Dec 07, 2007  |  By: LOU CHIBBARO J  | COMMENTS     

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) Thursday morning acquiesced to demands by House Democratic leaders to drop a gay and transgender inclusive hate crimes bill from the National Defense Authorization Act, a knowledgeable Capitol Hill source said.

The decision kills the hate crimes bill for this year, but House Democrats, led by gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), are calling on the Senate to pass a freestanding hate crimes bill as early as February.

Senate Democrats had hoped to pass the Department of Defense authorization bill with the hate crimes measure intact, saying it was the best strategy for discouraging President Bush from vetoing the hate crimes measure, which Bush opposes.

House Democratic leaders, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), supported the Senate strategy, but a bloc of about 30 liberal Democratic House members threatened to join Republicans in voting against the combined DOD-hate crimes bill, saying they could not support legislation advancing the president’s Iraq war policies.

Republicans support the DOD bill but more than 100 GOP House members said they wouldn’t vote for it as long as it was linked to the hate crimes bill, which they opposed.

Frank broke publicly this week with many of the nation’s gay advocacy groups by questioning their request that House members back continued funding for the Iraq war in order to support the hate crimes bill.

Frank voiced his concerns over the strategy pushed by Senate Democratic leaders to pass the hate crimes bill as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act as news surfaced late Wednesday that many House Democrats opposed to the Iraq war were prepared to
vote against a combined hate crimes/Department of Defense bill.

Capitol Hill sources familiar with the dispute said a whip count conducted by House Democratic leaders this week found that gay-supportive Democrats who oppose the war would join more than 150 Republicans who oppose the hate crimes bill to defeat the combined bill.

“House Democrats tell me, ‘Of course I support the hate crimes bill, but don’t tell me to vote for the war,’” Frank said.

“They’re saying why are you asking me to vote for the war in order to vote for this,” he said.

A source familiar with House-Senate negotiations over the hate crimes bill said Kennedy and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the two lead Senate negotiators on the DOD authorization bill, told House leaders on Wednesday that the Senate remained committed to keeping the hate crimes bill a part of the DOD bill.

Kennedy and Levin — who also oppose Bush’s Iraq war policies — reportedly said the DOD bill was certain to pass with or without a hate crimes bill attached, the source said. They reportedly argued that the 30 or so liberal House Democrats balking over voting for a combined DOD-hate crimes bill would not be hurt among their anti-war constituencies if they voted for the bill in order to save the hate crimes measure, the source said.

Pelosi, who also faces pressure from anti-war constituents, is sympathetic to passing the combined hate crimes DOD authorization bill, the source said, but she was reluctant to “twist arms” to press her liberal House colleagues to vote for a bill viewed by many as supporting the Bush war policies.

Although the National Defense Authorization Act doesn’t approve direct spending on the Iraq war, it authorizes various Pentagon programs that carry out the Bush administration’s Iraq war policies. Congressional opponents of the war say voting for the authorization measure would be a vote in support of a war they strongly oppose.

Two newspapers specializing in covering Congress reported earlier this week that House Democratic leaders were expected to decide on Tuesday or Wednesday whether to risk a defeat on the combined bill or to drop the hate crimes measure from the defense bill.

But one knowledgeable House Democratic aide said Pelosi most likely would postpone that decision until next week and would instead arrange for a House vote Thursday on an energy bill. The House was not scheduled to be in session Thursday.

The House passed a freestanding version of the hate crimes bill on May 3 by a vote of 237-180. On Sept. 27, the Senate voted 60-39 to end a filibuster and add the hate crimes bill to the Defense Department’s authorization measure as an amendment.

The Senate acted at the request of Kennedy and Sen. ...