Iowa's 5th District Rep. Steve King “Explains” His Vote 

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RadioIowa

Congressman Steve King (R-Kiron, Iowa) was the only “no” vote yesterday in the House on a proposal to honor the slaves who built the U.S. Capitol.  During a phone conversation late this afternoon [Wednesday] with Radio Iowa, King explained his vote. According to King, the slavery-related resolution was passed in a “quid pro quo” deal that will get a picture in the capitol visitor center changed to include the words “In God We Trust.” 

“It is clearly etched in stone above the speaker's chair in the House chambers:  'In God We Trust.'  The architect of the capitol has been for years trying to eradicate any sign of faith or Christianity from the capitol itself and from the historical documents that flow from it…So this was a deal that we had to put up another monument up to slavery to even get another resolution passed…I'm out of patience with these kind of maneuverings,” King said.

According to King, the picture of the speaker's chair that is currently in the capitol visitor's center is inaccurate.  “They had photoshopped that language off of the picture, so the architect of the capitol had gone in – or directed someone to go in – and photoshop and scrub the language, 'In God We Trust'…and in order to get them to agree to put the real language back in the picture so the picture was real, we had to agree to pass a resolution to put another monument up to slavery,” King said.  “So it was a trade-off that we had to apparently give up something in order to get the truth back and I rejected that idea and I think there were a lot of members that would have liked to vote no with me.”

So why was King the only no vote?

“I think it's simply many of them thought, 'I don't want to die on that hill.  It's not worth fighting over,'” King replied.  “…It was a deal and I mean, I sat there and looked at that (voting) board for quite a while last night and I thought this through and I knew I was going to be the only one and I thought: 'I just can't.  I just cannot simply go along with this and let them do what they're doing to our history.' This doesn't have anything to do with slavery to speak of, really.  It has to do with them trying to amend our history, after the fact, and at some point somebody had to draw the line and no one else had the will to do it when the issue was slavery.”  

“I would just add that there were about 645,000 slaves that were brought to the United States and I'm with Martin Luther King, Junior on this.  His documents and his speeches – I've read most of them and I agree with almost every word,” King said. “Slavery was abhorrent, but it was also a fact of life in those centuries where it existed and of the 645,000 Africans that were brought here to be put forcibly into slavery in the United States, there were over 600,000 people that gave their lives in the Civil War to put an end to slavery and I don't see the monument to that in the Congressional Visitors Center and I think it's important that we have a balanced depiction of history.”

(click here to read the original story with links at Radio Iowa)