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House Speaker Paul Ryan tried to break the House Democrats' sit-in for gun safety legislation Wednesday night and in the early hours of Thursday with the worst, most partisan votes he could come up with. This included a supposed House/Senate agreement on Zika funding—which included the agreement of absolutely no Democrats.
His first volley was to try to break them with a vote to override a veto of their legislation to end the fiduciary rule. Okay, so what's the fiduciary rule? That's the new Department of Labor rule that keeps big banks from ripping off senior citizens. Literally. The big vote Ryan came up with to try to stop this historic protest from Democrats was on behalf of big banks who want to continue to take seniors’ money. Insanely tone deaf.
But it got worse! He came back to pass the supposed Zika (and other stuff) funding bill and adjourn the House for its Fourth of July recess (yes, it is still only June). This is supposed to be a larger funding agreement from the House and the Senate, worked out in conference. Democrats on the conference committee abandoned it on Wednesday because Republicans refused to back down on their proposals for the Zika funding.
Those proposals include cutting funds for Obamacare, taking more than $100 million from the Ebola emergency fund, and blocking any funds "from going to Planned Parenthood for birth control services for women at risk of becoming infected with the virus." So women who fear they have been exposed to or are at risk of Zika infection can't get birth control to prevent getting pregnant with a baby who may be horribly, fatally deformed.
That's not all, of course.
It weakens pesticide regulations, allowing pesticides to be used to control mosquitos without a permit for 180 days. Or, the entire mosquito season. So pesticides could be used willy-nilly for half the year.
It gets even worse, because the House bill going into the conference had a ban on Confederate flags in national cemeteries. The Republicans stripped it out in conference. For all of these reasons, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid is vowing to lead Democrats in blocking it—which means one more funding bill isn't going to get passed. Which means Congress is that much closer to having to have do a stop-gap continuing resolution to fund the government in September.
That's what Paul Ryan took to the House floor last night, in the midst of an unprecedented effort by Democrats to protest the fact that Republicans refused to do anything at all to stop the slaughter caused by gun violence. He brought the most poisonous, most vile partisan stuff he possibly could.
That's who he is.