DADT Update From Politico: House Majority Leader expected to file 'don't ask, don't tell' repeal bill Tuesday

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December 13, 2010

Hoyer expected to file 'don't ask, don't tell' repeal bill Tuesday

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.) are expected to introduce standalone "don't ask, don't tell" repeal legislation on Tuesday, three sources actively involved in repeal discussions told POLITICO Monday.

However, considerable uncertainty swirled around the mechanics of the "don't ask" repeal effort over the course of the day Monday. At one point, a key repeal advocate said advocates and lawmakers supporting repeal had agreed that the Senate would take the initiative on the freestanding measure and that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) planned to file a motion on Tuesday to bypass the usual committee process.

A couple of hours later on Monday, other sources told POLITICO that the House had agreed to act first and that the Hoyer/Murphy bill would be promptly moved through the House as a privileged resolution. That scenario seemed to get support from a post on the Center for American Progress blog Monday afternoon that said Hoyer and Murphy had already introduced their bill. The news was tweeted and retweeted, but within minutes the link to the story was dead. (It was sucked quickly down the memory hole, but I did manage to scrounge up this cache.) The author of the post, Igor Volsky, told me late Monday that it was "published prematurely."

Adding to the murk, Hoyer's office refused to confirm that any bill was imminent, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a cryptic statement that observed that "all options are on the table," and Reid's office declined to comment on the scheduling issue.

By evening, it appeared that identically-worded bills would be moved independently in each body depending on the flow of business, rather than moving from one body to the other. House action still seemed likely to precede Senate action on the legislation, however, because of the likely need for a cloture petition and associated debate on the Senate side due to the filibuster expected from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

Repeal advocates view the standalone bill as their best hope for enacting legislation to set in motion a repeal of the ban on openly gay servicemembers. Advocates had pinned their hopes on the broader defense authorization bill, which already contains conditional repeal language, but it fell three votes short last week of the 60 needed to move to the floor. However, during that process it appeared that there were more than 60 votes for repeal itself, so backers quickly shifted their focus to passing a standalone bill.

Thanks to POLITICO's Manu Raju, Jen DiMascio and Scott Wong for help with this post.