Political Quotes

“I rise to commemorate this week as Lifetime's Violence Prevention Week and to call on this Congress to support legislation that will truly protect victims of violence and not punish them. It is time for the administration to get serious about protecting victims of abuse. The President, quite frankly, failed in his proposed fiscal year 2006 budget. He cut funding to the Violence Against Women programs by $19 million. For public assistance recipients, the President has requested zero funding for domestic violence counseling and services. How can he ignore the studies that find that up to 83 percent of mothers in the welfare system are victims of domestic violence. And to add insult to injury, the President proposes battered women and battered mothers with children be required to attend faith-based marriage classes or lose all of their welfare benefits. Marrying an abuser to keep benefits is not the way to build healthy families and healthy communities. This standard of morality really hurts victims of abuse. We must reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and the Welfare Reauthorization Act, and we must be in the business of protecting the most vulnerable and the abused. That should be our standard of morality.”