Jamie Raskin Slams GOP For Backing Local Police While Undermining Federal Law Enforcement In Budget Bill

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During a debate on the House floor on Tuesday, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) spoke about H.Con.Res.30 or Expressing support for local law enforcement officers.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I'd like to start just by asking my friend from Ohio

00:03if whether he's referring to me when he uses the word you, or if he's referring more generally to

00:09some other people, because I would categorically deny having done any of those things. I didn't,

00:14so perhaps if...

00:17...to that party that you belong to, not you personally.

00:20Okay, well, the gentleman refers, and I think he's aware of this because he's an extremely

00:24clever debater. He referred exclusively to things that different local governments did or did not

00:29do. I don't know what Denver, Colorado did or Burlington, Vermont or whatever. I know what

00:35the United States Congress does, and we never defunded the police, and we never tried to defund

00:41the police. On the other hand, my good friend, I believe, participated in, and if he didn't,

00:46I'm happy to stand corrected, but I know a bunch of his colleagues said they wanted to defund the FBI

00:50just like those who want to defund the ATF and shut it down right now. So that's a reality. But

00:57in any event, why don't we talk about what Congress can actually do? The president's new budget

01:02proposes to cut this. So this is something that my colleague and I could agree on. He wants to cut

01:08a billion dollars across 40 Department of Justice grant programs, which support local police departments

01:15to reduce violent crime, hate crime, and crime against women. Would my colleague work with me

01:21to oppose that suggestion in the president's budget? They want to cut $646 million from FEMA for violence

01:32and terrorism prevention. Why do they want to do that? I have no idea. They want to cut $545 million

01:38from the FBI cutting its workforce by more than 2,000 personnel. That sounds like defunding law

01:45enforcement to me. I know they don't seem to be as fond of federal law enforcement as they are of local

01:51law enforcement. But do they really want to cut more than a half a billion dollars from the FBI

01:56to be fighting criminals and terrorists? I mean, I just, for the life of me, I don't understand

02:02how they can do that while they swear fealty to law enforcement. It just makes no sense.

02:09They want to cut $491 million from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,

02:15making our cyber and physical infrastructure far more vulnerable to attack by foreign bad actors

02:22like Vladimir Putin and President Xi and Kim Jong-un. I know there are some people in high levels of

02:28office who are fond of those people, who write valentines to Kim Jong-un. But the rest of us

02:33would like to be protected from them. We should not be dismantling the cybersecurity infrastructure

02:39of America. They want to cut $212 million from the DEA. Now, can you imagine if a Democratic president

02:46had proposed any of this, they would be screaming. Their hair would be on fire. But Donald Trump proposed

02:52it, and they just mumble along like it's no big deal. What about all of these efforts to defund

02:59federal law enforcement like the DOJ, FEMA, FBI? Will our colleagues work with us to restore that money?

03:07I'm happy to reserve.

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