Political Quotes

“Mr. President, today, along with every other Senate Democrat, I am proud to introduce the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2019. This bill passed the House by a vote of 163-158, with 33 Republicans supporting it. It was written by the people on the front lines helping victims. It is not a Democratic bill or a Republican bill, it is a bill crafted by and for survivors who know exactly what's need in the real world. In other words, it is the survivors' bill. As I stated before, any reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act must do two things. First, it must preserve the advancements made when it was last reauthorized in 2013. And second, it must include meaningful improvements to the law. The meaningful legal improvements in this bill are particularly important, and I would like to highlight three. First, this bill preserves the anti-discrimination protections that were made in 2013. These protections are particularly important to the LGBT community. According to the Center for Disease Control, along with 35 percent of heterosexual women, 44 percent of lesbian women, and 61 percent of bisexual women experience rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner. Similarly, the 2015 U.S. transgender survey found that 47 percent of transgender people have been sexually assaulted. Simply put, these protections are important and we should not only be preserving them, we should be doing more to strengthen them.…”