It is National Police Week and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is once again insisting that Republicans support law enforcement despite an influential GOP House committee’s proposal defunding the police.
The Republican Study Committee puts out an annual budget proposal that calls for cutting funding to the Community Oriented Policing Services program, the federal government’s main grant program for local police departments, according to Huffpost.
At a press conference on Wednesday Johnson, a former chairman of the Republican Study Committee, was confronted over the Republican proposal to defund the police while accusing Democrats of doing the same thing.
“We’ve heard a lot this week about Democrats wanting to defund the police. The Republican Study Committee budget cuts the main federal program that local departments use to hire officers. How is that not defunding the police?” a reporter asked.
“I haven’t looked into the details of the RSC budget,” Johnson responded. “There’s lots of nuances. They also plus-up other areas where you support law enforcement, because that’s the central theme of what we believe, as part of our worldview, as part of our party platform.”
Johnson, who was chair of the RSC when called they called for eliminating grants to state and local police in their 2020 budget, went on to claim that Democratic leaders have backed the ‘defund the police’ movement before backpedaling.
“A lot of the Democrats in the House now are trying to revise history and pretend as though and even say that they never supported defund the police,” Johnson said.
“But I served on House Judiciary and have some pretty famous vignettes, viral videos, where I went through and literally took all the time reading all of their quotes and its top Democrats in the House who just a few years back were all onboard with defunding the police,” he continued. “We told them at that time and we remind them again today that that’s a fools errand.”
