Friday, May 27, 2016

Hog Tied

The House is tied up over LGBT rights and amendment was passed in the House on a military spending bill that ordered federal contract not to discriminate against LGBT employees.
An argument over transgender rights has killed a major spending bill in Congress
Business Insider
By David Morgan, Reuters
May 27, 2016

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The rancorous political debate over sexual identity unexpectedly prompted the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to rejected an energy and water spending bill on Thursday after Democrats attached an amendment to protect the rights of transgender people.

The legislation, which would have funded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Energy in the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1, failed on a 112-305 vote, with 130 Republicans and 175 Democrats opposing the legislation.

The vote outcome was such a surprise that the House Appropriations Committee initially announced that bill had passed and was forced to retract the statement.

Democrats blamed Republicans for opposing a Democratic amendment to bar federal contractors from government work if they discriminated against the lesbian, gay, transgender and bisexual (LGBT) community. Democrats were unable to attach the same measure to a separate House spending bill last week.
So the Republicans feel that it is OK to discriminate against people as long as they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

The Democrats said that they voted against the bill because,
The White House had already threatened to veto the legislation, and Democrats said on Thursday that it contained a number of "objectionable riders" including three provisions that they said would undermine the Clean Water Act and another that would allow people to carry arms on Army Corps of Engineers land.
Yup, we need to carry our guns when we go on a picnic at an Army Corps of Engineers site and we want companies to be able to pollute the waterways… the nerve of the government telling us that we can’t dump chemicals into the brook on our property! Just because the brook flows into our neighbor’s property and eventually into another state or ocean and making the water unusable for everyone else they are taking away my right to poison the brook.

No comments:

Post a Comment