Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I congratulate my colleague from Minnesota who has the dual experience of being both a prosecutor and a woman who understands how important these issues are. We men try to join in, but women know this so well and so strongly, whether from their own personal experiences, friends they know or--as in the case of the Senator from Minnesota who has done a great job on this--from their professional experience as well. I care a lot about this issue. I carried the Violence Against Women Act, the first bill, in 1994. Then-Senator Biden put it together in 1992. Senator Boxer carried it when she was elected to the Senate. They asked me to carry it, and we got it passed. It has changed the world. VAWA has changed the world. It used to be, before VAWA, a woman would show up bloodied and bruised at a police station, and the police officer--who had no training and no knowledge of what to do, not his or her fault--would say: Go home. It is a family matter. Now, of course, we have laws, we have training, we have shelters, and women are far more protected. We were much too close, in 1994, to the old rule of thumb that a husband could beat his wife with a stick, provided it was no thicker than his thumb. We are much further away from that because of this law, and it makes a great deal of sense. But similar to any good and important law that has changed the world, we have to keep updating it.…”