Chuck Schumer Blocks GOP Measure to Condemn Defunding Police

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) blocked a measure sponsored by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) to condemn Democrat measures to defund police departments across the country.

Cruz and Cotton tried to pass the resolution to condemn measures to defund the police by unanimous consent; however, Schumer denied the Republicans’ move to gain unanimous consent.

Cotton said that Schumer “must want to defund the police.”

Cruz said:

We know that violent crime disproportionally affects low-income communities, and that law enforcement plays a critical role in protecting life and preserving a free and functioning society. We also know that law enforcement has an important responsibility in upholding our criminal justice system. Though our nation has taken many troubled turns on our continuing march toward justice, defunding and abolishing police departments will undoubtedly take us backward in that endeavor.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) backed the Cruz-Cotton measure.

The resolution declares that proposals to defund police agencies would leave them “understaffed and undertrained.”

Democrats across the country have moved to defund police agencies in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

Los Angeles, California, Mayor Eric Garcetti moved to have the city government find $250 million in potential cuts for the city’s police force. The Los Angeles Times reported that the city will try to find and then cut roughly $150 million from the police budget.

Progressive Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) have called for public officials to defund the nation’s police departments.

Ocasio-Cortez even claimed that many police departments are “over-funded.”

She said, “If you’re an elected official … I’m asking you to ask yourself, what are you willing to sacrifice to make sure that over-funded police departments are defunded?”