Violence Against Women Act Expected To Be Debated By Senate This Week

WASHINGTON -- Democrats are pushing to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act this week, with an event by Vice President Biden on Wednesday and Senate debate that may begin mid-week.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Feb. 2 approved the (S. 1925) reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which aims to increase the reporting and prosecution of violence against women. The bill was sponsored by Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who is not a member of the committee. Nevertheless, the legislation attracted no GOP support among committee members and was approved by the committee on a party-line vote of 10-8. The act has been reauthorized twice before and Leahy's office said this was the first time it didn't receive bipartisan backing from the committee.

The measure now has a total of 61 cosponsors, including eight Republicans.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) office, in an email on Monday, outlined the anticipated legislative calendar for coming days, with the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization following the Buffett Rule and postal reform (emphasis added):

We do not expect cloture will be invoked on S.2230 [Buffett Rule]. Please note S.2204, the Menendez bill to increase taxes on American energy companies, will be the underlying measure before the Senate if cloture is not invoked; however, we think Leader Reid will move to reconsider the cloture vote on the motion to proceed to Postal Reform (S.1789). Leader Reid has also indicated he will turn to the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) after postal reform. In addition, Sen. Enzi has a Congressional Review Act Resolution of Disapproval regarding NLRB “Ambush Elections,” S.J.Res. 36. We will also vote on this resolution before the next recess.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) confirmed it was "likely" the Violence Against Women Act would be considered after postal reform, which is expected to follow the Buffett Rule. The Violence Against Women Act reauthorization could come "as early as mid-this week," the spokesman said. That would set it up to be the main focus next week, if there is no vote right away.

Since the Violence Against Women Act was first enacted in 1994, reporting of domestic violence has increased by as much as 51 percent. The legislation was aimed at improving the response to domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. Yet according to national statistics, more than three women are, on average, murdered by their husbands or boyfriends every day.

The Leahy-Crapo reauthorization would increase the emphasis on reducing domestic homicides and sexual assault, strengthen housing protections for domestic violence victims and focus more on the high rates of violence among teens and young adults.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and a few conservative organizations, object not to the act as a whole, but to new protections for LGBT individuals, undocumented immigrants who are victims of domestic abuse and the authority of Native American tribes to prosecute crimes.

The Leahy-Crapo bill enumerates protections for LGBT victims of domestic violence, forbidding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity by Violence Against Women Act grantees.

The reauthorization also expands the availability of visas for undocumented immigrants who have been victims of domestic violence and may be reluctant to come forward because of the risk of deportation. The act has always protected undocumented immigrants, but the reauthorization would raise the cap on visas for battered women and sexual assault victims to 15,000 from 10,000. The additional visas would come from unused visas from previous years.

Additionally, the reauthorization provides limited jurisdiction to tribes to prosecute Indian and non-Indian offenders in domestic violence cases. The tribal provision is taken from the SAVE Native Women Act, which had bipartisan support and was approved by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

Grassley said during a Feb. 2 hearing he backs the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, but doesn't support the Leahy-Crapo version, in part because of the provisions on LGBT individuals, immigration and tribal authority.

He has said the Republican leadership would not block the reauthorization of the law as long as their alternative bill was considered.

Democrats have said that they plan to use the legislation to highlight what they see as an increasingly hostile Republican attitude toward women.

McConnell has accused Democrats of "sitting up at night trying to figure out a way to create an issue where there isn't one -- not to help solve our nation's problems, but to help Democrats get reelected."

Biden, when he was in the Senate, introduced the original Violence Against Women Act, and he continues to be an outspoken advocate. On Wednesday, he and other senior administration officials will host an event stressing the need to reauthorize the act.

This story was updated with the number of VAWA reauthorization cosponsors in the Senate.

Comments

[reactionaryhater]

08:30 PM on 04/22/2012

This article was as baseless as the last VAWA article by Amanda Terkel. Even after some time to sit down and think continues to deliberately misrepresent the voices of opposition to VAWA. Her one source of substance, the Diane Rehm show, blatantly contradicts Terkel's statement that republicans oppose VAWA out of homophobia or racism, while her other sources are all circular to her own report which does not cite other sources! And she continues to relay propaganda about male-female violence that she gets directly from the people who benefit from relaying that dishonest information.

Why do people oppose VAWA? Well Terkel's sources all oppose it on the ground of wasteful expenditures. But everyone I've heard from opposes it because it not only fails to help men, but demonizes all men wholesale, and actively infringes the civil rights of any man who has nothing more than an accusation against him. Nothing about any of this in the "report"!

I'd all this bad reporting, but it's simply not reporting at all. Why is Terkel listed as a reporter when she does nothing but editorialize and even fabricate information? Maybe she does actual reporting when the issue is not about the Sacred Feminine.

[l78lancer]

04:14 AM on 04/20/2012

Hey repubs. Don't let a little bit of homophobia and xenophobia against illegals get in the way of blocking an otherwise good bill.

[flexibility2013]

02:56 PM on 04/19/2012

Where is the Vio lence Against Children Bill? Seems that much more of that is going around with those that have not come forth yet.

[harpen1]

12:03 PM on 04/24/2012

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s175 . Just 3% of all Senate bills in 2009–2010 were enacted.

[tim shepard]

03:24 PM on 04/18/2012

My ex wife hit me with a broomstick, jabbed me in the eye with her fingernails, and punched me in the genitals in order to try to get me to lose my temper when she was fighting to remove me from my house. She was hoping I would leave so she would be guaranteed full custody and a fat child support order. Finally she gave up trying and filed a false police report, I was fortunate and the police disobeyed their standing orders to arrest the man in a DV situation. VAWA is a sexist ploy by feminists to guarantee women the right to huge cash settlements, nothing else. Anyone who is informed would reject the idea of VAWA as nothing more than a sexist sham. Hell has a special place reserved for Joe Biden lets make sure he doesnt leave us a legacy misguided and wrong legislation.

[Coffee4Me]

12:41 PM on 04/17/2012

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/07/men-as-rape-victims-_n_1191154.html

Looks like President Obama acknowledged and took steps to protect male victims too.

[howie G]

12:12 PM on 04/17/2012

VAWA proponents lie and distort the facts. VAWA by name alone shows it's discriminatory ways. Why in this country is it ok to vote for a bill that ignores half of the abuse victims and only discourages men from being violent, not women? Watch this video and answer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lHmCN3MBMI&context=C44a48deADvjVQa1PpcFOHktE3vVPPz5IR11nPh_YktLBxd_zH7kY=

[Michael Tolbert]

10:55 AM on 04/17/2012

All states have existing laws to prevent murder, assault, battery and other acts of violence. Any rational person should find it ridiculous to create a law that only protects half the population when evidence shows that both women and men are nearly equally affect by violence in domestic relationships. Here's yet another example of how money (campaign contributions) corrupts politicians and gets them to do stupid things like authoring, drafting and supporting bills like this.

[Pantsy]

04:48 PM on 04/17/2012

where is evidence of both men and women being equally affected by domestic violence?

[flexibility2013]

03:00 PM on 04/19/2012

Knock, knock! Anybody home? This is a republic still! It doesn't mean that the 49%, the 25% or even the 1% should not have equal justice under the law. Would you like to borrow a copy of the Constitution?

[Ray2447]

10:18 AM on 04/17/2012

Credible research overwhelmingly shows that the ratio of domestic violence is at least 50/50 between women & men. http://tinyurl.com/3sakk According to one study by researchers who work at the CDC, in 70 percent of domestic violence incidents, where the domestic violence is not mutual, it's women who initiate the domestic violence. http://tinyurl.com/yzm9xhe Vice President Biden has called the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) “his baby,” but Biden should be ashamed, not proud, of his misandric piece of gender feminist, legislation, which excuses and rewards women’s domestic violence against children and men, thereby fueling more domestic violence against men and children by women.

[Ray2447]

10:16 AM on 04/17/2012

When will the domestic violence industry recognize women who batter children, and men? According to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services and DOJ statistics, more kids are killed by neglect and abuse in a year (1,460 in 2005), than all the female intimate partner homicides in in a year (1,181 in 2005). http://tinyurl.com/62rora and http://tinyurl.com/3xgllyv
As shown by HHS statistics, the age range for those child homicides is about ten times narrower than that for female intimate partner homicide, making that rate of child homicide far more concentrated. http://tinyurl.com/5hnjq6 Yet funding to prevent those child homicides is minimal, compared to the billions that go to the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA). And mothers are the single largest group of kid killers. They have a rate twice that of fathers, yet the taxpayer funded (gender feminist run) domestic violence industry would have us believe that women don't egregiously batter men too. They're lying!

[Ray2447]

10:15 AM on 04/17/2012

V.P. Biden recently called violence against women, "the very worst abuse." The very worst abuse is valuing one life less than another for having been born the wrong sex, or the wrong age. Under Biden's Violence Against Women Act the wrong sex is men and the wrong age group is children. Shelter and services are virtually non-existent for male victims of domestic violence (and in some cases men and their children) so those options out of a bad relationship, that are routinely available to women, are very often not available to men. Men wind up gender profiled and often falsely accused by the taxpayer funded, domestic violence industry, because of gender feminist ideology controlling the domestic violence industry. Men are often battered by domestic violence, and then battered again by the taxpayer funded, domestic violence industry. The taxpayer funded domestic violence industry has largely mischaracterized the true nature of domestic violence from the beginning and continues to mislead the public. Domestic violence law, following the gender feminist agenda/ideology over facts in evidence, does great harm to many innocent men and children (and also many battering women who need help) as shown in "Los Misandry" at Youtube http://tinyurl.com/27oh7cp and "Witch-Hunting Males" at Youtube. http://tinyurl.com/65dpzwu

[Dev Austin]

10:01 AM on 04/17/2012

Just like the effort against bulling the conservatives don't mind if there is violence against those that just don't fit in with there idea of being a human.

[Meredith Bayer Barbieri]

08:43 AM on 04/17/2012

So it's OK to beat up a woman if she is a lesbian? Their compassion is overwhelming. I don't know much about Jesus, but I don't think that's what he would do. The GOP confuses me.

[ennis438]

05:52 AM on 04/17/2012

Republipunks consider violence against women fine except if it occurs to one of the wives of the Koch's. They are much more interested in giving the middle finger to middle America by defeating the Buffett rule that would force their johns to pay a bit more of their fatcat welfare they have gotten over the last three decades.

[10 Little Amendments]

04:53 AM on 04/17/2012

The VAWA wording is sexist for no good reason. The bill is still under
debate, but you can get the 2005 version H.R.3402—5 PDF:
http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-109hr3402enr/pdf/BILLS-109hr3402enr.pdf
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=Bills-109hr3402enr.pdf&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz35

Do an Adobe advanced whole word search of the PDF and you find:
Key word/Count
women 206
men 8
spouse 46
intimate/
dating partner 24

The glaring disparity between men vs women is even worse when you see the context.
On men:
"Men are batterers in 50% of households
Engaging men and youth to fight D.V., sexual assault,
Engaging men and boys to work as allies with women and girls
to prevent violence against women and girls"

On boys: "Boys and girls clubs..." "Boys to work as allies"
On girls: "to create public education campaigns and community organising to encourage men and boys to work as allies with women and girls to prevent violence against women and girls..."

The presumption is that men and boys are innately predators, women and girls
purely victims. This bi-partisan bill was drafted and passed overwhelmingly
by men to attract women voters. A well-educated college sophomore could fix
the sexist language in one afternoon to make an equally effective
gender-neutral version. The current wording is an insult to men.

[Riana Lynn]

03:28 AM on 04/17/2012

This has to be re-authorized and ramped up for the young teen girls and college females that experience violence everyday. Young females experience the highest amounts of domestic violence compared to their older counterparts. We have to influence a new generation of individuals that value each other's bodies and lives.

[howie G]

11:53 AM on 04/17/2012

Wrong. Young males experience the highest amounts of domestic violence. Yes, studies show high school males experience more DV than high school females. Yet, VAWA does nothing to help male victims find resources for help. Nor does it address getting women to reduce their violence towards partners.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/ss/ss5905.pdf table 12. Pg. 49. Or do you feel it's fine to ignore abused men?

[Riana Lynn]

01:23 AM on 04/19/2012

No, I believe we need to focus more on young male violence as well. Especially, in the LGBT community