JTA Via Forward: Resolution 663 was not voted on this week in the U.S. House of Representatives because the body’s leadership does not allow what it calls commemorative resolutions to come to the floor for a vote, U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), who sponsored the legislation, told JTA.
In 2011, the House leadership agreed to ban most such resolutions in an effort to speed up the voting process.
“Today they allowed a resolution of outrage against what happened in Aurora, Colo.,” Engel said of his GOP colleagues, referring to last week’s massacre at a Denver-area movie theater that left 12 dead and 58 wounded. “They did that and I felt that the moment of silence should have been one of” the exceptions.
The resolution, for which Engel was the main sponsor and had GOP co-sponsors, unanimously passed the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The Senate, which is controlled by the Democrats, passed a similar resolution 100-0.
