WASHINGTON (AP) – While the country is struggling with another mass shooting and getting a settlement over the deaths of black men among police, President Joe Biden is calling for action. However, it is going to be much harder to go beyond that.
Three months after his presidency, Biden’s robust agenda is tackling the reality of his narrow Democratic majority on Capitol Hill and the Senate’s limited ability to tackle multiple pieces of large-scale legislation simultaneously. As the White House first focuses on a comprehensive package for coronavirus relief and now an extensive infrastructure plan that is likely to dominate Congress for months, it appears that issues such as gun control and police reform are likely to sit.
Biden insisted Friday that this was not the case, saying that especially on the issue of gun control: “I have never put it first.” He spoke one day after a gunman killed eight people at a FedEx plant in Indianapolis, the latest in a riot of mass shootings in the United States in recent weeks.
There are many of the central promises he made to Democratic voters – especially black voters who tried to drive him to the White House – about his priorities and his ability to move in Washington, where issues such as gun control have disappeared for years. The mass shootings, as well as the renewed focus on police killings of Americans of color after incidents in Chicago and a suburb of Minneapolis, have heightened demands for action.
DeAnna Hoskins, President and CEO of Just LeadershipUSA, a police reform reform group, suggested that activists were willing to be patient, but not for long. She welcomed Biden’s recent executive orders on arms control, which had taken modest steps to intensify the background check, but said “the actions do not go far enough.”
“They do not have the tentacles to really hit where rubber hits the road,” Hoskins said.
The White House says it can do multitasking and carry out its infrastructure plan in public while working to build support among moderate Democrats and Republicans over gun control and behind-the-scenes police reform.
“In this building, the legislative team, senior members of the White House staff, we are working on several fronts at the same time,” said Jen Psaki, White House press secretary.
Officials say Biden’s less public role in legislative talks on guns and policing is by design, out of the danger of complicating already complicated negotiations. They also claim that issuing executive orders on policing could undermine any momentum on the Capitol Hill issue, and they are being hampered by open-ended talks in Congress, such as talks between Republican Senator Tim Scott and Democratic Senator Cory Booker.
Yet Biden himself described his legislative strategy as a “one at a time” approach. He said last month that successful presidents are making progress because ‘they know how to make time for what they do, order it, decide and prioritize what needs to be done.’
In the statement, it was implicit that some priorities would have to wait their turn.
Biden has taken some executive action on guns, targeting homemade “ghost guns” and the stabilizing brackets for handguns that allow it to shoot from a shoulder, like a rifle. He did not propose new legislation to repeal the liability protection of gun manufacturers or to tighten the federal background, despite the promise that he would pass such legislation on his first day in Congress. Instead, he supports legislation proposed by House Democrats.
On police reform, Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday recalled the Trump era’s limits on consent decisions, the court order agreements used to enforce reforms in police departments. But Biden has not yet taken any significant executive steps, but mainly focused on the George Floyd Justice in Capitol Hill Police Act.
The focus has been heightened by some major police reform groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, whose interim president and CEO, Wade Henderson, said legislation was the best approach to such an unworkable problem.
“This case is too urgent to delay, and Congress is by far the most appropriate place to consider legislative changes regarding police liability,” he said in a statement.
But the bill, passed by the House, sits in the Senate – and this is where the counting of votes for the Biden White House is difficult.
Legislation on guns and policing cannot be considered in Congress via the budget reconciliation process, the path Democrats have followed to pass virus relief with just their party’s 50 votes in the Senate. This is the same way they appear offline to tackle infrastructure. That means Democrats need ten Republicans to join them to pass firearms or police legislation under current Senate procedures.
“I strongly urge my friends from the Republicans in Congress who are refusing to draft the bill passed by the House to bring it now,” Biden said Friday, referring to the gun control measure. ‘Who in God’s name needs a weapon that can contain 100 rounds, or 40 rounds, or 20 rounds. It’s just wrong and I’m not going to give up until it’s done.
Major lawmakers, including Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Have tried to design a way to the deadlock by involving colleagues in two-party talks. The House bill to expand background investigations is similar to the one that came closest to passing after the Sandy Hook shooting, but senators are now entangled in differences over provisions, including the transfer of firearms between family members. No breakthrough appears in sight.
“Ultimately, Congress must do its job,” Steven Horsford, D-Nev., Said, recalling the president’s message to lawmakers during a two-hour private session with members of the Congressional Black Caucus this week.
The Senate loggam on such high-priority issues has increased the pressure on Biden to adopt a growing movement within the Democratic Party to remove the threshold of 60 votes needed to pass most legislation. But here he is also confronted with opposition in his own party – Democratic Sens Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Cinema of Arizona are both against eliminating the filibuster. Manchin has also opposed the House Control Bill on gun control, making the passage in the Senate all the more difficult.
The White House is in regular contact with advocacy groups for arms control. Most say they are pleased with the first round of executive action Biden has taken and are cautiously optimistic about his promise to pass Capitol Hill legislation.
Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, said that while “I always want the Biden government to do more,” he does not see a “lack of effort” from Democrats in Congress or in the White House not.
“I think the key question is how much pressure are we going to put on the Republicans of the Senate. How many daily violent episodes, how many mass shooting incidents are we still going to have to watch? He said.
Horwitz said: “The state ship takes time to turn around, but we do not have time because people are dying there every day.”
Melina Abdullah, co-director of Black Lives Matter-Grassroots, which coordinates ground-based work for BLM, said Biden’s focus on infrastructure is a distraction from police crises taking place in color communities.
“It’s been 160 days since Biden told black people, ‘You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours,'” Abdullah said in a statement sent to the AP.
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AP writers Lisa Mascaro and Aaron Morrison contributed.