Kendrick Meek: “The COPS program is something that the Association of Police Chiefs wants; it is what the Association of Sheriffs wants.…”

“The COPS program is something that the Association of Police Chiefs wants; it is what the Association of Sheriffs wants. It is something that local communities, Mr. Speaker, they want it. The cops support community-oriented policing support from the U.S. Congress. Now, if 20 percent or 10 percent of that funding is in place, it would be shocking, and it is not there. As a matter of fact, in many areas it has been zeroed out. And so this is where people get an opportunity to see its government at work: bike patrols, preventing crime before it happens. I think it is very, very important. Mr. Ryan, because we believe in third-party validators in the 30-something Working Group, I just wanted to take out the Washington Times, by no stretch of the imagination the liberal paper, because as the Republican majority always talks about, you know, when I was in Florida, they had this caucus called the Freedom Caucus, and they wanted to be conservatives. But I just wanted to say that I think it is important that we bring third-party validators, not just fiction, but third-party validators.”