House to vote on punishing Steve King
House Democrats moved to punish Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) over a string of comments considered racist, with a floor vote to formally rebuke him expected on Tuesday.
The House is expected to take up a resolution from the No. 3 House Democrat, Majority Whip James Clyburn (S.C.), who is a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC).
King met with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on Monday as Republicans also considered punishments for the lawmaker, who in an interview with The New York Times published last week questioned why the terms white supremacist and white nationalist were offensive.
“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King said in the interview. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”
Clyburn noted that the resolution came a day before the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. and invoked a line the civil rights leader’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”: that people will have to “repent, not just for the hateful words and deeds of bad people, but for the appalling silence of good people.”
“I call on my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in breaking the deafening silence and letting our resounding condemnation be heard,” Clyburn said on the House floor.
{mosads}Earlier Monday, two House Democrats unveiled resolutions to censure King. Clyburn’s measure is not expected to go as far as a formal censure, Democratic aides said.
The House took similar action in 2009 with a resolution of disapproval after Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted “you lie!” at then-President Obama during a joint session of Congress.
Ahead of his meeting with King, McCarthy told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that he is reviewing whether to let King keep his committee assignments.
A spokesman for King didn’t immediately return a request for comment on the meeting.
King left the meeting without answering questions from reporters.
-Updated 7:35 p.m.
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