Congress Drops Hate Crimes Bill
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate has dropped its insistence that Congress pass legislation expanding hate crime laws to include attacks on gays, after it became clear the measure wouldn’t pass the House, according to congressional aides.
House and Senate negotiators agreed on Thursday to drop the provision from a major defense policy bill. The legislation authorizes the military to spend some $150 billion in money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and provides detailed policy guidance on the Pentagon’s multibillion weapons programs.
The exclusion of the hate-crimes legislation, sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., is a blow to civil rights groups who say it is necessary to address a rise in crimes motivated by prejudice against a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The military bill is “the last clear chance this year for Congress to make a meaningful effort to stop hate crime violence,” said Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.
But Democratic leaders said the bundled legislation posed too high a hurdle. A substantial number of liberal House Democrats routinely vote against the annual defense policy bill because of the billions of dollars it authorizes for the war and expensive weapons programs like missile defense.
At the same time, some conservative Democrats and Republicans said they would oppose the legislation if the hate crimes provisions were attached — either because they don’t think hate crimes laws should be changed or because they don’t think the issue should be tied to a bill for the troops.
In a private meeting on Wednesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and House Democratic Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., told Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., that if the Senate continued to insist on the hate crimes provision the defense legislation would fail.
Levin, as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, oversees the defense authorization bill, which covers the 2008 budget year.
“We don’t have the votes,” said one House Democratic aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity because conference negotiations are ongoing. “We’re about 40 votes short, not four or six.”
The Senate had voted in September to include the hate-crimes measure in the bill. The House version of the defense authorization bill, approved in May by a 397-27 vote, did not include Kennedy’s proposal. The House passed a similar hate crimes measure as a stand-alone bill this year.
After the Senate vote, which prompted nine Republicans to break ranks and swing behind the measure, the White House stopped short of reiterating President Bush’s veto threat against the hate crimes measure. But presidential spokeswoman Dana Perino made clear that Bush believes the federal provision is unnecessary.
“State and local law enforcement agencies are effectively using their laws to the full extent they can,” Perino said.
