U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-9) and fellow lawmakers are again calling on House Leaders Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer to avoid partisan tactics and allow the House to pass funding for our troops without attaching burdensome, divisive and unrelated measures.

After allowing controversial hate-crime legislation to be attached to previous defense funding legislation, there are now reports that Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer plan to attach the District of Columbia House Voting Rights Act (H.R. 157) to the fiscal year 2010 Department of Defense Appropriations Act. 

“Members from both sides of the aisle have concerns about H.R. 157 that deserve an open, transparent debate.  Inclusion of H.R. 157 in the Department of Defense Appropriations Act would severely limit this necessary discussion and ignores the valid constitutional questions surrounding this legislation, including serious concerns that many Members of the House have regarding D.C. residents’ Second Amendment rights.  We believe that separate deliberation on H.R. 157 would be most consistent with your promise to ‘create the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history,’ and urge you to resist any call to include H.R. 157 in any legislation coming out of a Conference Committee,” Luetkemeyer and his colleagues wrote in a letter to Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Hoyer.

Luetkemeyer said that the heavy-handed tactics being used by House leadership is reckless by placing political considerations ahead of our troops.

“It is reckless for the Majority Leadership in Congress to continue using bi-partisan legislation meant to support our troops as a means to pass controversial legislation,” Luetkemeyer said. “With our country engaged in two wars, it is time to put partisan politics aside and pass legislation that gives our fighting men and the women the tools to complete their mission and safely return home.” 

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