With Biden’s budget proposal highlighting police funding, Democrats are returning to their roots: shoveling federal money to unionized government employees.
With Biden’s budget proposal highlighting police funding, Democrats are returning to their roots: shoveling federal money to unionized government employees.
T he White House fact sheet on President Biden’s budget, announced today, includes the following:
Puts More Police Officers on the Beat. The Budget provides $3.2 billion in discretionary resources for State and local grants, and $30 billion in mandatory resources to support law enforcement, crime prevention, and community violence intervention, including putting more officers for community policing on the beat across the Nation.
You may recall a spat about the slogan (and serious policy goal) “defund the police” that erupted not that long ago in progressive politics.
After that slogan earned them a shellacking by Republicans in the 2020 elections, Democrats in swing districts, speaking on a post-election conference call, warned the party to back off the anti-police approach. It seems that Biden has listened to them.
The “defund the police” episode was strange for many reasons. It is, of course, a terrible idea on the merits. Countries need police, and police need money to do their jobs.
Representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) told swing-district Democrats on that conference call, “To be real, it sounds like you are saying stop pushing for what Black folks want.” But polls find that African Americans highly value police presence. A 2020 poll found that 81 percent of African Americans want either the same level or more police presence in their neighborhoods. On the question of spending in particular, a 2021 poll found that 76 percent of African Americans want police spending to either stay the same or increase.
Cops as good guys are a fixture of American pop culture, with an endless supply of broadcast-television dramas and documentary series about police busting criminals. Making them into a political enemy was sure to be a nonstarter with most of the country right from the start.
Above all, though, the “defund” slogan was strange because it went against the Democratic Party’s primary purpose as a political organization: spending money. Defunding stuff is a Republican thing!
Police spending was always safe because Republicans campaign as the party of law and order, and Democrats campaign as the party of government. Police departments exist at the intersection of those categories, so they never had to worry about getting their budgets cut.
That equilibrium held until 2020, when for the first time in recorded human history, Democrats found public-sector union members unfit for government largesse. “Defund the police” swept across the Left and probably swept some House Democrats out of office.
That’s because people don’t vote for Democrats to defund things. The Democratic Party debated a budget-reconciliation bill all of last year that started by figuring out how much money it wanted to spend, then debated what it actually wanted to spend the money on. The ordering of priorities was clear: Spend money first, design policies and programs second.
Democrats weren’t able to pass that one, but they did pass the American Rescue Plan (ARP). They have celebrated it even though it probably contributed to inflation and didn’t create a single new job. But remember, the goal is to spend money, not to deliver anything, and the ARP sent $1.9 trillion out the door: a roaring success.
The roadblock to even more spending was Senator Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.), whose steadfast refusal to assent to the budget-reconciliation bill ended up killing it. But he was perfectly happy to vote for the ARP, and, as Phil Klein pointed out at the time, “in the past year and a half, Manchin has already voted in favor of $6.5 trillion worth of spending, and he has indicated a willingness to vote for at least another $1.5 trillion, which would bring the total to $8 trillion.” He may have thwarted one Democratic bill, but he’s still a Democrat, and Democrats love government spending.
Some Democrats, such as Representative Cori Bush, haven’t gotten the message yet. Bush insists on sticking with the goal of defunding the police. But it seems that events have left her behind. Biden’s police-spending proposals, which are part of a budget that Nancy Pelosi treated in her statement as though it were delivered from on high, makes clear that Democratic leadership is returning to its roots: shoveling federal money to unionized government employees.