The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted 16-5 to advance a bill that would ease mandatory minimum sentences for some drug criminals, but its prospects on the Senate floor are uncertain after opposition from Attorney General Jeff Sessions and at least one big law enforcement group.
The Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act would put more power in the hands of individual federal judges and pave the way for about 3,000 federal inmates punished under old crack cocaine drug laws to ask courts for leniency. It also creates incentives for low-risk prisoners to participate in programming and ease their return to society.
The bill has attracted broad bipartisan support in the divided Senate, with nearly two dozen sponsors from both political parties. That's a source of pride for Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
But this week, on the eve of the committee vote, Sessions went out of his way to send a letter to Grassley calling the legislation a "grave error" because he said it would "reduce sentences for a highly dangerous cohort of criminals."
That prompted Grassley, his former colleague in the Senate, to unleash a biting personal attack.
