Sen. Gramm on Crime
Excerpts from Speech, Nashua, NH. May 15, 1995
The Nashua Association of Life Underwriters
Clarion Hotel, Nashua, NH

...I want to say something about crime.  Bill Clinton and I differ on
crime.  Bill Clinton blames society, I blame criminals.  I want to
hold criminals accountable for what they do.  I want to grab
violently criminals by the throat and not let them go to get a
better grip.  I'd like to start with the thugs, murderers,
terrorists who killed innocent men, women, and children in Oklahoma
City.  I want to hunt them down, prosecute them and put them to
death.  And I think that's what the American people want.  The
President asked for eighty-five million dollars to begin to adjust
to domestic terrorism, something that we're going to have to adjust
to.  I cut spending in my committee and provided one hundred and
eighty five million dollars, by cutting other programs that weren't
as important as law enforcement.  

I want ten years in prison without parole for possessing a firearm
during the committing of a violent crime or a drug felony.  I want
twenty years for discharging the firearm, and I want the death
penalty for killing somebody.  

I want to totally remake America's federal prison system.  I want
to turn our federal prisons into industrial parks.  I want to make
prisoners work six days a week to pay for the cost of their
incarceration.  I want to unplug the televisions color television,
and uh sell it.  I want to give the weights in the weight room to
the YMCA.  I want to make prisoners go to school at night, so they
know how to read and write when they get out of prison.  And I want
to change the American system of criminal justice so that we don't
have two or three years elapse between the time that somebody is
apprehended and indicted and they're actually punished.

When Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, within a month, we had
hunted down, indicted, convicted and hung all the people who were
involved.  I'm not saying that we can meet that standard again. 
But I think in the public's mind there needs to be a clear
relationship between the crime and the punishment.  And I intend to
try to make that happen again.