Politics

Sources: Menendez holding up vote on resolution honoring Margaret Thatcher

Alex Pappas Political Reporter
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WASHINGTON – New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez is holding up a vote in the U.S. Senate on a resolution honoring Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom who died last week after suffering a stroke, multiple sources tell The Daily Caller.

While the House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring Thatcher last week, Menendez, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, objects to some of the language proposed by Republicans in the Senate’s version, sources said.

A copy of the proposed resolution, which would be offered by Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, honors “the life, legacy, and example of British Prime Minister Baroness Margaret Thatcher.”

Another source said Democrats want to “black out everything but a few lines acknowledging her service as prime minister.”

Reacting to the news, conservatives slammed Menendez.

“I don’t know if he’s blocking the Thatcher resolution because he likes Socialism or because he holds women in such low regard, but Senator Menendez should drop his objections immediately,” Matt Hoskins, the executive director of the Senate Conservatives Fund, told TheDC.

The proposed three-page resolution obtained by TheDC praises the former prime minister and “recognizes that Baroness Margaret Thatcher, working with President Ronald Reagan, helped bring a peaceful end to the Cold War.”

Tricia Enright, a spokeswoman for Menendez, did not immediately comment on this story, telling TheDC she forwarded an inquiry to staffers on the Foreign Relations Committee. Last week, Menendez called Thatcher a “dynamic force as an ally to the United States in winning the cold War and overcoming the despotism and repression suffered by hundreds of millions at the hands of Soviet communism.”

The news that Democrats were holding up a vote on the resolution was first reported last week on The Forge, the blog of the conservative policy organization Heritage Action.

“To refuse to honor a woman of such great historical and political significance, who was deeply loyal to the United States, is petty and shameful,” Katherine Rosario of Heritage Action wrote on the blog. “One truly has to wonder, what is it about Lady Thatcher that gives them pause?  Her unfaltering commitment to freedom?  Or perhaps the way she fought for individual liberty and limited government?”

Thatcher, known as the “Iron Lady,” died last week at 87.

Last Tuesday, the House passed H.Res.141, which expresses “the condolences of the House of Representatives on the death of the Baroness Margaret Thatcher, former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

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