Confederate flags to still be allowed in veteran cemeteries

WASHINGTON — Channel 2 Action News first reported last month about Republicans and Democrats in Congress agreeing on a bill to ban Confederate flags at national cemeteries.

But now, even though House members voted in favor of the measure, it was quietly dropped from the final version of the bill.%

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As Channel 2’s Justin Gray found, it took a lot of people by surprise and sort of got lost in the mix with all the drama of this week's sit-in.

But efforts to remove the Confederate flag from national cemeteries look to be going back to square one.

While civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis led a sit-in on the House floor in the early hours of Thursday morning, a House and Senate conference committee issued a final version of the Zika funding bill.

Missing in that bill was a ban on Confederate flags in national cemeteries. It was an amendment that had passed the House last month with bipartisan support.

“I think it should have been kept in. The House passed this amendment,” Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo told Gray.

It was members of Curbelo’s party who pulled the Confederate flag ban that he supports from the final compromise bill.

“The Confederate flag is a flag of an army that was defeated. If people want to have the flag at their homes, their tombstones, I respect that. But it should not be a national symbol for our country,” Curbelo said.

Gray contacted leaders on the conference committee Friday to see why the controversial flag measure was cut.

A spokeswoman for the appropriations committee sent Gray a statement saying,

“In order to ensure passage in both the House and Senate and get these urgently needed funds approved, compromises had to be made.”

But Florida Sen. Bill Nelson says after controversial changes like this, the final Zika bill won't pass the Senate.

“That's not where the American people are and we've got to put a stop to this nonsense,” Nelson told Gray.

The conference committee meetings between House and Senate negotiators happen behind closed doors, so it's not clear who pushed to have the flag ban pulled.

Cox Media Group