ENDA May Not Yet Be Ended

Could this be the end of ENDA??This question was posed earlier this week on LiberalAmerica.org, prior to the Senate vote which ended debate?on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), moving the bill towards an up or down vote on the floor of the Senate.? The final vote on the Bill is expected later today.

Fifty Four of the Fifty Five Senators caucusing with the Democratic majority in the Senate voted to move the bill forward.? Seven Republican Senators joined with the Democrats to end debate and invoke cloture.? The Republicans who voted yes were Mark Kirk of Illinois, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine, Rob Portman of Ohio, Dean Heller of Nevada, and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.

This gang of seven Republican Senators all voted yes on invoking cloture for a variety of reasons. It will be interesting to see if they change their votes to no when the actual Bill comes back to floor for a final vote later today. Fear of backlash and a primary challenge from the far right could very well change the yes votes from some or all of the Republicans to a no.? It will also be interesting to see how many of the Senators who did not cast a vote on Monday will take a position on the Bill later today. Perhaps they too will abstain from voting in order to avoid that backlash down the road.

The question arises, how to react when Republican elected officials, who have been willing participants in the obstruction of the United States Government since the inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama, change their positions because they believe that they must do so in order to try to keep their jobs?? With thanks, if they are doing the right thing, but with suspicion never the less.

Take Senator Hatch who has been rumored to be retiring at the end of his term in 2018.? Senator Hatch is a target for retirement by the Teabully group, FreedomWorks,?which has been running a web ad soliciting contributions to go towards retiring the Senator.? Hatch has long been a target of the far rights due to his longtime friendship and cooperation with the ?Lion of the Senate?, the late Ted Kennedy,?Democrat from Massachusetts.

Then there is Pat Toomey, a Teabully favorite, former President of ?the?”Club For Growth?,?who has been trying to rehabilitate himself as he gets closer to the 2014 election, when former Democratic Congressman and high ranking Navy Admiral, Joe Sestak, will again challenge Toomey for the Senate seat.? Former moderate Republican Congressman from Ohio, Steven Latourette, has called the Club for Growth:

A cancer?on the Republican Party that prides itself in supporting rigid, divisive, and obstructionist candidates.

Pennsylvanians should be wary of re-electing Toomey who voted against lifting the Government Shutdown, who is against raising the debt ceiling, who will continue to vote with the Teabully Party to shut down the Government again, and who firmly believes that American Corporations should not be taxed.? Doing the right thing, this time, as he did when he joined with Blue Dog Democratic Senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, to propose an Amendment in the Senate to expand background checks and to criminalize certain private gun transfers, failed to get cloture in the Senate.

A vote in the Senate that most people view as the right position, taken for reason of political expediency, is cowardly and callous. Senator Hatch did not support ENDA?when it last came up for a vote in the Senate in 1996.? If Hatch is in fact ending his career, where has he been on this and so many other issues during his tenure in the Senate that began in 1977?

Senator Toomey must have known that the Gun Amendment would not come up in the Senate for a final vote.? Senator Toomey is counting on Speaker of the House, John Boehner, not putting the ENDA Bill on the floor of the House for a vote.? Clearly, Senator Toomey is callously attempting to curry favor with the voters back home on Legislation he knows has no chance of passing. But is it true that Speaker Boehner will not put the ENDA Bill on the floor of the House for a vote?? Speaker Boehner already has three announced candidates?challenging him in the next Republican primary.

Speaker Boehner has repeatedly broken the ?Hastert Rule?, the requirement that no Bill be put on the floor of the House that does not have enough Republican votes to pass without any votes from Democrats.? And FreedomWorks,?another one of those Teabully/Koch brothers groups, is already upset with Boehner,?a longtime mainstream Republican. They are quietly building a consensus within the Teabully base to remove Speaker Boehner using an online poll.

If John Boehner loses to a Republican challenger in the primary election in Ohio on May 6, 2014, he will still be the Speaker of the House, unless, of course, the Republicans remove him from that position before that time.? It is said that Speaker Boehner really is a good and decent man who unfortunately has an uncontrollable tiger by the tail preventing him from attempting to do what he believes is right for the people of the United States.? We shall see.

John Boehner’s days as Speaker of the House and his days as a Congressman, could be dwindling to a precious few.? And before he exits the scene, Boehner just might surprise you.? He just might allow the comprehensive Immigration reform Bill that came out of the Senate Committee sent to the House for Conference to go to the floor of the House for a vote, as is.? This would be over the objections of and without the support of Boehner’s fellow Republicans and yet another violation of the ?Hastert Rule?.

Then there is ENDA, which we all know is the fair and right thing to do for our fellow LGBT citizens. In the final days of Speaker Boehner’s reign, this too just might come up to the floor of the House for a vote.? It will be a good day for the LGBT community finally getting the protection from employment discrimination that should have passed back in 1996.

The Teabully strategy to obstruct the Government of the People is continuing to backfire.? They have succeeded in turning Americans against the Republican Party.? And they just might be well on their way to unwittingly turning the American Government back over to total Democratic control.

Edited by SS

I am the voice of my human parents. Dad, 59, mom 57, both retired lawyers. Dad worked privately as a personal injury lawyer in the Philadelphia, PA area before retirement. He has a BA in Political Science, a Masters in Secondary Social Studies Education and he did some public school teaching before retiring again. Mom also has a BA in Political Science and she spent her entire 33 year career working as an attorney for a US Defense Department Agency located in Philadelphia, PA. She spent the last four years of her career as the Chief Counsel. She retired in April of this year. I have two human brothers, both Graduates of the George Washington University. My older human brother is working his way up in Airport Management at the Philadelphia International Airport. My younger human brother is a Peace Corps veteran.