It’s over for House Resolution 600 – the legislation introduced by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas that would have proclaimed Michael Jackson as an American legend, musical icon and world humanitarian.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday denied the resolution because debate on the symbolic measure could raise “contrary views” about the pop star’s life, she explained.
Lawmakers are free to use House speeches “to express their sympathy or their praise any time that they wish,” said Pelosi, D-Calif. “I don’t think it’s necessary for us to have a resolution.”
Even before Pelosi’s comments, some Democrats said privately they did not support the resolution and a divisive debate would hurt House efforts to muster the votes for priorities such as health care and climate change.
“A resolution, I think, would open up to contrary views to — that are not necessary at this time to be expressed in association with a resolution whose purpose is quite different,” Pelosi said at a Capitol Hill news conference where she discussed various legislative matters.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who posted a video calling Michael Jackson a “pervert” and a “pedophile,” had pledged to do all he could to block the resolution. In an interview Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “The O’Reilly Factor,” he said his views had not changed.
The Long Island Republican told host Bill O’Reilly that he “was saying what millions of Americans really felt.”
Unbowed, Jackson Lee said she will seek support from colleagues who thanked her when she introduced the measure June 26, one day after Michael Jackson died. She said honorary resolutions don’t often “pass the next day.”
When members of the Congressional Black Caucus held a moment of silence in the House after Jackson died June 25, some lawmakers walked out of the chamber. It drew only one co-sponsor, Rep. Diane Watson, D-Calif., and was not endorsed by other black caucus members.
From the stage at Jackson’s memorial Tuesday at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, Jackson Lee hoisted a framed copy of the resolution.
