US President Joseph Biden is going all out to turn the tables on Republicans who are attempting to cast Democrats as soft on crime in the expectation of winning the important budget struggle this year, ahead of the election year in 2024.
Republicans, on the other hand, staunchly defend their position and dismiss Biden’s counterclaims, claiming that it is the Democrats who want to “defund the police” as budget and debt ceiling talks heat up ahead of a summer deadline with far-reaching economic ramifications, according to media reports.
The US government exceeded the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling limit, necessitating a relaxation in order to meet commitments on payments to senior citizens welfare schemes, interest payments to institutions, and honouring deals on US securities, the most traded financial instrument in global money markets.
According to a special dispatch from the Washington Examiner, Biden has essentially declared war on the freedom caucus ahead of the debt ceiling confrontation.
US Treasury Secretary Yanet Yellen has warned Congress that unless the debt ceiling is raised by the House of Representatives, the US economy will suffer and investors will lose faith in the country, which has a massive external commercial borrowing of 247 percent of its trillion-dollar GDP, second only to Singapore. Yellen has stated that she will take extraordinary efforts to meet obligations until June of this year, but not beyond.
Biden is “top-tier gaslighting” the public after “filling his administration with radical ‘defund the cops’ advocates from top to bottom,” Republican strategists claim.
“Democrat-controlled communities continue to agitate for police defunding and have followed through by eliminating money from police budgets,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Emma Vaughn was quoted as saying by the Examiner. “Americans know that Democrats are to blame for the rise in violent crime.” Vaughn emailed a “useful” RNC video titled “Nine Minutes of Democrats Calling for Defunding the Police” in an attempt to discredit Democrats on the eve of election year.
During his State of the Union address last year, Biden first distanced himself from more liberal Democrats and their “defund the police” movement, and asked Congress for increased funding for police training, among other things, according to University of Wisconsin-Madison Elections Research Center Director Barry Burden.
“That is a rather different position from prominent progressives in his party who want (to) redirect police funding to social services and other initiatives,” he said. Biden was not as direct during this year’s address, delivered with Tyre Nichols’s parents, RowVaughn and Rodney Wells, in the House chamber.
In January, Nichols, a black man, was beaten to death by five black former Memphis, Tennessee, police officers.
According to poll analysts, however scary it may be, Biden’s support for policing will make it harder for Republicans to portray him as an irresponsible liberal who is unconcerned about crime in the 2024 presidential campaign. Burden said. “Republicans will continue to blame Biden for the violent crimes in the country. He said this strategy did not however work in the 2022 midterm elections when it ran up against the abortion issue.
Vaughn and Wells, on the other hand, believe that sitting and former Republican governors, particularly those seeking to be GOP nominees for the 2024 presidential race, might discredit Biden and Democrats on crime by citing their different state policies.
Bertram Johnson, a political science professor at Middlebury College, disagrees, though he does not think that Biden is employing the “greatest defence is a good offence” strategy.
Democrats may garner a quantum of solace and support in highlighting the negative effects of budget cuts in general, they will find it a tough going to convince voters that Democrats support police more than Republicans do,” he said.
In a statement distributed to reporters on Wednesday, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said that the House Freedom Caucus wants to “defund the police by slashing 20% of federal money for law enforcement, assuming their proposed cutbacks are distributed fairly.” This Monday, the House Freedom Caucus released their budget demands.
The Congressional Black Caucus intends to undo the Biden administration’s common sense decision to more rigorously restrict stabilising braces affixed to handguns – the weapon of choice for mass shooters in Boulder and Dayton “Bates put pen to paper. “This comes as a slew of MAGA Congressional Republicans argue for the abolition of the FBI and the ATF, which were the first responders to the mass shooting after state and local police, according to media accounts.
Biden stated this week at a meeting in Monterey Park, California, that his new gun control executive order, among other actions, will ensure gun dealers conduct proper background checks on buyers, with the condition that the person be of sound mind and seeks the gun for self-defense and is not a danger to his live-in partner. It is possible that a gunman killed 11 people at a Monterey Park dancing class in January of this year.
Biden said that in his budget last week he had outlined the government invest more in safer communities schemes. “And expand access to mental health services for those affected by gun violence,” he said on Tuesday. “Congressional Republicans should pass my budget instead of calling for cuts to these services or defunding the police or abolishing the FBI, as we hear from our MAGA Republican friends,” he said
During a speech about his budget last week in Philadelphia, a major constituency for Democrats, Biden spun the “defund the cops” campaign amid his budget and debt ceiling issues with Republicans, though some reporters felt he misspoke.
“MAGA Republicans are calling for defunding the police departments and defunding the FBI now,” he said. “That’s a good one. I like that one… My budget invests in public safety. It includes funding for more training; more support for law enforcement at a time when they’re expected to play many roles,” a media report quoted the president as saying.
“We’re going to provide 100,000 more community policing officers nationwide and invest in tens of thousands more school nurses and school counsellors and mental health help,” Biden said adding, “We’re going to save communities billions of dollars over time.”
In 2021, the White House claimed that Republicans attempted to defund the police by voting against the American Rescue Plan Act, which provided more than $350 billion in emergency funds to state, county, city, and tribal governments to avoid, for example, cop layoffs due to the epidemic.
According to the Examiner, Biden’s aides have also chastised Republicans who supported former President Donald Trump’s budget, which advocated eliminating the Department of Justice’s Community Relations Services and Community Oriented Police Services.
