Senate Beats Bid to Strike Funds for King Holiday

The Senate overwhelmingly defeated two attempts today by conservative Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) to deny the Martin Luther King Federal Holiday Commission federal money and limit its extension to two years.

In back-to-back ballots, the Senate defeated 86 to 11 an amendment striking a proposed $300,000-a-year authorization for the commission and a second amendment 92 to 6, which would have reduced the proposed extension from five years to two years.

Helms reminded the Senate that when the commission was created in 1983, all sponsors said it would never receive federal money, adding, “The Senate ought to abide by its word.”

“Never before--not for George Washington, not for Abraham Lincoln, not for anybody--for whom there is a federal holiday has there been a federal expenditure.”

But two Southern senators, Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and Terry Sanford (D-N.C.), said the federal money is needed to help dramatize King’s birthday and to make known to younger Americans the slain civil rights leader’s legacy.

The bill would also make the assassinated civil rights leader’s wife, Coretta Scott King, a life member of the commission.

The House has already passed a bill making the commission permanent with an annual authorization of $500,000.

The commission was created in 1986, three years after King’s birthday was declared a national holiday, and extended for three years in 1986. It has never received federal funds, surviving on manpower and space provided by other agencies and on private gifts.