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Rep. Jackie Speier Accidentally Admits The Obvious About ENDA: 5 Years Away

Rep. Jackie Speier, the California Democrat, said something folks like Nancy Pelosi would rather she kept to herself: The Employment Non-Discrimination Act needs a five-year time line .

After speaking Sunday to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club Pride breakfast, Rep. Speier told a reporter “we will have [ENDA] for sure within the next five years. … I’m being realistic.” And while Speier lauded Pelosi for laying the groundwork for ENDA, you can bet the House Speaker’s office was on the phone with Speier after this report, as she contradicted what Pelosi said during a May 17 conference call with LGBT activists. EQCA’s Geoff Kors says Pelosi “was very clear that ENDA would pass the House with enough time to pass the Senate this year.”

Though let’s be realzies for a sec here: If any activist actually believed the time line Pelosi laid out, they are fools. You’ve been misled and lied to — by Democrats — before. And just because Obama is in the White House, and the Dems control Congress, you think things have changed? You don’t deserve to hold these posts if you do.

Pelosi herself said DADT needed to pass before ENDA, and she can handily point to the Senate as the reason ENDA isn’t moving forward.

Worth noting: Speier’s five-year time line — a construct with so many unknown variables nobody should trust it — puts ENDA’s passage in 2015, after Obama supposedly is re-elected, and long after November’s elections that could wipe away the Democrats’ majority in Congress.

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