美国有线新闻 CNN 2013-06-24

搜索关注在线英语听力室公众号：tingroom，领取免费英语资料大礼包。

Albert Narj is the pastor¹ at West Point Baptist Church in Chicago. And as his state moves toward legalizing gay marriage his stands of support for that effort has drawn² criticism  from some of his clergy³, and from other Black church leaders across the Windy City.

Many of them came and whispered in my ears, ¡°I support you, man.¡± But they won't come out publicly because you will be ostracized⁴.

Do your think these clergy colleagues of yours will eventually come out and support gay marriage? Do you think it's heading in that direction.

If you had a better chance of becoming African American, my friend, it's not going to happen.

Welcome to CNN Radio News day. I'm Tommy Undres. Gay marriage and the Black church, civil rights and sexuality. We'll take up that evolving conversation later in the show. But first we start with what turned into a wild day on Capitol Hill, and the most unexpected news left the nearly full House of Representatives silent.

You¡¯ve heard that kind of hiss⁵? Well, you might hear a few grumbling⁶ in a second. That's the sound of a massive bill, the 5-year farm bill, sponsored by Republicans nearly failing. House members just stood in silence at a surprise.

The Yeas are 198, the Nays⁷ are 234, the bill has not passed.

More on who was cheering in a second. That surprise vote came at the exact time the Senate was announcing a major bipartisan deal on immigration. To talk about both of these stories, our Lisa Dayshut Dan joins us now from her booth in the attic⁹ of the Capital.

Hi, Lisa.  Hey, Tommy.

Lisa, so immigration is huge news but can I first ask you about the farm bill vote? They've been talking about this thing forever. What happened?

A lot of us settled 180s as soon as we saw that happened and almost wouldn't believe it. There were a lot of actors in this vote, Tommy. One, Republican didn't like the amount of subsidies¹⁰ in this bill. They thought that it was laden¹¹ with kind of port to farmers, at least conservatives did. On the other hand, Democrats¹² didn't like cuts to food stamps that are in the bill, and more requirements for food stamp recipients¹³. But I think what I really want to point out about his vote is not just how surprising it is, but that it is a very big deal. The farm bill is under a temporary extention right now. It runs out at the end of the year at least for dairy. Different products run out at different times. And if they don't pass a new farm bill or an extention, Tommy, we will revert¹⁴ to 1949 at laws on farms and farm pricing. So this is something that Congress has got to figure out and today was a big low.

Yeah, that's basically the food policy for the entire country, right?

Yeah, that exactly is.

So I am guessing there's another round of the grain game going on right now. But let's cut to the chase. What does this mean for Speaker Noehner. We touched on his shaky fate yesterday and today he couldn't  even get a bill sponsored by his own party through?

Yeah, this was a bad day for Speaker  Boehner, and I will tell you how Republicans responded to this loss. And here is Boehner's number 2 Eric Cantor of Virginia, speaking on the floor not long after this vote, talking to Democrats.

What we saw today was a Democratic leadership in the House that was insistent¹⁵ to undo¹⁶ years and years a by partisan⁸ work.

Now, what he is saying there is Democrats failed. He said Democrats had promised more votes on this bill and didn't deliver. Democrats are saying that's ridiculous, you are in charge, you need to come up with the votes. And here's a really amazing sound by it from former Speaker, now Democratic Leader, Nancy Pelosi on the score.

分享到：