Reply to DC Council Overrides Bowser Veto of Revised Criminal Code

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This is like throwing red meat to the Republican loons in Congress, who almost certainly will not allow this to become law. [/quote]
It is not a question of whether the Republicans will let it become law, it is a question of whether the Democrats will let it become law. That’s a 50/50 proposition.[/quote]

Any vulnerable Democrat on the national stage is going to flee from supporting this bill because it's going to become an easy talking point for their Republican opponents, who will simply say "this person supported lowering penalties for violent gun crimes and carjacking in DC during a time when both were through the roof." The ridiculous talking points used by Charles Allen and his ilk are not going to fly on a national level (they barely fly at the DC level).[/quote]

Someone will have to introduce a bill to block it, though — and House Republicans have enough on their agenda that I'm not sure they'll make time for debate over a local D.C. matter.

I'm also not sure why any voters in, say, Arizona would care that their senator voted to lower penalties for violent crime in D.C. — are they voting based on their concern for D.C. residents?[/quote]

Nope. Any member can add disapproval of the new law as a rider to larger Congressional bill, and if the larger bill passes, this law does not go into effect. It's why DC doesn't have fully legalized weed, because one member of Congress (Andy Harris) attached the prohibition of it to a spending bill in 2015 and it gets added over and over again every year. House dems tried to strip it out after Biden took over but it got re-attached by the Senate.

A big part of the bill is that all misdemeanors can receive jury trials, which will require a massive expansion of the DC court system, costing millions of dollars. All one member of Congress has to do is insert a rider to another spending bill saying no federal money can be used for this expansion, and the new crime law will be DOA.

This will not be a heavy lift for Congressional Republicans. [/quote]

With the current House GOP, passing any appropriations bill may actually be a heavy lift, though...[/quote]

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