Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I am a survivor of domestic violence from a previous marriage. I serve on the advisory council of a domestic violence shelter in my district. I am the co-chairwoman of the Working Group Against Domestic Violence in Congress. So if you haven't figured it out, this issue is very important to me and I want to protect women. Another role I have is, I am co-chairwoman of the Congressional Women's Caucus. And in that, I spoke with my Democratic colleague, and she knew it was an important issue to me, it was an important issue to her, and we really had talked about having a bipartisan approach that all women and all of us could vote on that we would agree on. So once I found out that Representative Bass was going to be the sponsor of the bill, I reached out to her office. We were trying to--we just never were able to get together before the Judiciary Committee markup on the bill, in the attempt to talk with her, to see if she would listen to my concerns. Then, in the Judiciary Committee, I offered an amendment that basically would make sure that domestic violence shelters could protect the victims and keep their privacy private. And that amendment was rejected, and I was told that it was too broad, and those types of things. So in that Judiciary Committee hearing I asked Representative Bass if she would be agreeable to meeting with me, so I could work with her to do an amendment in a bipartisan fashion to protect women and children, and she said absolutely, yes.…”