Can someone explain this please?
Last Thursday, the House defeated SB 987, the “International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010″ sometimes referred to as the “Child Protection Marriage Act.” The bill had passed the Senate on December 14 with unanimous consent (i.e., no-one present objected, so no vote was taken). The bill garnered 245 votes, but was brought up under special rules requiring a 2/3 majority, or 290 votes. Nevertheless, the bills backers were stunned. The blog at Foreign Policy contains a detailed description of the political maneuvering.
The bill was killed by a last minute push by the GOP leadership, citing cost (disputing the CBO analysis of the bill) and linking the bill to potential funding for abortions. Can someone explain this? The logic seems tortured, especially since the bill was cosponsored in the Senate by Sam Brownback, who is strongly pro-life. I searched the web for close to an hour but could not find any cogent explanation. My gut reaction is that this is either hyper-partisanship, or “pro-life as paranoia”, but I would be interested in something more substantive.
I’m not surprised. When do they care about stuff like this? It was only a few short years ago that the Republican caucus had no problem with sex slavery and forced abortion in the Northern Mariana islands, because Jack Abramoff was giving lots of money.
Here’s the money line: “Invoking the abortion issue sent the bill’s supporters reeling. They believed that it was little more than a stunt…” Yet again, the GOP exploits the unborn in pursuit of its tawdry and ignoble purposes.
Why the hell does the US need to be monitoring and approving marriage laws around the world? Let’s just mind our own business and get our troops home and quit policing other nations and get our own house in order.
As I understand it, the bill classifies child marriage as a human rights abuse and therefore lists it among the policy goals that foreign aid seeks to achieve. It does not represent a new “crusade,” but rather an adjustment of our foreign aid policy.
The bill doesn’t (as far as I know) represent an increase in spending (and its failure does not represent an decrease in spending.
I see nothing wrong with the bill, and it is rather depressing t see conservatives against it, since they rarely have any qualms about linking foreign aid to condom use and abortion.
Easy to explain: conservatives are against Obama, and nothing else matters.
Obstruction is not a tactic, but the goal.
That about nails it phosphorious. It’s really at the core of it.
Phosphorius really just nailed what I had to say.
Perhaps to specify, though … a lot of people who engage in child marriage also own large amounts of oil. If we cause trouble with them, then Exxon Mobil might not be the most profitable corporation in world history.
We certainly can’t risk that over something as petty as women’s rights!
I suspect this is a case where those in the house did not exactly know what they were dealing with. Maybe someone doing lobbying put out the word that this was a bad bill while its backers didn’t bother to lobby. That happens a lot. If you only get one brief on something and it is negative, it doesn’t matter if it is true or not, that will still influence your thinking, because in most cases no one at all reads these things, not even the staff.
I suspect the Senate is a similar case, just in a different direction. If no one at all objected to it that probably means no one at all read it, because someone will find something objectionable in every piece of legislation given any careful scrutiny at all.
Now it may well be a good bill, I certainly don’t claim to know anything about it and I certainly have not read it. Maybe there are problems, maybe not. Yet I would rather the representatives vote “no” when in doubt rather than “yes”. Sort of a first do no harm idea.
In any case, I strongly suspect that child marriage issues can be dealt with by executive orders and rule making. After all, the President and State Department have some say in how such funds are used, it seems a simple matter to handle at the administrative level, at least in so far as you could block aid going to those states and causes you disagree with.
@smf
Your explanation might make sense except that Republican cosponsors of a bill voted against it. As for lobbying, as near as I can determine, the negative vote came in response to an email from the Republican leadership.
I agree with Phosphorious. What amazes me are those who do not support aid for girls and women who desperately need our support in fact do not support those who actually bring life into the world. If they really chose to support the unborn child we would have hundreds of billions of dollars invested in healthcare and education programs to support women who need this safety net to raise their children, instead of putting hundreds of billions each year into a failing foreign policy of unjustified warfare and giving tax breaks to the richest.
Being a pro-life politician gives a person the best chance to get elected because it seems to support the welfare of the unseen child without any financial burden to the general population pre-birth, and then after birth they are on their own with very little cost to the general population.
Consequently, there is more money available to keep the social status quo and threat is reduced that could potentially drain the wallets of those who prefer protecting their own interests.
Maybe someone doing lobbying put out the word that this was a bad bill…
This is exactly the problem. Someone puts out the word this is “pro-abortion”. It is an example of the corruption of the Right-to-Life Movement.
…because in most cases no one at all reads these things, not even the staff.
That simply is not true.
I suspect the Senate is a similar case, just in a different direction. If no one at all objected to it that probably means no one at all read it, because someone will find something objectionable in every piece of legislation given any careful scrutiny at all.
I dont believe that is true either. I’ve worked on bills that passed the Senate under UC and very detailed and specific questions are asked before the bill is hotlined.
I would rather the representatives vote “no” when in doubt rather than “yes”. Sort of a first do no harm idea.</I.
I would rather Representatives perform their constitutional duty and informed themselves of a bill rather than not protect children from abuse because they are playing partisan games.
I can’t for the life of me understand why people even defend them (Republicans)? Or try and see the positive side of what the Republicans do. What about the 9/11 bill they blocked? I mean to me it’s obvious, and I just can’t see any reason to try and justify what they do.
Cindy, I agree. The right wing’s approach is based on competition rather than mutual respect and cooperation. They desire political power just as the left does. However, their compassion for the poor and disenfranchised seems absent.
Their approach appears to me as rigid and it was that rigidity that women’s rights proponents rebelled against and decided to take responsibility for their rights and their bodies.
The rigidity of the male personality who is in power is a major contributor to the “culture of death” which results in women not wanting to bring a child into this life. I read a quote from Henry Carlson’s post this morning which, in essence, stated that life cannot co-exist with death. The right wing seems to have a great attachment to the worldly influences that cause death and thus are linked to abortion.
“I would rather Representatives perform their constitutional duty and informed themselves of a bill..”
Unfortunately by this standard, we would have to write bills that are legible and transparent, so bye, bye Healthcare bill, Tarp I, Tarp II, Stimulus, every budget bill since AT LEAST 1990, defense budget, medicare part D, NCLB, every farm bill, etc, etc.
I’m all for it. Let’s get rid of all these bills and start over with laws that an intelligent American could explain with no more than 3 hours reading. THAT would be progress, but could never be done on the federal level.
I’m with smf. No one reads them, because they can barely if ever be read. Heck even the policy briefs are bunk, I’ve seen them.