Senators Unveil Competing Funding Proposals For Capitol Police Now Short On Cash

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/12/ [login to see] /senators-unveil-competing-funding-proposals-for-capitol-police-now-short-on-cash
Just weeks before Capitol Police are due to deplete funding that was drained by the Jan. 6 insurrection, the top Democrat and Republican on a key Senate panel unveiled dramatically different proposals to rescue the agency's dire finances.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., introduced a broader $3.6 billion measure, which would direct $679.3 million toward Capitol Police and related security efforts. Meanwhile, the panel's ranking Republican, Alabama Sen. Richard Shelby, unveiled a much smaller $632.9 million package to direct funds just to Capitol Police and the National Guard.

The competing bills reveal the gulf that remains between the parties to reach a consensus on urgent calls to fund Capitol Police, and for new demands in the wake of the deadly siege.

"My Republican colleagues are proposing that we deal with these problems piecemeal — address some of them now, and others sometime, somewhere, someday," Leahy said on the Senate floor while introducing his bill late Monday. "But a piecemeal approach that jumps from one problem to the next is no way to govern. I've been here long enough to know that a promise to do it later is no promise at all."