Congress had allocated $380 million in election security grants in March after intelligence assessments detailed a coordinated and continued effort by Russia to interfere in U.S. elections.
The blocked $250 million would have covered the fiscal year 2019, which starts Oct. 1, just ahead of the midterm elections.
Republicans have argued it is too soon to allocate new money for the following year and want to see how states use the $380 million already set aside for election security efforts
Sensible.
Not the way the federal government is set up. And fiscal 2019 started LAST October 1st. Kiiid. There will be no evaluation of the current fiscal year spending until well after.
This reminds me of the way Head Start began.
Year 0, money is allocated.
Year 1, money is requested for Year 2 and distributed from the allocation. Congress demands to know if the program worked.
A program designed to change kids' lives and they want to know if it worked before it has even been distributed?!
Ditto a program to stop interference with our elections. It will take money every year, until and unless we make serious changes nation-wide.
And given that President Trump has not directed our intelligence services to pay attention to blocking the Russians and denies yet that they did much of anything, the GOP's games are stupid.