[Vision2020] Republicans Retreat on Domestic Violence

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>


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February 9, 2012
Republicans Retreat on Domestic Violence

Even in the ultrapolarized atmosphere of Capitol Hill, it should be
possible to secure broad bipartisan agreement on reauthorizing the Violence
Against Women Act, the 1994 law at the center of the nation’s efforts to
combat domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking. The law’s renewal
has strong backing from law enforcement and groups that work with victims,
and earlier reauthorizations of the law, in 2000 and 2005, passed Congress
with strong support from both sides of the aisle.

Yet not a single Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted in
favor last week when the committee approved a well-crafted reauthorization
bill<http://www.leahy.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/BillText-ViolenceAgainstWomenReauthorizationAct.pdf>introduced
by its chairman, Senator Patrick Leahy, and Senator Michael
Crapo, a Republican of Idaho, who is not on the committee.

The bill includes smart improvements aimed, for example, at encouraging
effective enforcement of protective orders and reducing the national
backlog of untested rape kits. The Republican opposition seems driven
largely by an antigay, anti-immigrant agenda. The main sticking points
seemed to be language in the bill to ensure that victims are not denied
services because they are gay or transgender and a provision that would
modestly expand the availability of special visas for undocumented
immigrants who are victims of domestic violence — a necessary step to
encourage those victims to come forward.

Senator Charles Grassley, the committee’s ranking Republican, offered a
substitute bill that not only cut out those improvements but called for a
huge reduction in authorized financing, and elimination of the Justice
Department office devoted to administering the law and coordinating the
nation’s response to domestic violence and sexual assaults. His measure was
defeated along party lines.


Mustering the 60 votes needed to get the bill through the full Senate will
not be easy, even though previous reauthorizations were approved by
unanimous consent. Recalcitrant Republicans should be made to explain to
voters why they refuse to get behind the federal fight against domestic
violence and sexual assaults.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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