Excellent news just in from the Tsongas campaign:
Congresswoman-elect Niki Tsongas will be sworn in tomorrow morning approximately between 10:00 and 11:00 a.m. in Washington, DC at the U.S. Capitol. Secretary of State William Galvin certified the election this morning.
Congresswoman-elect Tsongas will be sworn in before the vote to override the President’s veto of a bill to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Most likely, the Dems don’t have the votes to override. But it’s going to be close, and every vote will count. Three cheers for Niki Tsongas having the opportunity to cast her first vote to override a mean-spirited, politically bone-headed veto by the WPE. Truly an auspicious beginning!
laurel says
That is great news! She will also be seated in time for some important ENDA votes this week or next. Marty Meehan was a co-sponsor of the good ENDA bill, HR 2015. BMGers in MA-05 need to get on the horn and press her to sign up as a co-sponsor too, and do what she can to keep protections for gender identity and expression in the legislation.
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FYI, the news this morning is that Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) will be allowed to offer an amendment to Barney Frank’s stripped-down version of the bill (the non-T ENDA, or gay-only ENDA) which would restore protections for gender identity and expression. Story here. Detailed background on the whole mess here. Tsongas’s vote will be very important.
raj says
…maybe the House committee should report out both bills (T-inclusive 2015 and non-gay-inclusive 3685) and see which, if either, passes. If 2015 isn’t passed on the floor, it strikes me as a wast of time to try to amend 3685 to essentially conform to 2015. On the other hand, if 2015 is passed, it’s all been passed.
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As I’ve said over at Pam’s place, it’s all a tempest in a teapot. Even if the bill is passed in the House, it faces a filibuster in the Senate, and a certain veto by Bush, which veto is unlikely to be over-ridden.
laurel says
and i agree that whatever makes it out of the House is unlikely to pass the Senate, and most certainly would be stabbed to death by Bush’s pen.
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But I disagree that this is a tempest in a teapot. We need to start the floor debate over ENDA sometime, and now is as good a time as any. Bringing it up for debate and to a vote now will allow us to know with certainty who at this time supports which version of the bill. This is important as we look forward to working to get it passed when there is a president in residence who will sign it (as in, in 2009).
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As for which bill comes first when, it appears that the leadership will vote the gay-only version out of committee first (HR 3685). This is the one that Baldwin has announced an amendment for. If it passes as ammended by Baldwin, I suppose they may stop there. However, Pelosi has promised a vote on the original version, HR 2015, if the voted were there. The reason to vote on HR 2015 is that Frank stripped more than gender identity and expression out of the bill when he created HR 3685. Passing HR 2015 would restore those important deletions.
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Here is UnitedENDA’s response to Tammy Baldwin’s announcement. Btw, the UnitedENDA coalition is now comprised of 319 LGBT-A orgs.
raj says
Here’s how I would do it:
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Pass both bills out of committee, with or without recommendation (a committee does not need to “recommend” a bill for it to be passed out of committee.
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Bring 2015 to a floor vote. If it passes, there’s no need to bring 3685 to a vote.
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If 2015 fails, bring 3685 to a vote, unamended. If 3685 is amended as Baldwin is suggesting to essentially encompass 2015, then it is highly likely that the amended 3685 will fail, too.
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The problem that I have is that, if a T-inclusive ENDA goes down to defeat in a Democratic controlled House, will that give people who are on-the-fence in regards a non-T-inclusive ENDA cover to vote against that, as well? I’ll merely recall the NYS Senate vote a couple of years ago, that I described at Pam’s place.
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I have one question, the answer to which I do not know. “Sexual orientation” was added to the MA state anti-discrimination statute in 1989-90. Has there been any concerted effort to further amend the statute to add gender identity? I haven’t seen any reference that suggests that there had been.
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If not, why not? Maybe the discrimination issue is not as significant as you might want to believe.
laurel says
is clear to me either.
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as for MA, a bill (H 1722) was filed this session by Carl Sciortino to add gender identity and expression to the state’s non-discrim law. pdf’d fact sheet here.
raj says
as for MA, a bill (H 1722) was filed this session by Carl Sciortino to add gender identity and expression to the state’s non-discrim law…
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That is a point that I have been beating on for weeks over at Pam’s Place: advances are more likely to come at the state and local level than the national level in the near term.
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Unfortunately, that is something that Pam’s commenters don’t want to hear.
laurel says
well yes and no. i mean, 13 or 14 states already have employment protections for LGBT people. but obviously that means that there remain 36 intransigent ones for T people, and 29 for LGB people. MA remains one of the intransigent states. here we are in 2007 and only now is a bill to protect T’s being introduced? and i have not exactly heard that it is racing through the house like gangbusters. btw, it’s not for lack of trying on the T community’s part that a bill didn;t get filed sooner. Sciortino is the first legislator willing to sponsor one.
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so as far as i can see, we need to keep working all the angles, from local to federal.
raj says
…as far as I can tell, given the tenor of the politics in the US, it is highly unlikely that the federal government is going to pass an anti-discrimination act even if it is merely in employment any time soon. That is true for GLBs, and goes double for Ts, for the reasons that I’ve described at Pam’s place.
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And that is why I keep pushing for more attention at the state and local level.
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That doesn’t necessarily mean abandoning the effort at the federal level. But that also doesn’t mean that I would put much stock in the effort bearing fruit any time soon.
laurel says
The House Clerk tells me that Niki Tsongas’s phone number in Washington, DC will be the same as Meehan’s. That is, 202-225-3411. Of course, don’t expect anyone to pick up the phone today. đŸ™‚
eaboclipper says
and a compromise piece of legislation will need to be written to ensure that millions of poor children don’t go uninsured. Which is exactly what Jim Ogonowski said would happen. The SCHIP bill is in a nutshell shows how our government is broken. The Democratic controlled congress put up a bill that Republicans were afraid to not vote for because Democrats would do exactly to them what Niki did to Jim. Those same Democrats knew that the President would Veto the legislation ahead of time. They still passed the legislation to score political points on the backs of poor children.
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Jim was absolutely right in stating that Congress should have been working on backup legislation to ensure those kids don’t go without coverage. Niki is symptomatic of the problem.
laurel says
then I guess he did a poor job of communicating the truth. Will he remain actively involved in this and other issues, or is he going to dedicate himself full-time now to farming or other things? If he is to remain involved, what are the odds that he would join us here in fruitful discussion? Unless he is willing to get engaged even when he’s not running for office, isn’t he also “symptomatic of the problem”?
david says
You still don’t get it. Dozens of Republicans whose seats are at no risk whatsoever — Orrin Hatch and Chuck Grassley come to mind — not only voted for the bill, but worked hard in negotiating it, and are actively trying to override the veto. It’s a good bill. That’s the bottom line. Ogo has been deeply wrong about it from day 1; his strategy in dealing with it was a catastrophe; and for all we know it may have cost him the election.
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Niki didn’t do much to Ogo on SCHIP. He did it all to himself. Only Ogonowski could have created Idon’tknowski.