“Democrats…that’s all there is to it.”
This is a great story. The House finally passed the the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination ACT (GINA, they’re calling it). The bill passed 420-3; it guarantees that people cannot be discriminated against on the basis of analysis of their DNA (which could be come a problem now that the genome project has come so far).
The bill was strongly backed by Republican Congresswoman Judy Biggert, who pushed it for years only to have die in committee when the Party of the South still held sway over the House. She asked:
“We had 420 votes,” she said. “Why did it take us this long?”
Here’s the answer:
a key committee staffer opposed the effort and helped keep it bottled up. So did the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which gives largely to Republicans in federal races and has often rated Biggert as voting its way on more than 90 percent of issues it tracks.
Why did this popular bill finally get through now after all of these years? Our own Congresswoman, Louise Slaughter, who has been fighting for this bill since 1994 has the simple answer:
“Democrats,” Slaughter said. ” … That’s all there is to it.”
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