George Zornick | The Nation

Harry Reid is beginning debate on a gun control package that would create universal background checks. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh).

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Tuesday afternoon he would file for cloture on a comprehensive gun control package that would create universal background checks, dramatically stiffen penalties for straw purchases and gun trafficking, and fund improvements in school safety.

Reid will move to begin debate on the bill Tuesday night, and so that vote will occur Thursday. Many Republican Senators have said they are willing to at least allow debate on the gun control package as long as they can offer amendments, which Reid will allow—so Thursday will probably see over 60 votes to kick off debate on the bill.

But a contentious Senate floor fight lies ahead. On Wednesday morning, a deal to loosen some of the background check language will be announced. Is it enough to placate far-right conservatives (and some Democrats, like perhaps Montana Senator Max Baucus)? This group might still be able keep the Senate debate from ending and thus prevent a final vote if they can win over just a small handful of allies.  What other provisions will be weakened, if any?

Reid initially moved ahead with the uncompromised bill containing all the language of the Senate Judiciary Committee. (There are no measures on banning assault weapons or limiting magazine clips, however—though Reid will allow separate votes on both as amendments.) Now, presumably the language will be amended to reflect the Toomey-Manchin compromise. 

Here’s a comprehensive guide to what’s in the bill the Senate will now consider, with special note of where Senators really want to make changes.

Universal Background Checks

Right now, FBI background checks are only required for commercial sales—meaning that people can make purchases at a gun show or online and avoid any kind of background check.

The marquee feature of this gun control package is to require a background check for virtually every gun transaction: commercial, private, online, or in person, with very narrow exceptions. Only these private transfers of weapons wouldn’t be subject to a background check:

• “bona fide gifts” between immediate family members or grandparents.

• A transfer of a gun from a decedent’s estate, pursuant to a legal will.

• A temporary transfer, but only ones that last less than seven days and where the gun doesn’t leave the licensed owner’s home or property.

• Temporary transfers a shooting range or shooting competition, so that customers or competitors don’t have to bring or buy a gun.

• Between individuals while hunting or trapping, provided it’s happening in-season and the transferee has any necessary hunting licenses.

How many more gun purchases would now be subject to a background check, where they weren’t before? The statistics are fuzzy. President Obama and gun control advocates claim as many as 40 percent of gun sales don’t pass through a background check, but as it turns out that’s based on a 1994 study of 251 people, and included three years where background checks weren’t even required. Controlling for gifts and inheritances, which are still allowed under this bill, the number in that study drops to 26.4 percent. More recent, conservative estimates say somewhere between 14 and 22 percent of gun purchases aren’t subject to a background check but would be under the new law.

The bill also requires records of these transactions to be kept. Proponents argue this is the only way to ensure the checks are happening: the FBI already must delete background-check requests within 24 hours, so if dealers don’t keep records themselves, there’s no way to verify checks are actually being performed. In addition, it gives law enforcement the ability to track guns used in crimes.

But pro-gun Senators like Orrin Hatch are fear-mongering about the record-keeping: “When you start saying people all have to sign up for something, and they have a database where they know exactly who's who, and where government can persecute people because of the database, that alarms a lot of people in our country, and it flies in the face of liberty,” he said in February. Others contest enforcement could still occur without records, through spot checks and post-facto prosecutions if someone who bought a gun without submitting to a check commits a crime.

On Wednesday morning, Republican Senator Pat Toomey and Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, who both have 'A' ratings from the NRA, will announce a compromise that seems pretty decent from a gun control perspective. Crucially, they agreed to allow record keeping, and to expand background checks to gun shows, online purchases, and any other commercial sale that advertises. It appears they will propose language that widens exemptions for personal and family sales, however, to go far beyond the narrow restrictions described above. 

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The gun control package also aims to boost state participation in the background check system: a recent Mayors Against Illegal Guns report shows that 21 states have reported fewer than 100 mental health records to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). There are significant Constitutional questions about whether the federal government could compel states to submit this mental health data, as it might violate the Tenth Amendment, so the bill uses carrots and sticks to get it done.

The bill would increase funding for states to build systems to comply with the law, authorizing $100 million each year until 2018. It would also increase penalties for noncompliance: in the first two years of the bill, the Attorney General could withhold up to 3 percent of federal crime control funds if the state provides less than 50 percent of the records required; after three years, states muse provide at least 90 percent of the required records or face up to a 5 percent loss of funding. Also, within one year the Attorney General would be required to create a public website that ranks each state by their estimated compliance ratio, and to update it every year thereafter.

In addition, the background check section of the bill makes it a federal crime for any person to fail to report the loss or theft of a gun within 24 hours after discovering the loss--something Republicans like Senator Chuck Grassley are already blasting.

It would also clarify that federal court records should be fed into NICS, which is expected to be non-controversial.

Tougher Approach to Gun Trafficking and Straw Purchases

Even if a completely universal background-check system is achieved, there’s one problem: people who know they would fail the background check, but obtain guns through traffickers or straw purchasers that won’t.

Law enforcement officers have frequently complained that straw-purchasers undermine gun laws and flood the streets with weapons, and there’s little recourse: today, if you make false statements in relation to a firearm purchase the most you can be charged with is a federal paperwork violation.

The Hadiya Pendleton and Nyasia Pryear-Yard Anti-Straw Purchasing and Firearms Trafficking provisions of this bill would make it a felony to be a straw purchaser, meaning that a person buys or even conspires to buy a firearm for someone other than him or herself who is prohibited from owning it. It would subject that person to up to 15 years in prison, or as high as 25 years if the straw purchaser knows or should have “reasonable cause to believe” that any firearm will by used to commit a violent crime.

The measures are named after two recent teenage victims of gun violence in Chicago and New York City, respectively. Pendleton was the young girl who was killed only days after performing at Obama’s second inauguration. There are very narrow exemptions for people buying guns to give as gifts, or for use in a contest or raffle—but the recipient must still pass a background check.

Similarly, gun traffickers face much tougher penalties under the legislation. A person who transfers or receives two or more weapons if he or she “knows or has reasonable cause to believe” that the weapons would result in the violation of any federal law that is punishable by a prison term exceeding one year, would themselves be charged with a felony and face up to 15 years in prison. And once again, if the trafficker knows or should know that the gun will be used in a violent crime, the penalty goes up to 25 years.

In all cases, the legislation would allow the federal government to confiscate the straw purchaser or trafficker’s firearms and ammunition upon conviction. As a result of the Fast and Furious fiasco, the bill also forbids the federal government from setting up any kind of sting operation where straw purchasers are used or allowed unless the Attorney General expressly authorizes it in writing.

These provisions were long seen as the “low-hanging fruit” of the gun control debate; Republican Senator Susan Collins is a co-sponsor of the original legislation and even Senator Charles Grassley, the ranking Republican, voted for it during Judiciary Committee debate.

But the NRA has since demanded that the legislative language be weakened: they want to criminalize only straw purchases where authorities can prove the straw purchaser knew the customer wouldn’t pass a background check or was going to commit a crime. Mayors Against Illegal Guns has said that’s a “ridiculous” standard that would keep many straw purchasers from being prosecuted. The NRA also wants to scrap the provisions on confiscation of any weapons belonging to convicted straw purchasers or traffickers.

While Grassley voted for the provisions in committee, he hasn’t committed to voting for them on the Senate floor. Without naming the NRA objections in particular, he told The Hill that “that there were changes that needed to be made before I would support it on the floor.” With the NRA whipping against the provisions, they could be in real danger.

Increased School Safety

These are the truly non-controversial parts of the package among Senators: they passed the Judiciary Committee 14-4. If enacted, the bill would re-authorize through 2023 a Justice Department program that expired in 2009, which gave school districts grants to develop security plans.

It would provide $40 million annually for school districts to develop and implement safety plans, up from $30 million the last time the program existed. (Senator Barbara Boxer, the author of these provisions, originally wanted $100 millon annually but pared it back to win over Republicans.) It doesn’t mandate that school districts hire armed guards, as the NRA has demanded with much fanfare, but would allow school districts to use portions of the money to do so.

Two additions to the previous program are worrisome: specific language allowing the purchase of “surveillance equipment” by school districts, and money for the establishment of “hotlines or tiplines for the reporting of potentially dangerous students and situations.” Some civil liberties and youth justice advocates are decrying these little-noticed provisions, but it’s unlikely there are enough votes—or any, at this point—to remove these provisions.

Beyond that grant program, the bill would also create a brand-new National Center for Campus Public Safety, which would be run by the Department of Justice and focus on security at colleges and universities. The center would help train police officers on college campuses, foster research about campus safety, and promote information sharing about best protocols and practices between colleges and various government agencies.

This post has been updated to reflect evolving language in the gun control package.

Law enforcement agents respond to the shooting in Newtown. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill.)

As Washington gears up for the big Senate floor debate on gun control, two disturbing reports about the mass shootings in Tucson and Newtown have underscored the urgent need for a ban on assault weapons and semi-automatic magazines.

True, it seems unlikely that the Senate will pass a ban on either: Dianne Feinstein’s bill, which would ban at minimum 157 semiautomatic weapons and magazines that carry more than ten bullets, will not be included in the big gun control package the body will take up next week. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says there are not even forty votes to pass Feinstein’s bill, though it will come up for a vote as an amendment.

That means tragedies like Tucson are all to likely to be repeated. Thousands of new police documents concerning the shooting were released on Wednesday, and for the first time we know how quickly Loughner was able to carry out his attack:

About two hours later, he had apparently used some of that ammunition, emptying a 33-round magazine in about 19 seconds, and killing, among others, a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl and seriously wounding Ms. Giffords, who was shot in the head at close range.

That’s an astounding amount of carnage for nineteen seconds. The documents indicate police officers arrived only “moments” after the shooting, and bystanders already had Loughner pinned down—yet, he was able to shoot nineteen people.

Loughner was using a Glock 19 semi-automatic pistol. Feinstein’s office told The Nation that gun wouldn’t be banned, though many other semiautomatic pistols would be. But there’s no question Loughner’s 33-round magazines would have been illegal. (Note that the documents also confirm Loughner bought those magazines at Walmart, the country’s largest gun seller.)

On Thursday, extended police reports from the Newtown shooting were released, and contained similarly shocking numbers: Adam Lanza fired 154 rounds in the 300 seconds before police arrived, killing twenty children and six adults. That’s one shot for every two seconds, but they no doubt came faster: that 300 seconds includes the time it took Lanza to move around throughout the building.

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Both the Bushmaster rifle and the high-capacity magazines would be banned under Feinstein’s bill. Recall, too, that in Aurora, James Holmes shot seventy-one people in ninety seconds—even though his gun jammed.

The grim shots-to-seconds ratio underscores some basic facts: police officers respond remarkably quickly to mass shootings, and the more quickly the gunman can fire bullets, the more people die. Even a brief pause for reloading—which would also enable bystanders to attempt to restrain the shooter—means some lives are likely spared.

Some well-meaning arguments against the assault weapons and high-capacity magazine bans assert that they aren’t responsible for a very large percentage of gun crime, but that’s a misdirection: The issue is that, when they are used in a crime, the carnage is disproportionately bad.

And bans do work: A Washington Post analysis earlier this year found that during the last assault weapons ban, “the percentage of firearms equipped with high-capacity magazines seized by police agencies in Virginia dropped, only to rise sharply once the restrictions were lifted in 2004.” They’re now double what they were in 2004. Also, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that the use of assault weapons in crime dropped by about two-thirds nine years after the ban was enacted.

Sadly, it’s probably certain that there will be another mass shooting in America. If the shooter is using high-capacity magazines, it’s just as certain that more people will die than otherwise would even with a normal gun. Senators should keep that in mind next week.

Read George Zornick on a new government study that calls for the military to crack down on sexual assaults within its ranks.

A 2.3 percent tax on medical devices, such as MRI machines, has senators of both parties up in arms. Photo credit pennstate via Flickr.

It’s not often one finds bipartisan agreement in the Senate, but Thursday night seventy-nine senators joined to symbolically repeal the medical device tax provision of healthcare reform—a 2.3 percent levy on medical device companies that is projected to raise $30 billion over ten years to help finance the new law.

The vote brought together every Republican in the upper chamber plus thirty-three Democrats, including liberal stalwarts like Senators Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken and Ron Wyden. The vote was symbolic because it was a non-binding amendment to a budget resolution that also isn’t binding, but it does represent a serious bipartisan desire to get rid of the tax.

Opponents claim the tax will push medical device manufacturers overseas, costing a substantial amount of jobs, and will also stifle innovation, hurt small businesses, and cause increased costs for healthcare consumers.

The problem, however, is that virtually none of this is true. And the bipartisan push to repeal the tax—driven in large part by fealty to medical device companies in senators’ home states, which can be generous campaign contributors—underscores the many landmines that await if Congress takes up comprehensive tax reform at some point this year.

Closing loopholes in the tax code is easily said, but much harder to do when big-money special interests are involved, and the public isn’t really watching.

* * *

The chief attack on the medical device tax, which applies to everything from bedpans to MRI machines, is that it will cost jobs—a potent claim given the country’s high unemployment. “A 2011 study by the Hudson Institute found that the device tax threatens nearly 43,000 jobs nationwide, and will cost 3.5 billion in wages,” Senator Kelly Ayotte said during floor debate Thursday night. Members of Congress who oppose the tax frequently cite those numbers.

But that’s not really a Hudson Institute study—it was conducted by a senior Hudson fellow and a senior Manhattan Institute fellow, but financed by Advamed, a medical technology industry group.

The job loss claims fall apart upon even brief inspection. The tax applies on medical devices sold in the United States, not manufactured here—so moving a plant to Mexico doesn’t change anything. Medical device companies would have stop selling their products in the United States to escape the levy, which is simply unbelievable. The American healthcare market is by far the most lucrative in the world, as the country spends more on healthcare than any other by many orders of magnitude. No company is likely to leave the American market or even to reduce sales in order to avoid a 2.3 percent tax.

An analysis by Bloomberg Government found that the Advamed study’s job-loss figures—which were not supported by empirical evidence but simply industry claims—“conflict(s) with economic research, overstate companies’ incentives to move jobs offshore, and ignore(s) the positive effect of new demand.”

Indeed, demand is an important part of this equation. Medical device makers are likely to come out ahead as a result of healthcare reform. The law is projected to expand coverage to 33 million more Americans, so that’s a lot of extra medical devices. That was the original rationale for taxing the industry: the law is a huge boon to medical device manufacturers, so they should kick in a rather small tax to help fund the law. Now the industry is trying to wiggle out of the tax to come out even more ahead.

Other claims about the tax are fairly easily refutable, too. The industry claims it will “hurt innovation,” but it’s hard to see how. Analysts at PricewaterhouseCooper have concluded the Affordable Care Act will increase innovation by mandating more cost-effective ways to deliver care. And innovation is the bread-and-butter of any industry: if a medical device company for some reasons sinks less money into research and development because of a 2.3 percent tax, it would likely find itself outpaced by companies that don’t take the same route.

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On the score of “hurting small businesses,” there isn’t much evidence there either. Bloomberg Government notes that the largest ten medical device makers in this $116 billion industry account for 86 percent of sales, and thus would be responsible for about 86 percent of the taxes.

The industry also claims costs would be passed onto customers, which would cause demand for medical devices to fall. But this isn’t how the healthcare markets work. They are very inelastic, meaning that when prices go up demand falls by only a fraction. (Few people, if any, would not get a prosthesis or not use a bedpan because of a small marginal increase in cost.) Health care economists estimate that a 10 percent increase in healthcare costs results in only a 2 percent drop in demand. The Advamed study assumes a much stronger relationship and “is off by as much as a factor of 10,” says Bloomberg Government.

**

So why do so many Senators want the medical device tax gone, especially Democrats who strongly support Obamacare? The answer is simple: in most cases, they have large medical device companies in their state that are often are generous campaign contributors.

Medical supply company contributions skyrocketed in 2012, the highest year ever, as Congress focused its attention on repealing the tax (via OpenSecrets):

Many of the large donors to this cause are located in states of Senators pushing for repeal (via OpenSecrets):

Number two on the list, Boston Scientific Corp., is located in Elizabeth Warren’s state, and she voted for repeal of the tax, as did Senator Mo Cowan, the placeholder in John Kerry’s former seat. Direct Supply Inc. is located in Wisconsin, and Republican Ron Johnson and Democrat Tammy Baldwin both voted for repeal. (Number one, Masimo Corp., is located in California—though Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein both laudably voted against repeal.)

In 2012, Senator Scott Brown was the top recipient of medical supply funds, followed by Republican Senator Orrin Hatch and Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar. Not incidentally, the amendment passed yesterday was the Hatch-Klobuchar amendment. (via OpenSecrets)

Of the top ten recipients of medical supply money, a healthy bipartisan group indeed, every single one except Senator Max Baucus voted for repeal. (Baucus was one of the chief legislative architects of Obamacare and strongly opposes repeal of the medical device tax.)

* * *

Though Thursday’s resolution was non-binding, the medical device industry is hoping to make it official during any upcoming tax reform, where analysts say the $30 billion would barely be noticed. “The industry has a fighting chance of getting the tax moderated or eliminated as part of a much larger tax reform bill, where the device levy becomes a rounding error,” Paul Heldman, a policy analyst at Potomac Research Group, told Reuters.

So this week’s vote is then a disturbing, cautionary tale. In the supposedly ideal scenario that ends the sequester, Republicans and Democrats join together to slash safety net programs in exchange for revenue raised through tax reform—closing loopholes and such.

But as the medical device tax saga shows, cutting loopholes is really hard to do in practice. They were likely put there to benefit specific industries, which can often be quite powerful and influence even stalwart liberal Senators who claim to want new revenue sources. Many progressives thus fear that the loopholes most likely to be closed are the ones that benefit people without lobbyists—middle-class wage earners and homeowners, students, and the very poor.

And even if the loopholes are removed—in exchange for safety net cuts that likely remain permanent—they can be added back to the tax code very quickly thereafter, as demonstrated by Senators who enthusiastically voted to create the medical device tax three years ago by approving Obamacare and now are voting to remove it.

Republicans are already fighting Barack Obama’s EPA head nominee Gina McCarthy, but the issue is mostly that they just hate the EPA, George Zornick writes.

Keith Ellison, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari.)

Paul Ryan’s recently released budget will not become law—at least not any time soon. The Democratic Senate would never pass it, President Obama would never sign it. Ryan surely knows this, and his proposal is a fantasy budget: more an ideological argument than genuine attempt at legislating.

That hasn’t stopped widespread media coverage of Ryan’s proposal, and that’s fine: he’s a leading thinker of the conservative movement, with real power. But corresponding attention should also be paid to the opposite ideological vision sketched out by the Congressional Progressive Caucus in the “Back to Work” budget proposal, released on Wednesday.

As the name suggests, the CPC budget puts a priority on job creation—something no current proposal currently does. Ryan’s doesn’t even make an attempt at immediate job creation, but just posits that a decade from now, a smaller national debt will nudge Gross National Product Forward. The Senate Democratic budget has a relatively weak $100 billion infrastructure proposal tucked in amidst $960 billion in budget cuts; that’s nice, but clearly not a priority of their plan.

The “Back to Work” Budget contains a $544 billion increase over current spending on public investments and job creation in the first year, including $75 billion for an infrastructure program, $155 billion for a public works program and aid to distressed communities, $80 billion for hiring teachers and $92 billion for reinstating the Making Work Pay tax credit. It also expands unemployment insurance, sends more money to the states and undoes the sequester cuts.

The CPC estimates this will create $7 million jobs in the first year—and over the next ten years, the budget would spend over $4 trillion more on job creation and public investments.

But this massive spending is offset by a number of crucial revenue measures: The “Back to Work” budget increases taxes on millionaires and billionaires, taxes investments at the same level as wages, closes corporate tax loopholes, enacts both a financial transactions tax and a carbon tax, and introduces both a public option and government negotiating for drug prices to Medicare. In addition, the budget finds savings by cutting Pentagon spending back to 2006 levels.

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In short, they sketch out the opposite vision of Paul Ryan: reduced military spending, robust public investment and a strong safety net.

Moreover, the budget actually reduces public debt over the next ten years compared to both current law and current policy, as this table from the Economic Policy Institute Policy Center Shows:

You can find the full EPI analysis of the budget here and the CPC executive summary of their budget here. It’s certainly a vision that merits broad public discussion. And since it’s the only budget with a sincere focus on getting people back to work, instead of obtuse debates about the long-term federal deficit, it ought to attract some real attention.

Although Barack Obama is ready to negotiate over Chained CPI, senate democrats haver tested him on the benefit-cutting measure, George Zornick writes.