Invest to Protect Act of 2022

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, the chairman just said that the Democrats have always been for--I think the direct quote was: ``equitable funding for law enforcement.'' That is interesting because, just 2 years ago, here is what the chairman said in June 2020:

There should be substantial cuts to police budgets.

I don't know how you can say you have always been for something when 2 years ago you said that you weren't, but that just seems what Democrats are up to today.

Let's call this package of bills before us today exactly what it is: It is an election year ploy from Democrats to look like they care about funding law enforcement.

In the wake of radical leftwing efforts to defund the police, it is no surprise that violent crime is on the rise in America. Every major urban area has seen a huge uptick in violent crime. It should also be no surprise that Democrats are now trying to run and hide from their radical ideas and dangerous rhetoric.

For more than 2 years, we have seen violent crime surge all across the country, particularly in Democrat-run cities while many of those same Democrats not only advocated for defunding police departments, but they did it. They cut them.

Now, the Democrats want to use Federal tax dollars to paper over the problems they created in their local Democrat-run cities.

These bills do nothing to solve the underlying problem. They simply create more grant programs within the bureaucracy of the Federal Government.

Under current law, there are already grants available to law enforcement to hire personnel. In fact, last year, the Justice Department awarded more than $139 million in grant dollars through the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. That money provided funds to 183 law enforcement agencies and allowed them to hire more than 1,000 additional officers.

We don't need more Federal grants so Democrat-run cities can then divert taxpayer money to fund their woke agenda. What we need are prosecutors who are willing to prosecute crimes and jurisdictions with laws that actually keep violent criminals in prison.

Nothing in these bills prevents jurisdictions that choose to defund their police from receiving these grant funds. In fact, when Judiciary Republicans offered an amendment to preclude jurisdictions that defunded their police from receiving grant funds, the Democrats rejected it, and they rejected it unanimously.

Faced with an election just over a month away, House Democrats now want to pretend they actually support law enforcement. The timing of this bill should tell you all you need to know about where Democrat priorities are.

Democrats who are in full control of this body have had 2 years to show their support for law enforcement. Only now, when faced with an impending election, are Democrats beginning to feign support for our men and women in blue.

Democrats could have shown their support for law enforcement. Instead, Democrats passed bills to infringe on Americans' Second Amendment rights, legalize marijuana, and further empower the Biden Justice Department to spy on concerned parents.

These bills are just another admission by Democrats that the defund the police movement is wrong and irresponsible. Perhaps, if the Democrats weren't in a cleanup mode after their irresponsible embrace of defund the police rhetoric, the Judiciary Committee could have had an opportunity to consider and improve most of these bills before they came to the floor. But we didn't. Instead, Democrats are rushing to consider these bills to give themselves some pretense that they support funding the police.

No one is fooled. Americans know where Democrats really stand. Americans aren't buying the Democrats' revisionist history. They have seen years of Democrats embracing and supporting the radical defund the police movement. Americans know that the Democrats are the party of soaring crime and defunding the police.

Mr. Speaker, I urge opposition of this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to be clear. The Democrats want to go from COPS to community organizers, and they want the American taxpayer to pay for it. That is what they want to do in Democrat-run cities.

Mr. Speaker, read the bill. It talks about stipends to be used for graduate education or social work. That is what the bill is for. It is not about putting cops on the street. It is about transferring wealth from the people who funded their police and communities around the country, who funded their police, and giving American tax dollars to cities who didn't fund their police so they can use it for community organizers.

That is what this bill is about. That is why we are against it.
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Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Speaker, I have no idea what my distinguished colleague and chairman of the committee was referring to there, but I yield myself the balance of my time for the purpose of closing.

Mr. Speaker, I would just add this: One of the phrases we heard from the Democrats over the last couple of years is ``reimagined policing.''

Well, now we know what they mean. Now we get it. They want to take money from communities who funded their police and give it to communities who didn't, so they can get past this whole defund the police that has been their mantra for the last couple years.

In fact, as I said before, I am surprised by some of the statements I have heard from the chairman of the committee, because as I said, in June of 2020--and it is a direct quote--``There should be substantial cuts to the police budget. . . . `'--by Mr. Nadler.

Now he has got a bill that supposedly, they are saying, funds the police, but we know it doesn't. It takes money from communities I get the privilege of representing in west central Ohio who never, never defunded their police. They made sure the men and women in blue got the resources they needed to protect their communities.

And now the Democrats are saying: We want to take taxpayer dollars from those communities and set up these grant programs so we can give it to social workers. This is straight from the bill, so we can give ``a stipend to be used for graduate education in the area of mental health, public health, or social work. . . . `'

That is what they want the money to be used for, not for the people who are stopping the crime that is happening in every major urban area around the country.

That is why we are opposed to this legislation. I hope it goes down.

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Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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