- Here now for more on this effort,

Senators Chris Coons and James Lankford.

Gentlemen, good to see you.

Thank you for joining us this evening.

First, we do wanna talkabout this GOP bill

on police reform.

It doesn't appear there's legislation yet

that can pass both theHouse and the Senate.

With both partiesacknowledging this as an issue

that needs to be addressed,how confident are both of you

that Congress will delivera bipartisan solution

to the American peopleby the end of the year?

- Yeah, it's its own unique challenge

to be able to walk through this.

Obviously, the House has their proposal

that Speaker Pelosi is gonna bring up.

It looks like it's astraight partisan proposal

that'll come out of the house.

In the Senate, we do thingsa little differently.

You have to have 60 of 100senators to start debate.

Then you debate it, you amend it,

you go through the process.

If all the amendments aren't heard,

then the minority party canalways make sure it keeps going,

cause you have to have60 votes at the end.

That makes sure everyone getsheard through the process

and then at the end of it you pass a bill.

So our hope was that there would be a bill

that would come out of the House,

a bill that would come out of the Senate,

it's a normal process.

We would have this open.

Senator Tim Scott, who's theone coordinating all this,

made the offer of up to 20 amendments

that could be on this bill,

so it was a very wide openprocess for Democrats to be able

to engage, be able to addanything, bring it up for a vote.

Let's find where we havea bipartisan agreement,

because at this point right now,

America is really looking to the Senate,

knowing that the House proposalis gonna be a very partisan

proposal to try to forma bipartisan proposal,

to be able to get this done.

What we brought today was, we think,

a good starting point at that.

Good transparency, ending choke holds,

providing money for body cameras,

providing greater accountabilityfor law enforcement

to turn in good records,keep body cameras on,

to be able to do additionalgrants for training

that's out there.

So there's a lot that'svery very positive in it.

- Senator Landford, we knowthat you were a co-sponsor

to Senator Scott's legislation.

Senator Coons, why couldn'tDemocrats sign on to the process

and at least debate the bill?

- That's a great question.

We've got a significant gapbetween the bill that I'm

a co-sponsor of, the billthat was principally led

by Senators Booker and Harris,and is the bill that's gonna

be taken up and passed in the House,

and the bill that SenatorScott and Senator Lankford

and most of the Republicansare co-sponsoring,

and I respect SenatorLankford and Senator Scott

and listened to Senator Scott'sspeech on the floor today.

I got some critical input last night,

from the family of GeorgeFloyd, from the NAACP,

from 130 different civil rights groups,

that were urging Democratic senators,

urging all senators frankly,

not to proceed to this vote today,

but instead to negotiatea bipartisan based bill.

One that was closer to, or comparable to,

the Justice in Policing Act.

We've seen a similarchallenge in the past,

as we tried to workthrough real differences

on immigration, on taxpolicy, on gun policy,

on criminal justice reform.

In criminal justice reformwe were able to reach

a bipartisan compromise, withsupport from the White House

and with persistent engagementfrom communities of faith

and from our home statecommunities across a wide range

of backgrounds, we ultimatelygot over the finish line.

Two months ago, when weinitially took up the CARES Act,

the Epidemic Relief Actor the Financing Act,

it passed ultimately unanimously;

but only after twice Democratsrefused to move to the bill

until it was expanded.

What I really think we have here

is a difference about process.

Doing floor amendments, versus negotiating

before we get onto the floor.

But I think all of us were disappointed

at what's happening today,

in that today we're not moving forward.