During a press conference on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stated that there “is no way” that the Senate will pass a police reform bill if the Senate Republican police reform bill “is the base bill,” the Senate GOP bill “will never get 60 votes” in the Senate, no needed amendments will get 60 votes, and that there needs to be a bipartisan bill as the base bill.
Schumer said the bill “is fundamentally and irrevocably flawed. Here’s the problem: It will never get 60 votes from the — in the Senate. Nor will any — there is no pathway of amending the bill in a significant way that gets 60 votes on the amendments. It is a cul-de-sac, cynically designed by Leader McConnell, so that he can say he can do something, but do nothing. There is no way that we emerge with a bill if this is the base bill, plain and simple.”
He added that if a bipartisan bill is the base bill, “that has a good chance of passing from the get-go, then you can have an amendment process, but you’re not starting off so deep in the hole that you can never dig yourself out. So, we plead with Leader McConnell, do it in a bipartisan way.”
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