The JUSTICE Act

Floor Speech

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Mrs. CAPITO. Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from Oklahoma, Senator Lankford, for his dedication to this issue and his very substantive output.

I was privileged to serve on the minigroup that put a lot of work into this under Senator Scott's very able leadership. I am thankful for the way Senator Lankford always approaches issues, not disparaging motives but always looking at ways to improve and make this world a better place because that is what this is about.

I have been listening to a lot of the arguments, a lot of the discussion, and I am saying to myself: If somebody watching this from afar--from Oklahoma or from West Virginia or from Vermont--I am thinking to myself, what is all this talk about 60 votes and cloture and all this? They are not focused on that. All they know is that we failed--this failed.

This was an opportunity that we should have grasped. We had a chance to discuss the need for police reform and to look at the very serious issues of racial inequalities. I am exceedingly disappointed. I thought yesterday--no, actually Monday, I thought, good, we are going to get on this bill. We are going to have a healthy debate and amendments. We are going to be in front of the American people, giving our different opinions. We are going to vote up or down, and we are actually going to have a product here that is actually going to help. But it derailed. It derailed badly. I am very disappointed by that, as I think everybody in this country should be.

Those who are protesting, those who are deeply hurt by what they have seen--they don't care about cloture and 60 votes and who gets the political point and who is going to be able to drag this to the election. They care about getting something done on a deeply emotional issue.

We know that every American is entitled to equal protection under the law. We also know there are a lot of good police officers in this country--many, the vast majority. It is clear, though, that we have a real need to improve our law enforcement so that every American can have the confidence that officers are there to serve them equally.

We should provide better resources to train police on not just deescalation but use of force and intervention, all of the issues that we saw come forward in the horrifying death of George Floyd.

We should provide more body cameras. We wouldn't have known about George Floyd had there not been a camera. I don't believe there was a camera on the officer; it was a bystander's camera. But cameras can be so incredibly useful to protect the rights of the people who are confronted and to protect the rights of the police. So we need to make sure that those are not only provided and there for our law enforcement but that they are turned on. As we saw in Louisville, they were not turned on.

We should make sure that bad police officers can't get passed from department to department and that their disciplinary actions and employment records are there, kept either locally or--the Pelosi bill says kept at the State; the President says kept at the Federal--anyway, in any event, kept for the transparency we need.

We should eliminate the use of choke holds by officers unless the officer is in a situation where he can't get out of it, but quite frankly, I am for banning them in any circumstance.

Those statements are really not very controversial, and most Americans really agree with them. How do we know that? Both the bill introduced by Senator Scott and cosponsored by 47 Republican Senators and the bill introduced by Senator Booker and supported by many Democrats included these provisions in each one of their bills.

We have a nonpartisan Congressional Research Service that we rely on for nonpartisan advice. The quotes from their report in comparing both bills: Both bills seek to establish best practices for law enforcement officers and train officers in areas on the use of force and racial bias. Both bills would seek to increase the use of body cameras worn by State and local law enforcement--both bills. Both bills would contain provisions designed to enhance transparency concerning records of misconduct by law enforcement officers--both bills. Both bills include provisions designed to limit the use of choke holds by Federal, State, and local law enforcement--although the two statutes do differ in the breadth and approach. What happens when we differ with the House? We go to conference, and we work out our differences. But we are not having that chance today.

Given these areas of common ground, it should have been easy for us to come together and to pass that motion to begin the debate on the Senate floor. That is what we are supposed to do.

There are a few major differences in the bill, and this is where I think the American people would have really tuned in to the debate. We know that there is a difference on qualified immunity. Let's have a debate. Let's have a debate.

Had we moved forward, I think we could have ended up with a bipartisan bill that could pass both the House and the Senate and signed into law. As we are now, do you know what we have, as Senator Scott said in the speech he gave about an hour ago? Nothing. We have nothing. We have people on the streets of every town in America begging us to do something positive to help the situation, and today, crickets--nothing--because we couldn't get cooperation.

It would have made significant progress. I heard Senator Scott say-- and I didn't realize this until I heard him say it on the Senate floor--20 amendments and a managers' amendment he offered in conversations with the other side, and again, no--nothing. We don't want that.

We don't have the best record on showing the American people that we can work together and get things done, but, boy, we could have shown them that today. We could have shown them that the rest of the week as we debate those issues. I can guarantee you, on some of the sticky issues, we would have had great agreement. Maybe we all wouldn't have agreed on it, but some of each from each part of our party and each part of the country would have agreed on those issues and formulated better, smarter, more efficient legislation. We could have demonstrated that we are united in support of the civil rights of all Americans and in support of the men and women in law enforcement. Instead, partisanship was allowed to carry the day.

It should be clear, because I think it should be to the American people, that this motion--the other side says, ``We don't have a seat at the table''--would have provided the world stage for their seat at the table to debate this issue.

We need 60 votes to continue, and here I am talking about the technicalities of how to get it done. But there would have been an enormous amendment process that probably would have been quite lengthy and very beneficial.

I am very disappointed. I am disappointed to tell the American people that we are listening to you, but, you know, maybe it is not in our own political benefit to cooperate to move forward, so let's just draw it out, as Senator Lankford said.

I think it is important to point out in the process, if we had an amendment debate, if we had a debate on the Senate floor, if we cultivated and came up with a final product, it is still within the 60- vote margin for the other side to say: No. Can't do it. It is not enough. Can't go there.

OK. At least we tried. Now we have nothing.

As we move forward--I was on several radio interviews today, and a lot of people want to know what is next. I don't know what is next. We have to do better than this. We have to do better, with what we see happening in our country and listening to the cries.

When I heard Senator Scott's speech, when he talked of the communities that are most vulnerable, that have the most difficulties in all of the struggles of their lives, we owe it to them to have this debate on the floor of the greatest deliberative body, the Senate.

We could have demonstrated a lot today, and it didn't work. It was denied by 44 Senators. And here we are having to go back to our constituents, go back to those folks who are very vulnerable, and say: It didn't matter enough to try to fix it. It didn't matter enough that we gave each other 20 amendments. It didn't matter enough that we were going to have the debate on the Senate floor. It didn't matter enough to have our experts come in and tell us what the best is. It didn't matter.

I hope maybe, as time goes by, it will matter because this issue is not going away, and our passion to solve it as a collective body shouldn't go away. I am committed to seeing that it doesn't go away.

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