Boehner Doesn’t Want Confederate Flag To Become ‘Political Football’

UNITED STATES - JUNE 25: Speaker of the House John Boehner, R-Ohio, holds his weekly on-camera news conference in the Capitol on Thursday, June 25, 2015. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
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House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) said Thursday that he doesn’t want the debate over allowing Confederate flags on certain public lands to become a “political football.”

Minutes before Boehner’s weekly press conference, House Republicans cancelled a planned vote on an environmental appropriations bill in order to avoid debate on an amendment reversing other previously approved, Democratic amendments that restricted the display of Confederate flags on federal lands.

Boehner confirmed that the chamber would not vote on the spending bill “until we come to some resolution” on the flag issue.

“I think it’s time for some adults here in Congress to sit down and have conversation about how to address this issue,” he told reporters. “I do not want this to become some political football.”

Around the same time Boehner was speaking, one of his members pinned the blame for the Confederate flag move on the House GOP leadership. In a written statement, Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), who announced the Confederate flag move on the House floor Wednesday night, said the amendment was “brought to me by Leadership.”

“The amendment offered last night to the Interior and Environment Appropriations bill was brought to me by Leadership at the request of some southern Members of the Republican Caucus,” Calvert said in the statement.

When a reporter asked whether Boehner supported Confederate flags in federal cemeteries, the House speaker responded “no.”

Boehner was also asked to respond to Republican presidential candidate and real estate mogul Donald Trump’s much-maligned comments about immigrants crossing the border with Mexico.

“I disagree with Mr. Trump’s comments and, frankly, I think when you look at the presidential candidates, they’ve all made their positions clear,” Boehner told reporters.

He added that he considered illegal immigration to be the “biggest political football” he’d seen yet in his career.

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Notable Replies

  1. “So when the Parks Service prohibition of Confederate flags was added to the bill, then our understanding was that they heard from some of their extreme members within their caucus that they weren’t gong to help pass the bill unless they can have something out of it,” McCollum said. “Our understanding is that is why this amendment was offered.”

    If you don’t want it be a political football, then don’t make it a political football!!!

  2. You’re a spinless, boneless, chickenless egg
    You’ll Have to be put with the bowl to beg
    Johnny I hardly knew ya

  3. FOOTBALL-GATE! MORe LIBtard elecTION cycLE GAmesMENshIP maKING RepubLICAns owN OUR PoliciES. ShAME For MAKing RAce A PoliTICAL FOOTBALLS1!!!one!1!!!

  4. Oh, my …

  5. “I do not want this to become some political football.”

    Sir, you are no Tom Brady. I know Tom Brady. And you are not him. Not only could you not get this political football into the end zone, but it would probably end up on the sidelines in the Gatorade cooler.

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