Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 06:44 pm
It’s not just the Sandy bill. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and John Boehner (R-OH) also killed legislation that would help protect 30 million American women’s lives.
Yes, Joe Biden’s Violence Against Women Act was just killed for the first time since 1994, thanks to the House Republicans. We are truly going backward with each moment these knuckle draggers occupy the House.
To get more stories like this, subscribe to our newsletter The Daily.
Each congress before this one managed to keep the VAWA alive with no problem, because it was basic: It provided funding for the investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women, money to state and local government to fight domestic violence, helped support women fleeing an abuser, and so much more.
But just as with the Sandy bill, House Republicans found much to object to in the reauthorization of the VAWA. For example, it failed to adequately shame victims and also failed to shield perpetrators.
Don’t you think we should be working together as a country to make sure that violent perpetrators have more access to their victims? Yes? This is what the House Republicans think. Must give abuser more access, control and power. Especially if that victim is an “illegal immigrant”. I mean, hey, you come to the Land of the Free and get attacked — tough luck!
In Republicanese, if we let “them” get murdered or brutally attacked, they’ll self-deport, so it’s a win. Yes, let’s show everyone why they do NOT want to live here. We treat our women like crap — come on, in!
This is the same Party that tried to rename a rape victim a “rape accuser”. Perhaps they have binders full of “accusers” they need to “shut down”. They seem to spend an inordinate amount of time worrying about granting the perp access to the victim and shutting down as many protections for women as they can.
Republicans also object to same sex couples and Native American women being protected. All those women (and men, actually) can just suck it, as far as the House GOP sees it. They have their principles, you see. Sniff. Family values.
House Republicans proposed their own version, after abandoning the Senate’s bipartisan version. The House version was so bad, it’s fair to call it the Pro Violence Against Women Act. It’s so bad President Obama vowed to veto the House version. Sounding familiar now? Yes, just another piece of standard legislation that any other congress would manage to pass, but oh, no. Not this one. This House is busy hunting for ways they can oppress women, not empower them. That is, when they’re not busy wasting millions of taxpayer dollars putting ObamaCare up for another Show Vote. These are Very Busy and Important Men.
As for the alleged “protected class” of women, well, they too must be punished for having the bad sense to be born females in the first place. If you people really didn’t want to be killed, surely your body would “shut that down”.
No, Republicans didn’t really say that… Yet. But what else can they be thinking? Women die every day from intimate partner assault in this country. It’s a crisis. It’s an emergency. Wanting to mitigate the violent murder of American women should be the most basic thing, especially from a party that claims to stand for freedom.
Here’s the reality: Republicans would rather let women die than compromise on their “principles” (aka; have to extend the freedoms they enjoy to others).
Chris Christie is doing a masterful job shaming House Republicans for their failure to respond to the needs of the people: Lives lost. Destruction. Hunger. Lost homes. Seems a given.
But we can take those same end results and apply them to women, specifically women who have been the victim of violence. Yes, while the House Republicans were telling Sandy victims to go screw themselves, they also left women facing life-threatening situations hanging yet again.
The VAWA has been collecting tea dust since April when the Senate sent the bipartisan legislation to the House, where it joined the growing pile of legislation ignored by the Republican-led House. Maybe the boys are using all of these bills for toilet paper, but then, that would presume they were doing something useful and I think we all know better by now.
What House Republicans have done to Sandy victims and women in peril is outrageously offensive, but there’s no end to it. Eric Cantor will surely step up to the cameras he loves to much to smugly lecture us on how they can’t just go passing legislation willy-nilly, especially not when they are so offended by parts of it. Not to worry, Boehner equated the war on women to being as fake as a “war on caterpillars”. There, problem solved.
Compromise on the backs of women’s lives? YES. Compromise in order to get a bill passed? Not unless they’re backed into a corner and told by people who matter (read: $$$) to shut the Hell up and do their jobs.
Women are dying every day as a result of intimate partner abuse. DYING. Those who manage to get away today need shelter. Their children need shelter.
Instead, too many will be turned away because there is no funding. Three women a day die as a result of intimate partner violence, and that was with the VAWA in place. It’s reasonable to expect violence against women to increase by 60% (back to the rates pre-VAWA) if the act is left unfunded over the long-term.
A likely 60% increase in violence against women? A 5% increase is unacceptable, especially when it comes as the result of a petulant refusal to sign legislation that every other congress has signed.
Republicans should be so proud.
Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
