This week, the President urged Congress to resolve harmful budget cuts and reduce the deficit in a way that helps grow the economy and strengthen the middle class, held his first Cabinet meeting of the second term, announced three key Cabinet nominations, and signed the Violence Against Women Act.
Friday, March 1st
The President answered questions from White House reporters about his plans to move the country forward in light of the harmful automatic budget cuts — known as the sequester — that threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs, and cut vital services, that are taking place because Republicans in Congress refuse to close loopholes that only benefit the wealthy and the well-connected.
Monday, March 4th
The President announced his nominees to lead the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Office of Management and Budget.
The President convened the 17th meeting with his Cabinet- the first of his second term, to discuss how each agency would address the sequester and its impact on American families.
Tuesday, March 5th
The President spent some time with the staff of the Office of Management and Budget, reflecting on the importance of the work they’re doing in light of the sequester.
Thursday, March 7th
The President and Vice President traveled to the Department of the Interior for the signing of the Violence Against Women Act, which continues to strengthen the criminal justice system’s response to crimes against women, including domestic violence, sexual assault and trafficking.
It’s one thing for congressional Republicans to vote against the Violence Against Women Act. It’s another for some GOP lawmakers to try to deceive the public about their votes.
At first glance it seemed as though Republican Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri had broken with the majority of her fellow conservatives in the House of Representatives last week to renew an expanded version of the 1994 Violence Against Women Act, which funds programs to assist survivors of sexual assault and domestic abuse.
A statement from her office proclaimed: “Hartzler votes to protect women from acts of violence.”
“Violence against women, in all its forms, is unacceptable,” Hartzler said in the statement.
Reading the Hartzler press statements, one would believe she voted for the law. She didn’t — like most Republicans in Congress, Hartzler opposed VAWA when it was brought to the floor for final passage. But she voted for a watered-down version that was brought to the floor in order to be defeated, and Hartzler, aware of the popularity of the law, assumes the public won’t be knowledgeable enough to tell the difference.
This way, she can get the credit for pretending to do the popular thing, while actually doing the opposite.
A spokesperson for Hartzler told McClatchy “there wasn’t any intention to deceive.” Oh no, of course not. Hartzler opposed legislation, then issued press releases to make it seem as if she supported the legislation. Why would anyone think she intended to deceive?
What’s worse, Hartzler wasn’t the only one playing this cynical game.
What happened to far-right conservatives having the courage of their convictions? If they opposed the Violence Against Women Act and felt the need to vote against it, then why pretend otherwise? Why try to deceive the public instead of explaining why they opposed the legislation?
Extremism is disconcerting, but by some measures, cowardice is worse.
Universal Background Checks for Gun Purchases: The Senate Judiciary Committee is working on gun violence prevention legislation as we speak and is expected to advance a universal background check bill to the full Senate as soon as tomorrow. This is a no brainer. Not only would this be the most effective policy to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them, it’s supported by nearly everyone. The most recent poll, out just today, finds that 88 percent support universal background checks — including 85 percent of gun-owning households. Other polls have shown support of over 90 percent.
Job-Creating Infrastructure Investments: A majority of Americans support making investments to repair and replace our deteriorating national infrastructure — investments that could create hundreds of thousands of jobs. In fact, investing in our roads, bridges, airports, and other infrastructure was the most popular job creation policy. Unfortunately, Congressional Republicans have repeatedly voted down such proposals in recent years, citing their unwillingness to finance them using tax hikes on the wealthy and corporate special interests like Big Oil.
Pathway to Earned Citizenship: A pathway to earned citizenship is an integral part of reforming our broken immigration system and bringing the 11 MILLION undocumented immigrants already here out of the shadows. Even 60 percent of Republicans support a pathway to earned citizenship, which receives the support of 70 percent of all Americans.
Expanded Early Childhood Education: In his State of the Union speech, the president proposed universal pre-kindergarten for every four year-old and a significant expansion of other early childhood education programs. Unsurprisingly, two-thirds of Americans supportmaking these kind of vital investments in our children — investments which come with significant returns.
BOTTOM LINE: Support for progressive ideas and values isn’t limited to Democrats or the left side of the political spectrum. Most progressive policies enjoy broad, bipartisan support and are simply mainstream views held by a majority of Americans. By contrast, conservatives are clinging to an ideology and views that are seen as extreme and out of touch by a majority of Americans.
Republicans have offered a number of reasons why they oppose the Violence Against Women Act. Some think it’s unconstitutional. Others argue that it’s just a meaningless bill with a patriotic title.
On Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) added a new one: Native Americans supposedly aren’t capable of holding fair trials.
Last week, Grassley was one of just 22 senators—all Republican men—who voted against reauthorizing VAWA. During a town hall meeting in Indianola on Wednesday, a woman asked him to explain his vote. Grassley responded that the legislation is unconstitutional, a belief shared by at least five of his colleagues.
Since the Constitution guarantees citizens the right to a trial among a jury of peers, Grassley reasoned that white men would be deprived of their rights if those who were accused of violence against Native American women had to appear in a tribal court. “On an Indian reservation, it’s going to be made up of Indians, right?” Grassley said. “So the non-Indian doesn’t get a fair trial.”
GRASSLEY: One provision that non-Native Americans can be tried in tribal court. And why is that a big thing? Because of the constitutionality of it, for two reasons. One, you know how the law is, that if you have a jury, the jury is supposed to be a reflection of society. [...] So you get non-Indians, let me say to make it easy, you get non-Indians going into a reservation and violating a woman. They need to be prosecuted. They aren’t prosecuted. So the idea behind [VAWA] is we’ll try them in tribal court. But under the laws of our land, you got to have a jury that is a reflection of society as a whole, and on an Indian reservation, it’s going to be made up of Indians, right? So the non-Indian doesn’t get a fair trial.
Watch:
There is actually no requirement that juries reflect “society as a whole.” The Sixth Amendment requires juries to be drawn from the “State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed,” and Supreme Court decisions establish that criminal defendants also have a right to a jury which is “drawn from a fair cross section of the community,” where the trial court convenes to hear their case. But this does not entitle anyone to be tried by a jury that reflects the whole of American society.
A person who is tried in Vermont is likely to have an all-white jury because over 95 percent of Vermont is white. Similarly, a person who commits a crime in the Navajo Nation will face a jury of Native Americans because the population of the local community is made up of Navajo people. There is no reason to believe that Navajo jurors are any less impartial than white Vermonters, and Grassley is wrong to suggest otherwise.
Grassley went to great lengths to tell attendees that he had supported VAWA in the past. “I support 98 percent of what’s in the bill,” he said. If it weren’t for his belief that Native Americans’ are incapable of conducting a fair trial, perhaps he would have voted for it again.
If you want Congress to reauthorize VAWA, sign ThinkProgress’ petition here.
In an interview on Thursday with conservative magazine Newsmax, Tea Party standard-bearer and so-called ‘savior’ of the Republican party Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) revealed that he will become a cosponsor of the “Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act.” The bill is a concerted effort to prevent girls in dangerous family situations from going across state lines to receive abortions.
Familiarly known as “the Grandmother Incarceration Act,” CIANA bills have come up in Congress several times in recent years. Nearly every iteration of the legislation would prevent even a victim of rape or incest from getting a ride to an abortion clinic beyond state lines from her grandmother or older sibling, if she is under the age of 18. Instead, the girl would be forced to inform her parents or legal guardian, and be required to have them present.
While the bill has not yet been introduced, previous versions of the text would even apply the requirements to girls who require a medically necessary, potentially lifesaving abortion.
The fact that Rubio will serve as a co-sponsor on the legislation reveals a lot about the supposed new face of the Republican party. The policy, like many of Rubio’s policy choices, is actually an old trick from the Grand Old Party, not some new approach to Republican ideals. And it falls in line with Rubio’s party’s, and the Senator’s own, recent anti-woman efforts:
With his post-State of the Union rebuttal, Rubio signed up to be the face of a Republican party that is working hard to win over women and people of color, the groups that cost Republicans the election last time around. But with Rubio’s history of anti-woman policies, and now his renewed commitment to co-sponsor more of the same, he may just on the vanguard of a new Republican path back to the same Republican problems.
The Violence Against Women Act reauthorization passed through the Senate on Tuesday afternoon, by a vote of 78 to 22. Of those opposing the legislation, all 22 were Republican men. Every female Senator supported the bill.
Among the most notable votes against the bill were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). Here’s a look at all 22 opponents of VAWA:
VAWA expired during the previous Congress, and because of Republican opposition to provisions for Native American, undocumented, and LGBT victims of domestic violence, the different versions approved by the House and by the Senate were never reconciled, and the bill died without final passage at the end of 2012.
Since its inception in 1994, VAWA has established a system for helping women in danger. The law created the National Domestic Violence Hotline, made stalking illegal, and helped drive down the number of partner homicides.
Two Senators — Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) — also offered significant amendments to the VAWA bill. Grassley’s amendment stripped all Native American, LGBT, and undocumented victim protections. It was voted down on Thursday of last week. Cornyn’s, aimed exclusively on the bill’s language relating to tribal lands, failed on Monday.
Last week, eight Senators voted against even moving to debate on the revived legislation, and they are among those who voted against its passage. Four of them did so because their radical interpretation of the constitution precludes federal protection for domestic violence victims.
The version passed by the Senate today will next go to the House for a vote, where it is expected to encounter some difficulties, particularly over the protections of tribal women included in the bill.
Since Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) abandoned his opposition to providing undocumented immigrants with a pathway to citizenship and embraced a bipartisan framework for comprehensive immigration, political pundits and Republican leaders have anointed the Florida Congressman the future of the GOP.
Consequently, the likely 2016 presidential candidate has become a media darling, appearing on conservative talk shows and mainstream outlets to tout his reform principles and convince skeptics of the wisdom of reforming the nation’s broken immigration system. The media idolization reached its zenith on the cover of this week’s issue of TIME magazine. The publication prominently features a picture of a defiant Rubio under the headline, “The Republican Savior: How Marco Rubio became the new voice of the GOP.”
But dig beyond Rubio’s newfound embrace of immigration reform, and you’ll find that the GOP’s future appears stuck in the past, as the great hope of the party still espouses many of the extreme policies voters rejected in November:
1. Refused to raise the debt ceiling. Rubio voted against the GOP’s compromise measure to temporarily suspend the debt limit through May 19 in order avoid defaulting on the national debt. In a statement posted on his website, Rubio insisted that he would hold the debt ceiling increase hostage “unless it is tied with measures to actually solve our debt problem through spending reforms.”
2. Co-sponsored and voted for a Balanced Budget Amendment. “Now more than ever, we need a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Rubio proclaimed in 2011. A Balanced Budget Amendment would force the government to slash spending during an economic downturn, driving up unemployment and making the downturn worse, in a vicious cycle. If the amendment were in place during the last financial crisis, unemployment would have doubled.
3. Signed the Norquist pledge. Rubio pledged to never raise taxes under any circumstances and even voted against the last-minute deal to avert the fiscal cliff, since the deal included $600 billion in revenue. “Thousands of small businesses, not just the wealthy, will now be forced to decide how they’ll pay this new tax,” Rubio noted in a statement.
4. Backed Florida’s voter purge. Rubio defended Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) attempted purge Democratic voters from the rolls, brushing off its disproportionate targeting of Latino voters. He also defended Florida’s decision to shorten its early voting period from two weeks to eight days by pointing to “the cost-benefit analysis.” After Election Day, several prominent Florida Republicans admitted that the election law changes were geared toward suppressing minority and Democratic votes and researchers found that long voting lines drove away at least 201,000 Florida voters.
5. Doesn’t believe in climate change. During a recent BuzzFeed interview, Rubio claimed has “seen reasonable debate” over whether humans are causing climate change. Scientists have long agreed that the debate is now over.
6. Opposed federal action to help prevent violence against women. Rubio voted against the motion to proceed to debate the Violence Against Women Act, noting that he disagrees with portions of the bill. Rubio claims he supports a scaled-back version of the legislation.
7. Believes employers should be able to deny birth control to their employees. Rubio co-sponsored a bill — along with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) — that sought to nullify Obamacare’s requirement that employers provide contraception to their employees without additional co-pays by permitting businesses to voluntarily opt out of offering birth control.
8. Recorded robo calls for anti-gay hate group. Rubio has previously boasted the endorsement of anti-gay hate groups like the Family Research Council and during the election recorded robocalls for the National Organization of Marriage urging Americans to deny equal rights to gays and lesbians. He recently wouldn’t take a position on legislation that would prohibit employers from firing employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identify and wouldn’t say “whether same-sex couples should receive protections under immigration law.”
No wonder pundits are calling the 112th Congress the worst in the history of our nation. Their last day (yesterday) was a particularly repugnant one. Good riddance 112th “do nothing” Congress…
Congress had a lengthy to-do list as the end of the year approached, with a series of measures that needed action before 2013 began. Some of the items passed (a fiscal agreement, a temporary farm bill), while others didn’t (relief funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy).
And then there’s the Violence Against Women Act, which was supposed to be one of the year’s easy ones. It wasn’t.
Back in April, the Senate approved VAWA reauthorization fairly easily, with a 68 to 31 vote. The bill was co-written by a liberal Democrat (Vermont’s Pat Leahy) and a conservative Republican (Idaho’s Mike Crapo), and seemed on track to be reauthorized without much of a fuss, just as it was in 2000 and 2005.
But House Republicans insisted the bill is too supportive of immigrants, the LGBT community, and Native Americans — and they’d rather let the law expire than approve a slightly expanded proposal. Vice President Biden, who helped write the original law, tried to persuade House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) to keep the law alive, but the efforts didn’t go anywhere.
And so, for the first time since 1994, the Violence Against Women Act is no more. Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), the Democratic point person on VAWA, said in a statement:
“The House Republican leadership’s failure to take up and pass the Senate’s bipartisan and inclusive VAWA bill is inexcusable. This is a bill that passed with 68 votes in the Senate and that extends the bill’s protections to 30 million more women. But this seems to be how House Republican leadership operates. No matter how broad the bipartisan support, no matter who gets hurt in the process, the politics of the right wing of their party always comes first.”
Proponents of the law hope to revive the law in the new Congress, starting from scratch, but in the meantime, there will be far fewer resources available for state and local governments to combat domestic violence.
As for electoral considerations, Republicans lost badly in the 2012 elections, thanks in large part to the largest gender gap in modern times, but if that changed GOP attitudes towards legislation affecting women, the party is hiding it well.
Update: Reader AG asks about the House version that was approved several months ago. As I reported at the time, the House gutted the bipartisan Senate bill with a watered-down version, which was widely seen by everyone involved as a joke that undermined the interests of victims. It had no support in the Senate and drew a White House veto threat. House Republicans knew this, and instead of revisiting the issue and/or working with the Senate on a compromise, GOP leaders simply decided the law was not a priority. The result was this week’s outcome.
Ed. Note: This clip from the award winning HBO series “The Newsroom“ examines some of this right-wing extremist madness…
Taking a stand against domestic violence is a start. Trying to get the idiots (on the Right) in Congress to renew the Violence Against Women Act is like pulling teeth. And they claim there’s no war against women coming from their camp…
Domestic violence and sexual assault. The original and literal war on women. And now, the Republicans in Congress are refusing to re-authorize the assistance for abuse victims. Yesterday, Vice President Biden gave a sobering speech on the importance of the Violence Against Women Act, genuinely stunned that the GOP has gone down the road this far. Joe Biden is not a Johnny come lately to this fight. He is the original author of the VAWA. He is the original author of the law.
Republicans are blocking it in the Senate right now, and even if the Democrats can muster enough votes to overcome a filibuster, the Republican House is not so keen on bothering to stop domestic violence. Why? There are stuff in there that are not “consensus items”, argue Republicans.
Iowa Senator Charles Grassley (R), who leads opposition to the law’s renewal, said, “I wish we could proceed in a consensus fashion again. But there are provisions in the bill before us that have never been part of VAWA before. They’re not consensus items.”
Well, what are these non-consensus items that’s forcing the Republicans hands to put at risk resources to fight sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence and physical abuse? What is the big poison pill? Not to spoil the surprise, but it’s teh gays, teh “illegals” and teh Indians.
If you ask why the Republicans are holding it up – other than their fierce hatred for anything the administration is for – they have an interesting answer: it’s because this version of VAWA includes protection for people who they do not believe deserve equal protection of the laws: LGBT people, undocumented immigrants, and native Americans. Because, you know, gay people don’t experience domestic violence (or maybe if we do), sexual battery against women is fine so long as the woman doesn’t have papers, and native American reservations don’t deserve any federal funds for housing and protecting victims of sexual assault because… well, just because.
Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) has put together the most succinct statement rebutting the Republican disgraceful opposition to the bill.
“Whether you are gay or straight, whether you are Caucasian or Native American, whoever you are–you should have access to services that protect you from domestic violence. It is very important for millions of American women all across the country.
“I ask those who are threatening to block this bill: If the victim is in a same-sex relationship, is the violence and danger any less real?
“If a family comes to this country and the husband beats his wife to a bloody pulp, do we say, ‘Well, you’re illegal, I’m sorry, you don’t deserve any protection?’
That is exactly what the Republicans are saying. If you’re gay, or transgender, then you deserve to be beaten up at home, and suffer sexual and physical assaults at the hands of a partner in the dark corner of social stigma and a lack of resources. If you are undocumented and your husband or boyfriend is assaulting you, you should have no place to go. If you’re a native American, you’re just shit outta luck.
Southern Baptist ethicist Richard Land and two dozen other conservative leaders urged the Judiciary Committee to reject the bill, claiming VAWA would harm the family while maintaining programs that are ineffective. They acknowledged the “very real problem of violence against women and children,” but countered with VAWA “encourages the demise of the family as a means to eliminate violence.” The letter also indicated the latest version of VAWA would add expensive programs, including one that would have the effect of re-educating “school children into domestic violence ideology.”
That’s nice. VAWA “encourages the demise of the family as a means to eliminate violence.” Does it ever occur to these morons that the building blocks of a family – love, faith, trust, care, and respect - are decimated the moment domestic violence is perpetrated? The demise of the family does not come from interventions to assist the victims of domestic violence; it comes from the perpetration of domestic violence itself. A family where domestic violence is the norm is already demised.
But, when ending domestic violence means breaking up family – after all, the battered wife may have to get a divorce from her husband who might one day kill her – I suppose it’s nice to know that the conservative movement would rather see continued battery of the abused instead. After all, how dare you suggest women (or men) be able to escape from a “family” that gives them a black eye once every night?
It says something about conservative family values. When the social pressure to keep a dysfunctional unit nonetheless intact takes precedence over the protection of the abused, that is what a conservative family values society looks like. Good to know.
Nah, there’s no Republican war on women. Why do you ask?
