Missouri’s Bush one of three House Democrats to oppose $2 billion Capitol security bill
Freshman Missouri Democratic Rep. Cori Bush was one of just three Democrats to vote against a bill Thursday that steers $1.9 billion toward security upgrades at the U.S. Capitol.
Bush, an outspoken proponent of reallocating police budgets to other social services, said in a statement that the bill fails to address the causes of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“A bill that pours $1.9 billion into increased police surveillance and force without addressing the underlying threats of organized and violent white supremacy, radicalization, and disinformation that led to this attack will not prevent it from happening again,” Bush said in a joint statement with Minnesota Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar and Massachusetts Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley, the two other Democrats who opposed the measure.
The three congresswomen are members of “The Squad,” a nickname for a group of the most left-leaning lawmakers in Congress.
The other three Squad members, Michigan Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib and New York Democratic Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, abstained from the vote.
Without the support of the six progressives, the bill narrowly passed 213 to 212 after every Republican opposed the measure.
Bush and other Squad members had supported legislation the previous evening to establish a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack, which Bush described as a crucial step in ensuring accountability.
In their statement explaining their no vote on the security funding bill, the three congresswomen lamented that the security bill “is being passed before we have any real investigation into the events of January 6th and the failures involved because Republicans have steadfastly obstructed the creation of a January 6th commission.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, said Thursday that Congress “can’t wait until we have every answer before we start with the solutions that we are aware, that we know of.”
The bill provides for a permanent retractable security fence around the Capitol complex among other security upgrades.
Missouri Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who supported the bill, said the Jan. 6 attack “revealed the frightening vulnerabilities of our nation’s Capitol Building” and contended that the “legislation that will help to shore up our security shortfalls, while also providing the Capitol workers and Capitol Police who endured the trauma of January 6th with the mental health support needed and well-earned overtime pay.”
However, Bush and her allies argued that the security bill does not do enough to address the trauma faced by Capitol police officers and other Capitol personnel after the attack.
After narrowly passing the House, the legislation faces hurdles in the evenly divided U.S. Senate.
Missouri Sen. Roy Blunt, the top Republican on the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees the management of the Capitol, has repeatedly criticized House leaders for moving forward with a security spending bill.
The Senate Rules and Homeland Security Committees will soon issue a report with recommendations after their preliminary investigation on the security breakdown.
“Our study will come out in a couple of weeks. I think they should have waited for that frankly,” Blunt said. “House leaders will not work with us on the bicameral study we did here and apparently don’t want the information from any study like that before they decide how we should spend a couple billion dollars.”
This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 3:01 PM.
