Police Week

Floor Speech

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Mr. CASTEN. Madam Speaker, it is Police Week, the week when law enforcement officers who keep us safe all over the country come to Washington to remind us how important they are and when Members of Congress introduce resolutions and bills and give speeches in this Chamber letting them know how grateful we are for their service.

I rise today partly to share in that gratitude. It is my privilege to represent the 19th Ward in Chicago where neighborhoods like Mount Greenwood and Beverly have long been home to huge chunks of the Chicago police force from rank-and-file beat cops to the Cook County Sheriff himself. I am also proud last March that I was able to bring home $372,000 in Federal funding for police equipment in the village of Alsip.

I am grateful for all of the service from our law enforcement officers but for a bigger reason.

We are a nation of laws, and we only survive as a nation of laws if those laws are consistently and predictably enforced, and it is our brothers and sisters in law enforcement who make sure that they are.

I do find myself wondering how all these floor speeches this week look to them. How do all these pretty speeches sound to the local police chiefs who were pleading with us in 2020 to provide them with funding to shore up lost State and property tax revenue during the COVID downturn, who knew that they couldn't stay open without it, and they also know every single Republican voted against the American Rescue Plan that kept their officers paid?

How do all these pretty speeches look to the Capitol Police officers who are defending us right now? How do they feel when these speeches come from the same lips of Members who still refer to people who assaulted the Capitol Police as ``political prisoners'' or in one case as a ``martyr''?

How do all these pretty speeches sound to the FBI officers or local police who depend on the FBI to coordinate when crimes cross State lines when they come from the lips of Members of Congress who are regularly and consistently calling to defund the FBI?

How do they sound to ATF officers who are forced--thanks to dumb laws led by my Republican colleagues--to spend hours every day tediously stripping personal identifying information from gun sales databases, making a mockery of the claim that it is people not guns that kill people?

How do all these pretty speeches sound to the victims of financial fraud who depend on the NLRB to protect them from wage theft or the CFPB to protect them from junk fees or the SEC to protect them from financial crimes when the Republican Party is consistently trying to defund all three? After all, if somebody steals $1,000 from you, you are out $1,000. That is just as true if the crook is wearing a burglar's black mask or a huckster's white collar.

On that subject, how do all these speeches sound to our Nation's criminals? You know who they are; they are the ones who every April misrepresent their income and assets and commit tax fraud because they trust that the Republicans are going to consistently block funding and resources for the law enforcement professionals at the Internal Revenue Service.

Finally, how do you think all these speeches sound to E. Jean Carroll's rapist, the guy who was subsequently convicted in court of lying about that rape and still hasn't paid the $83 million fine imposed by law enforcement professionals for that lie, much less the $355 million fine imposed on him for unrelated financial fraud? He is the guy who most of you wouldn't trust with your retirement savings. He is the guy who none of you would trust for an evening alone with your teenage daughter, but who all of my Republican colleagues think should be the next President of the United States.

Oscar Benavides, the former president of Peru, famously said: ``For my friends everything, for my enemies the law.'' That is not how a country of laws works but it is how fascism is built. It is not the way that you ensure that everybody has equal protection under the law, nor is it the way to honor the men and women who dedicate their life to that principle. I hope that next year on Police Week that isn't such a partisan idea.

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