Last week our local press was focused on such things as where to locate a soccer stadium, the knock-down drag-out battle between our Mayor and City Manager, and just how far UC and Xavier might go in the NCAA Basketball Tournament (unfortunately, not very far.) In this week’s blog, I’d like to focus on two stories which got quite a bit of coverage in the national and international press. I happened to play a significant role in both. Here goes.
First, on Friday President Trump signed into law legislation that I introduced in the House, along with my Democratic colleague from California, Brad Sherman, called the Taiwan Travel Act. (You can click here to read a Washington Post article concerning President Trump’s signing the bill.) The Senate version of the bill was introduced by Senators Marco Rubio and Sherrod Brown. The bills passed both the House and the Senate recently.
This legislation will end restrictions on high ranking Taiwanese officials coming to the United States. Likewise, it will remove the restrictions on high level U.S. officials traveling to Taiwan. It will, for example, allow our Presidents, Vice Presidents, defense officials, and foreign affairs officials to meet in either country, to strengthen our close ties and mutual defense. Not only does the legislation allow such visits, but it encourages them.
Taiwan is a strong ally of the United States, and strengthening our relationship will promote peace and stability in that critical part of the world. China of course maintains that Taiwan is merely a breakaway territory. It has for decades been U.S. policy that any differences between China and Taiwan must be resolved through peaceful means. Now that Taiwanese and U.S. top officials will be allowed to meet face to face in either country, we will be better able to coordinate our joint response to any Chinese aggression. In my opinion, this makes it less likely that China will take any hostile or reckless actions. This is in U.S. national security interests. (You can click here to see an article which appeared in today’s Washington Post showing that The Taiwan Travel Act is already being used by the Trump Administration.)
The second action I was directly involved in was Congress’s response to violence in our schools, most recently in Parkland, Florida. The Stop School Violence Act of 2018 passed the House of Representatives last week by a bipartisan vote of 407 to 10. The final bill was a combination of items contained in a bill I introduced recently, and another introduced by Congressman John Rutherford of Florida, who was a sheriff in Florida before being elected to Congress.
The bill does a number of things, including more than doubling, from $30 million to $75 million per year, funding for the Cops Secure Our Schools Grant program. This money can be used by states, localities, and tribal governments to better protect our schools. The grants can be used for metal detectors, for identifying students who may have mental health issues and be a threat to other students, for training school employees and students on how to better protect themselves, for technology upgrades to more quickly notify law enforcement of an active shooter situation, and for hiring additional school resource officers, if such measures are determined to “provide a significant improvement in security.”
Finally, I would like to thank the President of the Cincinnati FOP, Dan Hils, for sharing his commonsense proposal to hire retired police officers for additional school security. After all, no one is better trained to handle a potential shooting situation than our policemen and women. They could play an important role in making sure our schools across the nation are once again a safe place to get an education, not a place to become a victim.