The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“HORROR IN THE NATION'S CAPITAL” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Justice was published in the Senate section on pages S12426-S12427 on Aug. 11, 1995.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
HORROR IN THE NATION'S CAPITAL
Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, too often today, when we read and hear about the unspeakable violence that occurs on the streets of our country, we simply shrug it off as the price we pay for living in a free society. In a very real sense, we have begun to tolerate the intolerable.
This past weekend, however, a crime occurred just several city blocks from this building that, I believe, would send shivers down the spine of even the most jaded observer.
Three employees of a nearby McDonald's restaurant--18-year-old Marvin Peay, Jr.; 23-year-old Kevin Workman; and a 49-year-old grandmother named Lilian Jackson--were all shot dead while working the late shift. One of their co-workers was fortunately spared.
Here is how the Washington Post described this brutal crime:
Because Kenneth Joel Marshall was a trusted co-worker, the four men and women working the closing shift at the McDonald's on the eastern edge of Capitol Hill opened the door for him when he showed up shortly before 2 a.m. * * * Minutes later, police said, Marshall pulled a gun, forced the manager to open a safe, herded his co-workers into a basement freezer and pumped bullets into the heads of three of them, a woman and two men. Bent on leaving no witnesses, police said, he turned to the fourth worker, a woman. Twice, he allegedly aimed his gun at her head and squeezed the trigger. Twice, the gun clicked but did not fire.
Apparently, the person who committed this unspeakably evil act fled the crime scene. He was subsequently arrested by the D.C. police department. According to newspaper accounts, the killer also had a prior criminal record, having been arrested by the D.C. police at least seven times since 1987 on both drug and weapons charges.
Mr. President, it is, of course, impossible to make any sense out of such senselessness.
I simply want to take this opportunity to express my own outrage at what has befallen three of our citizens--citizens of the Nation's Capital--and I know I speak for all my colleagues in the Senate when I extend our prayers and heartfelt sympathies to the families of the victims.
Mr. DOLE. Mr. President, all too often in our political discourse, we concentrate on the differences separating the two parties, rather than emphasizing those areas on which there is agreement or at least the potential for agreement.
Last week, the Democratic leadership council--through its think tank, the progressive policy institute--issued an important paper outlining its views on affirmative action. Although I do not agree with every point made in this paper, it does suggest that there is ample room for Republicans and openminded Democrats to forge a new consensus on the meaning of equal opportunity.
I have three observations about the DLC paper that I would like to share now with my Senate colleagues.
One. The paper calls for the ``phase-out'' of mandatory preferences in contract set-asides, public jobs, and hiring by private firms that do business with the Government on the
grounds that these preferences ``put Government in the business of institutionalizing racial distinctions.'' The DLC says that these distinctions are ``hardly a good idea for a democracy held together by common civic deals that transcend group identity.''
This position is very similar, if not identical, to the principle underlying the Equal Opportunity Act of 1995, which I introduced late last month with Congressman Charles Canady of Florida and more than 80 other Congressional Republicans. The Equal Opportunity Act would prohibit the Federal Government from granting preferences to anyone on the basis of race or gender in three key areas: Federal employment, Federal contracting, and federally conducted programs.
The DLC apparently supports this proposition, but wants a gradual phase-in of any ban on group preferences, not their immediate elimination.
In other words, our difference is one of timing, not one of principle.
It is my hope, however, that the DLC will come to understand that if discrimination is wrong, it is wrong today as well as tomorrow, and ought to be ended immediately.
In fact, the DLC goes much further than the Equal Opportunity Act by calling for the outright repeal of ``Lyndon Johnson's 1965 Executive order requiring Federal contractors to adopt minority hiring goals and timetables.'' In its paper, the DLC argues that these guidelines
``encourage employers to hire women and minorities on a rigidly proportional basis,'' a
statement that is directly at odds with President Clinton's own affirmative action review.
In my view, it is appropriate for the Federal Government to require Federal contractors not to discriminate in employment. That was the original purpose of Executive Order 11246. Unfortunately, bureaucratic implementation of the Executive order has converted it from a program aimed at eliminating discrimination to one that relies on it in the form of preferences.
Our first priority should be to restore the original meaning and purpose of the Executive order, not to repeal it, as the DLC has suggested.
Second, the DLC argues that we need to replace Government preferences for groups with new public policies that empower individuals to get ahead regardless of race, gender, or ethnicity. The DLC argues that an empowerment agenda is critical to ``striking a new bargain on racial equality and opportunity.''
I happen to agree that we need to forge a new civil rights agenda for the 1990's, one rooted in policies that are relevant to the needs and challenges of our time. I do so, however, not as part of a bargain, as if one should be defensive about opposing discrimination in the form of preferences.
I support a new civil rights agenda simply because making Government policy by race is not only wrong, but a diversion from reality, an easy excuse to ignore the very serious problems that affect all Americans, whatever their race, or heritage, or gender may be.
Nearly 30 percent of our children are born out of wedlock. Only one-
third of our high school graduates are proficient readers. And children routinely kill other children.
These are the realities
of our time, and this is where our focus should be.
That is why Congressman J.C. Watts and I recently took the step of offering a blueprint for a new civil rights agenda. This agenda includes: strengthening the family by reforming a corrupt welfare system that has substituted Government dependence for personal independence; investing crime-fighting resources in our inner-city communities and ensuring that those who commit violent crimes stay behind bars where they belong; giving low-income parents the opportunity to choose the school, public or private, that they consider most desirable for their children; removing regulatory barriers to opportunity; and, or course, enforcing the anti-discrimination laws that are already on the books.
Finally, the DLC has joined me and other Republicans in taking issue with the Clinton administration's position in the Piscataway case. In this case, the Justice Department has turned the principle of equal opportunity on its head by arguing that a school district may legally fire a teacher, solely because of her race, in order to maintain workforce diversity. The DLC is correct to point out that the Justice Department's position, taken to its logical extreme, would ``sever the increasingly tenuous link between race-conscious remedies and specific acts of discrimination and wipe out the distinction between preferences and quotas.''
Mr. President, I welcome the DLC's contribution to this debate. We may not agree on every point and on every issue, but we both agree that the group-preference status quo is no longer tenable.
Race should not be a wedge issue. If we keep our voices low and our intentions good, I am convinced that this long-overdue debate can, in fact, serve as a catalyst to unite the American people, not divide us.
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