The Delta Queen will stay shackled to Chattanooga’s shore for the time being after an attempt to move the boat to Cincinnati so it can cruise the Ohio River went awry at the 11th hour.
After months of debate, the 113th Congress ended without passing a critical bill that would have allowed the Delta Queen to operate out of Cincinnati as an overnight passenger vessel on the Ohio River for 15 more years, as it did before 2007.
“It is what it is,” Leah Ann Ingram, managing partner at Delta Queen Hotel, said Friday about the bill going aground.
Two U.S. Senate Democrats from the East Coast faced down the entire delegation from Ohio in a showdown over a battered paddlewheel steamer that enthusiasts say evokes the glory days of Mark Twain-era river culture.
According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Ben Cardin, D-Md., used a move called a “hold” to effectively strangle a bill that would have resurrected the Delta Queen, even after an identical bill sailed through the U.S. House.