The GOP’s Civil War Over LGBT Rights Just Killed a Spending Bill

BIGOTED ASSHOLES!

All Paul Ryan wanted was to appropriate some funds for energy and water spending: a quick and easy vote, bang the gavel, go home, and CrossFit hard enough to forget the Donald’s name. But lately, routine spending bills in the House have had a funny habit of turning into acrimonious debates over LGBT rights. 

Last week, Democratic congressman Sean Patrick Maloney proposed an amendment to a Veterans Affairs appropriations bill barring federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT employees — thus enshrining President Obama’s 2014 executive order on that matter into law. 

The amendment appeared to pass — then a bunch of Republicans switched their votes. And then Democrats chanted “Shame, shame, shame,” and the Human Rights Campaign blasted the GOP flip-floppers over Twitter, and Speaker Ryan had another fire to put out. 

Late Wednesday night, Maloney reintroduced the amendment, this time to an energy and water spending bill. Pennsylvania Republican Joe Pitts tried to split the baby, adding a line stipulating that the ban wouldn't apply in circumstances where its enforcement would violate the Constitution. Since conservatives think the Constitution guarantees Christians the right to discriminate against gay people, while liberals think it demands the exact opposite, this was supposed to let both sides win. 

And for a while there, they seemed to: The amendment passed with 43 Republican votes. And then, just before the full bill came up for a vote, Georgia congressman Rick Allen treated his colleagues to a prayer about "the gays." Per Politico: The breakdown of the appropriations process started earlier in the day when Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.) opened the weekly GOP conference meeting with a prayer about the LGBT issue, prior to the vote. He read a passage from the Bible and questioned whether members would violate their religious principles if they supported the bill. 

Moderate Republicans were stunned by Allen's remarks, and some walked out of the meeting in protest, according to GOP lawmakers. The appropriations bill fell 305–112, as a majority of Republicans voted it down in protest of the LGBT-rights provision. The vast majority of Democrats also turned on the bill after the GOP caucus filled it with poison pills. 

Among these was a provision barring the federal government from spending money to calculate the climate impact of regulations, one cutting off all funding to “sanctuary cities," and an amendment prohibiting the federal government from withholding funds from North Carolina if it continues to violate the president’s federal order about transgender bathroom rights.

GOP Psychopath Tom Cotton

Senator: 'We have an under-incarceration problem'

(CNN)Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton spoke out against bipartisan efforts to reform America's criminal justice system at a conservative think tank in Washington on Thursday, saying, "If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem." 

"For the vast majority of crimes, a perpetrator is never identified or arrested, let alone prosecuted, convicted and jailed," Cotton said at the Hudson Institute. The Arkansas senator has been a staunch opponent of bipartisan legislation which would push to reduce mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent criminal offenders. The bill would also give judges greater discretion on sentencing for low level drug related crimes.   

Cotton called efforts to restore voting rights to felons, and making it easier for ex-felons to seek employment "dangerous." "Law enforcement is able to arrest or identify a likely perpetrator for only 19% of property crimes and 47% of violent crimes. If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem," Cotton said. "The truth is you cannot decrease the severity and certainty of sentences without increasing crime," Cotton said. "It's simply impossible." 

Criminal justice reform advocates claim the severity of the sentencing does not have much of an effect on repeat offenders and crime rates. "When he says we have all of these unsolved crimes, so that's why we should be filling the prisons even more, where is he going to get the resources to prosecute those if we're spending so much money putting a nonviolent drug offender in prison for 30 years," said Kevin Ring, Vice President of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, a non-profit organization. "This is a misallocation of resources. No one is trying to make a trade off between safety and security. We're saying we can get more safety if we use our resources efficiently."

Cotton is a traitorous monster... totally lacking in humanity. Fuck him.