Proponents of sentencing reform legislation are hoping the lame-duck session of Congress can be a real chance to pass bills and send them to President Obama’s desk, after a summer setback in the Senate.
“This is just good policy that should pass at some point and whether it happens in September or happens in December, I don’t think it matters,” Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, told the Washington Examiner on Thursday.
Labrador is a conservative supporter of sentencing reform bills that have been percolating in the House Judiciary Committee for months. As a leading member of the House Freedom Caucus, he could play a significant role in uniting a sometimes-fractious GOP conference in support of the proposals.
On the Senate side, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked consideration of a bipartisan sentencing reform bill unveiled in April, because it divided Senate Republicans so dramatically, but backers of the bill hope he’ll reconsider the legislation after the election.
“It’s going to have to be a lame-duck play because there’s limited days,” Holly Harris, executive director of the U.S. Justice Action Network, told the Examiner. “This will all happen post-election and if it happens on the Senate side, it will be a lame-duck play.”
Harris is one of the most prominent members of an activist coalition that is hosting a flurry of events throughout September, designed to convince red-state Republicans that their ideas have been implemented successfully in state prisons and have the potential to improve the federal corrections system.
The Charles Koch Institute is hosting a conference on “safety and justice in Tennessee” next week. Right On Crime, which also supports sentencing reform, conducted a briefing Thursday on Capitol Hill that featured speakers from Georgia, Texas, and South Carolina.
Those events are being reinforced by public messaging from conservative groups, some of which announced that they intend to “key vote” the criminal justice reform bills in an attempt to rally GOP support.
“These state-led reforms have made communities safer by successfully reducing recidivism and saving taxpayers billions of dollars that had been slated for prison expansion and construction costs,” FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon and seven other conservative groups wrote to House leadership on Thursday. “Most importantly, even as prison populations declined, states saw crime rates fall.”
“We always knew that the fate of the federal bill would rest with House action in September and that’s what we’re gearing up for,” Harris said.
House leaders aren’t prioritizing it nearly as much this month, however, as the deadline for funding the government and the ongoing Zika funding crisis threatens to dominate the calendar. Sentencing reform went unmentioned in House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s September agenda memo. When the GOP chiefs of staff had their regular meeting to discuss the month’s agenda, only House Whip Steve Scalise’s representative mentioned the issue — and then, only to note that the Whip’s office would host listening sessions for members.
“This is a dense issue and it’s going to require a lot of education,” a House GOP aide told the Examiner. “There’s little time and it’s a complex issue, but we are working with members on it.”
If the vote is pushed back into November or December, some of the would-be reformers could be in a difficult position. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is one of the architects of the Senate bill, but he has a long record of opposing the passage of major legislation in a lame-duck session. Labrador is trying to convince House leadership not to pass a major government funding package during the post-election session.
Labrador makes a distinction between a year-end policy debate and a last-minute fight over “must-pass” government funding bills. “What you don’t want is ‘must-pass’ legislation because what happens is you give a must-pass to a lame duck session and then they attach a bunch of other stuff which is bad,” he said. “[Sentencing reform] is not must-pass.”
Opponents of the bills like their chances of stopping legislation even if the House does pass some version of sentencing reform, because they regard McConnell as an silent ally in the debate. “Sen. McConnell used to serve on the Judiciary Committee, he’s been a student of crime for many years and I think he is uneasy about this legislation,” Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., the leading opponent of the package in the Senate, told the Examiner.
Harris is more confident, because the lame-duck session will create an opportunity for broad negotiations involving several otherwise independent issues. “If and when it happens, I think it’s going to happen fast,” Harris said. “There could be something outside of the realm of justice reform that could be in play. There’s a lot of horse-trading.”
