The Senate plans to vote on whether to block D.C.’s new crime bill this week, even as city leaders try to pull the legislation.
Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, on Monday, announced the withdrawal of the law, which would have overhauled how the nation’s capital prosecutes and punishes crime. It was a rare move he said wasn’t prohibited under Washington’s Home Rule authority.
However, Tennessee Republican Sen. Bill Hagerty, one of the leading critics of the new criminal code, indicated that the vote to overturn would proceed as planned this week.
“This desperate, made-up maneuver not only has no basis in the DC Home Rule Act but underscores the completely unserious way the DC Council has legislated,” Hagerty said in a statement, per the Associated Press. “No matter how hard they try, the Council cannot avoid accountability for passing this disastrous, dangerous DC soft-on-crime bill that will make residents and visitors less safe.”
A Senate leadership aide, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss plans that were not yet official, told The Hill Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., confirmed that the vote will take place Wednesday, and the House vote would be on the House disapproval resolution, rather than the D.C. Council’s transmission to the Senate.
The decision to not endorse the crime bill put forth by the D.C. council has become politically charged, regardless of which way it goes, but President Joe Biden’s decision last Thursday to sign the resolution should it pass the Senate has caused lawmakers to review their thinking.
The debate has been further complicated by the fact that Washington’s own Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser, opposes the new criminal code. Bowser vetoed the measure in January but was overridden by the council.
Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), the Senate’s majority whip, according to The Washington Post said, “Biden’s decided that he’s not going to veto it. That’s significant. It’s a pretty mixed message coming out of D.C. When they spent five years rewriting their criminal code that they haven’t touched for almost a century, then the mayor vetoes it, then the council overrides the veto 12-to-1, it’s kind of a mixed message as to the substance of what they have done.”
