The senate. Votes on confirmation 4744. Live coverage on the senate on cspan two. Next, Congressional Black Caucus chair representative karen bass talks about Police Reform efforts in virtual discussion with the National Press club. Welcome to the National Press club. I am lisa matthews. Vice president of the club and Associated Press u. S. Video assignment manager. The killing of george floyd by police in minneapolis on may 25 convulsed the nation in black lives matter protests and renewed an urgent outcry for Police Reform. At the same time, our nation has struggled to contain the coronavirus, which has struck communities of color disproportionately. Today, we welcome Congressional Black Caucus chair, representative karen bass, a democrat from california. She has devoted her decade in congress to issues of criminal justice and disparities in health care. Representative bass chairs the Judiciary Committee subcommittee on crime and was passed by House Speaker nancy pelosi and judiciary chair jerry nadler, shepherding the George Floyd Justice in policing act, through the legislative process. The act, which passed the house in late june, bans chokeholds and no knock warrants, as well as lowering the legal barriers for bringing civil and criminal charges against police for misconduct. A Police Reform bill offered by republican senator tim scott has stalled in the senate after democrats complained it did not do enough to Curb Police Abuses and lacked key components including an end to qualified immunity for police. Senatoot bass have tried to negotiate a compromise. It is something representative bass can claim is a bit of a specialty. Prior to congress in 2010, representative bass served in the california state assembly. Where in 2008, she became the first ever black woman in u. S. History to serve as speaker of any state legislature. Under her leadership, republicans and democrats in the assembly came together to address californias crisis. Bass and three colleagues, another democrat and two republicans, were awarded a john f. Kennedy profile in courage award in 2010. The judges recognize the the courage for standing up to the Party Pressure they faced. Now, political pundits are buzzingabout are about representative bass as a possible running mate for joe biden. Before we ask representative bass about her position on Vice President bidens shortlist, let me take a moment to thank the organizers for the event. Todays headline coordinator, and theer, club member Club Executive director, bill mccarron. Following representative basss opening statement, we accept questions from the audience. I will take as many questions as time permits. To submit a question, please send via email to headliners press. Org. Now, i will turn the screen over to representative karen bass. Thank you for joining us. Rep. Bass thank you so much for having me here. Good afternoon to everyone. It is an honor to appear before you and an honor to meet you virtually. I will say that i do hope in the future that i can appear before the club in person. We are really in an historic moment. I think back to a couple of months ago when the world witnessed the brutal murder of george floyd. We sat there and we could see it take place over almost nine minutes. To me, that represented a profound difference in any video we have seen before. We saw protests in 50 states around the country. We saw people protesting of every race and nationality, every gender out there. We saw people protesting in countries around the world and, on the african continent, all 54 countries came together and essentially leveled the protest at the United Nations, about racism in the United States. We are in a moment now that i believe has developed into a movement that started with Police Brutality and has now up,n an even bigger issue systemic racism. I think back to the civil rights movement. Jim crow had been going on for over 100 years in the south. The brutality that had taken place in the south had been going on for years. Camerasot until the tv went down to the south, pictures there,ken, the media was and reports were given about what was happening in the south. That really raised the consciousness of people not just in the United States but around the world and one of the outcomes was civil rights legislation. I feel like we are in one of those moments again. Prior to george floyd, pulling would be taken polling would a murder wasy time taken place. And the pulling was always the same. I will make up the numbers to make a point. 70 of white people who were polled would say there is no systemic problem with policing. One problem, one example. 70 of africanamericans would say, there is a systemic problem with policing in the United States. Now, the polls reflect a united view. 70 of americans are saying that there is a deep problem here, and it is a problem we need to address. To me, this presents a real opportunity. That was the basis in which the George Floyd Justice and policing act was conceived, put together, and passed. It was no small matter that every democrat voted for the bill. I believe prior to what we saw happen, we would not even have had all of the democratic support. We even had the votes of three republicans. That was no small matter. If you remember, the president tweeted a couple of days before, and he called for all republicans to oppose the bill. Everybody here knows when that happens, he usually gets his way because my republican colleagues are concerned about him tweeting or attacking them and they line up. In the process of putting the bill together, the hearings we had, any number of my republican colleagues approached me and said, you know, i cannot be in 100 favor of this bill. But i do recognize there is an issue. We need to talk about this. The substance of the bill actually reflected bills that members of the Congressional Black Caucus worked on for many years. This is the 49th year of the Congressional Black Caucus. In the very beginning of the history, members introduce legislation to address police abuse. This is a longstanding issue in our community. When i went to George Floyds service and looked up and saw the year he was born, 1973, that was the year i first became active on this issue in los angeles. I joined an organization, the coalition against police abuse, in 1973. We had terrible problems in our city led to numerous losses. Chief who wasce very difficult. Out of step. Africanamericans were being killed by chokeholds in large numbers. He had a press conference and he told los angeles in the press conference that the reason why black people die from chokeholds was because our veins were different than white people, and our veins did not open up as rapidly. That is what we were dealing with 47 years ago. I thought after the rodney king beating, when it was on video, i said, finally, everything will change now, because it is on video. We had been crying out about these problems for years, but nobody believed us. Every time someone was killed, it was always said, well, they assaulted a Police Officer, the officer was in fear for his life. And that is why it happened. We thought with rodney king, the world would see and those officers would be convicted. We know what happened. And theward a few years cell phone camera is invented. Now i thought, ok, there are a lot of videos. Every time before george floyd, people would say, we really do not know what happened before the video started. The officer said he was in fear for his life. And we do not know who Michael Brown was. Michael brown was ferguson. Garner, and eric garner, well, you know he was , doing something wrong, as though, even if he was committing a crime, when do you execute people . What happened to innocent until Proven Guilty . What happened to arresting someone and putting them on trial . I think that george floyd was just so egregious, no one could really argue. You did not need to know what happened before the video. You watched him being murdered over eight minutes and 46 seconds. You saw that he was completely subdued. I think that really led to people saying, we cannot debate this one this time. So the movement has raised other issues. It raised the issue of systemic racism. It is leading to us looking at our history with the movement around the statues. I certainly do not agree with the violence that has taken place, the looting that has taken place in the protests, but we all know now that protests happen everyday and the incidence of violence now, if you add the length of time of the protests, there have been a there have been few examples. The statues i would like to see , them come down. But i think there is a way for them to come down, as opposed to vandalizing the statues. But the point is that, what started with a killing of george floyd has now led to bigger questions in our country, like systemic racism, and questioning very specific systems. The education system, the criminal Justice System, which im happy to say there is a lot of bipartisan support for and i will introduce a bill related to the criminal Justice System and women next week. If you look at the Health Care System and prior to George Floyds murder, as chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, i was focused 100 on the disproportionate death rate of africanamericans and because of covid. We could have a whole discussion about covid and how it is being handled and the fact there are 138,000 americans that died in the last few months. In my opinion, a president who does not seem to be moved by it moved by it at all. In fact, wants us to congratulate him that there are not more americans. And we do not know what the breakdown of those 138,000 americans are. The Congressional Black Caucus introduced legislation to tell the cdc they need to give us the demographics, but now the administration does not even want the cdc to have the information. You should know, the Congressional Black Caucus works lockstep with the hispanic caucus, the asianpacific islander caucus, know we have two native american women in congress and we all work , together and are in lockstep because these issues do not just impact black americans. They impact latinos, asianpacific islanders even a , disproportionate death rate has impacted all of our communities in disproportionate ways. So we work together. Coming back to policing, you can you did detail what the bill was about in terms of the accountability measures, the transparency measures. I want to add there are two parts of the bill, one on transparency and accountability where we are uplifting the police. Why is it that your hairdresser has National Standards, national accreditation, but your Police Department does not . When we met with the paternal order of police, they were excited by that part of the bill and they feel it actually helps them because they have been fighting for National Standards for a longtation time, but they have to fight on a retail basis. There are 18,000 Police Departments around the country. Us passing the george floyd act and hopefully getting it on the president s desk will allow National Standards to then take place around the country that will help the order of the police. One other piece i would like to talk about is the grants we provide to communities so they can reenvision policing. I think that addressed a lot of what the protesters are talking about when they are raising a raising the question about how we are spending money in our communities. I prefer to talk about refunding of communities to address communitybased problems like Substance Abuse and homelessness. Police officers should not have to pick up the pieces because we have divested from cities. I think we are at a moment in our country, and inflection point, and it is my responsibility and the responsibilities of other members of congress to take advantage of this point. I hope the protests continue peacefully until we get the job done. Let me thank you very much for the honor of addressing you today. Thank you so much. So much to unpack, representative bass. I would like to start with could you go into a little more about the transparency portion of the bill and specifically, how that might appeal to the folks with black lives matter . Rep. Bass sure. First of all, one of the things we absolutely knee we absolutely need to have is a National Registry of Police Officers. If you think of to mere rights, and i will remind you, he was a 12yearold child killed within seconds after the Police Officer jumped out of his car and killed him. That Police Officer had been fired from a nearby department and had been fired because he was viewed as unstable, with a propensity for violence. And he lied and did not acknowledge that he had been fired. We think there should be a registry for officers like that. I do not think there is any inice chief anyway chief the country who willingly hire somebody that was known to be unstable and violent. That is an example. But i think, very significantly, the idea of communitybased organizations, not Law Enforcement can apply for , grants. In a city, they can say, why dont we all come together across sectors . Why dont we look at what we need to keep our communities safe . What are parts of the community that are not safe and why . How should we look at our city budget . How should we prioritize . In my city of los angeles, the mayor decided to shift funds to address some of the problems in the community that are not directly Law Enforcement. In los angeles, we have a jail we call the twin towers. We say it is the nations most expensive mental institution. What we have done over the years is we have systematically taken funding away from the safety net and supportive services, and we started criminalizing health problems. Mental illness should not be criminalized. Years ago, we had mental institutions. People decided those are barbaric and we should not have those anymore. We made a commitment as a society that we were going to build communitybased institutions, and we reneged on the commitment. We never did that. That is obviously not the only reason people are homeless, but it is a contributing factor to the homeless situation. It should not be that a person with Mental Illness deteriorate to the point where they become violent. We should be sure they have the proper treatment and medication and whatever else they need so they do not reach the point of violence. I am not trying to say that you can send in social worker to deal with a hostage situation. There are obviously times when you need Police Officers. But you do not need Police Officers to be marriage counselors. You do not need Police Officers if you took care of the problem on the front end. That is a little bit about transparency and community. Ok. Im curious to know more about how you are working with senator tim scott. Your negotiations on the Police Reform matter. Can you give us a little insight into those discussions and what the next steps might be . Rep. Bass and let me correct something. Senator scott and i are not negotiating. We have talked. We came into congress together. A member of the house before he was in the senate. There are no formal negotiations going on. I am always willing and interested to talk to the senator. I look forward to that again when i get back next week, but we essentially had a cordial meeting when we talked about the issue globally. I have been having a number of conversations with my colleagues in the house. There are republican colleagues that came up to me in the courts in the course of conversations. We have been having conversations. They have talked about parts of the bill they feel good about, parts of the bill they have angst about, and they are presenting different ideas. I am always willing to talk to whoever is interested in having a conversation but understand , that my primary focus is trying to put the pressure on the senate to vote on the George Floyd Justice and policing act. That is the primary focus right now. We will see what happens. I am not pessimistic. I am optimistic. Anytime republican colleagues come up and say, there are parts of the bill that we like i will tell you something that i thought was funny. During the hearing, during the voting in committee on the floor, my republican colleagues talked about everything under the sun but the bill. They talked about everything. To me, i viewed that as, maybe there is an opportunity. I am use to, especially where my republican colleagues tear apart the bill because they disagreed with it top to bottom. Instead, they express interest and support for different parts of the bill, but i cannot vote and z. For x, y it would be an overstatement to say i am negotiating with the senate. Senator harris and senator booker have the George Floyd Justice and p