Next ‘War on Women’ Showdown Looms Over VAWA Reauthorization
The Senate passed a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act today, rejecting a Republican alternative and setting up a conference showdown just as Democrats are charging the GOP in an election year with waging a “war on women.”
With 61 co-sponsors in the upper chamber going into the vote, including Sens. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass.), it was a given that the reauthorization, crafted by Sens. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) and Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), would eventually pass.
But the extension until 2016 didn’t slide through 68-31 this afternoon without a good deal of controversy.
Three amendments that needed to cross the 60-vote threshold failed before the final vote on the bill. The first two were variations of a push to increase funding for processing of backlogged rape kits. Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s (D-Minn.) version failed 57-41, and Sen. John Cornyn’s (R-Texas) was shot down 50-48.
Cornyn’s amendment also called for Backpage.com to remove parts of the website linked to child sex trafficking and required that 75 percent of funds be spent on clearing the massive backlog of untested kits.
After Klobuchar’s amendment failed, Cornyn said on the Senate floor that his variation was his colleagues’ “last chance” to correct a wrong that’s “nothing short of a scandal.”
Of his language that would have established a sexual forensic registry, he said, “If you don’t catch them early, more people are going to get hurt.”
The third amendment was the Republican alternative to the VAWA reauthorization, offered by Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). It struck language that singled out protection of gays, lesbians and transgenders, lowered the number of visas for legal and illegal immigrants who are victims of domestic abuse from the Democrats’ 15,000 cap to 10,000 a year, and offered a federal court alternative to the Democrats’ plan to let tribal court systems try non-Indian abusers.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) slammed the GOP version for replacing the word “women” with “victim,” saying it “negates centuries of violence against women,” violence that wasn’t always illegal.
“It was this unique and shameful history we responded to in 1994 when we crafted the Violence Against Women Act,” he said during floor debate. “The Violence Against Women Act should be low-hanging fruit even in a disputatious Congress. You wouldn’t think there would be opposition but unfortunately there has been.”
Hutchison defended her bill, which also included mandatory sentencing guidelines for crimes ranging from possession of child pornography to aggravated sexual assault by means of rendering the victim unconscious, as being tougher than the Leahy-Crapo version.
“Our substitute improves on the underlying bill,” Hutchison said on the floor. “…No one is arguing that we shouldn’t pass a Violence Against Women Act; the question is, can we do it even better?”
Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett helmed a White House call with reporters this morning to push passage of the amendment and to highlight the Department of Justice stand on the American Indian provision.
She slammed the Hutchison-Grassley version for substituting “gender-neutral language” and putting a lower cap on the immigrant visas. “We think it take us backwards and leaves too many victims without protection,” Jarrett said.
The Hutchison-Grassley language drew upon a Congressional Research Service memo that outlined a number of constitutional concerns regarding the extension of tribal court jurisdiction to non-Indian members.
Last week, Grassley said that their version addressed “significant waste, ineligible expenditures, immigration fraud and possible unconstitutional provisions” in the Leahy-Crapo bill.
Democratic senators pushing the provision said that U.S. Attorneys currently decline to prosecute a majority of violent crimes that occur in Indian country, including an overwhelming amount of sexual abuse related cases.
“The jurisdictional gap keeps us from holding non-Indian men accountable,” Jarrett said.
Does anyone else out there think Valerie Jarrett is a really weird looking little lady?
Most progressive liberal women do look weird. That is why they are angry all of the time!
Most most modern, independent, progressive women don’t take their husband’s name when marrying, and certainly don’t retain it after divorce; but then Valerie’s ex-husband is the son of Vernon Jarret, radical black journalist and, of course, go-to CPUSA member- …seems to trump basic feminism.
Couldn’t your comment be considered violence?
Uh, this is all very fascinating, but is it still a fact the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate has not offered a Budget for our fiscally-insane federal Leviathan for what, three years now? Why would any sensible American citizen give a flying F about this VAWA Reauthorization crap? This is nothing but cheap-seats politics. Meanwhile, our national solvency lies in the balance! And I mean ACTUALLY. These derelict senators should be SHOT!
I still can’t understand Demublicans who support this kind of legislation, yet hate the Patriot Act. And, vice versa, for what it’s worth. VAWA is an unconstitutional disgrace.
Yeah, where does Congress get the police power to enforce legislation covering violence against anybody? I suspect this is covered by a thin veneer of Civil Rights, but it sure seems to step on state police power. Oh well, I guess we lost that battle long ago.
That battle was lost a hundred years ago, when governors of Southern states themselves asked the FBI to intervene to stop the Ku Klux Klan. And when kidnappers would transport their victims across state lines. And drug traffickers, and all sorts of other criminals that operated interstate.
Indeed, that was one rationale for the creation of the FBI.
More recently, it took National Guard troops to enforce desegregation of the South.
Exactly.
It flouts “equal protection of the law”.
fyi, somebody was getting concerned that too many American men were going overseas for wives, so the feminists started attaching a rider to the v.a.w.a. late in the night before signing, called i.m.b.r.a., the int’l marriage broker act. the excuse for it is that American men are just too violent and can’t be trusted to date whomever we want. what it requires us to do is criminal, and could lead to us getting really hurt, financially. it requires us to tell the foreign women EVERYTHING about us, so much that we could easily become targets of i.d. theft. i can’t give out the info. because of where i have lived and worked, as well as the i.d. theft thing. the u.s. is the only country that has this law. it also makes it very expen$ive, which effectively takes overseas dating out of most mens life, which was the intent of the bill. nice bunch, these feminists.
The root cause is that they, themselves cannot understand that they will never be happy. Not so long as they cannot grasp their own fundamental mental problems, be they “daddy issues” or “mommy issues” or that they’re one UGLY-looking human-being with a penchant for a bad attitude.
So, why WOULDN’T they want further control over how men behave?
I have been divorced since 2001 and in that time, I have dated many women with most of them looking for 1)a guy with a decent paycheck who 2)does whatever they want them to, while they, themselves feel no need to be accountable and 3) that they generally aren’t too pleased with men overall because we refuse to “obey” them and cede to their moody whims.
Even early in relationships, I’ve run into the mind-reader problem. That is, I cannot readily identify what it is they’re sore about without further information, with they’re acting as though I should be more attuned to their every mood, as listed in some magazine’s psychobabble BS. That’s usually the time I make myself scarce and go about doing my own thing. I have no time for such juvenile behavior.
As for American women, I have learned that even the most right-wing woman subscribes to the notion that men are “brain-damaged” somehow and two themes prevail: 1) The need to “change” the man..make him better…improve and mold and reshape him to something “better”. 2) Enjoy his company as a “friend” but for romps and slap & tickle, go to the sleazebag guy with a crappy attitude but the dangerous good looks. Yet, when confronted, you get the baby-blues “What are you talking about” look.
Women…here’s a tip. You’re no better at hiding your goings on than guys are. You’re not smarter than guys, either. In fact, the inherent distrust my generation of women display towards men is very off-putting and it’s no wonder men go overseas seeking females who aren’t all wrapped around the axle about it.
And, it’s also no wonder that feminazis have taken more control over men, due to their own dissatisfaction with their own lives and personalities. Yet, even this latest “score” will not satisfy their intense self-hatred. Their own denial of how mammals behave is stark. Loyalty, trust, fidelity are two-way streets, not just something the “man is responsible for”.
Then, the ongoing, created narrative that “men are pigs”. Some are but there is an equal number of women who are. I looked at my grandparents, aunts and uncles and the long-term marriages they all enjoyed. None of them were “pigs”. Nor were the men emasculated metrosexuals “in touch with their feminine side”. They were as loyal, caring, giving and tolerant of their wives as their wives were of them. Give and take, some sense of humor was required. Angry moments occurred but seldom lasted very long.
The “good old days”? Maybe but they definitely had something. Today’s bra-burners would love to romp all over it and claim how “oppressed” the women were, but during the 60′s they would come right out and say, “I don’t feel oppressed” and all the female members in my family worked, as did the men. In case you missed it, in the 1960′s.
Even I have considered looking overseas for a potential mate but…what scares me is the US citizenship ordeal and being used just for that. When people really want something, they will do anything to get it.
Civil Disobedience time….
that or go overseas and not come back
I already live abroad, and it’s worse. The things the Left hides in the US, they say openly elsewhere. Things like “women need special priveleges to ensure equality”, or “evil capitalism” or “the LEft needs to run the media, the universities, and the courts”. Limited government? What’s that? And thi s in a country that has largely rejected socialism.
(On the other hand, we have to balance our budget.)
Valerie Jarrett, and Van Jones Talks About Transforming Society
http://www.Youtube.com/watch?v=TnDxzvc0OXk
Thank you, sweet man chat Btaay Almighty Look
“Rubio voted against the Leahy-Crapo bill for the same reason. “Furthermore, it would give the Justice Department greater power in determining how funds are used at the state level, taking decision-making out of the hands of the state-based coalitions on the ground who know best about how to serve their communities,” he said, adding that he wants reauthorization of VAWA as it is currently written and hopes to vote for the bill when it emerges from the House-Senate conference.”
This is why you have to like a guy like Rubio. He’s one of the few people in Congress who bothers to think about how a Federal law will affect a state. Putting more power into the hands of the Justice Department and taking it away from states, who have a better idea on how to spend funds and protect their own citizens, is only a recipe for disaster. Too often the Federal government just ignores the needs of the states and that’s how you end up with disasters like Obamacare. Good for Rubio for pointing that out.
thanks and great article