Why Republicans Want a Criminal Justice Overhaul
President Barack Obama came very close in 2015 to passing a bipartisan bill to rewrite prison and sentencing laws. Three years later, the same people who were responsible for stopping that bill may become responsible for passing a scaled-back version. Guest: Nicholas Fandos, who covers Congress for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
- Duration
- 24m
- Broadcast on
- 12 Dec 2018
- Audio Format
- other
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President Barack Obama came very close in 2015 to passing a bipartisan bill to rewrite prison and sentencing laws. Three years later, the same people who were responsible for stopping that bill may become responsible for passing a scaled-back version. Guest: Nicholas Fandos, who covers Congress for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.
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With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One Bank Guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply, see CapitalOne.com/BankGuy, Capital One NA. Member FDIC. From the New York Times, I'm Michael Barbero. This is the deal. Today, in 2015, President Obama came very close to passing a bipartisan bill to reform the criminal justice system. Three years later, the people responsible for stopping may become the same people responsible for passing a new version of the same bill. It's Wednesday, December 12th. So, at about 10 o'clock this morning, Mitch McConnell walked onto the floor of the Senate. Madam President. It's already later? I think it's time the Senate subjects itself to a bit of a reality check. I'd gotten the heads up a couple of minutes early from somebody who works for him saying, pay attention to speech just now. Nick Flanders covers Congress for the times. And he comes out and starts to say, we need to have a reality check here in the Senate. We only have a couple of weeks left and a lot of issues to run through. Today is December the 11th. Here are just some of the things the Senate needs to accomplish. Before this Congress adjourns. One of them was so-called first step act, which is a big package of prison and sentencing reform measures to change the federal criminal justice system and begin to unwind some of the tough on crime policies of the 80s and 90s. It seemed as if this criminal justice bill was dead. And then he takes a pretty quick pivot and says, at the request of the president and following improvements to the legislation that had been secured by several members, the Senate will take up the recently revised criminal justice bill this month. I'm going to put this on the Senate floor as soon as the end of the week. So as a result of this additional legislative business, members should now be prepared to work between Christmas and New Year's, if necessary, in order to complete our work. Which took advocates of this effort totally by surprise. Senator McConnell is the person who in 2015-2016 effectively killed a very similar version of the bill. The president of Obama and his allies put forward just a couple of years ago. And what's the story behind McConnell doing that? So entering the last two years of President Obama's presidency, you had this kind of unusual coalition that came together. Welcome everybody to a bipartisan news conference. We're here today because a lot of hard work and a strong desire by those of us here to make the Senate work. Do you have Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin? It's no surprise that we are a political odd couple. We come from different spots on the political spectrum, but we found common ground. Durbin and Democrat, Grassley, Republican, both from the Midwest, come together and work with President Obama and then with Speaker Paul Ryan in the House to put forward a criminal justice bill. We did something which we believe is fundamental to why we were elected to the Senate. We identified the issue and the challenge and we set down together to reason together and compromise. The net result is for the first time in a generation, we are tackling the issue of criminal justice to make America safer. And they rolled it out with great fanfare. They picked up support and endorsements from all kinds of groups, the ACLU, the Koch brothers, two groups that don't come together very often on policy matters.
Transcription truncated.
President Barack Obama came very close in 2015 to passing a bipartisan bill to rewrite prison and sentencing laws. Three years later, the same people who were responsible for stopping that bill may become responsible for passing a scaled-back version. Guest: Nicholas Fandos, who covers Congress for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.