The statement:
“Kelly Loeffler voted against government funding legislation that extended millions in federal funding to law enforcement.” -Warnock for Georgia website, Dec. 7
What we found:
One of the claims often made by Georgia’s Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue is that their Democratic opponents in the Jan. 5 runoff election want to defund the police.
Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock say this is false, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution has reported. They’re calling for criminal justice reform, not defunding the police.
Now, Warnock is attempting to turn the tables on Loeffler.
“I want to point out that Kelly Loeffler actually voted to defund the police,” Warnock said during a recent debate at The Atlanta Press Club. “She voted against the COPS program. She was one of only 10 United States senators who did.”
Loeffler said that wasn’t true.
“I’ve never voted to defund the police,” she said. “In fact, I’ve voted to support more funding that the Democrats, of course, blocked.”
It’s unclear which bill Loeffler was referencing. The Loeffler campaign has not responded to an AJC request for clarification.
Credit: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The day after the debate, the Warnock campaign posted a statement on its website entitled “FACT CHECK: Reverend Warnock Does Not Support Defunding The Police, But Kelly Loeffler Has Voted Against Law Enforcement Funding.”
The statement cites Loeffler’s vote against a measure passed in September to avoid a government shutdown, the AJC previously reported. (Georgia’s other U.S. senator, David Perdue, voted for the bill.)
At the time, Loeffler’s representatives told the AJC that the senator had “decided to take a stand against how the government is funded and noted what they consider fraud and waste.”
The budget measure includes the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2020, which funds the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS). The COPS office provides federal funding to local law enforcement organizations in the form of grants.
COPS is set to receive $174 million in funding from the DOJ for the 2021 fiscal year, according to the office’s proposed budget. The amount is about 0.6% of the DOJ’s nearly $30 billion annual budget.
Loeffler’s campaign website lists “Taxes and The Deficit” on its issues page, noting that one of the senator’s priorities is to “rein in the national debt.” The federal deficit has grown from just under $1 trillion at the end of 2019 to more than $3.1 trillion this December, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Feedback: Send your campaign questions to senatewatch@ajc.com
About the Author
