Some Democrats on Capitol Hill are expressing frustration with President Joe Biden after he signaled his support for a Republican-led effort to reverse a local District of Columbia law that softens penalties on violent crimes.
The Revised Criminal Code Act, initially vetoed by Democrat Mayor Muriel Bowser, was passed by the district’s city council in January in a 12-1 override vote.
The law represents an overhaul of the district’s criminal code, removing most mandatory minimum sentences and reducing the penalties for violent offenses like carjacking, robbery, and sexual assault.
“I support D.C. statehood and home rule—but I don’t support some of the changes D.C. council put forward over the Mayor’s objections—such as lowering penalties for carjackings,” Biden noted in a March 2 tweet.
“If the Senate votes to overturn what D.C. council did—I’ll sign it.”
But while 31 House Democrats joined with their Republican colleagues to pass the resolution disapproving of the crime bill, the vast majority did not.
“This ain’t it,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) responded to the president in a tweet of her own.
“D.C. has a right to govern itself, like any other state or municipality. If the president supports D.C. statehood, he should govern like it.
“Plenty of places pass laws the president may disagree with,” she added. “He should respect the people’s gov of D.C. just as he does elsewhere.”
Likewise, Democrat Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents the District of Columbia, responded that it was a “sad day for D.C. home rule and D.C. residents’ right to self-governance.”
“We had hoped that with more Senate support, we would have been able to ensure that neither disapproval resolution pending before the Senate would reach the president’s desk, but with the nationwide increase in crime, most senators do not want to be seen as supporting criminal justice reform,” Norton said in a statement.
“I will continue to do everything within my power to persuade the president that signing or failing to veto the resolution would empower the paternalistic, anti-democratic Republican opposition to the principle of local control over local affairs.”
Meanwhile, some Senate Democrats, like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), have voiced support for the resolution, expressing concern over the potential consequences the crime law would have on public safety.
“I don’t support it [the crime law],” Manchin told CNN on Feb. 27. “I mean, I want to put people away, I don’t want to let them out. I haven’t been briefed on it, but what I know about it, I would vote to rescind it.”
And Manchin’s vote could make all the difference in passing the resolution, as the Democrats’ already slim majority in the Senate has been reduced to just one vote in the absence of Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.), who remains hospitalized as he receives treatment for clinical depression.
The Senate is expected to vote on the measure next week.
WHY would the dishonorable Democrats want to – remove most mandatory minimum sentences and reducing the penalties for violent offenses like carjacking, robbery, and sexual assault or allow non-citizens (illegal Immigrants) in the district to vote????? 😯
The Democrat Party is treasonous, unethical and destructive. This disgraceful Democrat Party is deliberately doing everything possible to destroy our country! i.e. encourage, support and protect illegal immigrants, criminals and sexual perverts, to do everything possible to destroy our economy and increase inflation! 🙁 🙁 🙁
What these failed disgruntled Democrat social experimenters really mean, is to lower the ability to socially correct people of color, which the City Of Washington D C is about 70% where stalking the homes of House and Senate Representatives and Supreme Court Justices is OK, but let some love sick wolf whistler do an admiring whistle blow at AOC, he gets labeled as a stalker worth life imprisonment, or if you show up by the 100’s of thousands of white faces responding to months of BLM national street rioting, it’s ok to lock them up for months without trial or bail. The very acts of removing well-earned mandatory sentencing for crimes of theft and violence is just a return on investment to the George Soros secular socialist legal education fund to get corrupted criminal enhancing D.A.s get educated, elected, and empowered to kill all concepts of self-discipline and personal accountability to correct mostly people of color, every bit as harsh as what white people do to their own white faced sociopaths and wayward rebellious children, to get them back on the path to success and prosperity. Soros and the democrat party of social disruption he finances, just thrives in social violence and division by race, an established Alinsky tactic to win power by overwhelming the system in committed crimes followed by released unpunishment of the recidivous criminals that populate their new Democrat voting base.
Their ideas about self governing seem to be Anarchy or Law of the Jungle
The oNly overhaul that needs to be done, is to ACTUALLY ENFORCE THE BLOODY LAWS we already have existing!
Come on, Dems—he’s your Boy. If this one thing is all it takes to get you all riled up and disgruntled—would you like to see the LISY of grievances we have//
Of course you don’t, so shut up and deal with it.