Senate To Vote On ENDA… With Amendments!

The Senate voted yesterday to vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), but there has been some backroom deals they did to advance the bill. According to Politico they agreed to allow some amendments,

Still, the procedural vote to move to floor debate was not without some drama. The vote was held open for well over half an hour as Republican Sens. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania and Rob Portman of Ohio — all undecided before the vote — huddled in the cloakroom off the Senate floor as they were lobbied by the bill’s backers.

Collins, one Republican co-sponsor for the bill, asked Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to come into the GOP cloakroom during the vote, followed shortly thereafter by Reid and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), the legislation’s chief sponsor. While in the cloakroom, senators agreed to votes on two amendments to satisfy Ayotte, Toomey and Portman, according to a source familiar with the situation: a Portman-Ayotte amendment that would ban state and local governments from retaliating against religious groups that take action only permissible because of the religious exemption clause. Toomey’s amendment, which would broaden the number of groups covered under the exemption, will also get a vote, according to the source.

Unfortunately, at this time we do not know the wording of the amendments to know how poisonous they are to the LGBT community.

However, it may all be moot because Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R-Ohio) is against the bill and I don’t even think it will come up for a vote in the House under the new rules that the Republican initiated where only the Speaker or his delegate can call for a vote on a Senate bill. Before the “Government Shutdown” any representative call for a vote on a Senate bill but that was changed by the Republicans so no one could call for a vote on the Senate budget bill.