ICYMI: NYT: G.O.P. Opposition to Gay Rights Provision Derails Spending Bill

By: Meredith Kelly

“Speaker Ryan confidently staked his reputation on returning the House to regular order, and this week’s chaos is just the latest example of his failure to live up to his own standard for success. Taken with his divisive decision to hold out on endorsing his party’s frontrunner, all Ryan has accomplished is weakening House Republicans and ensuring that they have no meaningful legislative achievements to point to while they’re running on the Trump ticket this fall,” said Christie Stephenson of the DCCC.

G.O.P. Opposition to Gay Rights Provision Derails Spending Bill

New York Times

By Emmarie Huetteman

May 26, 2016

Key Highlights

[…]As lawmakers headed off for a weeklong Memorial Day recess, Mr. Ryan was left to blame Democrats for the failure of a Republican bill in a chamber with its largest Republican majority since the 1920s. Mr. Ryan and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate majority leader, have staked their success on returning order to a recalcitrant Capitol.

[…]But House Republicans made clear Thursday that they were unwilling to take a difficult vote in an election year, and for the second year in a row a cultural fight torpedoed the appropriations process. In 2015, a battle over flying the Confederate flag on federal property paralyzed spending bills on the floor and dashed the promised return to an orderly process for allocating taxpayer money.

[…]During the revolt that drove out Speaker John A. Boehner last fall, Republicans demanded a more rule-abiding House, where members would be allowed to introduce amendments and there would be votes on appropriations bills. Mr. Ryan, so dedicated to procedure that in January he cut off a key vote to rebuke tardy lawmakers, agreed. Now, with bipartisan majorities forming around amendments like anti-discrimination legislation for gay men and lesbians, some House Republicans are having second thoughts.

[…]The failure of Mr. Ryan to push through a basic appropriations bill comes as House Republicans concede they are also unable to produce a budget this year — also because of infighting in their ranks — and Mr. Ryan’s admission that major policy proposals being devised in the House will not be turned into actual legislation. These failures raise questions about what precisely Mr. Ryan is going to be able to accomplish as he and his colleagues struggle to gain relevance in the presidential campaign.

[…]But members of the minority party are rarely held responsible for passing the majority’s bill, and Democrats said they had numerous reasons to oppose it, notwithstanding the gay rights amendment.

[…] “House Republicans’ thirst to discriminate against the L.G.B.T. community is so strong that they are willing to vote down their own appropriations bill in order to prevent progress over bigotry,” Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader, said in a statement. “In turning against a far-reaching funding bill simply because it affirms protections for L.G.B.T. Americans, Republicans have once again lain bare the depths of their bigotry.”