A Bill for Bad Optics

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, after the 5-month deployment of the National Guard around our U.S. Capitol, after the fact of the January 6 break-in, the bill has come due now of over half a billion dollars-- $521 million--for the thousands of troops to guard this Capitol.

This was, again, after the big break-in of January 6. Of course, had the decisionmakers on hand here at the Capitol with their security intel used ahead of time decided to employ just a handful of those troops, we wouldn't have had the January 6 situation happen. But they did not want the bad optics of armed troops standing in front here at that time.

So, instead, we got 5 months' worth of it with two rows of fence, razor wire, and the inability for the people to come visit their Capitol. So now we have months of those optics and a half-a-billion- dollar bill instead.

Mr. Speaker, if that bill doesn't get paid, now our National Guard will not be able to do their training and have their other readiness needs met because Congress hasn't paid the bill for what they did not want ahead of time--bad optics.

Instead, the taxpayers get the bad optics of that bill and a possibly decimated National Guard.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source