Intriguing testimony for tomorrow's USSC hearing

As discussed here and here, the US Sentencing Commission has a public hearing on tap for tomorrow, Tuesday, March 20.  This detailed official agenda now has links to some of the prepared written testimony.  And though the USSC seems eager to keep all its discussion of the guidelines Booker-free, some of the linked testimony discusses Booker (and also Claiborne and Rita).

For example, the Justice Department's main representative is to be John Richter, Chairman of the Attorney General's Advisory Subcommittee on Sentencing and the United States Attorney for the Western District of Oklahoma.  Here is a notable passage at the outset of his prepared testimony:

But before I address a specific topics [sic], I would like to note that we are at a unique place in the history of the guidelines.  At least for the time-being, the guidelines are advisory and while the Department has suggested some possible legislative responses, it is clear that everyone is waiting for the Supreme Court's decisions in Rita and Claiborne.  In the meantime, the data that the Commission has collected has helped inform the discussions about the impact of Booker and its progeny.

The Department believes that in establishing the priorities for this year, the Commission correctly focused on some of the larger, systemic questions that are constantly raised, and decided, except as to immigration, to address only those guidelines that have been impacted by newly enacted or amended statutes.  In recognition of these Commission priorities, the Department is not seeking increases to the guidelines except in response to specific, newly-enacted, mandatory minimums or where the maximum sentence has been raised — i.e., where it is clear that Congress intended that sentences should be increased.  In those instances we have been guided by the principle of proportionality with other existing guidelines.