New York Times
By Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Steinhauer
April 8, 2013
Congress returns to Washington on Monday with two issues reaching critical stages – gun safety legislation in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration system.
Both issues face a hard road, and action could slip into next week. But negotiations, which for two weeks have largely been between staff members, will intensify as lawmakers return from their spring break. In both cases, breakthroughs are possible by midweek.
On gun-control legislation, the focus is on efforts by Senators Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, to try to find a compromise on expanding federal background checks for would-be firearms buyers.
The two have been discussing a possible measure that would expand background checks to gun show purchases and online sales – a more narrow field than most Democrats want. The measure would also maintain record-keeping provisions that law enforcement officials find essential in tracking criminal gun use, but which gun rights groups find anathema.
“Ultimately, I think we’re going to have to call the Republicans’ bluff,” Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, said, if a breakthrough cannot be reached soon. Democrats in the Senate believe that Republicans could not withstand the pressure of a straight vote on expanded background checks, which have the support of as much as 90 percent of the public.
On immigration, a bipartisan group of eight senators hopes to unveil legislation that would strengthen border security, establish a new guest-worker program for foreign workers and establish a pathway to citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country. That, too, could slip to next week amid hard negotiations, especially over the scope of the guest-worker program.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said the window for moving on immigration was narrowing, and if the group of eight senators could not reach agreement in the next week or two, he would have to begin a more formal legislative process in his committee.
“This is one where the senators are going to have to stand up and vote yes or vote no,” he said.
Adding to the tension and emotions of the issues, the families of children and educators killed at Sandy Hook in Connecticut will converge in Washington for private meetings with senators on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Rallies are also in the works for immigrant populations pushing for change. Such shows of force helped galvanize legislative drives on the immigration issue in 2006 and 2007, but they were not enough to get hard-fought legislation through the Senate.
On the fiscal front, President Obama’s budget release on Wednesday will add a third set of tax-and-spending plans to a Republican version that has passed the House and a Democratic one that passed the Senate. That should kick off talks to try to find some common ground and reach a deficit deal that would encompass changes to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare and an effort to overhaul and simplify the tax code.
But gun legislation is the most immediate concern. The effort has been trapped between various political factions in the Senate. The fight over background checks has been about the balance between how far to expand the current checks at licensed firearms dealers and conservatives’ fears over a paper trail that they insist could lead to a de facto national gun registry.
Specifically, Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, was close to a deal to expand the checks almost universally, but one of his chief Republican allies, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, pulled away because he did not support record-keeping of those transactions, which is standard on gun sales.
Mr. Coburn would still like to press forward. His vision is for an online gun-check “portal” that would allow rural gun buyers to get pre-clearance to make their purchases but to leave no record of the transaction. Aides say the enforcement of gun checks would come from the fear of sting operations and stiff penalties – similar to the way restaurants and stores are policed to stop the sale of alcohol to those under age 21.
But Senate Democratic leadership aides say pulling back on the universality of background checks is very likely to be more preferable than jettisoning the record-keeping that law enforcement wants. One of the strengths of the current background check system is the ability it gives the police to track a gun used in a crime to the person who bought it – something that is only possible if sales records are kept. Aides say Mr. Toomey may be inclined to support that compromise.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, has indicated that he is willing to push the debate of gun legislation to next week to give the background-check negotiations more time. Without a bipartisan deal, breaking a threatened Republican filibuster would most likely be impossible.
“It will be a testing time for a lot of senators who know in their hearts it’s the right thing to do, and know from the polls that a majority of Americans support it,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut.
And if the gun bill falls to a filibuster, the Senate will again be confronted with Democratic unrest over the rules that now mandate 60 votes for the passage of any bill with even a modicum of controversy. Even old bulls like Mr. Leahy are growing discontented.
“I believe in protecting the rights of the minority in the Senate,” he said, “but this has become about ego trips, not about the good of the country.”
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