House GOP leaders abruptly canceled a vote Thursday on a spending bill for the Interior Department amid an intraparty split over the display of the Confederate flag.
The bill was pulled after the House moved to vote on an amendment to the measure that would continue to allow the Confederate flag to be displayed in certain federal cemeteries.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.) offered that amendment late Wednesday night, triggering a furious blowback from House Democrats who ripped Republicans over the issue.
“Don’t Republicans understand that the Confederate battle flag is an insult to 40 million African Americans and to many other fair-minded Americans?” Congressional Black Caucus Chairman G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) said on the House floor.
A series of Democrats went to the floor to denounce the vote, which they noted would take place the same day that South Carolina’s House had voted to remove the Confederate flag from its state capitol grounds.
Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters the spending bill had been pulled to avoid the issue from becoming a “political football.”
“That bill is going to sit in abeyance until we come to some resolution,” he said.
Boehner said he does not believe Confederate flags should be displayed at federal cemeteries. When asked why the amendment was added to the bill, he said he “supported the goal of trying to work with all the parties to address their concerns.”
The Fed gov cannot discriminate. To dictate which flags are permitted to be placed on loved
ones graves is discrimination.
Mean while the treason continues while the American people fight over a flag that not one Slave was ever traded under.