[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 74 (Wednesday, May 4, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2293-S2294]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                            Law Enforcement

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, the week before last, it was my honor 
to sit down with a number of law enforcement officials in my hometown 
of Louisville, but I wish we could have met under happier 
circumstances.
  Our city is contending with a tragic and record-setting jump in 
crime. Last year, Louisville saw 188 homicides--the most in any year on 
record. In the last 2 years, carjackings have tripled, and deadly drugs 
are becoming so prevalent on our streets that Jefferson County saw 500 
overdose deaths in 2021.
  Unfortunately, the historic wave of crime that has swept my hometown 
is challenging communities all across America. The murder rates of at 
least a dozen other major cities set alltime records last year. Chicago 
saw its most carjackings in 20 years, and in the first quarter of 2022, 
New York's crime rate was already up--listen to this--44 percent.
  Needless to say, this is a time for strong law enforcement. Studies 
show that fewer police and less active policing make crime worse and 
leave the most vulnerable communities particularly worse off.
  But our Nation's police officers aren't just facing higher volumes of 
crime; they are facing more direct, personal risks to confront it. Last 
year, as overall homicide counts continued to climb past 2020's record 
total, killings of police officers saw a staggering 59-percent spike of 
their own: 73--73--men and women sworn to protect and serve their 
communities were killed in 2021 while trying to do exactly that, and, 
already, 2022 has seen more than 100 more officers shot in the line of 
duty.
  The surge in anti-police violence that boiled over in the summer of 
2020 has taken its toll on the men and women of law enforcement. An 
exhaustive report

[[Page S2294]]

compiled by the city of Louisville last year found that morale--
morale--among our officers is alarmingly low. A full 75 percent would 
leave for another police department. Not surprisingly, this has led to 
a severe staffing shortage on the force. Our police chief even took out 
billboard ads in Atlanta--in Atlanta--to try to recruit officers from 
other cities.
  Now more than ever, we need to fund law enforcement, support police 
officers, and back the blue, but too many Democrats are apparently bent 
on doing just the opposite. The far left's call to defund the police 
has taken root at every level of government. Elected officials--sworn 
to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution--have chosen instead 
to amplify distrust of the men and women who work every day to enforce 
our laws.
  So let's just consider whom the Biden administration has prioritized 
for confirmation to top jobs in the Justice Department.
  There is the new U.S. attorney with a reputation for pushing to 
cancel entire categories of the Criminal Code and the assistant 
attorneys general who have advocated for efforts to ``decrease police 
budgets'' and ``invest less in police.''
  There is the newly minted Supreme Court Justice who advocated in her 
last job that the COVID pandemic was an appropriate reason to let 
inmates out of jail right here in Washington.
  Just last week, our colleagues on the Judiciary Committee considered 
a nominee to the circuit court with an unapologetic record of hostility 
toward law enforcement. Without any basis in fact, Nusrat Choudhury 
suggested that police murdering unarmed Black men ``happens every 
day.'' Happens every day?
  When our colleague the junior Senator from Louisiana called her out 
on it, the nominee tried to claim that she had only made the statement 
as an act of ``rhetorical advocacy''--``rhetorical advocacy''--on 
behalf of a client.
  Unsurprisingly, that answer hasn't done much to ease the concerns of 
America's law enforcement community. Major organizations representing 
officers--from the Sergeants Benevolent Association to the National 
Sheriffs' Association, to the Fraternal Order of Police--have voiced 
strong, strong opposition and called on President Biden to ``take a 
stand against this dangerous and absurdly''--absurdly--``divisive 
rhetoric.''
  Well, needless to say, the President and his administration need to 
do a lot more than that to prove to the men and women of law 
enforcement that they have their backs.


                              S.J. Res. 39

  Now, Mr. President, on another matter, last week, President Biden 
offered a particularly candid look at his view of education in America. 
In speaking at an awards ceremony for public school teachers, he 
remarked:

       They're not somebody else's children. They're like yours 
     when they're in the classroom.

  Unfortunately, this wasn't a mistake. It was actually a rather 
accurate summary of the increasingly radical way he and his party think 
of children in America.
  When it comes to the respective roles of parents and teachers, 
Democrats have used the past 2 years of the pandemic disruptions to 
show their true colors. They have shoveled money into woke training, 
like the North Carolina program to help preschool teachers 
``deconstruct whiteness''--``deconstruct whiteness.'' They have torn up 
time-tested procedures as in one California district's move to 
institute an equity lottery for admissions. Last fall, the former chair 
of the Democratic National Committee ran a gubernatorial campaign, 
saying:

       I don't think parents should be telling schools what they 
     should teach. Suffice it to say, parents in Virginia saw 
     things differently.
  Across America, parents have rejected the radical liberal campaign to 
make education a ``one size fits all government knows best'' 
proposition. From coast to coast--even in deep-blue bastions like San 
Francisco--they have sent rogue local administrators packing and 
asserted their rights and responsibilities as the first and most 
important teachers of their children.
  Yesterday, Senate Republicans made clear once again that we stand 
with the parents of America. A bipartisan majority adopted Senator 
Thune's resolution of disapproval on one of the Biden administration's 
most egregious violations of parents' rights and kids' well-being.
  Masking children as young as 2 in Head Start Programs across the 
country, including outside on the playground--including outside on the 
playground--flies in the face of what even the World Health 
Organization considers settled science. And it has seriously damaged 
parents' confidence in the systems to which they entrust their children 
for hours every day.
  So I was proud to join a majority of my colleagues last night to 
express the Senate's opposition to this unconscionable policy. Ah, but 
make no mistake: This is not the last we will hear about the far left's 
efforts to grab more control over how America raises its kids.
  As we speak, Senate Democrats are trying to resurrect portions of the 
failed reckless taxing-and-spending spree they spent most of last year 
trying to ram through on party lines. That proposal includes the 
Toddler Takeover that would stick American families with dramatically 
higher costs and dramatically less choice in the market for childcare.
  More redtape for independent providers, special subsidies for 
bureaucracies' preferred one-size-fits-all systems, outright hostility 
toward the faith-based options that are preferred by a majority of 
families who use outside-the-home childcare, and nothing--nothing at 
all--for families who choose to have a full-time parent or another 
family member look after their kids; just the latest example of a 
massive overreach the American people never asked for.
  The Biden administration is having a hard enough time with basic 
governing responsibilities like national security, energy independence, 
and controlling inflation. American families, and especially children, 
will be a whole lot better off the sooner the Democrats stop looking 
for even more ways to fail them.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. Without objection, it is so 
ordered.