Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Thursday he negotiated a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on an amendment allowing military veterans whose finances go into conservatorship to keep their firearms, a proposal Schumer previously called a “poison pill” to the Senate’s minibus appropriations bill.
Kennedy’s effort to get a vote on his amendment had held up the bill funding military construction and the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development.
Now, the Louisiana senator said he expects to get a vote on his proposal after he agreed to modify the language. As a result, Kennedy said he will let the long-delayed appropriations bill advance.
“I just left Chuck’s office. I think we got it worked out,” Kennedy told The Hill. “We’re going to hotline some new language. Frankly, I think it makes my amendment stronger. Now, not everyone’s going to be happy.”
Kennedy said the modifications to the amendment are being put on the Senate “hotline,” giving all senators a chance to review it prior to coming to the floor.
Kennedy said the agreement was between himself and Schumer.
“The original position was they wanted me to pull my amendment down and I said ‘no,’” he said.
But now that he has an agreement, Kennedy said he has “no plans to withhold consent to the minibus.”
Schumer got into an animated discussion with Senate Appropriations Committee Vice Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine) over the Kennedy amendment, which he called a “poison pill,” on the Senate floor Tuesday evening.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) were part of Tuesday’s floor discussion over how to break the impasse.
Kennedy said Wednesday that he was “blindsided” when Schumer denied him a vote on the gun rights-related amendment.
“They blindsided me. My amendment was submitted five weeks ago. Everybody looked at it, there were no objections,” he said. “All of a sudden a bunch of people on the Democratic side got upset with it.”
Kennedy added “right now, if you’re a veteran and you go to the VA and say I’m having trouble with my finances and I’d like your help and the VA places you in a conservatorship … your name automatically goes on the list and they take away your guns.”
The senator’s original version of the amendment was the same language as legislation that passed the House in July with six Democratic votes.
Senate Democrats led by Sen. Chris Murphy (Conn.), a leading advocate of addressing gun violence, say they will try to defeat Kennedy’s amendment on the floor.
“It’s a disaster. It will result in a dramatic spike in veterans’ suicides. I’ll vote against it,” he said. “I’m going to vote against it and try to defeat it on the floor.”
Murphy said he did not object to the hotline request on Kennedy’s amendment, which could have resulted in a longer delay of the minibus spending bill.
He argued that the veterans now being denied firearms have been judged “mentally incompetent.”
“I think there’s a legitimate conversation about making that process better but if we no longer have consensus that people with serious mental illness shouldn’t have weapons, that’s real trouble,” he said.
“The only people that are in this category is people the VA has adjudicated to be mentally incompetent,” he said. “The finding is not a finding that you can’t balance your checkbook, the finding is that you are mentally incompetent.”