House floor skirmishes over amendments protecting the LGBT community, like the ones seen last week, are likely to continue because Democrats plan to force more votes on those provisions, House Minority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday.
Hoyer, D-Md., said he expects Rep. Sean Maloney, D-N.Y., to re-introduce an amendment that would protect LGBT defense contractors from discrimination.
Republican lawmakers blocked Maloney’s provision by one vote last week after seven Republicans switched their votes to “no” several minutes after the vote should have ended.
The move provoked shouting on the House floor and Democrats accusing the GOP of abandoning “regular order” to change the outcome of the vote in their favor. But it’s not over yet, Hoyer promised.
“I’m sure there will be opportunities” for another vote on Maloney’s provision, Hoyer told reporters.
Hoyer said Democrats may not stop with one amendment addressing LGBT issues. “There may well be additional amendments so we have a country that treats people equally, fairly and justly,” he said.
Those amendments threaten to blow up the GOP’s plan to debate and pass most of the dozen appropriations measures that are needed to fund the 2017 federal budget.
Republican leaders said they opposed the Maloney amendment because if it was adopted, the underlying military construction and veterans affairs funding bill would not have passed due to GOP opposition to the language. Maloney’s amendment would have reversed GOP language added to the spending bill providing protections for the religious beliefs of defense contractors.
But Republicans have backed down on other Democratic amendments, including an amendment adopted just before the vote on the LGBT provision that would ban the Confederate flag in national cemeteries.
Hoyer said the GOP could eventually decide to end its opposition to the LGBT protections.
“I hope they would determine, as they did on the flag amendment, that they were wrong,” Hoyer said.
