Democrats in Senate block GOP police bill
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats on Wednesday blocked a narrow Republican bill to incentivize police departments to change their tactics, refusing even to open debate on a measure they denounced as an insufficient and irredeemably flawed answer to the problem of systemic racism in law enforcement.
The vote, 55-45, was a setback in the effort to pass legislation this year to address excessive use of force and racial discrimination by the police, amid a groundswell of public sentiment in favor of overhauling law enforcement.
The Democratic-led House is set Thursday to pass its own sprawling legislation, but Senate Republican leaders have said they won’t take up that measure, setting the stage for a bitter stalemate on the issue.
Expressing their deep opposition to the bill, Democrats demanded Tuesday that Republicans negotiate a more expansive package that both parties could support, citing the opposition of dozens of civil rights groups to the measure as drafted and arguing that it was an unacceptable starting point for discussion.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., said Democrats’ decision to block the bill was an effort “to not take crumbs on the table when there is a hunger that America has for real solutions to a very real problem.”
“This movement will not accept anything less than real, real substantial, substantive solutions, which are the solutions we have offered,” Harris said.
Republicans were livid at Democrats’ refusal to even allow the measure to reach the floor for a debate and accused them of deliberately sinking the bill for political purposes.
It would have needed 60 votes to advance in the Senate, where a three-fifths supermajority is necessary for most major action. But only two Democrats, Sens. Doug Jones of Alabama and Joe Manchin of West Virginia, as well as Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, joined Republicans in supporting moving it forward.
“If you don’t think we’re right, make it better. Don’t walk away,” Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, who spearheaded the legislation, said before the vote.