Improving Secret Service protection a bipartisan issue, lawmakers say
Colorado Rep. Jason Crow and Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly , both ranking members of the task force on the apparent attempted assassination of Republican nominee Donald Trump, emphasized the need for bipartisan support for Secret Service agents in a joint appearance on Sunday.
"These guys are exhausted, they have been played out to the very end," Kelly, a Republican, told the host on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," referring to Secret Service agents. The July assassination attempt of Trump occurred in Butler, Pennsylvania, a community in Kelly's district.
"This is not a Republican or Democrat issue," he added. "This is an American issue. We have to protect those who we have up for election and those that are already serving. It's a very dangerous time for us to be looking at this and thinking, this is just the way the world is. It's not. And we cannot accept this as Americans."
Following the second apparent assassination attempt on Trump, Secret Service funding and its ability to do its job have been under scrutiny , with many looking to find a way to boost its funding .
Crow, a Democrat, said, "There were no doubt a series of cascading failures" on the day of the first assassination attempt, "which is reflective of a cultural problem, a command-and-control problem."
However, the Secret Service is also stretched thin, both Crow and Kelly agreed.
"Our Secret Service now is trying to guard more people than they've ever had to guard in the past," Kelly said.
Additional funding and resources for the Secret Service will not be enough before Election Day, Crow said.
"We can't mass-produce Secret Service agents. We can't create these. It takes years to create a Secret Service agent. So, we have to rely on Department of Defense agents, other federal agencies to cover down and provide some relief to these folks."
Kelly agreed, but added, "There's another way of doing this." Rather than redeploy money — which he said is necessary — it is more important to get "more people on the ground, people who are trained, people who are competent, and people who have a nose for all this."
Kelly blamed some of the heightened problems the Secret Service is dealing with on incendiary political rhetoric, a talking point that has been popular for Republicans recently.
"We have people acting and acting out in a bad way and something spurring them on to do that. A lot of it is the rhetoric," Kelly said. "We've got to be careful about what we say and when we say it and how it's received by somebody else."
Kelly emphasized that rhetoric on both sides of the aisle should be toned down.
Crow backed his task force co-member, returning to the issue of bipartisanship.
"Mike is a very conservative Republican. I'm a very proud Democrat, and what we are trying to show folks is we can go through an election cycle, we can have fierce and tough debates, and we can show people that we will settle our political differences and debate," Crow said.
He added, "We're going to come together on an issue that Americans expect us to come together on and we are going to get answers to people's questions and we're going to make sure that our candidates are being protected."
