Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Tuesday the Senate will have a chance to vote on a criminal justice reform bill favored by President Trump by month’s end.
“At the request of the president and following improvements to the legislation that have been secured by several members, the Senate will take up the recently-revised criminal justice bill this month,” McConnell said in a Senate floor speech. “I intend to turn to the new text as early as the end of this week.”
The FIRST STEP Act, would, among other things, reduce some federal prison sentences, passed in the House of Representatives earlier this year. But it has sharply divided the Senate Republican Conference, with Sen. Tom Cotton, Ark., leading the charge against it as soft-on-crime legislation.
On Monday night, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, an administration driving force on criminal justice reform, told Fox News he was optimistic the bill would pass during the current session of Congress.
“The president’s built an amazing bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans, and we’re very close right now,” Kushner said. “And hopefully this will get to the floor and we’ll be able to have a big bipartisan celebration before Christmas.”
