Rebel flag issue disrupts House in heated debate
WASHINGTON — The escalating national debate over the Confederate battle flag smoldered on the floor of the U.S. House on Thursday in a partisan dispute over efforts to restrict the display of the emblem on federal land and cemeteries.
Several black lawmakers from Texas played a prominent role in the heated discussion on a day that South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley signed legislation retiring the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds.
“It is a new day for America — a new opportunity for us to improve the crippled race relations in this nation,” said Houston Democrat Sheila Jackson Lee, praising the decision in South Carolina. “The nine members of Emanuel AME died as martyrs. Their deaths have brought about an unprecedented change in America, with states debating on the place of a hate flag sanctioned by a government institution.”
A group of Southern Republicans in the U.S.
House rebelled against language in an Interior Department spending bill that would restrict Confederate flag imagery on federal lands and cemeteries.
A GOP amendment to strike the language was scheduled for later in the day Thursday.
Members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Jackson Lee and Houston Democrat Al Green, immediately came to the floor to register their objections, some standing astride of a large placard depicting the Southern emblem.
“The House of Representatives confronts a seminal moment in time,” Green said. Paraphrasing Martin Luther King, he added, “We can bend the arc of justice, or we can turn back the clock.”
Entire bill pulled
Caught between stiff Democratic resistance and recalcitrant Republicans who wanted the flag restrictions removed, Speaker John Boehner pulled the entire spending bill off the floor, averting what could have been a difficult vote for GOP lawmakers.
But it remained unclear how GOP leaders will resolve the issue in the spending bill, which funds a host of natural resources and environmental programs.
“I actually think it’s time for some adults here in the Congress to actually sit down and have a conversation about how to address this issue,” Boehner said. “I do not want this to become a political football.”
Eager to keep a spotlight on the issue, Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi forced a dramatic vote on a separate resolution banning the Confederate flag image from the U.S. Capitol.
The practical effect of the measure would have been to remove Mississippi’s state flag, which includes the Confederate banner, from the Capitol grounds. It would still be permitted outside the offices of Mississippi lawmakers.
The resolution prompted an uproar; GOP leaders moved to refer the measure to the House Administration Committee, angering Democrats who wanted an immediate vote.
Shouts of “Vote! Vote! Vote!” erupted from the Democratic side of the aisle.
What followed was a largely party line, 238-176 vote to send the resolution to the committee for review.
Only one Republican, Curt Clawson of Florida, sided with the Democrats, who saw the referral as a way to bury the measure. Rep. Will Hurd of San Antonio, the state’s first black Republican in Congress, voted for the referral.
Underscoring the sensitivity of the issue, Rep. Mia Love of Utah, the only black female Republican in Congress, initially voted “present” before changing her vote in favor of referral.
‘A cheap political stunt’
Amid the furor, a spokesman for Boehner issued a statement calling Pelosi’s resolution a “cheap political stunt.”
Democrats said her move was simply a reprise of a similar resolution introduced by Rep. Bennie Thompson, the sole black member of the Mississippi delegation, in response to the shooting in South Carolina.
Also marching to the House floor to inveigh against the Confederate flag was Marc Veasey, a black Democrat from Dallas-Fort Worth. “It has to do with segregation and keeping us in the past,” he said. “Let’s let the past be the past.”
The issue, however, is not over in Congress.
Jackson Lee vowed to introduce an unspecified resolution next week to “ban all signs of hate” sponsored by the federal government on public lands.