On the recordJuly 24, 2012
I am proud to follow Senator Murray in her call to pass the bipartisan Senate bill which would reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. The Leahy-Crapo bill is the only bill that will protect all of the women in our country. I well remember when Vice President Biden was then-Senator Biden, and in 1990 he wrote the Violence Against Women Act. I was in the House at the time. He asked if I would carry the House version of his bill. I was extremely honored to do that. We were able to pass small portions of the bill early in the 1990s. But it wasn't until I came to the Senate that we actually passed the entire bill, and I think it was Senator Schumer, who was then in the House, who picked up the ball on the bill in the House. It got passed. Since then we have seen a decline in domestic violence of 53 percent. But even so, even while the law is working, we have to strengthen it because, as the Presiding Officer knows because she is a leader in this cause, every day three women are killed by their abusive partners. Let me say that again. Every single day, three women are killed by their abusive partners. So in order to change this terrible statistic, we need to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, and we need to improve it to protect more victims of domestic violence. That is what the Senate did. I am very proud of the Senate. We passed the bipartisan bill with a vote of 68 to 31, with 15 Republicans voting in favor.…
