Senate

Reid: House GOPers ‘afraid to denounce the Confederate flag’

by Jordain Carney - 07/14/15 4:26 PM ET

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) slammed House Republicans on Tuesday for pulling a vote on a spending bill over a fight on the Confederate flag.

“They were afraid to denounce the Confederate flag,” the Democratic leader said.

{mosads}House leadership canceled a vote on an Interior Department spending bill last week after the House moved to a vote on an amendment, offered by Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), that would allow Confederate flags to continue to be displayed in certain federal cemeteries.

Lamenting Republicans’ handling of the budgetary process, Reid said the GOP “had to bring up that issue, the Confederate flag issue. Of course that was the downfall of the appropriations as of now.”

House Democrats slammed Calvert for the amendment, which came on the same day that House lawmakers in South Carolina voted to remove the Confederate flag from its state capitol grounds.

A shooting last month in South Carolina, which left nine African-Americans dead, has put the flag and other Confederate-related symbols under a political and media spotlight. The suspect in the shooting had been photographed with the flag and allegeldy told police he intended to start a race war.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) told reporters that he canceled the vote on the appropriations bill to avoid letting the issue become a “political football.”

Tags Boehner Harry Reid John Boehner