drug abuse. Our system hasn't empowered people. It hasn't empowered them to deal with addictions. It hasn't empowered them to deal with mental health challenges. Our system, as it stands, hasn't empowered us to do the things we know make us safer.

This has been punishment without proportionality, retribution without reason, and a gross taxpayer expense that takes away money that could be invested in public safety and our community well-being.

If the failed war on drugs, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1984 have taught us anything, it is that locking more people up for longer and longer sentences for low-level drug crimes at the expense of billions and billions of taxpayer dollars does not curb drug use and abuse. These laws didn't work then. Why are we proposing new ones now?

There is a different way. More mandatory minimum sentences won't impact the fentanyl opioid problem. The mandatory minimums being proposed for low-level drug offense are not going to accomplish what the amendment supporters hope it will. It is a facade that makes people feel like they are doing something about the problem, but they are not making a difference.

What they will do is throw more taxpayer dollars at our Bureau of Prisons, expanding that bureaucracy and draining money--taxpayers' money--from solutions that we know will work.

What is stunning to me, what is actually deeply frustrating to me is that we have two pieces of bipartisan legislation, one that has passed without enough funding and one that has yet to be brought up for a vote that would address this epidemic and the broken criminal justice system.

Instead of turning to bipartisan legislation that is going through regular order and investing in strategies that this body, in a bipartisan fashion, has agreed with near unanimity would work, we are now considering an amendment that would spend more money on imprisoning low-level offenders for longer and longer sentences.

Earlier this year, the Senate passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2015, also known as CARA. It is a bipartisan bill that would allow the Attorney General to award grants to address the opioid epidemic and expand prevention and education efforts.

I was pleased to cosponsor that bill, but unfortunately the amendment that would have provided funding for the programs and grants in this bill failed to pass. The bill that went forward had the right intentions, but an unwillingness in this body to provide robust funding means that it simply won't address the epidemic adequately. That is what is frustrating to me. The Members of this body who refused to increase funding for preventive and treatment measures through CARA now want to divert taxpayer resources towards putting people in jail for longer and longer sentences for low-level, nonviolent crimes. That makes no sense--to spend millions of more dollars to lock up low-level offenders and starve the programs that local leaders all over this country are asking for, such as treatment, education, and local law enforcement.

If properly funded, CARA would expand prevention initiatives, would expand education efforts, and would curb abuse and addiction, hitting our Nation's problem at its heart--at its demand--and helping addicts with what they need--treatment, not more jail. It would expand the availability of naloxone to law enforcement. It would increase resources to identify and treat incarcerated Americans suffering from drug addiction. It would increase disposal sites for unwanted prescription medications and would promote best practices for evidence- based opioid and heroin treatment and prevention all over our country.

This bipartisan bill had wisdom in it. It was sensible, commonsense, and based on evidence-based strategies.

But now, here we are, not talking about investing in what we know will work but suggesting that we do things that have proven over the last two decades not only not to work but to drain taxpayer dollars and to do more harm. We are considering an amendment that would use taxpayer resources not to do the things I just listed that are underfunded right now but would spend money on incarcerating low-level drug offenders because of unwise increases of mandatory minimum sentences.

The fact is the opioid epidemic is not a problem we can jail our way out of. We already have mandatory minimum sentences in place for heroin and fentanyl offenses, and they haven't done what they were created to do--to prevent an epidemic such as this from occurring. What this amendment does is to double down on that failing strategy.

In fact, for over a year, Senate Judiciary Committee members on both sides of the aisle have worked on crafting a bill, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which would take meaningful steps toward undoing so much of the damage these failed policies have caused over the past decades. That bipartisan criminal justice reform legislation, which worked through regular order and would reduce mandatory minimum penalties and give judges more discretion at sentencing, has been pending on the Senate floor for over 7 months now without Senate action.

The bill followed regular order. It moved through a hearing and a markup. It took in testimony from dozens of experts and organizations. It was adjusted and amended with input from law enforcement officers, attorneys general, prosecutors, civil rights leaders, and local elected leaders. It passed out of the committee. It was then, because of input from other Republican Senators, changed again and modified. Now, this baked bill is fully ready for a vote on the floor. If given that vote, it would most likely get a super majority in this body.

But today, instead of moving forward on that bipartisan, compromise piece of legislation--which would start to fix the failed drug policies of the 1980s and 1990s, which would save us money, which would help us right past wrongs, which would create resources through its savings that could be used for the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act--we are now considering an amendment that would actually build on the mistakes of the past and divert money from the solutions we know work today.

So again I say that I am frustrated, I am angry, and I am beginning to grow disheartened by the current state of affairs. The amendment being proposed and its potential consequences are what a growing consensus in the Senate from both sides of the aisle and especially thoughtful leaders around the country from all sides of the political spectrum--this is exactly what we have been fighting against. My frustration is that instead of looking to take a step forward with the current bipartisan legislation, we are looking to take a step back into the mistakes of the 1980s and 1990s. Instead of learning from the mistakes of the past, we are damning ourselves to make them again.

Since arriving in the Senate 2\1/2\ years ago, I have been encouraged by the momentum building around this comprehensive criminal justice reform legislation. I felt encouraged that hope has been dawning. It has been one of my more affirming experiences as a public leader. During the 2\1/2\ years I have been in the Senate, many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle have been negotiating over this issue in good faith, and actually for a time even before I was here they were working hard on criminal justice reform.

This comprehensive criminal justice reform bill would address so many of the issues that have been agreed to on both sides of the aisle. It would address a system that does not make our communities safer but instead wastes the potential of millions of Americans and drains billions, trillions of taxpayer resources over time.

What we have in the Senate is amazing. It has been incredible to see. We have Senators as different from each other on the political pole as Senator Leahy and Senator Grassley, with other Democrats and Republicans, from the most liberal to the most conservative in this body, coming together to craft a measured bill that would begin to fix our deeply broken criminal justice system. This result, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, would enable prosecutors and judges to maintain critical tools for prosecuting violent offenders and high- level drug traffickers while reducing mandatory minimums and life- without-parole sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

In addition, the bill actually includes a provision related to fentanyl--not one that I necessarily believe in or believe is most effective, but it was included in the bill as a compromise measure.

This critical piece of legislation has the support of dozens of civil rights groups and faith groups, Christian evangelicals and law enforcement and prosecutor groups, including well-respected organizations such as the Major County Sheriffs' Association, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, and the National District Attorneys Association. From law enforcement to faith-based leaders, civil rights activists, and fiscal conservative organizations, so many have come together and are being led in many cases by law enforcement officials because they know this bill is actually smart public safety policy. This bill has the support of law enforcement leaders, including former President George Bush's U.S. Attorney General, Michael Mukasey; former FBI Director Louie Freeh; and the U.S. Department of Justice.

In a letter to Senate leadership, former U.S. Attorney Michael Mukasey, with former Director Bill Sessions and dozens of former Federal judges and U.S. attorneys, shared what they believe the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act can do. They said it ``is good for Federal law enforcement and public safety. It will more effectively ensure that justice shall be done.''

Groups like Law Enforcement Leaders to Reduce Crime and Incarceration, which represent more than 160 current and former police chiefs, U.S. attorneys, and district attorneys, have spoken out in support of this bill, arguing:

This is a unique moment of rare bipartisan consensus on the urgent need for criminal justice reform. As law enforcement leaders, we want to make it clear where we stand: Not only is passing Federal mandatory minimum reform necessary to reduce incarceration, it is also necessary to help law enforcement continue to keep crime at historic lows across the country. We urge Congress to pass the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act.

Contrary to what the few opponents argue, this act would preserve certain mandatory minimum sentences for drug offenders. It would also more effectively target these mandatory minimums toward high-level drug traffickers and violent criminals. Federal drug laws were meant to go after these kingpins, and this legislation leaves important tools in place that allow prosecutors to go after them.

Also, contrary to what the few opponents of this bill argue, the bill would not open the floodgates and permit violent offenders to be let out of prison early; rather, each case must go in front of a Federal judge, where the prosecutor will be present, for that independent judicial review.

Experts from the National Academy of Sciences to the National Research Council have found that lengthy prison sentences have a minimal impact on crime prevention.

The profound thing about this bill is that it is not breaking new ground. This is now becoming common knowledge around the States. In fact, it is being followed and led by many red States in our Nation. In fact, States have shown that we can reduce the prison population, save taxpayers millions and billions of dollars, and also reduce crime. Texas, for instance, between 2007 and 2012, reduced its incarceration rate by 9 percent and saw its total crime drop by 16 percent. If Texas--a State known for law and order and being tough on crime--can enact sweeping measures to reform its criminal justice system, so can we at the Federal level. That is why I am proud that one of the sponsors of the bill is the Republican Whip from Texas, Senator Cornyn.

But there are other States--California, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Massachusetts, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, and New Jersey. All these States have lowered their prison populations through commonsense reforms and--surprise, surprise--have seen crime drop. These States have enacted reforms because it is good for public safety and it saves needed taxpayer dollars that can be reinvested in public safety strategies that actually make us safer. Remember, these are Republican-led States and Democratic-led States, Governors from the right and the left.

There is a great conservative organization called Right on Crime. This is what they had to say about public safety and criminal justice reform:

Taxpayers know that public safety is the core function of government, and they are willing to pay what it takes to keep communities safe. In return for their tax dollars, citizens are entitled to a system that works. When governments spend money inefficiently and do not obtain crime reductions commensurate with the amount of money being spent, they do taxpayers a grave disservice.

It is worth repeating that line: ``Citizens are entitled to a system that works.''

You see, this is not a partisan issue; it is an American issue. There is a chorus calling for reform across the political spectrum. Everyone from Republican candidates for President to conservative groups, such as Koch Industries and Americans for Tax Reform, have come out in support of criminal justice reform and this bill. That is why some Republicans like Grover Norquist and George Martin have written:

Some Republicans who have not focused on our successes in the states think we are still living back in the 1980s and also believe that ``lock them up'' is a smart political war cry. . . . Wasting money is not a way to demonstrate how much you care about an issue.

That is why people like Marc Levin, the founder of Right on Crime, have shared that ``the recent successes of many states in reducing crime, imprisonment, and costs through reforms grounded in research and conservative principles provide a blueprint for reform--at the Federal level.''

Former Governor Mike Huckabee said:

I believe in law and order. I also believe in using facts, rather than fear, when creating policy. And, I believe in fiscal responsibility. Right now, our criminal justice system is failing us in all three camps.

Republicans and Democrats from across the political spectrum have come together because they realize our failures to fix this system have simply cost us too much already. Everyone knows that the first rule of holes is that when you find yourself in one, stop digging. That is why this amendment is so frustrating--because it seeks to dig us deeper into a hole. Look at the financial costs we are already paying. In 2012, the average American taxpayer was contributing hundreds of dollars a year to corrections expenditures, including the incarceration and monitoring and rehabilitation of prisoners.

A report from the Center of Economic Policy Research concluded that in 2008 alone, formerly incarcerated people's employment losses-- keeping people in for decades and decades--cost our economy the equivalent of 1.5 to 1.7 million workers or $57 billion to $65 billion annually. And it is estimated that the U.S. poverty rate between 1980 and 2004 would have been 20 percent lower if it had not been for all this mass incarceration. This is a lot of money we are spending keeping people behind bars--nonviolent offenders--and it is taking a significant financial toll in our country. We could be investing this money better.

By passing this bipartisan Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, the CBO told us that this one bill alone that takes modest steps toward criminal justice reform will save an estimated $318 million in reduced prison costs over the next 5 years and $722 million over the next 10 years. Doing the right thing creates savings that we can then invest in strategies to make ourselves safer or give back to the taxpayers.

Please understand that we have paid dearly for our mistakes. For example, from 1990 to 2005, a new prison opened every 10 days in the United States, making us the global leader in this infrastructure investment. A new prison opened every 10 days in the United States to keep up with the massive explosion in incarcerations. Imagine the roads and bridges and railways we could have been investing in during that time. As our infrastructure has been crumbling over the last three decades, the one area of infrastructure that has been ballooning was gleaming new prisons to actually incarcerate overwhelmingly nonviolent offenders. Imagine the investments we could have made in lifesaving research, innovative technologies, science and math funding. Instead, we extended mandatory minimums again and again and again for low-level drug offenders.

The United States must be the leader around the globe for liberty and justice. Unfortunately, the United States now leads the world in a vastly more dubious distinction: the number of people we incarcerate. We only have 5 percent of the world population--only 5 percent--but one out of four imprisoned people on planet Earth is here in the United States. Again, the majority of those people are nonviolent offenders. The U.S. incarceration rate is 5 to 10 times that of many of our peer countries.

The financial cost, the dollars wasted, are only part of the story, though. We are actually paying for our system's failures in innumerable ways. The hidden financial costs of our broken prison system mirror the hidden social costs that befall families of those incarcerated, with 1 in 28 American children--or 3.6 percent of American kids--growing up with a parent behind bars. Just 25 years ago, it was 1 in 125 American children. I recently saw that ``Sesame Street'' has started programming specifically aimed at helping kids with parents in prison because there are now so many of them. Over half of imprisoned parents were the primary earners for their children prior to their incarceration. What is more, a child with an incarcerated father is more likely to be suspended from school than a peer without an incarcerated father--23 percent compared to 4 percent.

Our rush to incarcerate as a response to many of our societal problems has now created a stunning distinction. According to a new report from the Center for American Progress, close to half of all children in America are growing up with a parent with a criminal record.

Our system often entraps the most vulnerable Americans. We are entrapping people who often are in need of incarceration but treatment and medical help, putting those vulnerable populations in jail for longer and longer periods. In fact, now many of our prisons serve as warehouses for the mentally ill. Serious mental illness affects an estimated 14.5 percent of men and 31 percent of all the women in our jails. Between 25 and 40 percent of all mentally ill Americans will be jailed or incarcerated at some point in their lives, and 65 percent of all American inmates meet the medical criteria for the disease of addiction, many of them not getting the treatment they need but just getting more incarceration.

Today we live in a country where in many ways the words of Bryan Stevenson are also true. This idea of equal justice under the law is challenged by the facts of our criminal justice system. As Bryan Stevenson said, we live in a nation where you get treated better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. Over 80 percent of Americans who are charged with felonies are poor and deemed indigent by our court system.

Our criminal justice system doesn't disproportionately affect just the mentally ill, the addicted, and the poor; it also disproportionately impacts people of color. We know that there is no deeper proclivity to commit drug crimes among people of color, but there is a much deeper reality that the drug laws affect people of color in a different way. For example, Blacks and Whites have no difference in using or selling drugs. There is no statistical difference. In fact, right now in America, some studies are showing that young White men have a slightly higher rate of dealing drugs than young Black men. But Blacks are 3.6 times more likely to get arrested for selling drugs. Latinos are 28 percent more likely than Whites to receive a mandatory minimum penalty for Federal offenses punished by such penalties. A 2011 report found that more than any other group, Latinos in America were convicted at a higher rate of offenses that carried a mandatory minimum sentence. And Blacks are also 21 percent more likely to receive a mandatory minimum sentence than Whites facing similar charges. Black men are given sentences about 20 percent longer than White men for similar crimes. And Native Americans are grossly overrepresented in our criminal justice system, with an incarceration rate 38 percent higher than the national average.

Because minorities are more likely to be arrested for drug crimes even though the rates are not different in usage of drugs or selling of drugs, they are more--disproportionately--likely, therefore, to lose their voting rights, thus resulting in stunning statistics. Today, 1 in 13 Black Americans is prevented from voting because of felony disenfranchisement. Black citizens are four times more likely to have their voting rights revoked than someone who is White.

Those are statistics befitting a different era in American history, but unfortunately they reflect our current circumstances.

So here we find ourselves. I have been talking about this issue for my entire time in the Senate. Many of my colleagues have been working on this issue longer. I have been so encouraged that literally my first policy conversation on the Senate floor right after being sworn in right there by the Vice President of the United States--I walked back toward the back of the room and was met by colleagues who talked to me about this issue. I am so glad there is this growing consensus, but I am frustrated that an amendment is potentially coming to the floor that takes us backward while so much work has gone on to move this body ahead.

I have come to believe in this body. I worked hard to become a Member of the Senate because I believe in the Senate and the power of this institution to do great things. In fact, it is the result of the great good of this body and the labor and struggles of so many Americans that I am even here in the first place, so many Americans fighting for issues that this body helped to change. From equal housing rights, to voting rights, to civil rights, this body has made us a fairer and more just Nation. This body has made our country the shining light on planet Earth for liberty and justice. This body, with so many committed Americans through so many generations, has so much to be proud of.

I am so encouraged by colleagues on both sides of the aisle, that despite the partisanship and cynicism this body often generates, we have found common ground to advance the common good around our criminal justice system. We have a crisis in that system, but I am proud there is movement to address that.

I urge my colleagues to consider the profound potential we have to advance our Nation, to deal with the opioid crisis, the drug crisis, and the crime crisis with smart and effective policies that have proven to work already at the State level.

I urge my colleagues to resist the seductive temptation to claim to be tough on crime when in reality we are just wasting taxpayer dollars on a failed fiction that obscures the true urgency of the day.

Finally, I urge the leadership of this body to not let this amendment reflecting failed policy of the past to the floor and instead move to bring forward a bipartisan, widely supported bill that will address the current crisis. We can no longer hesitate or equivocate, and we can definitely not afford to retreat. Wasting more time is not the answer. The time is now, and, I confess, I am losing patience.

While I am encouraged by leaders like the chairman of the Judiciary Committee and the ranking member of that committee, while I am encouraged by the fact that the majority whip and the Democratic Whip are on this bill, while I am encouraged by the fact that likely a supermajority of support exists for this bill, I am growing impatient that it has not come to a vote yet. There is nothing as painful as a blockage at the heart of justice, blocking the flow of reason, of commonsense, fairness, and urgently needed progress.

But the pain and frustration I might feel is minimal compared to those who are suffering under the brunt of a broken system. We cannot be deaf to the cries for justice of families and children, those suffering addictions, those suffering from mental illness, and those whose families have been torn apart by such misfortunes. We cannot be mute or silent in the face of injustice, those of us who are elected to serve all Americans.

At the beginning of each day, we swear an oath in this body. We pledge allegiance to those ideals of liberty and justice. Let us now act so we do not betray the moral standing of our Nation.

I urge the Senate leadership to bring the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act for a vote. The time is right now to do what is right now.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source