Senate grapples with prison reform bill

Senators are under growing pressure to take up a prison reform bill that is a top priority for President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

The bill got a boost of momentum after it passed the House last week in an overwhelming 360-59 vote, where only two GOP lawmakers voted against the legislation. Democratic critics of the measure said it is too narrow and pointed out it doesn’t include sentencing reform.

{mosads}The White House, supported by a coalition of outside groups, is urging the Senate to bring a bill to the floor. But there are obstacles in the upper chamber, as key members are pushing for different pieces of prison reform legislation.

Trump publicly called on Congress to work out a deal during a prison reform summit earlier this month, saying the legislation would help “restore the rule of law, keep dangerous criminals off our street, and help inmates get a second chance on life.”

“[The] strong bipartisan vote paves a path for action by the Senate,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders added in a separate statement after the bill passed the House. 

The House-passed prison reform legislation would provide funding for programs aimed at reducing the likelihood of inmates committing new crimes once released from prison. Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the No. 2 Senate Republican, and Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R.I.) introduced a companion bill in the Senate.

However, Senate negotiators are warning they are not close to a deal that would allow the prison reform bill to move quickly.

Instead, the fight is pitting two influential GOP senators — Cornyn and Chuck Grassley (Iowa), the Judiciary Committee chairman — against each other as they jockey for competing bills.

“We’ve got work to do here on building consensus … but right now we don’t have it,” Cornyn said last week about what happens to prison reform in the Senate.

The GOP divisions could scuttle any chance that the Trump-backed legislation becomes law this year, with leadership unlikely to bring up legislation that would highlight divisions within their own party ahead of the midterm elections.

Both Cornyn and Grassley are signaling they plan to press forward with trying to build support for their own separate bills once the Senate returns to Washington, D.C., next week.

Asked if he would budge on his opposition to a prison reform–only bill, Grassley responded, “No.”

“We’re going to take up my bill. Or I should say, my bipartisan bill that’s got 28 co-sponsors — equal number Republicans and Democrats. … What the House does through that legislation is about the equivalent of a spit in the ocean compared to what the problem is of too much imprisonment,” Grassley added.

Grassley and Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), the No. 2 Democrat, have introduced broad criminal justice reform legislation that would pair prison reforms to changes in sentencing, including reductions in mandatory minimums for certain drug offenses while increasing mandatory minimums for other offenses.

Both senators say they’ve made a deal not to separate the prison and sentencing reform components despite pressure from the White House.

But that bill is unlikely to be taken up given GOP control of Congress and opposition from key members of the Trump administration. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was an outspoken opponent of the criminal justice reform bill when he served in the Senate.

Grassley acknowledged that he has not convinced Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to bring the criminal justice reform bill to the floor.

“You’ve got to remember that McConnell doesn’t like the bill, and all I can say is that you ought to let a Republican president who needs a big, bipartisan victory have a bipartisan victory,” he said.

The Kentucky Republican did not move criminal justice reform legislation in 2015 or 2016 amid vocal pushback from four GOP senators. The then-Obama administration supported the bill, and senators in both parties said they had 60 votes to pass it.

Supporters of the narrower prison reform–only legislation are seizing on the opposition from key Republicans and the Trump administration as they push for their bill.

After a group of Democrats, including Durbin, sent a letter ahead of the House vote to Democrats urging them to oppose the prison reform bill, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) argued they were ignoring political reality. Jeffries wrote the House-passed bill along with Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.).

“We have a Republican President. Republicans control the House of Representatives and the Senate. While the Senate authors of the opposition letter support the all or nothing approach, the Majority Leader apparently does not. Those are the facts,” Jeffries wrote in a publicly released letter.

Cornyn added that the decision boils down to either passing prison reform or accepting that Congress will take no action for the foreseeable future in the criminal justice space.

But it’s unclear if McConnell would be willing to move a bill without Grassley’s support. And prison reform is facing new hurdles from both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue.

The New York Times reported late last week that Mark Inch, appointed to oversee the Federal Bureau of Prisons, resigned amid a “turf war” between Sessions and Kushner over the federal prison system.

And on Capitol Hill, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), one of Trump’s closest allies in the Senate, is privately raising concerns about the bill. A spokeswoman for the senator said Cotton has “concerns with provisions in the bill pertaining to lenient treatment for heroin and fentanyl traffickers.”

Cotton, Sessions and GOP Sens. David Perdue (Ga.) and Orrin Hatch (Utah) were a small but vocal group of Republicans senators deeply opposed to broader criminal justice legislation that included both prison reform and changes to mandatory minimum sentencing.

Cornyn acknowledged that he has spoken to Cotton about trying to address his issues with the prison reform bill.

“I’ve told him we’re going to work with him and come up with something that I think he’ll be able to support,” Cornyn said, “but he did express some concerns.”