Gwen Moore

Ms. MOORE

Ms. MOORE. Madam Speaker, if the final amendment that I'm offering here today were to be adopted, is it not the case that the bill will be amended and that the House will then proceed to final passage right away?

Ms. MOORE. Madam Speaker, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Ms. MOORE. Yes, ma'am, I am opposed to the bill in its current form.

Ms. MOORE. Madam Speaker, I have a motion to recommit at the desk.

Ms. MOORE

Ms. MOORE. The manager's amendment, thankfully, was adopted, because the manager's amendment did have one little piece in there that helps out immigrant women. But there are 325 groups and organizations, everything from national women organizations to evangelical women and the bishops, that oppose even the manager's amendment because they say that not only are there just simply rollbacks to the Violence Against Women Act, but it actually puts immigrant women in danger, as the balance is tipped from current law in favor of these batterers, sexual assaulters, abusers, and killers. I would like to yield to the gentlelady for one more question. Will this body ever have an opportunity to vote on the bipartisan bill from the Senate that passed 68 31? Will this body ever have the opportunity? Will that bill ever be before us?

Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I do appreciate the woman walking us through the protocols for the unfunded mandates. And I would submit to her that the National Network to End Domestic Violence, who does a point-in-time counting of domestic violence services nationwide, would indicate that it costs not only personal anguish, but there are costs in society, actual fiscal costs, to not protecting women who are suffering in violent situations. Right in my own State of Wisconsin, 714,000 women have been assaulted, raped, or stalked by an intimate partner. This number actually exceeds the population of the entire city of Milwaukee. Imagine the cost to employers when people don't show up at work. Imagine the cost in emergency rooms when people show up battered and bruised and broken and have no health insurance. Approximately half a million of these women were fearful or concerned for their safety. Two hundred and eighty thousand Wisconsin women, 12.7 percent of our population, have been stalked in their lifetime. Imagine the cost of additional police work when these women call the police and nothing has been done in terms of making arrests and asking for accountability. A study of childhood exposure to violence in Milwaukee has found that 16 percent of Wisconsin adults report having experienced recurring violence between adults in their childhood. Imagine the loss of productivity at schools. There's often a lot of talk about kids being inattentive in school and not being able to pass and succeed in school. Next to hunger, imagine the cost of witnessing and experiencing violence in the home as a cost to society. I would now like to yield to the gentlelady for a question. There were several amendments that were introduced in the Rules Committee last evening, and I was wondering if you were aware of any amendments that were adopted after we left the Rules Committee last evening. I know there had been a hearing. I was wondering if any of the amendments that Democrats had introduced were adopted.

Ms. MOORE. I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the ladies who are submitting their statements for the Record. The Members who join me today are just a few of the many people who would like to be here to offer their suggestions for improving the bill and to highlight the stories of women, men, and children in their district and communities who have experienced atrocious violence. There are lessons to be learned from their stories, and it is unwise and unkind of us to turn a blind eye. I'm thinking of Rosalind in Milwaukee, who was killed by her girlfriend, Malika, and her family had concerns about her over- possessiveness. But, of course, this is an LGBT relationship, and an order for protection may have been ignored without these provisions. I think of another person in my district, Diane's story, 26 years old, married to a non-Indian, beaten. Over a hundred incidences-- slapped, kicked, punched, and living in terror. She called for help several times but no one ever came to her rescue. She was living on a tribal land. The Violence Against Women Act has been a lifeline for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. It has allowed us to hold perpetrators accountable and to pave pathways out of violence for victims--all women. And since VAWA passed in 1994, domestic violence has dropped by more than half. We must not turn back, Mr. Speaker. We must not weaken or repeal some of VAWA's lifesaving protections. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Ms. MOORE. Representative Foxx, just a follow-up, you are a member, a very senior member, of the Rules Committee, and so I was wondering if the rule is structured in a way that will ever allow to have before us, after we vote on this version, the Adams version of the VAWA bill? Will there be a pathway toward voting on the Senate bill as you understand it?

Ms. MOORE. I thank the Chair.

Ms. MOORE. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

Ms. MOORE. I thank the Speaker and I thank the gentlelady.

Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I raise a point of order against H. Res. 656 because the resolution violates section 426(a) of the Congressional Budget Act. The resolution contains a waiver of all points of order against consideration of the bill, which includes a waiver of section 425 of the Congressional Budget Act, which causes a violation of section 426(a).

Ms. MOORE. The declarative statement that you referred to, am I not correct, Mr. Speaker, that that could also include a sentence, a complete sentence?

Ms. MOORE

Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to please see this request through the eyes of a child who was assaulted by a family member and comes forward at school to confide in a beloved teacher; the woman in an isolated rural area, where local law enforcement is under- resourced and transportation or legal services may be lacking or nonexistent; the women on college campuses, where rates of intimate partner violence are among the highest. Please, Mr. Speaker, see this through the eyes of victims with disabilities who are at high risk of abuse and are often dependent on their abusers for care. In short, this VAWA funding means that a woman--and even men--who have been victimized can step out of the shadows away from their abusers and get access to counseling, legal services, or other services. And, Mr. Speaker, every single day, for three women, this VAWA funding is a difference between life and death. It is so true that the CJS legislation before us has provided the requested level of support for victims and their families; but it's been chronically underfunded since the day they opened their doors, and there are thousands of men, women, and children who are not being served. Please, this is an opportunity to provide a small increase to fill the gap between available resources and the desperate need to serve folks. We must commit adequate resources toward these effective, lifesaving programs. And, Mr. Speaker, we must do it now. I ask my colleagues to vote for this motion to recommit.

Ms. MOORE

Ms. MOORE. I thank the gentleman from Maryland. It's important that the American people know the truth about this sequestration replacement bill. And no matter how many times we hear that this package is going to cut welfare programs or socialist programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, things that we call the safety net, all for the sake of reserving every last dime of military spending, ignoring the opportunity to rout out waste, fraud, and peace dividends, it doesn't add up. The math I was taught is that what you do to one side of an equation, you have to do to the other side of the equation for it to balance out. You can't just subtract from the social safety net--Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, cut the Social Services Block Grant, stop the Wall Street bailouts; you can't just add more tax cuts for the wealthiest, add more defense spending, maintain oil subsidies, maintain expensive corporate farm subsidies and say that that's a balanced approach. I have very limited time, but I want to say to Americans: It don't add up. This dog doesn't hunt. You can't just cut the social safety net and add billions of dollars of corporate welfare and say that that's a balanced equation. It doesn't support simple math. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Ms. MOORE

Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, I come humbly to the well today, under the ``E Pluribus Unum,'' to ask that there be swift bipartisan action in reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. VAWA's authorization, of course, lapsed at the end of the last fiscal year, on September 30, 2011. Unfortunately, for every day that passes by, women pay the price. The annual National Census of Domestic Violence Services--a daily snapshot taken every year by the National Network to End Domestic Violence-- found that in one 24-hour period in the United States, over 67,000 victims were served through emergency shelters, transitional housing, counseling, legal advocacy, and more. Over 22,000 hotline phone calls were answered and over 26,000 people participated in domestic violence prevention and education training. For all these people who are served, unfortunately, in the same 24- hour period, there are nearly 11,000 unmet requests for services because these programs neither have the resources to help these victims nor the authorizations based on best practices on how we need to change VAWA in order to meet the needs of women. Our colleagues across the Capitol in the Senate are on the cusp of passing a bipartisan VAWA reauthorization bill that contains these provisions to strengthen our ability to combat not only domestic violence, but also sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. And I'm so proud to say that right here on this floor, 1 month ago, I introduced a companion bill to the Senate legislation that contains these badly needed updates to reflect the input of numerous stakeholders and lays a path forward for VAWA. The vision is to protect all victims, no matter what their gender, sexual orientation, immigration status, or whether or not they reside in sovereign territories or in States. These updates have garnered criticism from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle that offer fundamental, simple rights that ought to be guaranteed by the 14th Amendment. For example, this bill would recognize the tribes' authority to prosecute non-Indians or Indians who abuse their American Indian spouses or dating partners on tribal lands. Fifty-two percent of women who are beaten, battered, raped, or stalked on tribal lands are not prosecuted because tribes have no authority. And on tribal lands, there is no follow-up and no prosecution. The bill would also provide equal opportunity for areas that are in traditionally underserved areas, including those who have barriers because of their religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation. It's absurd to say that because you are a homosexual that you don't deserve protection from being beaten, stalked, or raped. And, of course, the Hippocratic Oath would have us scoop up a person who may be lying in the street, hit by a truck. We don't ask people for their immigration papers in order to intervene in a lifesaving intervention. Why would we demand this of immigrant women? We have got to ensure a more comprehensive response to the continuing problem of enforcement, reporting, and services for victims of sexual assault. In spite of the strides we have made toward a new and improved VAWA, just yesterday the House Republicans put their so-called ``clean'' reauthorization bill on the floor. Let me tell you this: it's clean, perhaps, because we don't want to sully our hands dealing with the beaten, stalked, murdered, and bullied butch-batterers, because we don't want to deal with homosexuality. We want clean reauthorization, a sleight of hand that keeps immigrant women in the shadows and keeps their pain and their battery and their victimization in the shadows and makes them invisible. We're actually sanctioning the abuse that occurs on tribal lands and providing a sanctuary for assailants who commit these crimes on native lands by not providing this authority to tribal nations. I urge my Republican colleagues to work together with House Democrats to craft a truly bipartisan update of VAWA.

Ms. MOORE

Ms. MOORE. No, no, no. He said it would be determined during debate.

Ms. MOORE. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Ms. MOORE. I want to thank the gentleman for a vigorous debate--at least on my part--and I would ask my colleagues to take a closer look. This is the Congress of the United States of America. We are supposed to do things very carefully. This is the budget that we're setting out, the moral document for how this country is to be run, and we should not be deeming it as passed, as this resolution calls for. I would ask all my colleagues to support my point of order and ask them to vote against this resolution. I yield back the balance of my time.

Ms. MOORE. I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. MOORE. Reclaiming my time from the point at which I said I was reclaiming my time. And I ask that he be taxed for that extra time because he already gave me his answer--that, yes, it would be deemed to be passed. I just want to remind people, in this week when we have learned how important it is to have a stable, good budget for women, that this program slashes funding for Medicaid--two-thirds of adults are women who depend on it. It slashes Medicare--two-thirds of the recipients are women. And 85 percent of Medicare recipients that are older than 85 depend on it. It cuts support for key programs like childcare, which are important to women, and job training. It cuts core programs like food stamps. Our Presidential candidate said that 93 percent of women lost jobs during the recession. Why would we want to take away the safety net of food stamps when women put food on the table every day trying to feed their babies? Mr. Speaker, this program--which will be deemed to be passed--needs more review, and I would ask you to find my point of order in order. Mr. Speaker, how much time do I have remaining?

Ms. MOORE. Reclaiming my time.

Ms. MOORE. Yes.

Ms. MOORE. I would yield my time for the purpose of your answering my question. The Speaker has declined to answer my parliamentary query and said that that would be settled during the debate. So is it your understanding that passage of this resolution will or will not deem the Republican budget to have been passed in all of the Congress? I yield to the gentleman.