What follows is a full transcript of the speech Joe Biden gave on November 18, 1993 in defense of the Biden/Hatch Crime Bill which eventually became the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. I made this transcription after doing some research and finding that it was difficult to even find a full (over twelve minute) video of the speech, let alone find any full transcript online.
Plenty of people, for all kinds of political reasons, have provided single word, short phrases, or sentences out of context from this speech — but no one seems willing to provide a source link to a full record of it when making their claims/arguments. I hope this full version will provide people with the context needed to understand the intent behind those short excerpts better.
I want to make it clear that I’m not supplying this to defend or attack Biden’s past statements and stance regarding how to curb crime in America. That’s a huge topic covering both parties and decades of our entire political system! All I’m trying to do with this post is make sure that America’s voters have access to complete information about a topic being politicized during an election year.
(Boldface denotes speaking with force. I apologize for any errors in transcription.)
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Madam President, it's been a real pleasure to work with my friend from Texas. We, uh, most times are on opposite sides of issues. Uh, this time we're on the same side. but, uh, uh, it is, uh, I realize, in this in this business it's difficult for us, um, notwithstanding the fact we're personally cooperating on this bill, for us to, uh, dismiss the prospect of some partisanship. Let me set the record straight on this bill.
The underlying bill which is now the "Biden/Hatch Bill" was the "Biden Bill". A guy named "Biden" wrote that bill, and he wrote that bill by going down and sitting down with the President of the United States of America, not with his, not with his Attorney General, not with anyone else - Bill Clinton, President of the United States of America. Who, between the time he got elected in November until the time he was sworn in, called me at my home on six separate occasions, and he unfortunately has, uh, doesn't need, a lot of sleep. Um, sometimes literally, and I say this on the record, as late as 11:30 at night, to discuss why I wasn't moving quicker on the "Biden Crime Bill" from before.
I sat with him, not with his Attorney General. He wanted 100,000 policemen. He does not view this as a "social issue" as opposed to trying to bring peace and security to the streets. As Governor of the State of Arkansas, he presided over, as Governor, the execution of individuals within the state and the death penalty. He supports the death penalty. He is the "fella" who insisted that I bump this up from, initially when I said, "Where're we gonna get the money?" He said, "Well, all I know is I want 100,000 cops. I made that commitment." He had endorsed the “Biden Crime Bill” as a candidate when he ran. He is the one who talks about the need for stiffer penalties.
So, notwithstanding the fact some of the old Democrats and former Presidents, who were Democrats before Carter I suspect - I don't know who we're talking about here, but "in the old days". It is true when Richard Nixon was running for President, Richard Nixon used to talk about "law and order" and the Democratic response was "law and order with justice" whatever either one of those meant. I never knew. I was running then in 1972. I didn't think Richard Nixon knew what it meant, and I didn't think the opposition knew what it meant.
This President is very, very straightforward and simple. He knows there are two basic steps here. One step is "you must take back the streets" and you take back the streets by: more cops, more prisons, more physical protection for the people.
He also understands what my friend from, uh, Texas, understands and I, doesn't talk a lot about, um, I, I, I, but, he, he signed onto in this bill. He understands we need to keep people who are first time offenders, who are non-violent offenders, or who are potential first-time offenders (I yield myself an additional three minutes) who, in fact are people who are getting themselves into the crime stream for the first time, that they should be diverted from the system.
So, I hope this crime bill, when it passes, the Biden/Hatch Crime Bill, as it becomes law Godwilling, I hope that we will have ended, once and for all, this notion that is a hangover from the Sixties that somehow Democrats are "weak on crime" and Democratic Presidents are "weak on crime" and Republicans are "tough on crime". The truth is: every major crime bill since 1976 has come out of this Congress. Every minor crime bill has had the name of the Democratic senator from the state of Delaware, Joe Biden, on that bill, and has had a majority vote of the Democratic members of the United States Senate on the bill.
So, one of the things I want to do in addition to ending crime is end the political carnage that goes on when we talk about crime. Crime is not Democrat or Republican. Making the streets safe is not a Democratic or Republican issue. This is one of those issues I hope this passage of this bill will do, we'll be taken out of the gridlock category and moved into an emerging consensus, and the consensus is as follows, and I will cease when I finish this statement:
The consensus is:
A) We must take back the streets. It doesn't matter whether or not the person that is accosting your son or daughter, or my son or daughter, my wife, your husband, my mother, your parents - it doesn't matter whether or not they were deprived as a youth. It doesn't matter whether or not they had no background that would enable them to have, to become, uh, to become, uh, become socialized into the fabric of society. It doesn't matter whether or not they're the victims of society. The end result is they're about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe, shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons.
So I don't want to ask, "What made them do this?" They must be taken off the streets! That's number one. There's a consensus on that! The Democratic Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the Democratic President of the United States of America, the Democratic Attorney General, the Republican Leader, the Republican leader of this effort, Senator Hatch, the Republican Senator from Texas, we all agree on that.
Now we can find some “fringe folks” in the study groups on the right wing and left wing, Libertarians and, uh, uh, and “left wingers” in my party who say, "No. That's not what we should do," but politically that consensus has been arrived at. I acknowledge there was not that consensus in the Sixties. There is today.
There's a second thing that we all have agreed upon, and that is:
Unless we do something about that cadre of young people - tens of thousands of them - born out of wedlock, without parents, without supervision, without any structure, without any conscience developing because they literally (I yield myself three more minutes) because they literally have not been socialized. They literally have not had an opportunity. We should focus on them now. Not out of a liberal instinct for love, brother, and humanity - although I think that's a good instinct - but for simple, pragmatic reasons.
If we don't, they will, or a portion of them will, become the predators fifteen years from now - and Madam President, we have predators on our streets, that society has, in fact, in part because of its neglect, created. Again, it does not mean, because we created them, that we somehow forgive them or do not take them out of society to protect my family and yours from them. They are beyond the pale, many of those people, beyond the pale, and it's a sad commentary on society. We have no choice but to take them out of society, and the truth is we don't very well know how to rehabilitate them at that point. That's the sad truth.
You're looking at the "fella" who was one of the primary architects of the Sentencing Commission. You know what the basic premise of the Sentencing Commission is? I know the Presiding Officer knows. It was the first time in eighty years we rejected the notion that the condition of sentencing must be related to how long it would take to rehabilitate. I'm the guy that said, "Rehabilitation. When it occurs we don't understand it and notice it, and when, even when we notice it and we know it occurs, we don't know why." So, you can not make rehabilitation a condition for release.
That's why in our system there's, the federal system, you serve eighty-five percent of your time. I remember what was going on when I was making these arguments in the late Seventies. They used to call it "Biden's 'same time for the same crime' provision".
It's a shame, but we don't know how to rehabilitate, but there is a consensus and I will cease:
A) We must make the streets safer. I don't care why someone is a “mal” factor in society. I don't care why someone is anti-social. I don't care why they become a sociopath. We have an obligation to cordon them off from the rest of society, try to help them, try to change their behavior. That's what we do in this bill, we have drug treatment and we have other treatments to try to deal with it, but they are in jail away from my mother, your husband, our families, but we would be, be, we would be absolutely stupid as a society if we didn't recognize the condition that nurtured those folks still exists, and we must deal with that.
And I think there's a consensus among Republicans on that. All "barbed wire" Republican conservatives who always wanna "hang 'em high", even those folks are saying, "Hey, we've gotta deal with the root cause of this." Not, not "one or the other" but separately. And liberal Democrats who used to say, "Let's look at the sociological underpinnings of why this occurred, and we have to . . ." They're now saying, "Hey look, we've gotta take back the streets. We'll make that fight later."
So, there is a consensus. I hope the remainder of the discussion as we close out the debate on this bill, we can end that old fight. We can put it behind us. Hopefully, we have, as the Senator from West Virginia said, "This is a historic moment on this bill, a consensus being reached." I think that it is, but I think that it's a historic moment for a political reason as well.
Hopefully, we will end the discussion about whether or not Republicans are "neanderthal" and only want to "hang 'em high" and Democrats are "wacko liberals" and only want to look at the causes. those days are gone. Evidence of that: a Democratic Senator from Delaware and a Republican conservative Senator from Utah are united in a “Biden/Hatch Crime Bill” that does all the things that I just said.
So, as my, one of my, relatives who will remain nameless would say, "Godwillin' and the crick not risin'" hopefully we will end this kind of debate and just decide how we're going to deal with the problem from here on. I, uh, I reserve the balance of my time.
(Followed by Biden re-rising to enter into the record endorsement letters from six major national police organizations, and to explain that he'd also worked for several years hand-in-hand with police to formulate the bill.)
