Expressing Concern Over Handling of Violence Against Women Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. LaMALFA. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my concerns over the handling of the Violence Against Women Act, known as VAWA, by the Democratic leadership.

A few weeks ago, Democratic leadership intentionally let the Violence Against Women Act expire when negotiating the reopening of the Federal Government during the shutdown rather than simply reauthorizing VAWA. That is because, instead, as we see now, they want to tack on additional partisan provisions, like gun control and many other ideas that have little to do with violence against women and this act.

We need to extend this program. We need to do a clean version of it that would be noncontroversial and that is respectful to women and respectful to girls who are to be protected by this, which we could have done in the previous spending bill.

They want to use it, instead, to infringe upon our Second Amendment rights and do other things in a social agenda. That is not what that bill is or should be about. Piggybacking inappropriate and nongermane issues onto this bill is harmful to the women and girls we are trying to protect.

This legislation will make it more difficult for women to protect themselves with a firearm, for example. How does that make sense to anybody? We need a clean version of this bill.

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