Former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts released the following statement regarding passage by the House of Representatives of S. 1789, the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010:
“When I voted to reduce sentencing disparities as a member of Congress in 1995, I would not have thought it would be 15 years later before it would happen; however, the U.S. House of Representatives has followed suit with the U.S. Senate and passed S. 1789, the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010.”
“Passage by the House of this important piece of legislation has been long overdue. The disparate treatment of powder and crack cocaine has been long sought by groups and individuals such as the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, U.S. Sentencing Commission, Prison Fellowship Ministries, and many others.”
“I am encouraged that Republicans and Democrats did not allow political differences over other issues to get in the way of good policy. The Congress should continue to evaluate whether our sentencing laws are functioning in the way we intended.”
When Mr. Watts was considering a run for governor late last year, a few Republicans jumped on him for working with the ACLU to pass this type of legislation. Those few Republicans should be ashamed of their react-first, think later approach to public policy. For them, gaining a political foothold was more important than doing what was right for Oklahoma and the nation.
Fortunately, those tactics rarely work. As we noted earlier this week, state senate candidate Matt Jackson attacked Mr. Watts’s endorsement of his opponent, David Holt, because Watts had previously worked with the ACLU. Jackson lost badly to Holt. Voters weren’t convinced by those silly tactics.
Long before others jumped on the bandwagon, Watts was ahead of the game on the issue. He understood more than fifteen years ago that the disparate treatment of crack cocaine and powder cocaine was fundamentally unjust. It punished African-Americans more severely than it did whites and others who preferred powder cocaine. In effect, the sentencing guidelines said smoking cocaine is really, really bad, but snorting it is just kind of bad. It’s those kind of policies that have undermined the “War on Drugs” and have sent some inner city neighborhoods into a death spiral.
We believe the vast majority of Oklahomans would wholeheartedly agree with Watts’s position, which is backed not only by the ACLU, but by thousands of religious organizations, conservative think tanks and media, and conservative icons.
Today, Congress did something right. Given how rare that is these days, let’s applaud those who helped them do it.
