Christmas miracle: Congress passes bipartisan legislation
There were some bright spots in 2018: Democrats won back the House, even electing the first Native American and Muslim women; Democrats also added seven new governors; the unemployment rate is the lowest since 1969; Nevada became the first state with a female majority legislature; women can now drive in Saudi Arabia and Canada became the second nation in the world to legalize marijuana.
But, let’s be honest. Overall, 2018 was pretty grim: Pittsburgh synagogue shooting; deadly California wildfires; daily Trump outrage; hourly Trump lies; Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and Michael Cohen; chaos at the border; trade war with China and the Arctic melting even faster than we feared.
This year was so grim, in fact, that it’s nice to close 2018 with some good news, for a change.
And we got it last week with what amounted to a Christmas miracle: congressional passage of major prison and sentencing reform legislation, the First Step Act.
You don’t think it’s a miracle? Consider this: The bill was supported by both the ACLU and the Koch Brothers; by the American Conservative Union and the Center for American Progress; by President Barack Obama and President Trump.
It had 34 sponsors in the Senate, 17 Democrats and 17 Republicans. It passed the Senate with an overwhelming, 87-12, bipartisan vote. Every single Democrat and all but 12 Republicans voted in favor of it.
If that’s not a political miracle, I don’t know what is.
In terms of public policy, as Joe Biden would say, the First Step Act is a BFD.
It makes sweeping changes long sought by criminal justice advocates, both in how criminals are sentenced to prison and how they’re treated once they get there.
Perhaps the most important would grant judges more leeway in applying the mandatory “maximum minimum” sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, including shortening from life in prison to 25 years the notorious “three strikes and you’re out” provision, which has done little more than institutionalize and dehumanize an entire generation of young black men with great potential.
The bill would also allow those imprisoned before a 2010 reduction in the disparity of sentencing between crack and powder cocaine to retroactively appeal their sentences.
Again, tougher penalties for crack cocaine only resulted in more young African-Americans serving long prison terms while drug dealers selling powder cocaine got off easy.
As important as it is, passage of the First Step Act didn’t come easy.
First proposed by Obama as the much-tougher Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act of 2015, the legislation passed the House with overwhelming bipartisan support, but was blocked in the Senate by leader Mitch McConnell.
This year, undeterred by such a display of bipartisan support, McConnell again vowed to deny a vote — until Trump himself supported the legislation and dispatched son-in-law Jared Kushner to twist Republican arms. In the end, McConnell not only caved in, he voted for the bill.
“This is the biggest thing,” a jubilant Sen. Chuck Grassley, lead Republican co-sponsor of the bill with Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, said after the vote.
Indeed, the First Step Act is the most substantial legislation enacted in the 115th Congress. It reverses the dangerous, but politically popular “get tough on crime” campaign launched by President Bill Clinton with his 1994 crime bill, which came back to haunt Hillary Clinton in her 2016 campaign. And it will no doubt lead to further reforms.
Kudos to Senators Grassley and Durbin — and, yes, to Donald Trump and Jared Kushner — on passage of the First Step Act.
But its success also contains an important message: On this issue, as with others — like infrastructure, prescription drug prices, immigration or health care — Trump can accomplish more by working with congressional Democrats than by waging a petty Twitter war against them.
If only Trump would put down his iPhone long enough to learn that lesson.
Tribune Content Agency