Posted by Sen. Reid's Staff  on 3/10/2011 - 5:05 PM

I was pleased to be joined by Southern Poverty Law Center founder Morris Dees today to highlight the prevalence of hate groups in Nevada and express concern at the reckless Republican spending plan (H.R. 1) to gut the FBI – the agency that monitors hate groups – by $133 million. House Republicans passed H.R. 1 on February 19. Yesterday, all Senate Republicans but three voted for H.R. 1.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified 15 hate groups currently operating in Nevada – from Neo-Nazis to white supremacists. The FBI in Nevada is tasked to aggressively investigate and work to prevent things like hate crimes and human trafficking.

My recent trip to the birthplace of the civil rights movement brought home for me the importance of ensuring our law enforcement agencies have the tools and resources they need to combat hate groups. We need to cut wasteful and excess spending like tax breaks for corporations that ship American jobs overseas. However, we should not be jeopardizing the safety and security of Nevadans by balancing the budget on the backs of the law enforcement agency tasked with monitoring groups like the Ku Klux Klan and Neo-Nazis.

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