Senator Tim Scott, RS.C., criticized Democrats on Wednesday after the police reform bill failed in the Senate in a procedural vote, accusing Democrats of criticizing the issue until after the election and abusing what he described as his “monopoly” on black voters.
“They cannot allow this party to be seen as a party that extends to all the communities of this nation,” he said of the Democrats in Congress.
THE REPUBLIC OF THE SENATE POLICE REFORM PROJECT FAILS IN THE PROOF VOTE AMID THE DEM OPPOSITION
The procedural vote on whether to start the debate was 55-45; I needed 60 votes to proceed. Republicans had 53 votes, but not enough Democrats joined.
This effectively freezes police reform in Congress for the time being, even if the House passes its own measure on Thursday, despite a national reform movement since George Floyd’s death in police custody.
Democrats had objected to the bill not ending police strangleholds or qualified immunity for police officers.
But Scott emphasized what the bill did, including increasing the requirements for use of force reports, a “no knock” arrest warrant tracker, and encouraging agencies to remove bottlenecks or lose federal funds. .
‘LAW OF JUSTICE’: WHAT IS IN THE SENATE REPUBLICAN POLICE REFORM LAW
“We were four [votes] less than saying yes, yes to having enough information to direct the training and resources so that we can hold people accountable, ”he said. “We lacked four votes to say yes to having a powerful resource pooling tool to force behavior in bottlenecks.”
He said that if the bill had moved to the debate stage, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had agreed to allow debate on 20 amendments, and that Democrats could have gotten most of what they wanted. .
“The irony of the story is today and for the rest of June and all of July, what we are going to have here is that instead of getting 70 percent or more of what you wanted, you will get zero,” he said. said.
He addressed recent comments by Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi that Republicans are “trying to get away with, in reality, the murder of George Floyd,” calling those comments “toxic.”
“That is not politics, it is not a game to win, it is ‘you lose, sooner or later you will lose,’ but immediately all the children in the nation who heard that nonsense lost at the time,” Scott said.
He then doubled down on his assertion that it was not politics, but politics, as he accused Democrats of trying to “clear this ball” until the election and devalue black voters.
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“What became clear to me is [Pelosi] she knows something we all know: she knows she can say that because Democrats have a monopoly on the black vote, “he said.
“And it does not matter the return of their loyalty, and I tell you that the most loyal part of the democratic construction is the black communities, and it does not matter the loyalty of the people, the return they obtain will always continue to drop because in monopolies you begin to devalue your customer. “
Marisa Schultz and Chad Pergram of Fox News contributed to this report.
