This time, those plans go beyond anti-liberal rhetoric. Republicans are laying a legislative agenda. And the plan in the RSC memo is the most comprehensive picture voters have to date for how Republicans will seek to tackle crime if they retake the majority. First and foremost, the “Concerned Citizens Bill of Rights” is fiduciary in nature. Conservatives would use congressional purse strings to close the net on states and local authorities they believe “promote the left’s pro-criminal agenda.”
Among other things, this means withholding money from states “when their district attorneys’ offices systematically decline to prosecute types of cases or charge certain crimes,” and also cutting off federal dollars “to states that have ‘no-cash bail’ laws on the books.” The RSC would also tie strings to federal funding, perhaps largest among them the condition that state and local police departments open their books and report all crimes to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program.
The memo also details 10 other proposed reforms, each of them almost certain to trigger a showdown with the White House.
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