Unanimous Consent Requests

Floor Speech

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Mr. BOOKER. To the esteemed Presiding Officer, I am going to reserve the right to object.

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Mr. BOOKER. I am really grateful that this is one of the areas where we have a lot of bipartisan support because this body I would say unanimously believes that we have to do more to help local law enforcement.

I see it in my State. We have real challenges--challenges with recruitment, challenges with officers who are in incredibly stressful situations for their mental health, and even empowering officers to be able to do their job, which is a job that everyone wants our officers to do.

I say this all the time: If you polled my city, which is a majority minority city, a majority African-American city, and asked them ``Hey, do you want more police, less police, or the same amount of police?'' undeniably, they would want more law enforcement.

When I talk to the law enforcement officers in not just my city but up and down the State, they want more resources. That is why I have multiple bills to actually fund our police departments around our country and specifically in New Jersey to empower them on everything from closing out murder investigations all the way to mental health.

In fact, the legislation that is being brought forward--it is right, it is bipartisan legislation. I am the cosponsor of some of the bills we have right now on the floor. We should be united in this body, all 100 of us, to stand up for public safety and to fund our police, get them the resources and the equipment they need to do their job.

Unfortunately, that is not what is happening. President Trump, through an arbitrary Executive order, has told this body: Your intentions will not be followed.

The legislation that is being proposed today--the President has already said that those DOJ grants will not go to certain States-- Illinois, California, New York, New Jersey--that they are not eligible for these grant programs. That is not a bipartisan way of going about it. That is singling out certain States over other States. That is actually defunding the police departments in certain States for other States when you say that these States that have gotten many of these grants in years past can no longer get them. None of us in this body should support that. All of us in this body should join together and say: When Congress passes a grant program, the President of the United States cannot arbitrarily decide which States receive those grants and which States don't.

I feel a driving sense of urgency that we must support our police officers. They are facing greater and newer challenges in this country. I feel a deep urgency to support mental health issues in particular because I lost one of my dear childhood friends, who died by suicide in uniform.

I want to make a simple adjustment to this legislation--very simple. What it would do is basically say that when this body has approved these grant programs, the President can't undermine the Founders' intention that we hold the purse strings, that the President can't undermine that and these grants have to go out as Congress intended them.

That is all I am asking from my colleague across the aisle, and it is all I am asking from this body, is that we, together, say: We need to get resources for police officers in all of our country. We shouldn't be picking out some departments and not others.

This is just simply making sure that this is a bipartisan effort to fund local police officers.

So I ask my colleagues to pass these bills as I amend them so that we can refocus on the urgent work of reopening the government and then providing all law enforcement agencies with the resources they need, ensuring every law enforcement agency has a fair opportunity to secure funding to support their work, to support the men and women, to support their sacred and noble duties. We should work in a bipartisan way.

So I ask that the consent be modified such that my amendments to S. 180, S. 419, S. 539, S. 1316, and S. 1563, which are at the desk, also be agreed to, with all the other provisions that my colleague is asking for remaining intact, so that we can fund all of police and stop our President's attempt to defund police departments in blue States.

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Mr. BOOKER. Yeah, I just--again, I have so much respect for my colleague that I want to respond to some of the things he said, because, again, I just want to affirm that he is right on the urgency to help our police officers. He is right that States should abide by Federal law that passes from this body. But what we have now is a President who, in his first term, didn't ever try something like this, which is undermining the will of Congress. This is really unprecedented. It has never happened--Republican President, Democratic President--including Donald Trump's first term, where he suddenly said: I am going to turn off the spigot of support to local law enforcement agencies because I don't agree with your policies.

I think that is a threat to the independence of our branch of government. I think that is in so many ways violative of our shared values on both sides of the aisle. But let me go further than that. What the President is doing is saying: Not only am I going to stop funding from going to the State of New Jersey, I am going to go to red counties in New Jersey, red counties in California.

I actually went out and talked to people. Republican legislators in States, Republican police officers, a Republican union leader told me this as well: This is ridiculous. This is insane that we would hold grants back from the entire State. He said: I don't agree with Democrats' policies, but we are out here putting our lives on the line, and Republicans in Congress want to stop resources coming to our police departments.

One of the union leaders said to me: My guys are out there sacrificing their lives, and we can't get help that both sides of the aisle agree on?

So, yes, my colleague and I disagree on domestic immigration policies. One thing he and I don't agree on--because I was the mayor of a city that basically said: In order to keep my city safe, we are going to cooperate with the police department. It was an overbroad generalization that was made on the Senate floor that we are not supporting ICE and immigration activities. I know this up and down the State of New Jersey. Not only do we support them, but we detailed officers with Federal immigration enforcement. I did it when I was mayor.

You want to talk about cooperation. Anybody who knows local government from the FBI to the ATF to ICE, all over New Jersey, we are cooperating with Federal authorities. What we have simply said is we are responsible for local law enforcement. We are not going to do things that create such fear in our communities that immigrant communities are afraid to come to local police to report crimes. And that somehow--not in Trump's first term--but somehow in this term of office, that is a bridge too far.

Let me tell you right now, the way immigration is being pursued in our neighborhoods, where masked agents are coming out of unmarked cars or going to court appearances and schools and hospitals--my local police officers are telling me how much more dangerous this administration is making communities because people who are the victims of crime now are afraid to go to local police officers and report those crimes.

Again, this is not coming from politicians in New Jersey. This is coming from law enforcement officers that have said that we have created such a climate of fear in our country that just solving crimes is getting harder and harder because people are afraid to come to the police.

So, yes, we have policies that say there are certain things we won't do to maintain a community of trust within our communities.

I understand there is a lot of rhetoric. I could turn on shock news and all of that, but when you talk to the law enforcement officers in many of the most Republican parts of my community, they are outraged about what is happening right now.

Again, we can debate policy on immigration, but, to me, for a Senator to allow a President to undermine the power of the purse relegated by the Constitution to this body is outrageous. It has never been done before, not in Trump's first term, not by Bush, not by Reagan, not by Clinton, not by Obama. We are in new territory here in our country where we see a President encroaching upon our powers. I can't be complicit in that.

Everybody in this body--I would never question any of my colleagues on either side of the aisle. We all want our local police departments to not only be able to do their job, we all want to have more equipment and resources. That is why these bills are bipartisan. How can we allow bipartisan bills passed out of the Senate to then be stopped, in a partisan way, by a President who is then going to choose red States and hurt blue States, even though my State has millions of Republicans who deserve to have their communities safe as well?

I am standing today just to say, let's use common sense and help our police officers together; get the resources desperately needed out to our communities now and not let this fall victim to something that wasn't even an issue in Donald Trump's first term.

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