But they say they are determined to hold a vote because dozens of lawmakers would prefer not to commit one way or the other on the sensitive issue until they have no choice.
Republicans said the result was misleading because a number of lawmakers were absent.
At one point in the closing days of the most recent session, a senator pleaded for the proceedings to be slowed because a number of lawmakers were lost in the sea of paper on their desks.
There's a considerable oddity here, because a lot of lawmakers in both parties will tell you that Speaker Gingrich played as significant a role as anyone in making politics more personal and vicious.
But while public opinion has changed in favor of gay rights over the past two decades, those attitudes are often not reflected in public policy, because the views of lawmakers, polls suggest, lag behind the public, and not just among social conservatives who have long opposed elements of the gay rights agenda on moral grounds.
The leadership turmoil after Democrats won a Senate majority in the 2008 elections began in part because a group of lawmakers, who called themselves the four amigos, were upset at what they described as a lack of Latinos in key leadership positions.
Legislation to close this glaring threat continues to languish with little promise of enactment because a bipartisan mass of lawmakers fear retribution by the gun lobby's campaign machine.
WASHINGTON — Unable to come to agreement on highway funding and eager to start a two-week recess, Congress on Thursday passed a 90-day stopgap measure to continue paying for the nation's highways and infrastructure programs, averting a halt in road and infrastructure projects because of the inability of lawmakers to agree on a broader transportation measure.
NCLR is a nonpartisan organization with a solid track record of working with a bipartisan array of lawmakers because we believe that it is essential to the Latino community's best interests to participate in, and be courted by, both parties.
* * * UNICEF believes in the power of lawmakers because we believe in the power of laws to improve the lives of children.
