[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 111 (Tuesday, July 11, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H6740]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


            THE VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT IS BEING DERAILED

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 
12, 1995, the gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized 
during morning business for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, as time evolves we are seeing more and 
more about how things look and how things really are. I must say, as 
one of the people who has been very concerned about the Violence 
Against Women Act, because I think living rooms in America and kitchens 
in America are the classrooms of violence for many of our young people, 
I was so proud when this body passed the Violence Against Women Act, 
and what did it pass by? It passed by 411 to 0, and you really cannot 
do any better than that. So, after 200-and-some years of this Republic, 
we finally decided that we would go right to the core of where a lot of 
this violence was starting, in the home, and we also realized that, if 
children see every single dispute solved, every single dispute solved 
with violence at home, they are not going to be able to be given a 
conflict-resolution course for a couple of hours in school to change 
their behavior. So, going in and really saying for the first time this 
country was going to take this seriously I thought was marvelous.
  Well, now we see that, while we passed the bill, apparently they are 
taking all the money out. There was to be $161 million appropriated for 
such things as shelters for victims of domestic violence, for families; 
a hotline for the very first time. We have never had a national hotline 
on this issue. Also for rape crisis centers $161 million was to go out 
this year to begin those things, and, believe me, that money is really 
needed because to say to the victims of these kinds of acts that you 
have to privatize it or you are going to have to pay for it yourself, 
good luck. Part of the reason they have not been able to get out of the 
violence at home, or whatever, has been because of the economic 
dependence they have on the batterer, whether it be male or female, so 
that is very essential.
  Well, what happened? It appears, it appears that $161 million is now 
$1 million, that they took $61 million out. Now that is an outrage. At 
that point we ought to just say the act has been canceled. I say to my 
colleague, ``Let's be real honest about this. Don't brag about your 
vote if you vote to absolutely gut this.''
  There was also $100 million put into the crime trust fund for this, 
and that was to help train police and judges and to do more aid in the 
States and localities to get their laws tougher and so forth. I say to 
my colleagues, ``Well, guess what? If that's all zeroed out, don't brag 
that you voted for the Violence Against Women Act because obviously 
that didn't happen.''
  Now there will be people saying, ``Oh, well, it is just women.'' No, 
it is not. It is men and women; let me make that perfectly clear. 
Violence against men or violence against women in the home is wrong. 
Violence against children in the home is wrong. Instead you see 
everybody now moving to say that Government should back out of all of 
that and we should just again go back; the home is totally off limits, 
and you can batter children, batter spouses, do whatever.
  Mr. Speaker, it looks like we are doing something, but we are not 
because we take all the money away. I hope that people in this country 
wake up and realize that because, if we ever want to get crime on the 
streets under control, we are not going to do it until we go to the 
source. We have had study after study showing that, if a person grows 
up in this violence, they are going to be violent.
  Second, imagine the horror for the many, many Americans living in 
this type of situation. If you are afraid to be on the street because 
of crime, but you cannot even go home because you are also afraid to be 
there, what a nightmare.
  So what a wonderful feeling it was a year ago when we all came 
together in a huge, bipartisan manner, and we voted that out, and we 
got the bill signed, and we got the details in order, and we really 
thought the train was moving, and now we find the whole train has been 
derailed, and they are going to drop a little token, $1 million, in the 
box and say ``Isn't that wonderful? Look what we have done.''
  Let me tell you what you have done. You have done nothing. You have 
done absolutely nothing, and we will be back to business as usual on 
one of the most important crime generators and violence generators in 
this country.
  And let us be perfectly clear about this. It is easy to tell you 
about other things, but the most important thing is the home and the 
family, and if the home and the family is the roots of violence, if the 
home and the family is absolutely torn asunder, then you are never 
going to get off square one when it comes to fighting crime.


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