Senator John Kerry (D-MA), speaking to the Fraternal Order of Police in Boston, blasted House Republicans for taking a “meat ax'' to crucial items in the proposed federal budget, including education, research, infrastructure, and public safety, and he vowed to continue to fight for unions, reports the Boston Globe. The FOP endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for president in 2008, but members now say they are deeply concerned about the Republican-led House’s plans to slash anticrime programs in the federal budget.
Kerry said Republicans are attempting to dismantle a program he helped spearhead in 1994, with GOP support, to put as many as 100,000 additional police officers on the streets. He said crime decreased 1.5 percent since then, and violent crime dropped 2.5 percent. “Well, I didn’t know that we had ended crime in America,” Kerry told FOP members. “But some of our Republican friends evidently think that none of this matters. I mean, none of it. We’re caught up now in one of the most ridiculous moments that I’ve ever seen in all the time that I’ve been in public life.”