It’s not often these days that Congress can easily pass legislation, let alone pass something on a unanimous basis.
But, that’s exactly what happened this week when both the House and Senate unanimously passed a new bill that will increase the protection that presidential candidates get from U.S. Secret Service.
The bill headed to President Joe Biden’s desk for his signature after the Senate passed the bill unanimously on Tuesday. That followed a 405-0 vote in the House.
The bill, called the Enhanced Presidential Security Act, will give the two major presidential candidates — Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump — the same level of Secret Service protection that Biden gets as president.
The bill doesn’t go into a lot of detail, but rather just gives broad discretion to the federal agency on how it would apply different measures so that it can meet the same level of protection that a president gets.
This bill comes only a few weeks after a second assassination attempt was carried out against Trump. In the wake of that attack, Biden called on Congress last week to act, saying that he believed that Secret Service “needs more help.”
The bill was originally introduced in the House by two New York representatives — Republican Mike Lawler and Democrat Ritchie Torres. It was then brought to the floor of the Senate by Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott.
The House cast their unanimous vote last Friday, and the Senate took its vote a few days later.
After the House voted last Friday, Ronald Rowe, the acting director of the Secret Service, held a press conference. He said that Trump was already getting “the highest levels of Secret Service protection.”
He added that the former president was getting everything that Biden was “with respect to Secret Service.”
Rowe added, though, that he believed the protection agency needed “a paradigm shift” in how it approaches protecting U.S. presidents.
The House is also considering a broader bill that would provide additional funding to the Secret Service — as much as $231 million.
All of this comes the same week that Trump accused the Department of Justice of “downplaying” the second assassination attempt on him, which occurred outside one of his golf clubs in West Palm Beach, Florida.
A Secret Service agent happened to notice a barrel of a rifle sticking through the bushes on the perimeter of the golf course, and opened fire at the suspect.
The suspect, a man from Hawaii, fled the scene but was later caught by law enforcement officials. The subsequent investigation has already revealed that the man, Ryan Routh, had been stalking Trump for the better part of a month and had written down his plans to assassinate the former president.
The first assassination attempt against Trump happened at a rally he held in July in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a man was able to climb onto the roof of a building. He had a clear shot at Trump, but hit him in the ear.
Secret Service agents returned sniper fire once that happened, killing the man.
