Nita Lowey: “I would like to address two issues in this bill which directly affects women and their families. First, I would like to…”

“I would like to address two issues in this bill which directly affects women and their families. First, I would like to thank the gentleman from Kentucky, Chairman Rogers, for fully funding the Violence Against Women Act. These funds are needed desperately, and we appreciate the attention to this issue. However, I would like to reiterate the concerns of the gentleman from West Virginia which were mentioned previously. Because the bill was so late and was not signed until April, the funds for 1996 are just being processed. The Department of Justice is doing a valiant job in getting these funds out. Many of my colleagues may not think of legal services as a women's issue, but it clearly is. The funding cuts contained in this bill will force the Legal Services Corporation to abandon many of the critical legal services that it provides to poor women, particularly victims of domestic violence. In 1995, legal services programs handled over 59,000 cases in which clients sought legal protection from abuse of spouses and over 9,300 cases involving neglect and abused and dependent juveniles. In fact, family law, which includes domestic violence cases, makes up one-third of the 1.7 million cases handled by legal services programs each year.”