Report: Democrats Very Frustrated with Joe Biden over DC’s Soft-on-Crime Bill Debacle

On Thursday, Biden’s Twitter account published what appeared to be a stunning policy shift on a local soft-on-crime law that took Democrats by surprise. Biden said he would sign a Senate Republican-led resolution to block the District’s soft-on-crime law after allegedly opposing the Republican’s resolution, though Biden had expressed no explicit veto threat.

House Democrats indicated Biden would veto the disapproval resolution on the District’s soft-on-crime law, according to Punchbowl News. “That’s why party leaders worked to limit the number of Democratic defectors when the House voted Feb. 9 on the measure – thus ensuring they were under the threshold for overriding a presidential veto,” Punchbowl reported. “Democratic leaders whipped everyone but Battleground Democrats on the measure.”

“They [White House] gave a signal that led the House Democrats to take certain actions and the president then took a different position when he came to the Senate — speaks for itself,” Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told reporters about being blindsided by the president.

Moreover, Biden’s public statement on signing the Republican resolution frustrated Democrats further when he highlighted the reduced punishments for carjackings in the District’s law as the reason for supporting the Republican resolution.