Montana Sen. Steve Daines has decided to endorse the revised criminal justice reform legislation pending in the Senate, becoming the 17th GOP senator to support the bill, multiple sources told the Washington Examiner.
Daines’ endorsement will be announced publicly during a press conference Thursday in which the would-be reformers officially unveil the bill’s revisions. They are led on the Republican side by Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, and Tea Party Sen. Mike Lee.
Daines is the fourth Republican senator to sign on to the bill in the weeks since the negotiators started circulating their updates. Proponents of the bill hope the show of support will incline Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to schedule a vote on the legislation.
“We are hopeful that both chambers will have their respective bills on the floor for a vote soon,” Koch Industries general counsel Mark Holden, who has worked with the White House and congressional lawmakers to help coordinate an agreement, said in a statement thanking Daines and the other senators for their support. “We believe these reforms will help remove barriers to opportunity for the least advantaged, keep our communities safer, and allow our brave law enforcement officers to focus on serious, violent offenders, which will improve relationships between law enforcement and the communities they protect and serve.”
McConnell dislikes holding votes on legislation that divides Republicans and unites Democrats, as the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act does. That stance forced Cornyn and other GOP senators to scramble for more support after five Republicans voted against the bill when it passed out of the Judiciary Committee.
The negotiators made significant changes the bill, including the elimination of some of the provisions that might have applied retroactively to violent offenders, and the addition of other language that would mollify Senate Democrats who wanted to ensure that the bill covered a certain percentage of the prison population.
“It’s a good middle-ground that people should be more comfortable with,” a GOP Senate aide said two weeks ago.
But Democrats refused to allow major changes to the legislation, and blocking an amendment that would have required federal prosecutors to establish that a defendant knowingly committed a crime, to the frustration of some Republicans. That made it more difficult for the Republican architects of the bill to recruit new GOP alies.
“Cornyn’s trying to get people without giving them anything,” a senior Senate Republican staffer said. “You’d think that they’d try to sweeten this.”
They did include some minor “sweeteners” to the bill. At Daines’ behest, the negotiators added a provision requiring a prisoner’s full criminal history to be taken into account when deciding whether to grant an early release. Daines also asked that the bill be changed in such a way as to allow federal district attorneys to have district-by-district data on the statutory crimes committed in their area.
“This ensures that prosecutors have the tools they need to prevent a criminal from getting an early release who should otherwise not be,” a Senate GOP aide familiar with the revisions told the Examiner.
Not every new senator required a sweetener. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, agreed to support the revised bill even though it doesn’t include an amendment he sought that would toughen the requirement that prosecutors disclose evidence that is favorable to the defendants and penalize prosecutorial misconduct.
That policy risked breaking up the coalition currently backing the bill. “It’s a more complicated issue,” explained a Senate GOP staffer familiar with the talks. “It’s something that would require more approval from both sides.”
The other two Republicans who have recently signed on to the criminal justice bill are Illinois Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., and Mississippi Sen. Thad Cochran. Kirk is one of the most vulnerable Republicans in office this year.
