Dispute over Confederate flag stymies spending bills on Hill

In this July 9, 2015, photo, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, speaks with reporters on Capitol Hill in Washington. House Republican aides said that a bill covering general government operations tentatively set for consideration next week would not be considered, after all.

National Park Service officials and House Democrats involved in the flag debate agreed Friday that the Republican amendment would have continued the exemptions allowed by the administration.

As we watch the Confederate flag being brought down in South Carolina (and being brought up by Nancy Pelosi, in a characteristically cynical and underhanded ploy), it’s worth taking a look at the racist history of the Democratic Party.

GOP leaders suffered an embarrassment this week when they had to pull a different spending bill amid a revolt by conservative Southern members against a Democratic amendment blocking display of the flag at federal cemeteries.

“And while the people of South Carolina move one step past this bad tragedy, many House Republicans want to take our nation one hundred and fifty years back”.

Adding to the hard political optics for Republicans, the dispute on Capitol Hill flared just as South Carolina removed its own Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds in the wake of the vicious church shooting in Charleston that has sparked a national debate on the topic.

In a follow-up interview this morning, Williams said while he disagrees with the decision to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse, he is “satisfied” at the process by which the flag was removed.

The move left the main Democrat on the bill clearly stunned.

“We can honor that history without celebrating the Confederate flag, and all the awful things that it symbolizes”, argued Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA).

On Friday, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., a civil rights-era icon, walked off the House floor together to a nearby room. Also true: House Democrats wanted to go farther than Obama and ban most Confederate flags from national cemeteries.

At the same time, he said he regretted not telling Democrats in advance about his plans. “I think the Republicans should just tear off the Band-Aid here and get on with this”.

A vote on a spending bill was delayed over whether to stop flying the Confederate flag at National Parks. “Republicans pulled the bill because their members would not support something that said Americans will no longer tolerate the symbol of oppression and racism that is the Confederate Battle Flag”.

That led to the offering of a surprise amendment, which will put the House on the record about the Confederate flag, and whether it should be sold in National Park Service gift shops and book stores, as well as whether the rebel flag should be displayed at some federal cemeteries on a regular basis.