Gillibrand: Schumer should bring military sexual assault bill to floor

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on Sunday said Majority Leader Chuck Schumer should bring her bill that would overhaul military sexual assault policies for a vote.

Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) worked with Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on the bill, which now has 64 co-sponsors — more than the Senate's 60-vote threshold to secure a vote. But Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, objected to a vote, saying he would include a similar plan in this year's defense spending bill.

"I believe we should have a vote now," Gillibrand said on CNN's "State of the Union." "It is a generational bill of shifting how we address military justice, how we build a military justice system that's worthy of the sacrifice our men and women in the military make."

Gillibrand's bill would remove the decision to prosecute major crimes like sexual assault and murder from military commanders, instead moving it to military prosecutors. She said that while she couldn't speak to why Reed is blocking the bill, she disagreed with his stance on narrowing the bill to apply only to sex crimes.

"You're going to create one set of justice for one set of plaintiffs and defendants and the rest for everybody else," Gillibrand said. "It's not fair."

The New York senator also brought up biases in the current system, including racial prejudice and biases against the victims.

"To take biases out of the system across the board, you need a trained military prosecutor to make these decisions about whether it should go to trial," she said. "That takes it out of the chain of command. The chain of command has bias because they may know the perpetrator, the accused. They may know the survivor."

Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), chair of House Armed Services' subcommittee on military personnel, is sponsoring similar legislation in the House.