October 20, 2007
Barney Frank Flips on ENDA Again, Supports Baldwin Amendment
Press release from Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.):
FRANK URGES COLLEAGUES TO SUPPORT REP. BALDWIN’S GENDER IDENTITY AMENDMENT TO ENDA
Congressman Barney Frank is urging his colleagues to vote for the amendment to be offered by Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin to include transgender individuals in the Employment Non-Discrimination Act when it is considered on the House floor.
“The decision to offer such an amendment came out of a Caucus which Chairman George Miller held of the Democratic Members of the Education and Labor Committee. After some discussion, it became clear that offering such an amendment would offer us the best chance to achieve Speaker Pelosi’s goal of adopting in the House the most inclusive ENDA bill for which majority support existed.
“I argued in favor of transgender inclusion when I testified on the original legislation on September 5, but many of us believed that sending the full inclusive bill to the floor would open the door to a series of demagogic procedural moves that would have endangered our chances of a passing any bill at all. The discussion held by the Democratic Members of the Education and Labor Committee, Congresswoman Baldwin and myself resulted in this approach and I believe it meets the goal of giving people the opportunity to support a fully inclusive bill while avoiding the potential parliamentary death traps that would otherwise have resulted. I will on the floor of the House be repeating essentially the arguments in favor of transgender inclusion which I made in the September 5 hearing, because we will now be able to do that in a procedural setting that allows us to maximize support for an inclusive bill without endangering our chances of getting any bill at all.”
We’d like to think Frank experienced an epiphany — or at least that he finally heard those of us who refuse to leave our trans brothers and sisters in the dust, with the empty promise that we’ll come back for them later.
Too bad we don’t think either of those things. We think that if a trans-inclusion ENDA passes, Frank will take all the credit — and if it doesn’t, he’ll lay the blame squarely on Baldwin, and… well, everybody else.
Still, one has to wonder why he flipped (again) at all. Does somebody have some dirt on him or something?
Filed under: Barney Frank, Employment/ENDA, Tammy Baldwin, Transgender
