This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, November 1st, 2016.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Is it too early to say that criminal justice reform is dead on Capitol Hill.

Mark Levin, director of the Center for Effective Justice

at the Texas Public Policy Foundation,

says there's still time for something to happen,

possibly in the lame duck session.

We spoke earlier this month in Nashville.

Criminal justice reform essentially died in the in Congress, but you suggest that there may be some hope that the lame duck session, people

who've already been reelected, or had just been unelected, might push something through. Well, I'd say it's on life support, but fortunately, you know, when you have the Speaker of the House administering that life support, that's encouraging.

We have been in very close conversation with Speaker Ryan and he's incredibly committed to seeing

this criminal justice reform through.

And his plan is to bring it up in the lame duck session before the end of the year and of course you know those of us on the right

understandably are very skeptical of lame duck maneuvers when they come to spending money but

fortunately this is something that actually saves money but more importantly is going to be good for public safety and good for keeping families together.

And among other things, this package of bills in the house will really rein in some of these extreme sentences of very low-level drug

offenders under federal law by expanding what's called a safety valve where judges could

depart from what would be an excessive

sometimes 30 or 40 year sentence for a low level drug case far more than

many violent offenders get and so we're you know encouraged I think that it can come out of the House potentially with an overwhelming

vote and that would generate enough momentum to where Leader McConnell would bring it up in the

Senate where I think there are 60 votes for it.

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