March 11, 2011

 March 11, 2011 - Nevada Senator Harry Reid and Southern Poverty Law Center founder Morris Dees held a press conference call highlighting the prevalence of hate groups in Nevada and expressing 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.

“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,” said Reid. “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.”

Click this link to read Senator Reid's blog entry about the call: http://reid.senate.gov/blog/blogreidfbispendinghategroups.cfm