Barney Frank: “if people want a dictionary illustration of adding insult to injury, the Republicans are providing it. They do great…”

“if people want a dictionary illustration of adding insult to injury, the Republicans are providing it. They do great injury today to the principle of nondiscrimination, and they have added to that the insult of not allowing this House to debate it. As the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) made clear, this is the first time we will be removing from the statute books an existing antidiscrimination provision, one that says you cannot take Federal money and then discriminate against some of the people who paid the taxes. If you are a particular organization, you can say, I do not care if you are Jewish and pay taxes or Catholic and pay taxes. I do not care if you are a Protestant and pay taxes, if you believe in abortion. I do not care if you are a Methodist and pay taxes, if you agree on evolution. We will exclude you. It is appalling to me that they are going to be able to engineer this enormous regression in the principle of nondiscrimination without there even being a separate vote and debate. It is a tribute to the Republican majority, the most submissive body of elected officials gathered since the dissolution of the Supreme Soviet that they will ratify this decision to roll back a fundamental constitutional provision, a fundamental antidiscrimination public policy provision, and they will all march down and vote not to allow it to be debated.”