How can a bill that passed the Senate unanimously stall and die in the House?

All that is needed is to make up some claims about wild spending and abortion and every invertebrate in the House will lack the backbone to support it.

Six years in the making, and backed by nonpartisan groups such as the YMCA, S. 987, the International Protecting Girls by Preventing Child Marriage Act of 2010, passed the

Ileana Ros-Lehtinen: "I understand the importance of protecting our children from predators,” unless they are married to them.

Senate without a dissenting vote. Outside of honoring a non-controversial American for contributing to American culture or thanking God that the sky is blue, it is difficult to get all Senators to agree to anything.

This bill would have shifted an existing $108 million in international assistance to help prevent child marriages in developing countries. The bill specifically targeted nations that have more than 40% of girls under the age of 18 marrying.

The bill called for the President to begin a “multi-year strategy to prevent child marriage and promote the empowerment of girls at risk of child marriage in developing countries, which should address the unique needs, vulnerabilities, and potential of girls under age 18 in developing countries.”

Basically, S. 987 is an attempt to keep girls in school, educate them and let them gain the age of majority so that they can decide who they want to marry.

Besides 60-year-old men looking for an 11-year-old bride, there were not many people who could come up with an argument to oppose this idea.

Along comes Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen who sent a letter to Republican House members urging them to vote against the bill. In the letter, Ros-Lehtinen claimed that the funding should not be allowed since the U.S. government does not know how much it is currently spending against child marriage and does not know what is currently effective in reducing those marriages.

Ros-Lehtinen claimed her own alternative bill would only cost $1 million. However, it lacks specifics and follow-up besides calling for a report on how to deal with the problem. She also conveniently twisted the facts to make it appear that the bill’s funding was for $108 million in new funding, which was not true.

S. 987 calls for “examples of best practices or programs to prevent child marriage in developing countries that could be replicated.” It also calls for an assessment of current practices being implemented by the U.S. government. That is the very thing that Ros-Lehtinen claims that should be known before voting on the bill. How the federal government is supposed to determine what is effective without authorizing a study does not trouble Ros-Lehtinen.

A 12-year-old Yemeni girl intended for marriage to her 30-year-old cousin

Ironically, Ros-Lehtinen claims credit for legislation “protecting our children.” On her website, she stated that she cosponsored H.R.1120, Deleting Online Predators Act, which limits access to social networking sites in schools without adult supervision. She also claimed that the act protected minors from “visual depictions that are obscene, child pornography, or are harmful.”

While Ros-Lehtinen is doing her best to keep America’s children from viewing porn or being groomed by a sexual predator, she effectively halted a bipartisan bill that might have saved young girls from being hauled off into coerced marriages with sexual predators. It seems Ros-Lehtinen is only interested in the well-being of some children.

Ros-Lehtinen stated that as a “mother of two daughters, I understand the importance of protecting our children from predators.” By opposing S. 987, she basically said that the foreign girls are on their own.

Even with Ros-Lehtinen’s late opposition, the Democratic House leadership thought the bill would sail through. Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided to enact a rule requiring a two-thirds majority to pass the measure. A two-thirds requirement prohibits any amendments and brings the bill to an immediate vote.

Unfortunately, an hour before the vote the Republican House leadership sent out a Whip Alert requesting that all Republicans oppose the measure. House Minority Leader John Boehner and Whip Eric Cantor, along with Ros-Lehtinen, authorized the alert by claiming that there was not sufficient oversight over the funding of S. 987.

Then they put in the kicker. The Republican House leadership claimed that preventing child marriage in this bill was not pro-life enough. They claimed that it would “promote and perform abortion and efforts to combat child marriage could be usurped as a way to overturn pro-life laws.”

S. 987 is about finding ways to prevent child marriage. It said nothing about abortion. It does not focus on current child marriages where some may make the case that an impregnated 12-year-old should not be a mother. It is solely to stop young girls from being taken from their families and married off before they have the right to make their own decisions. That sounds pro-life to me. The Republican leadership is concerned about a non-existent threat to a baby in the womb, but not a real life threat to an eight-year-old forced into marriage.

About the only pro-life argument that can be made is if a man dragged some pre-teen girl from her family, raped her and promised to marry her but the family rejected the proposal. There are not too many people who would oppose a 10-year-old girl from getting an abortion in that instance. Unfortunately, there are just enough to stir the fears of the weak-willed Congressmembers. Yet S. 987 does not even address that.

With that appeal from the Republican House leadership, all but 12 Republicans abandoned the bill, combined with 9 Democrats who bolted to oppose it as well, it was enough to send it down to defeat despite a clear majority in favor 241-166.

The arm-twisting was so effective that Republicans who co-sponsored the House version of the bill voted against their own bill. That will be a neat trick to explain when they get back home. However, not all Republicans buckled under the whip of Boehner and Cantor. Ohio Rep. Steve LaTourette did his best to set the record straight with “enough is enough.”