House Speaker Paul Ryan intends to bring up legislation that would reduce sentences for federal prison inmates.
The bill is expected in September, even though a companion bill has stalled in the Senate. Meanwhile, murder rates are spiking in major U.S. cities and cops are being targeted and killed in American cities.
But Ryan and liberal media allies who also support less harsh penalties for criminals will focus instead on seeming racial inequalities and why drug traffickers are in poverty after being released from federal prison.
In a recent NPR interview, Ryan tried to explain his position. “Some people have raised questions about … whether there’s been a double standard over time,” asked host Steve Inskeep. “In the ’80s when there was a focus on drugs in the black community, people focused on prisons. Now people are concerned in the white community, and it’s about treatment and public health. What’s happening there?”
“No, I think you need to complement this with criminal justice reform. I agree with that, as well. That’s something we’re working on for September,” Ryan answered.
“Just this week I set up a working group of members from both sides of the aisle to work on community policing ideas, training ideas, but also finishing the job on criminal justice reform so we can get all of those bills out to the floor in September,” he added.
Congress “overcompensated” by cracking down on drug trafficking in response to the decades-long crime wave that gripped the nation from 1965 to the nineties. Locking up drug traffickers doesn’t deal with all of the problems, Ryan said:
In the 1990s, to your first point, I think government, both Republicans and Democrats, overcompensated on our criminal code. And we went too far and there are disparities — crack cocaine vs. powder cocaine — there are clear disparities and more importantly, I think that we’ve learned there are better ways of dealing with some of these problems than locking up somebody for 20 or 30 years. You end up ruining their lives, ruining their families, hurting communities, and then when they try to re-enter into society, they’re destitute.
“So I really think there are better methods of dealing with these problems and I think that is part of criminal justice reform. I think that’s something I put out in the poverty plan that I first authored three years ago. So we intend on bringing these bills up in September,” he said.
Ryan’s position puts him in conflict with the agenda of presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump. In May during a speech before the National Rifle Association, Trump called out Obama’s plans to spring up to 70,000 federal prisoners without approval from Congress — nearly one-third of all federal inmates — while pushing the GOP-controlled Congress to send him sentencing reform legislation to free even more.
“President Obama also tried to take the guns from Americans and yet reduced prosecutions of violent criminals who use guns. President Obama is even releasing violent criminals from the jails, including drug dealers and those with gun crimes,” Trump said. “And they’re being let go by the thousands. By the thousands. Many of these are also—I’m sure you’re not going to be surprised to hear this—illegal immigrants. President Obama pushed for changes to sentencing laws that released thousands of dangerous, drug-trafficking felons and gang members who prey on civilians.”
Middle class and lower income whites along with minorities are very concerned about rising crime: In 2014, before Obama launched his “stigmatize-and-federalize” campaign against local and state law enforcement, 39 percent said they were worried “a great deal” about crime. Only two years later, that number soared to 53 percent.
Ryan’s criminal justice reform efforts neatly align with his globalist immigration agenda: Sentencing reductions bills pending before Congress will free thousands of illegal alien drug traffickers helping to fuel the violent heroin epidemic back onto American streets, which has prompted critics of the bills to call them a “Trojan horse amnesty.” One quarter of all those convicted on federal drug trafficking charges last fiscal year were foreign nationals.