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Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, last evening, I had the opportunity to get on the phone in a telephone townhall with citizens from Davidson and Shelby Counties in Tennessee, and crime was the No. 1 issue that people were talking about. And one of the points that came up several times was, Why is it that some of our colleagues across the aisle have stuck with this prepackaged, zero consequences crime narrative that they are still trying to sell to the American people?

Crime is an issue. And Tennesseans aren't buying the message. I don't think the American people are buying it because they are living with the real-world consequences of the Democrats' refusal to work to get crime under control.

Now, a few days ago, I was watching the news, and I could not believe what I was seeing. Young people were ransacking a convenience store. They were doing this in full view of the cameras, continuing to talk to one another, just going through ransacking that store.

Now, I know I would like to say that was an isolated incident, but we all know that this is not an isolated incident. What is happening is, this has become a trend in many of our cities. The numbers aren't working in our favor when we talk about this trend, whether you are talking about theft or vandalism or something much worse.

Here are some stats. Since 2019, homicide rates in our largest cities are up 50 percent. That is since 2019. Aggravated assaults are up 36 percent. Last year, 108,000 Americans died of a drug overdose; 4,000 of those were Tennesseans.

Now, we can continue to engage in a cable news proxy war or we can do something about this. We, as lawmakers, cannot control what the pundits and the activists say, but we can do something to help the millions of Americans who have become or are at risk of becoming victims of violence.

Back home in Tennessee, the sheriffs and other local officials whom I talk to as I have done my 95-county tour, visiting with every county, these sheriffs, these local officials, parents, principals--they are all telling me exactly why they are struggling to get this crimewave under control. Go talk to a police chief or a captain or go talk to a sheriff or a deputy, and they will tell you: lack of manpower, lack of funding, and the Democrats' soft-on-crime agenda.

We can help with the first two things right now without spending an additional dime of taxpayer money. That lack of manpower, that lack of funding--yes, this is something that we could take action on today if we chose to.

This month, Senator Hagerty and I filed a bill called the Restoring Law and Order Act that would establish a grant program to help State, local, and Tribal law enforcement officials do the work that obviously our President and the Democrats have chosen not to do.

First and foremost, here is what the bill would do. Our local law enforcement officers would be able to use these grants to hire more officers and to train them to deal with violent criminals. They will also be able to pull in more resources to combat interstate child trafficking between the open border and the ease with which criminals are using technology to target kids. This was something we could not afford to leave out of the Restoring Law and Order Act.

These grants would help communities prioritize tough sentencing for repeat offenders and use responsible bail practices and pretrial detention to keep dangerous offenders behind bars. If housing is a problem, they will be able to address it. If food items are a problem, then there would be a way to address that.

We are also going to make these grants available to departments that need help targeting drug crime and getting fentanyl off the streets. Sheriffs in Tennessee tell me that around 80 percent of the drugs that they are seizing--80 percent--contain fentanyl, which means there are a lot of people out there who are ingesting fentanyl and dying without ever knowing that they were taking something laced with fentanyl. This is also putting law enforcement at considerable risk. At least one Tennessee officer is lucky to be alive after accidentally coming into contact with fentanyl.

Last but not least, we are going to encourage law enforcement to make use of these grants to clear the investigatory backlog and get evidence processed as quickly as possible.

So much of our focus has been on urban areas because cities like Philadelphia, Washington, DC, and Memphis are struggling when it comes to controlling homicides, carjackings, and other crimes that are really frightening to people, but rural areas of my State are also seeing unprecedented levels of crime and drug overdose. So to help these communities rise to the challenge, this bill commits no less than 25 percent of its total grant allotment to rural and depressed counties.

Now, as I said, this grant program won't spend an additional dime of taxpayer money. The big IRS payday my Democratic colleagues snuck into the so-called Inflation Reduction Act will be put to better use. Here is how you do it. Instead of using that money to hire more bureaucrats to attack small businesses and independent operators, we are going to use it to keep the communities where they work safe from violent criminals.

We also found that Joe Biden and the Democrats have left a lot of their so-called emergency COVID funding lying around, so we are going to put those funds toward hiring more officers and forensic examiners and clearing the rape kit backlogs. Tennesseans are spending $616 more per month now than they were last year just to keep themselves fed and their cars running. They can't afford to maintain a slush fund for far- left priorities when that money could be put to use actually helping clean up our streets, helping keep our communities safe, and helping to apprehend drug dealers and keep them in jail. That is where these dollars should be used.

The final element of this bill would help us get to the root causes of the rape kit backlogs. In 2021, the U.S. Government spent $251,975,000 through six separate programs to help law enforcement conduct rape and sexual assault investigations. Here is that breakdown. And yes, indeed, Mr. President, $251 million is a lot of money--you are right. More than $24 million was spent on advocacy programs; almost $34 million to train forensic examiners and their staff to collect and preserve DNA evidence, analyze it, and present it in the courtroom; $4 million to train and provide resources to medical personnel who treat victims of sexual assault; almost $90 million to get first responders and forensic testing capabilities in rural areas up on par with urban areas; and $158 million just to address the backlog.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been invested, and still it seems we cannot get these rape kits processed. Sometimes it takes a full year to get these results.

I want to use one grant program as a case study to demonstrate the problem that we are seeing. An audit of the Sexual Assault Kit Initiative found that between 2015 and 2021, we sent $266 million to 75 grantees in 40 States and DC to process these kits, to process and obtain this evidence. In that time, they only managed to clear a little over half of a 136,000-kit backlog.

Now, bear in mind, these kits are the kits that contain the DNA evidence of violent offenders. These are individuals who have committed violent sexual assaults. Every one of these should be processed as a rush order--but no. From 2015 to 2021, with $266 million being sent to 75 grantees in 40 different States and the District of Columbia, they managed to clear a little over half of a 136,000-case backlog. So you still have tens of thousands of kits that are gathering dust, and that is just the ones in the custody of grantees from one single program.

This represents over 50,000 violations of trust and bodily autonomy, 50,000 worst night of an innocent man or woman's life, and 50,000 times the scum of the Earth thought they committed a crime and they got away with it, but they also represent 50,000 opportunities for us to take that rapist or that violent offender and put them in jail for the rest of their life.

The Restoring Law and Order Act will give the GAO a year to conduct a study and prepare a report to explain why we haven't been able to clear the backlog. Why is it we cannot get these kits processed? They are going to look for deficiencies in processing and also let us know where and to what extent rape kits aren't available at all.

This month, Tennesseans--especially the people of Memphis--have been stuck in a vicious cycle of grieving and asking: What more could have been done to spare the victims of two of the most notorious killers in recent memory?

We already know that at least one brutal murder could have been prevented if the crime lab had been able to reduce their processing time for rape kits. Three more may have been prevented if the people responsible for keeping criminals in jail had done their jobs and forced a repeat violent offender to serve out a full sentence. That didn't happen. Four innocent people in Memphis are dead.

The community is heartbroken, and they are grieving. Last night, on our telephone townhall, they talked a lot about this. They talked about how it has affected them and their community.

Now, the left has spent 2 years screaming at Congress to defund the police, pull law enforcement out of neighborhoods, and eliminate consequences for violent behavior, and it is just plain frightening to see so many of my colleagues continue to go along with that rhetoric.

Tennesseans agree, and I think the American people agree also. They don't want an unfair system. They don't want innocent people to be behind bars. They want a system that works. They are tired of hearing that they are the problem--at least according to the Democrats' zero- consequences narrative. That narrative has turned criminals into victims and innocent people into villains and has left true victims wondering who was there for them. There is nothing just or equitable about that.

I would ask my Democratic colleagues to abandon the echo chamber and get on the phone. Go see and visit and listen to and hear from your sheriffs and your mayors and other law enforcement officials back home. Listen to what they have to say. They need your help.

Senator Hagerty and I would love to have their help and support in passing the Restoring Law and Order Act. We need to move this legislation. We need to vote on it now before the crimewave gets even worse.

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