EQUAL Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I first want to say before my colleague leaves--I know he has a packed day--when I came to the U.S. Senate, I found a friend, I found a mentor, and I found a leader on issues of justice. The incredible friend I have in the Senator from Illinois--he has been leading on issues from immigration reform and fighting for Dreamers all the way to being the principal leader on the Democratic side for the passage of the First Step Act.
I will never forget that he invited me to the White House in my earliest days with then-President Obama, centering me on that table. I had just gotten here, and he then was talking about these issues--the issues of mass incarceration, the issues of racial discrimination and incarceration. What I rise to talk about really is an issue that my colleague has been dealing with for 35 years. He gave important history.
It was a bipartisan issue 35 years ago when the Senate and House of Representatives voted to pass the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, and the President signed it into law that year. He said, very specifically, one of the things it did was create a massive sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine. The bill made it so that five grams of crack cocaine--the example that my colleague gave--carried the same mandatory minimum prison sentence as 500 grams of powder cocaine. That is a 100- to-1 disparity.
What is very powerful to me is what Maya Angelou said. She said:
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
And that is the leadership of Senator Dick Durbin. Understanding that this was a failure, that the policy did not achieve its intended purpose--in fact, it created, as he described, the opposite--Dick Durbin then led this body towards the long process of making reforms happen.
I was proud that when I got into the Senate, Senator Durbin told me the story of how we got it from 100 to 1 down to 18 to 1. It wasn't necessarily based on science. It wasn't necessarily based on law enforcement evidence. It was a negotiation between Senator Durbin and another Republican colleague. I love the story because Senator Durbin pushed for what we are asking for right now. He then fought for 1 to 1. He couldn't get it but was able to negotiate down from 100 to 1 to 18 to 1.
So what I would like to do is read real quickly the research that looked at cocaine use in the United States from right before this bill was first passed up until 2013. I want to quote:
Despite harsher ADAA penalties for crack compared to powder cocaine, there was no decrease in crack use following implementation of sentencing policies . . . although both powder cocaine use and misuse of prescription drugs (the negative control) decreased.
The report concluded that ``these findings suggest that mandatory minimum sentencing may not be an effective method of deterring cocaine use.''
This has been the growing consensus about the War on Drugs on both sides of the aisle. It has been one that has been changing policy.
I am so grateful for Senator Durbin's work chipping away at the mistakes that were made.
During the time between when I was in law school in the 1990s and mayor of the largest city in my State in 2006, we saw the prison population explode in this country. In that period, we were building a new prison or jail--about 1 every 10 days. We became the place on the planet Earth with the most incarcerated people. One-third of all the women incarcerated on planet Earth are now in the United States of America; one out of every four incarcerated people, period--in the United States of America.
A growing consensus of bipartisan work led by Senator Durbin with his wingman from Jersey has been beginning to undermine that, with our partners. So we saw the 2018 passage of the First Step Act, a bill which was made retroactive, and we saw thousands of people liberated from Federal prison who were unjustly sentenced under that 1986 law. The bill Senator Durbin and I wrote and introduced, the EQUAL Act--this is again Senator Durbin's leadership--is now our opportunity to do better.
It must feel good for everyone who understands the good intentions but disastrous results of the crack cocaine-powder cocaine disparity. For all those who understand that we say equal justice under law, but the disproportionate impact it had on Black and Brown communities, further punishing African-American communities in a disproportionate way--in fact, incarcerated Black men at rates that we now have more Black men under criminal supervision in America than all the slaves in 1850. So we are working to do better.
The bill that I picked up to partner with Senator Durbin on passed the House of Representatives. And Senator Durbin hinted at this--I would have never expected it--it passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. The bill was championed by Democrats and Republicans. It passed with 149 Republicans voting for it, and now it is over here. The great thing is, our list of cosponsors, which Senator Durbin read, is growing. I think we will have an announcement over the next few days of other Republicans joining this bill.
We can't change the past, but we can make for a better future. We can't undo the disparities that have disproportionately sent African Americans to prison, but we can make for a more equal and more just future.
There is an old saying that ``the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.'' It was a Martin Luther King quote. But he also said that ``change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability.'' It must be carried in on the backs of people who are willing to struggle for it, people who still believe that this Nation can be a symbol to this world about justice and its justice system.
A terrible mistake was made 35 years ago. I was a teenager. There are people right now unjustly incarcerated--an affront to our most sacred ideal in this country, that of liberty. They are there because of this mistake. We have not fixed it. It was grievous. We have not fixed it. It is wrong. This is our moment. It is a moment of redemption to right past wrongs, to set this Nation on a more just course, to bend the arc of the moral universe more towards justice.
I urge my colleagues to support this bill. I urge them to be arc benders. Together, we can make this a more perfect Union.
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