As part of their debt ceiling crisis, the Republicans approved a ransom note demanding drastic cuts to domestic priorities. For the Biden White House, this created an opportunity to explain to the public how these cuts would affect much of Americans’ public lives — including law enforcement.
Indeed, just last week, Andrew Bates, the White House’s deputy press secretary, released a lengthy memo making the case that if the GOP’s agenda were implemented, it would mean cutting “thousands of agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency, the FBI, and the Border Patrol.” The memo added that Republicans are “threatening millions of jobs, small businesses, and retirement accounts unless they can cripple the law enforcement agencies the entire country is depending on.”
Feeling a bit defensive, House Republicans have scheduled a series of votes this week intended to show the GOP’s support for law enforcement — designed to coincide with National Police Week. Yesterday, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee published a tweet that read in part, “When Democrats say they want to defund the police, believe them. [House GOP members] will always back the blue.”
As it turns out, “always” might not have been the best choice of words.
A few hours before that tweet was published, Republican Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona reiterated his belief that Congress should “defund and dismantle the FBI.”
Around the same time, Republican Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee appeared on Fox Business and voiced a related position:
“The Congress is this country’s checkbook, and we can start cutting funds to the FBI. You know, they’ve bungled so many cases as of late and they continue to do so. … It’s this top level of arrogance [at the FBI] that we’ve seen, and it is the swamp. It does exist. And that’s what we’ll have to do, we’ll have to start cutting their checkbook a little bit just to get them to the table, if that’s what it takes. And I’m for that…
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