John Boehner is sticking with the exclusionary
Republican Violence Against Women Act.
(Yuri Gripas/Reuters)
The Violence Against Women Act remains stuck in a House-Senate standoff, a result of a
procedural problem with the Senate bill. A visa fee contained in that bipartisan Senate bill is considered revenue, and revenue-raising bills have to originate in the House. The House could nonetheless decide to take up the Senate bill, but House Republicans
aren't doing that. Rather, they're sitting around doing the congressional version of "nyah nyah, you can't make us":
"The Senate has possession of both bills, so it’s very hard for us to negotiate with the Senate when we don’t even have a bill," the chief sponsor of the House version, Rep. Sandy Adams (R-Fla.), said this week.
House Republicans are also using the delay to try to paint the Senate, with its bipartisan bill, as the chamber politicizing the Violence Against Women Act, despite the
long list of domestic violence organizations, law enforcement groups and faith-based groups opposing the exclusionary, damaging House bill:
"We passed a good bill that dealt with all the victims, and it went to the Senate, and there it sits along with the Senate bill — in the Senate," Adams said. "So it is up to the Senate to make a decision whether they really want to pass a bill that is for victims, or whether they want to politicize it."
That "good bill," remember, excludes or weakens protections for LGBT, immigrant and Native American victims of violence.