five seventeen a domestic partnership benefits benefits and obligation act of two thousand and nine twenty five seventeen provides the same sex domestic partners of federal employees will be entitled to the same benefits available to a married federal bill on july eighth the subcommittee held a hearing on the legislation before us today at that hearing we heard from several witnesses who voiced their support for this bill including the u s the u s office of personnel management direct john berry we also heard from both public and private employers on the merits and potential obstacles of providing these benefits although every detail involving implementation of these benefits has not been completed this subcommittee has all the information it needs to proceed with reporting this legislation and correcting the inequality that it currently exists for federal employees and the domestic partners with consideration of h r twenty five seventeen the real issue that we are tackling today involves principles of equality fanous inclusion in the workplace principles that should be common place for the federal government as an employer both in theory and in practice however neither exist currently many federal employees and their same sex partners continue to be denied access to employee benefits such as health insurance or retirement savings which are customarily offered to employees with opposite sex spouses as a leader in employee rights and benefits the federal government needs to catch up to numerous public and private sector employers who already have extended domestic partner benefits the passage of h r twenty five seventeen will also demonstrate that the federal government stands by the concept of equal pay for equal work the bottom line is that the pastors this bill before is just simply the right thing to do aside from the basic concepts of fairness and nondiscrimination the need to provide domestic partnership benefits to federal employees should also be evaluated in light of the potential positive impact such policies can have on the federal government's recruitment and retention capabilities employee productivity and morale as the recent hearing demonstrated we have letter from menace amount of talent walk away from federal employment and seek jobs from private employers who offer these valuable benefits this legislation is being reported in order for the federal government to continue its leadership and support of equality and inclusion again like to thank the lead sponsors from wisconsin and florida congresswoman tammy baldwin l u r us like now as well as the hundred fifteen co sponsors of h r twenty five seventeen for their work diligence and commitment i thank the subcommittee members for their but just patient agendas this morning and i hope you will join me in supporting the bill as well as the amendment i intend to offer later i now yield to our ranking member the gentleman from utah mr chavis for his  read a statement that i put together and it's a very difficult subject and i appreciate the difficulty of the subject for many of us today and i thank the chairman in today's society the biggest hope that one can commit seemingly not to be tolerant to condemn is to judge which is mean harsh nasty and uncivilized so he's saying we can't have more disagreements anymore on homosexual rights abortion prostitution illegal drug use gambling we should be allowed to do our own thing back when bill clinton was president i was live on a b c s highest raise newscast after the monica answer that i was asked why are americans so upset that the president dropped his pants for an intern why are americans so moralistic that he feeds feels he needs to keep apologizing they ask similarly why d governor sanford senators answer them better and others feel compelled to apologize especially in a country with around fifty percent divorce rate and many more have affairs is safe to say there's a nation we have some gaps between what we say and what we do i believe a person is a  so i do not believe that i or others should go around condemning others when we disagree we can state our disagreements but we need to watch our tone i do not pretend to be perfect none of us are most americans still believe in the basic judeo christian values as a goal if not always the reality does well most of us have homosexual friends and many have family the majority even in california believe that marriage should be between one man one woman the fundamental debate behind today's vote is whether as a society we still agree that marriage and legal benefits derived from serve only for traditional families if we give the same tax benefits and even fund benefits with taxpayer dollars for partners or whoever the committed other is then we have taken away the concept of a traditional marriage it becomes irrelevant i am most americans are offended at gay bashing and appalled by violence against homosexuals we can strongly disagree without mistreating each other i maintain that while americans want to be personally more tolerant and less condemning of others they still want to uphold basic moral ideas of the traditional one man one woman family today's vote is a difficult reconciliation if there is a gay couple who has been together for twenty years why shouldn't a partner get help benefits on the one hand it just seems fair but the real question is much harder and challenges our fundamental beliefs do we believe in continuing the wall idea of a traditional marriage in america where we've gone so far that even now we are abandoning that as official position of our society and its laws this congress and the president are still eroding away our traditional moral standards the fundamental moral goals of a society in the name of fairness i understand why but i do not agree is bad enough in my mind that we fail to achieve our moral goals as we have seen some much in the recent news but it is worse to be abandoning moral hazard even as a guiding principle right now it seems this government is doing it in almost every piece of legislation whether it's in in financing or it's in narcotics or in this case in the traditional definition of marriage i'm against taxpayer funding of these benefits because  totally inconsistent with the belief that marriage should be one man and one woman and all there's a long held position of our society that i thank the gentleman does any other member wish to be heard on this matter was the ranking member mr chavis of utah thank you mr chairman i i appreciate this this opportunity my my my comments will be brief i simply believe in the traditional view of marriage and i stand tall in that i make no apologies for the idea that i believe that marriage should be defined as between one man and one woman i am not support of trying to redefine marriage or try to provide something that will appease someone else i do not believe we should try to redefine marriage and therefore i am very unsupportive of this bill as it's presently written i believe it is unconstitutional i think it is fraught with problems i think it will create  but i also understand that when you're talking about love if two people love each other then in a sense there are times that sexuality can just kind of dissolve as as a factor and i think that as we evolve as human beings and as we evolve as a country i think we there's a potential that we have a more compassionate view of  support of the legislation because i don't think this is about the personal moral views of members of congress this is about equity and fairness in the federal workplace this is about making sure that no class of human beings based on their beliefs their lifestyle their orientation is discriminated against in the federal workforce and this congress needs to be heard loud and clear that we will not countenance discover nation in any form for any reason against any person or class of persons that's what this legislation is about and that's why i support the bill mr  following our hearing i was pleased to be a co sponsor of this bill i recall that for several sessions this subcommittee saw even the paltry  executive order that was on the books not being enforced so we are squarely facing this issue in fat and frank with me we're followers on facing this issue but with facing straight on another issue of discrimination there's no way to avoid what we've been doing with discriminating against employees of the federal government based on th sexual orientation doing the same jobs as other couples and not getting the same benefits we are way behind fortune five hundred companies we are way behind country where a cop the country has changed on these issues congress is following not leading i'm pleased to see that this subcommittee is stepping forward and pressing this do think that we need to remember maybe the the sad issue here and i'll say this is someone who strongly supported domestic partnerships when i served in california i hate to see the way that support has been manipulated in the recent past but why is the government you know what we read in the situation of why was the government even providing these benefits ever to somebody who is related or associated with an employee and you know we forget what all of these institutions are all these arrangements were for and i hate to say it but they the the issue of marriage has been tagged on with the gay community when in fact this thing goes a lot deeper the fact the total devaluation of the concept of family and abroad you know the definition of a family you know ignores the point that the only reason why we provide these benefits be for sake because there was a unit in society where one person stayed at home or didn't was not fully employed because there was a requirement with in that unit that somebody be present to raise the children and i know this is a dirty word to bring up but this whole thing is not about couples it's about the reason why the government or got into treating somebody who was associated a certain way was because that person was part of a team that was raising children and there was a social benefit of having that unit together raising those children i think we've all seen what happens when the concept that a couple raising of the children is not doesn't matter any more are we seeing the social economic and cultural problems created by denying the importance of two people working together to raise a family and i think we totally forget this not about love this not about sexual orientation this is not about couples this was originally developed developed has always been aimed at children and families and the family unit was not a couple it was to help individuals that we wanted to participate and protect and one of the ways of doing that is understand that there was a team and not both members may be working that gain benefits and what ever and that just as we do with the military where we actually pay  for spouses to support the spouse it was based on a whole different assumption i know i'm not getting into this back and forth but let's admit that we have moved and this is not just this is both federal and homosexual communities have moved so far from the concept of marriage that we forget what it was all about and the only reason why we gave these benefits was because there was a sumption that somebody was going to not be working not getting benefits and that the that the that the people taking care of children needed to be supported with with the child itself and i know this sounds like an antiquated concept that has been abandoned but i just think we've just got to remember we're going to a point now then that we're basically saying you get married you're on your own raising children are no longer in a b or we're going to go the other way and it seems like we're just forgetting that this is not about couples it never was designed to take care of the spouse just because because a spouse could work two why couldn't  the spouse go work because the spouse was assumed to be staying at home watching the children i know these are dirty things and terrible things to say today but that is common sense that's history that's where we were now where we go from there we can debate it but let's not talk about it that's had family looks a lot different than what it looked like forty years ago you may have two parents raising children so it's probably we are moving taking care of those children that are part of that family taking care of the spouse of the partner or whatever you want to call it because they have put into that family to make it a  no it's not a traditional family that you and i grew up with but it is the american family and that's what we have to come to the realization that th what the new american family looks like in two thousand whether you like it or not that is our country and people have a right to the scheme of benefits that has been recognized by employers and by this government began as a concept of compensating for the disability the burdens of parenthood and and that's how it began many many many years ago how it has evolved and i thank the gentleman from ohio was pointing out how in the case of a heterosexual couple without children those benefits flow freely whereas the benefits are denied to same sex couples they sing the same challenges and i think that's the inequity that this bill tries to  address if no other members wish to speak i now call twenty five seventeen the clerk will read the title of the bill h r twenty five seventeen a bill to provide certain benefits to domestic partners of federal employees i ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered as read and open for amendment at any point there are no objections or  i believe i have an amendment in the nature of a substitute at the desk the clerk will please designate the amendment amendment in the nature of the substitute twenty five seventeen offered by mr lynch of massachusetts i ask  consent that the amendment be considered as read without objection the amendment is considered as read and i recognize myself of five minutes now the amendment i'm offering this morning for consideration is fairly straightforward in that it takes the original language in the introduced version of h r twenty five seventeen and molds it with the various technical corrections recommended by the office of personnel management at the legislative hearing we held earlier this month most of the office of personnel management type nicol concerns involve strengthening many of the bills provisions by ensuring that they were applied correctly to the laws governing all of the benefit programs affected by the bill before us does just that by modifying a spelling out throughout the bill all of the various title five employees spousal and if it's that upon passage would be extended to domestic partners of federal workers benefits such as health insurance retirement and disability benefits dental and vision benefit life insurance and long term care insurance and others in terms of major policy issues dealt with by the amendment i'm recommending that the bill be modified to eliminate the ambiguity regarding whether domestic partnership benefits will be afforded to current annuitants those on the cost of retirement for the amendment before us includes language just pacifically apply the bulk of the bill's provisions to retirees which is consistent with o p m tradition while the amendment in the nature of a substitute goes a long way in fin tuning age twenty five seventeen and sending a message to thousands of federal employees that the concept of equal pay for equal work should be upheld i must admit that the bill may possibly have to undergo some additional minor changes going forward as the measure fails to address the an equity in the tax treatment of domestic partner benefits benefits which is not within the jurisdiction of this committee nevertheless i hope all members will join me in supporting this amendment and i now yield to the ranking member for five minutes for any additional comments that he may have on this amendment thank you mr chairman i i cannot support this moment as i do not support the overall bill you know what based on the comments that i heard in the opening statements and some of the arguments that i've heard talk a lot about equality this bill still fundamentally continues to discriminate if you're a heterosexual couples decided not to marry you are not going to get the same benefits it continues to discriminate i fundamentally do not believe that we should be creating benefits like this based on sexual orientation orientation or lifestyle changes lifestyle choices that the exception i obviously make is for the traditional view of marriage which is between one man and one woman i think what is it is sought in this bill is a recognition from the federal government of these certain lifestyle and orientation choices which i cannot support i think that's  one of the underlying things that's a sought in this bill looks to do in many ways redefine marriage and i will not i will not stand for that we also talk about these huge need this huge demand in the in the in the marketplace that's needed for this based on the testimony and arguments that i heard earlier that this supposedly is only going to affect point two percent of the workforce point two percent i have real questions about that because as the other side has continually used the numbers in various different directions to their advantage sometimes we hear it's ten to twenty percent sometimes we hear it's you know based on the scoring so they get a low score point two percent i think there are huge question marks in this regard as to where how how many people this would affect or not affect but certainly i don't think you can make the equality argument well they can just simply choose to get married well i don't buy that this bill continues to discriminate i want to be as compassionate as we possibly can i think if the there was a true sincerity about providing benefits to anyone that they may choose that they would write it as such that you wouldn't have to be participating as a as a homosexual or as lesbian couple if they were to craft a language that says you could designate anybody to be your that's who receive these benefits i think there would be a  very different view of this but because it's based simply on homosexual or lesbian lifestyles i think we're doing something that is unprecedented and that i simply cannot support that i'll yield back i thank the gentleman just in response to the claims of discrimination are inapt i believe as the gentleman has acknowledged in his statement i think the treatment of a heterosexual couple is a huge and distinct difference between just simply signing a quick affidavit that is just as easily dissolved and what is traditionally done in marriage the commitment that is made in the states with traditional marriage has much heavier consequences is much more difficult to dissolve than simply just filling out a form and then drop it off in the inbox there is a huge and distinct difference it is not simply the same  you know it has been offered but i studied it and i thought about a broader application of the of domestic partnership which period i don't necessarily know when i change my support for it but i think i think the idea of domestic partnership every  every same sex couple that is because benefits would be covered under this is a domestic partnership but not every domestic partnership involves same sex couples your the point that you're making well taken i think we also have to recognize the tremendous amount of discrimination and so many levels that has existed against same sex couples  really it's really extraordinary to think about anybody any one of us who who knows people who are in a committed relationship have to be happy to be of the same sex one case two very dear friends of my wife and i have been in a committed relationship for over forty years and looking at the trajectory of that relationship and where it started what people had to go through that kind of a prejudice and the  and the other had a kind of courage it took to live it authentic life it's something i think is recognized in this amendment but i but i don't think that we should discount the concerns that mr chavez has expressed  often true to a point to be in scary that the former mayor of cleveland and i agree pretty closely on this item i think that if the new definition of couple has evolved to a point  i know that there is also prejudice against heterosexual relations that are not married trying to get rentals and you get into those issues there are there are  prejudice from tradition from perceptions both ways but granted it's not balanced but the point being here is this piece of legislation is it going to perpetuate and other discriminate women ation al or other prejudices or is it just going to dress dress is going to dress it across it and basically said we have now moved beyond the traditional family or couple definition and will now apply it because the same thing can be said about the fact that what about a couple that for religious reasons don't get married that feel that the entire institution of marriage they may be heterosexual have had no sexual relationships but they don't do not support the traditional institutions and think and oppose the traditional institutions on the same side is the fact that this this relationship go on and i i just got to say that if you're going to say the benefit should be provided to anybody with a with a committed relationship then how the heck do you say make it conditional on an orientation you know how do you justify that except you're saying this bill really is meant only for this one group and we won't allow anybody else the same opportunity so i think the best way to be able to release execu what is what is claimed to be intended with this bill is to eliminate the condition that they have to be same sex eliminate those conditioning clauses and say look anybody that falls into this category regardless of their gender can participate in the program affidavit does that mean that the gentleman would support this bill in those states where in fact couples may be married and they are now almost half a dozen states which recognize same sex marriage which would therefore meet your a terrine criterion of a committed relationship because they are married under the law of the state probably not now i think that points out that that is not relevant how one feels personally about same sex relationships or marriage is not what's in front of us what's in front of us is a piece of legislation to allow those who are living in a partnership relationship of the same sex to be able to access benefits like any other federal employee unless what we're about is trying to make political points it's a piece of legislation to a fact address a piece of discrimination we ought to be uncomfortable with as a congress and as the chairman's indicated this is about the federal workforce not some other workforce the one we control the one we have to address and you know we've heard so many comments here that really get at i'm uncomfortable about that and i find as i've said before a monumental contradiction that somebody would say i'm concerned that this legislation perhaps unintentionally actually discriminates against heterosexuals  i'm so grateful to hear the concern about discrimination but i don't hear it followed through inconsistent logic this is designed this legislation is designed to right or wrong and to recognize the twenty first century reality for what it is in the federal workforce irrespective of our personal moral views and i would hope the subcommittee would proceed accordingly with recognizes gentleman from utah to suggest that it's the same for each and every person i can remember exactly how you phrased it it is simply not true with all due respect there are over there are people in many different categories and what we're doing is essentially creating another another new class but still not including everyone and that's what i'm saying is duplicitous in this in this discussion is the night before when we had the hearing one of the examples that i used is my my great aunt and she was in a federal employee but just for the sake of the discussion let's pretend that she was a federal employee when her husband passed away was very sad time for her it was very difficult for it and she ended up living with another woman who had nothing to do with sexual orientation or intimacy it had everything to do with safety and security with a the need to maybe share an apartment and that sort of thing but that to suggest that it is something that is available to absolutely everybody is is just not true the other thing that i think we also haven't discussed in these in any of these discussions is just the sheer cost of a time when worked at twelve trillion dollars in debt  hundred million dollars a day and interest to offer new benefits and expand that benefit pool is something that's troubling but specific to what the gentleman from virginia said i just take issue with the with it because have two different angles here one is that whatever your view is to try to say that i or others take my position to try to score political points is just not true i have had and will continue to have deeply held moral views that actually are not politically correct in many cases and it's it's not necessarily comfortable as advocate that and i do not raise these things in my lections and in fact the democrats ran a national ad against me claiming that i was friends with mark foley who had a natural sex with minors so i'm not about to get a bunch of moral lectures from democrats about how i how i use politics in this i have deeply held views and the view that you can't that you can find domestic partners benefits is a moral view in itself you believe that that's your moral view and it's not just to ask me to check my moral views that traditional christians have to check their views at the door and can't be governed by it while you're governed by your views namely that a quality over trumps a moral traditional moral view that your moral view now more no sexual employees or covered with their certificate but more a basic principle because like it or not heterosexual couples can get a marriage certificate and they choose not to homosexual couples overall are banned from getting a marriage certificate the reason we're having to deal with this is because they aren't so the fact is that they are more discriminate against than heterosexual couples so ironically in this case while i understand my friend from california's point i don't agree with  amendment to the amendment in the nature of a substitute to h r twenty five seventeen offered by mr bilbray of california page two lines ten to eleven strike of the same sex page  nine insert and after the sun micro on page three line eleven strike and page three strike lines twelve through fifteen another may may be new hampshire and massachusetts you don't know what california is going to be next year my bill basically eliminates that question directed at the fact that everyone no matter what their gender will be treated equally under this bill and makes it appropriate now if if in fact the chairman argument is that that everyone else already has this option so why do we have to bring it my question is then what's the damage of reaffirming that they have that option and so i i introduce this bill as as a way of be able to limit the segment that may be perceived as being discriminatory and to transform the bill into inclusionary so you'll back mr thank you  climbing a few minutes on this the effect of the gym is amendment would basically extend benefits between every federal employee and every person with which the that person has a relationship now it doesn't save you kate any particular relationship it could be a cause and a brother a teammate somebody in the carpool if he could establish that there was a relationship any relationship between the employee and that other person then benefits would be extended the floodgates problem of the cost problem with this and the  let me just finish and each member will have adequate time to address this but to establish benefits on the basis of any any relationship at all is i u first of all you still have the committed relationship and that's not a point it's a fact that let's not bring this back five years from now and say well we've gone this far it's time that we finally finish it off and make it universal option the fact is that there are different types of committed relationships i live with my mother i admit i'm you know i'm fifty eight years old i'm the family's taking care of my mother there was a lot there was a long term relationship and commitment there the fact is is that there's different types of committed relationships but if you are saying now that dollars and cents is what matters then we get back to the whole different argument that i thought this was about being inclusionary not discriminating then let's do it let's let's actually allow it to be done and let's not pick and choose winners and losers on this side or anybody else has to be heard on this one as a gentleman from washington d c all right is trying to catch up with the rest of the country certainly with large corporations and if you will look at the polls on where people stand on the rights of same sex couples and the rights of homosexuals you will see that we're just catching up with the rest of the country we're not asking the federal government to take a great leap into the unknown as i say to the gentleman on the other side if you're the bill the honorable way to respond is a vote against the bill not to try to insert a poison pill in the bill which you know will generally i intend if this amendment is passed to support the bill and that's why it's a poison pill because you know it won't pass reclaiming my time and i yield back to the the gentleman from utah so far i haven't heard a substantive argument against it other than to throw in some names out a poison pill it could never pass this the same definitions that we had used for homosexual lesbian couples still apply for instance you know common residence responsibility those types of of requirements are still in this bill what we're trying to say is if you truly want to create equality let's not base it soley on lifestyle and sexual orientation there are many cases and we could be here for weeks coming up with scenarios where you have people who are in a committed relationship but maybe aren't participating at the intimate level something is it impossible for the federal government nor should the federal government be involved in trying to decipher and decide and investigate and enforce  this this amendment which mr bilbray is bringing forward makes a lot of sense if you want to actually designate an additional person to participate as a beneficiary and you're truly truly about equality and you want to be the same for everyone then you have i think half the vote for this amendment because if you're rejecting you're saying no no no no no i just want to do this for somebody who  practicing and making a lifestyle choice not the moral issue but what we are saying is yes you can designate somebody there are ramifications of refill of some paperwork to to get into it and you have to meet certain requirements and you've thought of piece of paper and when you dissolve it but i would like to hear a substantive argument from the other side as to why because every every homosexual and lesbian couple would be included in this if they meet the requirements as is the underlying bill but would also open it up to others who may be dull practice those lifestyle choices and i think that is truly more fair and more equitable and more of a balance playing guess once again i hear a monumental contradiction in my friend's logic he initially told us this made him uncomfortable that he believed the definition of marriage was between a man and woman now he's telling us he's concerned about discrimination and that he could support this amendment which actually would if passed provide benefits to same sex couples something he earlier told us  and we heard him lecture us about consistency about discrimination well if you really want to be that consistent about discrimination then i assume you favor repeal of the defens marriage act because it discriminates and i assume that you would in fact favor the movement in the united states to recognize same sex marriages because it discriminates and you're against that  from california mr bill right mr chairman i i need apologize to the committee i should have explained that my history related to the entire issue of discrimination some of you may not know i was the author in the ninety's of the workplace fairness act the workplace fairness act was a concept that rather than picking certain groups to be protected we said that and less it directly related to workplace less it directly related to work performance no discrimination should be justified or should be legal that was a workplace fairness act i know the lot of people in this town hated my bill because it didn't target certain groups and didn't you know create certain certain packages that people would come to with but it was a feeling that we if we're going to say that discrimination is bad then it should be no matter what group if it had a political power in d c or not was going to be able to be protected in this and why not use this momentum to address everyone on the line this amendment is just basically trying to say the same thing and so i'm just saying and there's a spirit of the workplace protection act i'm just saying is is that why not why condition who qualifies for this when in fact we know somebody is out there is going to be end up being hit we know it's not going to be something we'll ignore five ten fifteen years from now why not address it now and why take only one group or what one segment of society rather than sending the more general view which i think is much more defensible that it's this isn't just for one group this is for everybody now you gentleman from indiana mr souter is recognized we've been having a kind of like two parallel debates that the basic fundamental question is modification of the traditional definition of marriage and giving access to those rights to those who don't have the opportunity to be recognized as having a marriage mr bray has raised a second point which is  really why do we have that kind of law why did we have things through our code that discriminate on the basis of families and the part of it was economic and part of it raising them because i believe that the fundamental debate here is over marriage and in fact that i don't believe contrary to the implied statement that any state bans heterosexual marriage or ever will ban heterosexual marriage  therefore heterosexuals are in a totally different situation than homosexuals now if we move to legislation that says that it isn't a definition of marriage and rather just  caring relationship then it's interesting debate i don't believe we should move that direction and one last point discrimination can mean meanness it can mean nastiness it can mean second class and all this type of thing but the fact is we discriminate all the time in law if we say there can be no discrimination why should not anything be called a church we have definitions for church why such small business get benefits over big business it's because society has said this is a value that we want to promote so we give tax breaks to religious institutions we give tax breaks to small business over big business and the fundamental debate here and it's a legitimate debate which which many americans don't accept the traditional position anymore that there should be a benefit given a traditional marriage i haven't shied away from that fundamental debate and to me that's the fundamental issue here because indeed this is a whole different bill if we're debating that this is a caregiver bill for home care for moms if you have foster kids in your house if you are to a brother and sister living other that's a whole different debate really than the definition of marriage i think the gentleman while i certainly understand the argument the gentleman has put forward i must oppose the amendment at hand for a number of reasons and cost interesting is just one of the reasons why it's certainly understand that the language would essentially extend the mastic partnership benefits to both same sex and opposite sex couples the amendment goes further than that by recognizing any commitment and a committed relationship between a federal worker and any other individual it exponentially expands the number of people who are eligible for benefits on under the plan  in addition opposite sex couples already have access to complete family benefits under federal law to gain access to these benefits one avenue would be for heterosexual couples to marry the other recognition at o p m for federal employees to which this bill applies heterosexual couples living in common law marriage are also  recognized marriage is only available to same sex couples in six states and even if they do legally marry they still do not have access to federal civilian employment benefits such as health care and retirement benefits for their families the germans amendment is not about fantasy or even about giving opposite sex couples in a manner of securing family benefits it is essentially altering the original intent of this bill which is to extend benefits to individuals who have been denied such simply because of their sexual orientation therein lies the real constitutional issue at hand lastly the amendment is unnecessary again of course unless the gentleman believes that marriage is an undue burden upon opposite sex couples who want family benefits so again i thank the gentleman for his engagement but i urge opposition to this amendment to one of the other members wish to speak on the gentleman's amendment if no other members wishes to speak on the amendment the question is now on the bilbray amendment all those in favor signify by saying german and human recognized i'm not going to call the i'm just going to say look i didn't come here with an agenda i didn't even come here with an intent to make an amendment it's just as a discussion a valid it became obvious to me that that that the should be made and i appreciate the the ability to dialogue on this side i understand and i thank the gentleman i now move that the subcommittee on the federal workforce postal service and the gist of columbia report twenty five seventeen as amended the committee on oversight and government reform with the recommendation of the bill does pass the question is on favorably reporting h r twenty five seventeen for the committee on oversight and government reform all those in favor signify