Congressional Republicans will not send gun control or a Zika funding bills to the president's desk this week nor will they advance measures to ban the Confederate flag at federal cemeteries and national parks.
House Republican leadership has blocked amendments introduced by House Democrats that would have banned the flag.
Two House Democrats, Reps. Jared Huffman (Calif.) and Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), submitted amendments to a 2017 Interior Department spending bill that would prohibit decorating graves in federal cemeteries with Confederate flags and would ban federal contracts within the National Park System to sell Confederate flags at any facility. Their proposals were not among the 131 amendments made in order by the House Rules Committee Monday night.
Out of over 130 amendments, these were not included.
This is not the first time House Republican have chosen to die on this particular hill.
You may recall that Republican leadership suspended the entire appropriations process earlier this year because Democrats successfully added amendments to the Interior funding bill to ban the flag. This led to the uproar from conservatives who forced House leadership to pull the bill from the floor and suspend the process. We have not seen an appropriations bill passed since that time.
I stand by my prediction from earlier this year that this Congress will be forced to pass a continuing resolution when they return from recess in September that will fund the government through the election and possibly the new year. I'm not exactly going out on a limb with this prediction. It has been the way of things under our Republican-controlled Congress.