[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 113 (Tuesday, June 29, 2021)]
[House]
[Page H3249]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         A BILL FOR BAD OPTICS

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, after the 5-month deployment of the 
National Guard around our U.S. Capitol, after the fact of the January 6 
break-in, the bill has come due now of over half a billion dollars--
$521 million--for the thousands of troops to guard this Capitol.
  This was, again, after the big break-in of January 6. Of course, had 
the decisionmakers on hand here at the Capitol with their security 
intel used ahead of time decided to employ just a handful of those 
troops, we wouldn't have had the January 6 situation happen. But they 
did not want the bad optics of armed troops standing in front here at 
that time.
  So, instead, we got 5 months' worth of it with two rows of fence, 
razor wire, and the inability for the people to come visit their 
Capitol. So now we have months of those optics and a half-a-billion-
dollar bill instead.
  Mr. Speaker, if that bill doesn't get paid, now our National Guard 
will not be able to do their training and have their other readiness 
needs met because Congress hasn't paid the bill for what they did not 
want ahead of time--bad optics.
  Instead, the taxpayers get the bad optics of that bill and a possibly 
decimated National Guard.

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