[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 56 (Monday, April 1, 2019)]
[House]
[Page H2936]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     EXPRESSING CONCERN OVER HANDLING OF VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN ACT

  (Mr. LaMALFA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  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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