From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the deal.

Today, in 2015, President Obama came very close to passing a bipartisan bill to reform the criminal justice system.

Three years later, the people responsible for stopping it may become the same people responsible for passing

a new version of the same bill.

It's Wednesday, December 12.

So, at about 10 o'clock this morning, Mitch McConnell walked on to the floor of the Senate.

Madam President.

The charity leader?

I think it's time the Senate subjects itself to a bit of a reality check.

I'd gotten the heads up a couple minutes early from somebody who works for him saying pay attention to speech just now.

Nick Fanderers covers Congress for the Times.

And he comes out and starts to say, we need to have a reality check here in the Senate.

We only have a couple weeks left and a lot of issues to run through.

Today is December the 11th.

Here are just some of the things the Senate needs to accomplish before this Congress adjourns.

One of them was so-called First Step Act, which is a big package of prison and sentencing reform measures to change the federal criminal justice system

and again to unwind some of the tough on crime policies of the 80s and 90s.

It seemed as if this criminal justice bill was dead, and then he takes a pretty quick pivot and says

at the request of the President and following improvements to the legislation that have been secured by several members,

the Senate will take up the recently revised criminal justice bill this month.

I'm going to put this on the Senate floor as soon as the end of the week.

So as a result of this additional legislative business, members should now be prepared to work between Christmas and New Year's if necessary in order to complete our work.

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