Speaker Paul Ryan’s Ugly Lie (Video)

Standing Up for LGBT People and Equality Is ‘Sabotage’ Speaker of the House Says

For a month now the U.S. House of Representatives have been embroiled in a battle over LGBT civil rights. It started when Rep. Steve Russell drafted and passed an amendment to the nation’s critical military spending bill that would gut and nullify President Barack Obama’s 2014 executive orders banning anti-LGBT discrimination by any federal contractor. The Russell Amendment would carve out special rights for anyone who could claim a deeply-held religious belief that LGBT people should be discriminated against. The Russell Amendment literally would provide taxpayer money to enable and support legalized discrimination.

Democratic Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney of New York came up with a solution. His bill would nullify the Russell Amendment, by codifying the President’s executive orders into law. As the full House voted, and time ran out, Maloney’s legislation passed.

But that was unacceptable to the Republican-led House.

Top leaders, supported by Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, held the clock and the votes open, and colluded with at least seven Republicans who had voted for Maloney’s bill, to change their votes. They did, and the measure went from passing to failing.

Usually, when the majority party bends the rules and allows vote changes, Representatives are required to walk up to the clerk to change their votes. It’s a bit of decorum and integrity. Even that was too much for Speaker Ryan’s thugs, who allowed the seven saboteurs to kill the bill anonymously, or so they thought, from their desks. Democrats dug into the record and identified the anti-LGBT lawmakers, later vowing to unseat them.

As the votes were being changed and equality was being thwarted, House Democrats shouted, “Shame!, Shame!, Shame!,” but to no avail.

The bill was dead.

Or so we thought. 

Rep. Maloney introduced his bill and attached it Wednesday night to another spending bill, a water and energy infrastructure bill. It passed, and even the maleficent seven voted in favor of the measure.

But Rep. Ryan’s House henchmen were not done.

Also on Wednesday, two anti-LGBT bills were attached to the infrastructure spending bill.

One effectively overrides the Maloney bill, creating religious carve outs and allowing federal contractors to, yes, you guessed it, discriminate against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, in Jesus’ name.

The other would ban the federal government from withholding previously dedicated funds from the State of North Carolina in response to its illegal and unconstitutional anti-LGBT law, HB2.

Both of those bills passed.

But the infrastructure bill, a massive umbrella under which the two anti-LGBT and the one pro-equality bills were nestled, did not.

Georgia Rep. Rick Allen Thursday morning told his fellow Republicans if they vote for it — because of its pro-LGBT part — they would be “going to hell.” He also read from the Bible and quoted Scripture. Some called it a prayer. 

Some of his fellow Republicans, a few who had voted for Rep. Maloney’s bill, according to reports, were so offended they walked out.

Later Thursday morning the spending bill failed — a bipartisan decision, you could say.

Which brings us to Speaker Paul Ryan’s ugly lie.

Holding his weekly press conference, Rep. Ryan warmed up the crowd by denouncing the long lines at airports and announcing legislation to help fix the TSA backlog.

Then he went for the kill.

Speaking about the House’s $37.4 billion infrastructure bill, which included the three LGBT-related amendments, Speaker Ryan attacked the Democrats, claiming they would rather scuttle the bill, and compromise America’s infrastructure, than allow it to pass.

“I want to talk about the vote we just had on the energy and water appropriations bill,” Speaker Ryan told reporters, “this is a very good bill,” he said, despite it failing 305-112.

“It improves our energy infrastructure. It enhances our national security. It uses the power of the purse to stop harmful regulations,” Ryan proclaimed.

“But what we learned today is that the Democrats were not looking to advance an issue but to sabotage the appropriations process,” he insisted. “The mere fact that they passed their amendment, then voted against the bill containing their amendment, proves this point.”

Now. let’s think about that last statement for a moment.

Voting for an amendment that protects LGBT people, but voting against the full bill because it harms LGBT people is “sabotage”?

Of course Democrats and even moderate Republicans would vote for a bill that advances equality, and of course they would vote against one that reverses it, even harms LGBT people. That’s not sabotage, that’s just common sense. 

“The mere fact that they passed their amendment, then voted against the bill containing their amendment, proves this point.”

That’s so illogical, so easily disproven, so embarrassingly false, of course it’s a lie, and an ugly lie at that.

Welcome to Speaker Ryan’s Republican House.

 

Image: Screenshot via Speaker Paul Ryan/YouTube