Houses Passes Stand-Alone DADT Repeal
Politico reports:
By a 250-175 vote, the House on Wednesday passed a stand-alone bill that would end the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy — a move supporters believe can build momentum for Senate passage in the final days of Congress’s lame-duck session.
But while gay rights activists and their Capitol Hill allies continue to believe that more than 60 senators support repealing the Pentagon’s 17-year ban on openly gay men and women in uniform — a view mirrored by nearly eight in 10 Americans — the House vote seems to have left the basic dynamic in the Senate unchanged.
For now, it appears that repeal advocates simply can’t get the Senate’s attention.
Senators from both parties remain consumed with other legislative challenges, and it continues to be equally evident that Republicans are willing do anything to run out the clock on Democratic priorities like the repeal.
With the Senate easily passing a tax package Wednesday, Republicans — who twice have filibustered a defense bill containing repeal language — say they won’t take their eye off funding the government and generating jobs this post-election session.
And Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.), one of at least 47 sponsors of an identical stripped-down repeal bill introduced in the Senate last week, said he’s entirely focused on bringing back a defense authorization bill — this time without any of the controversial measures that doomed it in the past.
Levin said he had no idea when the House-passed repeal bill might come up in the Senate. “I’m working on my bill,” he told reporters. “I’m a co-sponsor of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’ ... I hope it comes up, but I’m working on a defense bill.”
Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) failed to even mention the repeal bill in his opening floor remarks Wednesday, though he ticked through a host of other Democratic lame-duck priorities he hopes to complete by next week: tax cuts, a government spending bill, the START arms-control treaty, an immigration measure, health care for Sept. 11 first responders and confirmation of presidential nominees.
