We officially do not have the VAWA

Congress is a hot mess, which is generally the norm, but for the love of all that is holy 66 days without a disaster package for victims of Sandy and the death of the VAWA. I’m glad we avoided a fake crisis that was the fiscal cliff, because there is totally nothing else going on.

So can someone explain to me how we failed on the Violence Against Women Act? Because this was supposed to be easy. Maddow’s blog had a post about it written by Steve Benen.

So the VAWA was approved by the Senate back in April with a 68 to 31 vote. The bill was co-written by a liberal Democrat Pat Leahy (VT-D) and a conservative Republican Mike Crapo (ID-R). It should have been approved like it had been in 2000 and 2005. But House Republicans killed it.

Why you ask? Because the GOP hates women, gays, and people of color. The House GOP found the bill was too supportive of immigrants, the LGBT community, and Native Americans. They decided it was better to let the bill expire than to approve an expanded proposal. Vice President Joe Biden (an original author of the bill) tried and failed to keep the bill alive. This is the first time since 1994 that the Violence Against Women Act doesn’t exist.

Senator Patty Murray (WA-D) said:

“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.”

So, proponents of the law aim to revive the law in the new Congress, but they will start from scratch, and in the meantime state and local governments will have fewer resources to combat domestic violence.

Republicans took a beating in the last election from the ladies. Remember the rape caucus? Yeah, they lost. Apparently, the GOP continues to believe that women are not important. Anyone who votes for these people better be able to defend this or not speak to me for a lengthy period of time.