First Step Act

Floor Speech

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This amendment is inconsistent with current Federal law and would allow States the right to break existing law. If there is an attempt to legalize across the country, we should have that debate and let the Congress decide the issue instead of creating a back door to legalization.

Furthermore, the amendment would allow financial institutions to bank marijuana distributors. This is inappropriate to consider in the context of a criminal justice reform bill. Criminal justice is not a vehicle through which we create reform for banks to create more business.

The Senator from Colorado is very much an advocate for the people in his State. I understand that. I respect his position. He works hard on this, and he may be ahead of the time when there will be a real debate on this, and maybe there will be, at that point, an opportunity to consider his approach as something lesser than the legalization of marijuana generally.

For those reasons, I will object to what the Senator from Colorado is trying to accomplish.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, before we go to the amendments, I want to give a general overview of what it took to get to the point at which we are now.

The first thing we had to do was show the leader we could produce 60 or more votes for this bill. This is a big bipartisan bill. Senators Durbin, Lee, Graham, Booker, and I--and I suppose I am leaving out some people--had spoken extensively with our colleagues to address their concerns and to gain their support. As we saw last night, more than 80 Senators showed that they were ready for the debate in the culmination of this bill on the Senate floor.

The next step we had to take was to show the people we had broad bipartisan support. On November 15, the FIRST STEP Act was introduced in the Senate. At that point, we had 12 cosponsors. We now have 38 cosponsors.

Of course, the question that always comes up is, Will the House of Representatives take any action if we are successful on the floor of the U.S. Senate? Every step of the way, the House was read in on the Senate bill. The leaders in the House of Representatives, who happen to be Representative Collins, Representative Jeffries, and, of course, Chairman Goodlatte of the Judiciary Committee, were all strong partners in this compromise.

We have reached a point with the House of Representatives at which, when the Senate passes this bill--and hopefully we will--Speaker Ryan will be ready to act on this bill. We don't have problems with the House of Representatives as sometimes come up late in a session like we are in--hopefully, the last week of this Congress. We know what we are spending our time doing will be considered by the House of Representatives.

About 3 or 4 weeks ago, we had a Republican caucus, and we listened to the concerns our colleagues had. We were asked to show more Republican support within the Congress. So, with several changes that were made in the bill in the last 3 or 4 weeks, we addressed our Republican colleagues' concerns--the same ones that were raised in our caucus. We did this, obviously, because we wanted to gain support for our bill. The concern among Republicans was that the caucus was divided to the point that more of a majority was against the bill than for the bill. I think, with the answers we had from colleagues, as we individually talked to them about their support for the bill, we gained that support.

We also had to show support from outside the Congress of the United States. I have here, without reading any names, just broad bipartisan support from conservative organizations. At the same time, there are a lot of law enforcement organizations and liberal organizations, and I will just name four or five at this point: The Fraternal Order of Police, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Conservative Union, and the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

We had to show the colleagues in the Congress that we had broad support from, you might say, the extreme right to the extreme left in support of this legislation. I don't know whether we have had legislation like this before the U.S. Senate, whereby we have put together such diverse groups of people and organizations that support the bill.

Of course, once we had gone through this hard work of getting this bill where it is now on the Senate floor, it was very legitimate for our colleagues to ask: Is the President going to sign it? We worked very closely with the House of Representatives and had even made some changes at the House's suggestion. We also talked to individual Members of the Senate, and the House knew what some Senators had concerns about.

We got admonition from the President and the White House to change some things to bring the President on board. We now have a person who has a reputation for being tough on crime but also a person who recognizes that within our criminal justice system and the prison system and the way judges have to make decisions under mandatory minimums, there is some unfairness. We have a President who may now be seen by a large part of this country as being somebody who not only wants to be tough on crime but be fair on crime.

The President of the United States had a news conference when we put the original bill together, but it was before the fine-tuning, which I have already talked about, to get additional Members' support. At the end of the news conference, at which many Members of the House and Senate were present, the President said, I have my pen ready to sign this bill.

If anybody has any doubt whatsoever about whether the President is for this bill, I am telling you what I heard from his own words--that he has a pen ready to sign this bill. So I hope nobody comes up here and wonders, what does the President of the United States think about this bill? I heard him say it.

So I hope we have a Senate majority--particularly, the Senate majority. When you have an opportunity to have the President of the United States, who is tough on crime but understands there has to be some fairness to it, that the majority party in the U.S. Senate would support the President of the United States--I hope that is what they will think about as they cast these votes on these amendments that we are soon going to have.

I think it is fair to say that as we proceeded over the last 4 years to get a piece of legislation like this, they would be skeptical about this President. But don't be skeptical anymore, because this President gives this bill his full backing.

This is an opportunity for a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate to show that this Republican President can do something that even President Obama couldn't get done, because this was a big issue in the last Congress, but we couldn't get it here to the Senate. So the Congress can deliver a big bipartisan legislative accomplishment for President Trump with the passage of this bill.

I have just described to my colleagues how the legislative process is supposed to work--one on one. How do you eat 10,000 marshmallows? One at a time. How do you get support for a bill? One person at a time, and that is pretty much what the Republican supporters of this bill have been trying to do. Why do it? To placate the honest interests of people in our caucus that raised those same concerns 3 weeks ago.

So this is how the legislative process works. You work in a bipartisan way to build support for your policy and debate it on the floor of the Senate.

Later on I will ask for support for a unanimous consent request.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. The Senator from Louisiana is ready to object to what I am doing.

I am going to ask unanimous consent, but before anybody objects, I would like to make, maybe, a 1-minute statement on the reason for my unanimous consent request.

4132 be made pending and agreed to.

This is why I ask that. This amendment ensures that faith-based groups can operate in Federal prisons to help prisoners turn over a new leaf. It also excludes dangerous criminals from earning time credits. Finally, it extends the independent review committee from 2 years to 5 years, and it also requires an annual report.

Now, I have had a little bit of conversation with Senator Cotton, the main opponent of our legislation, and Senator Kennedy as well. I think that everything that is in amendment No. 4132 is something that at least every Republican ought to support, and I think a large part of the Democrats support it. As far as I can tell, from reading the point of view of my friend from Arkansas on some of these amendments, this point about extending the independent review committee from 2 years to 5 years and requiring an annual report is about the only part of this amendment No. 4132 that Senator Cotton disagrees with. I don't know why he would disagree with an independent review that could be done over a period to go on from 2 to 5 years, because there is going to be periodic decisions made in the meantime, and there is an annual report.

That is what this amendment does, and I hope we can get it adopted.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, before I speak, I think we need to give the Senator from Arkansas another 2 minutes because he was speaking on the wrong amendment that is before the Senate.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. It is the victims notification amendment.
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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise in opposition to this amendment. This amendment is unnecessary. This amendment is duplicative of requirements already enacted into law under the Crime Victims' Rights Act.

Current law requires notification to crime victims who choose to be notified. It allows others to opt out to avoid being retraumatized. This would change the law to require victim notification, which could retraumatize victims who choose not to be notified.

This is not a victim-centered approach. It is a heavyhanded violation of a victim's choice. This amendment would require notification even if the victim doesn't want it, raising the specter of retraumatizing a victim who has tried to move on with their life.

This is not a victim-centered approach. It is a heavyhanded government violation of a victim's choice. Victims' rights groups oppose this amendment for this reason.

The public notice mandates create a series of new bureaucratic, big- government requirements and a new unfunded mandate for the Bureau of Prisons.

So I will vote against this amendment. To support my reasons, I will quote a whole list of conservative groups: the American Conservative Union, FreedomWorks, Right on Crime, R Street Institute, Jessica Jackson's group, U.S. Justice Action Network, and a whole host of groups like that.

Heritage Action scores it

We have from the victims' rights groups, Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice, fairness, dignity, and respect for crime victims and survivors, and the National Coalition of Police and Prosecutors warns of hostile amendments.

I am going to end by simply stating what you heard me say in my opening remarks before this--that we have a chance to send a bill to the President. In his news conference, he said that he is ready to sign it. We have a President who is tough on crime, but he wants to be fair on crime. The bill we put together with the White House does that. I ask you to vote no.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. As we talked about the earlier amendment, we talked a great deal on the previous amendment about victim's notification. There is also a victim's notification in this amendment as well. So I don't want to go into--the arguments are the same. Remember, victim rights groups oppose this amendment because it is covered by current law.

So I want to spend my time on talking in opposition to this amendment from the standpoint of granting wardens veto authority over what this law sets up as an objective, evidence-based system--or you could call it a risk assessment system--in the act to make sure that we have a good foundation for determining whether somebody is a risk to society if they take advantage of this program and to do it in a studied way. Once that is set up, then this amendment would allow a warden to veto it.

If a low- or minimal-risk inmate works hard to make themselves ready to be productive citizens and community leaders or members, then they ought to reap the rewards of that work under the FIRST STEP Act and not have a person step in who could put bias into the system and human error into the system. We are trying to set up a system to get away from it, because this legislation is all about bringing fairness to the prison system and to the judicial system as well.

How much time do I have left?

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Mr. GRASSLEY. I am done.

Did you say 2 seconds?

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Mr. GRASSLEY. OK. Vote against the amendment.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, if I had 2 minutes the last time, I should have had more than 2 seconds left over.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. No, I can't do that.

Let's see if we can keep our bipartisan coalition together to pass a bill that the President said he is ready to sign. That is what he said at the end of his news conference. It is pretty important to understand, this is something the President is behind. So we are facing a very serious vote on this next one.

Obviously, I rise in opposition to this amendment. This amendment is very finely tailored to scare you that if you don't vote for this amendment, you are going to have somebody out on the street, contrary to the intent of this law, who is going to commit some awful act. Remember, this law is centered on those people who are the least violent people who are in prison already.

Don't be scared by what you have heard about this amendment--it is unnecessary--because the system that is set up by the FIRST STEP Act itself renders dangerous and violent criminals ineligible for the benefits available to low-level offenders under this bill. We are only going to help low-level offenders.

This tactic that is being used to scare you into voting for this amendment and then into destroying the bipartisan cooperation we have gotten in order to get this bill passed undermines the goal of incentivizing low-level offenders to prepare themselves to be productive on reentry.

My 2 minutes are up already?

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Will you vote against the amendment, please?

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Will you vote against the amendment, please?

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