[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 59 (Monday, May 15, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Page S3937]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       CAPITOL HILL POLICE BUDGET

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I also want to very briefly mention 
another matter since I have the floor. I think the Senate is going to 
be united. This I hope will be less of a battle than on the horrible 
bankruptcy bill, credit card company bill, big banker bill. This is the 
week where we honor law enforcement. I said it last week. I will say it 
one more time. I say it to the Presiding Officer. I say it to every 
Senator.
  You should, if you get a chance, talk to some of the Capitol Hill 
police officers at the different stations here on the Senate side. You 
will be really troubled by how demoralized they feel and also how angry 
they are. I have never seen anything like this, and I have been here 
9\1/2\ years. I have never seen anything like this.
  Sheila and I are pretty good friends socially and in other ways with 
some of the police officers. I am sure some of the Senators are. They 
are just livid. In July, 2 years ago, we lost two fine officers, and 
after all the concern that was professed, they cannot believe, in light 
of that and in light of the fact that we do not have two officers on 
every post where we need two officers just for security reasons for the 
public, for us--and I would argue just as important for them--that not 
only are we not living up to that commitment and doing what we need to 
do--the Sergeant at Arms on the Senate side, Jim Ziglar, has been 
terrific on this and Senator Bennett, the Republican chair of the 
appropriations legislative subcommittee; his subcommittee has been 
terrific on this--these police officers cannot believe what the House 
of Representatives has done.
  It is unbelievable. What the House of Representatives has done is to 
call for fairly dramatic--I don't have the figures. I don't know if the 
figures are so important. They are calling for dramatic cuts in the 
budget so we will have hundreds fewer, 400 fewer, police officers.
  I will say to some of the Representatives on the House side, and in 
particular I am going to say it to the Republicans because on this one 
there seems to be a pretty major party split where the Democrats have 
expressed a lot of indignation, where Congressman Hoyer and Congressman 
Obey spoke up rather strongly about this, in all due respect, do we 
need to wait for this to happen again where we only have two police 
officers at the memorial post over the weekend, with long lines of 
people, and one person shows up who is deranged, and those two officers 
cannot possibly handle that situation when there are all sorts of other 
people coming through the line, and you have to check baggage and check 
what people have and you have to be talking to people and keep your eye 
on so many different people, and it cannot therefore be prevented or 
avoided, and we lose more? What are you waiting for?
  It is absolutely outrageous. I say to the police union, the officers' 
union, which is a fine union, whatever the union decides to do is what 
the union decides to do, but I would not blame this union if the police 
officers do not express clearly their indignation.
  I cannot believe this was done. As I said last week, it is one of the 
most unconscionable, one of the worst things that has been done in the 
Congress since I have been here. I really believe that.
  I say to Senators, when this appropriations bill comes to the floor, 
I know Senator Reid, who is a former Capitol Police officer, and I know 
I will be out here and others will be, too, with an amendment that will 
get the funding up. All of us will agree, Republicans and Democrats, 
that we are in good shape on the Senate side, and I am proud of that.
  I say to the Chair, what I would rather not see is two different 
operations where on the Senate side we have the funding and do what we 
need to do to make sure these officers are given the resources for 
their own security, much less the security of the public, and then on 
the House side, they have a completely different situation.
  I wanted to bring this to the attention of my colleagues because we 
are going to have a very strong showing on the Senate side. I do not 
believe it is posturing just to show one is on the side of the police 
officers. People feel strongly about it in the Senate.
  We went through far less than the families of Agent Gibson and 
Officer Chestnut. We went through a living hell here. We do not want it 
to happen again. We do not know whether we can prevent it from 
happening again, but we certainly ought to do everything we can. 
Cutting 400 police officers is not doing everything we can.

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