Justin's Political Corner

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has reached an “agreement in principle” on a sweeping immigration bill that would parallel work underway in the Senate, sources said Thursday.

h/t: Los Angeles Times

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) debuted his newest campaign bumper sticker in a tweet on Friday.

The sticker combines Stockman’s pro-gun and pro-life beliefs.

h/t: Huffington Post

After nearly a year of resistance that has damaged them politically with women voters, House Republicans have found a clever way to back down on the reauthorization of an expanded Violence Against Women Act, aides confirmed to TPM late Tuesday.

The original plan was for the Republican majority in the House to pass its version of the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization and then go to conference conference committee with the Senate. The Senate has already overwhelmingly passed a more aggressive bill, with protections for LGBT, Native American and undocumented women that have been at the heart of the dispute with House Republicans.

But all that changed Tuesday night. The Rules Committee instead sent the House GOP’s versionof the Violence Against Women Act to the floor with a key caveat: if that legislation fails, then the Senate-passed version will get an up-or-down vote.

The big admission implicit in this latest move is that House GOP leaders don’t believe they have the votes to pass their version of the bill but that the Senate version is likely to pass the chamber. So this way they’ll give House conservatives the first bite at the apple as a way of saving face and still resolve an issue that has hurt them politically.

Here’s how Democrats expect it to play out.

After the House finishes debating the GOP-version of the bill on Wednesday and Thursday, it will get a vote, but will fail to muster enough votes for passage due to conservative and Democratic opposition. So the Senate-passed bill will get a vote instead, and Democrats as well as a faction of more moderate Republicans will carry it to victory. Then it will go straight to President Obama’s desk for his signature.

“[Rules Committee Chairman] Pete Sessions laid it out in not so many words that this is what the majority’s plan is,” a House Democratic aide said Tuesday evening. “They’re anticipating that their version gets voted down. But it’s clear the Senate bill will pass with flying colors.”

h/t: Sahil Kapur at TPM

WASHINGTON — House Republican leaders are ready to move forward on legislation reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act as soon as next week, a GOP source familiar with the plans told The Huffington Post on Wednesday.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) still haven’t sorted out whether they plan to take up and amend the VAWA reauthorization bill that passed the Senate or introduce an entirely new bill, said the source. But either way, the Republican leaders are likely to act on some kind of legislation next week, and aides in Cantor’s office have been meeting with committee staff and member offices this week in preparation, the source said.

Cantor spokesman Doug Heye said only that GOP leaders are working on having a VAWA bill ready “in the coming weeks,” and that his office has been in regular contact with GOP staffers on the issue every week for the past several months.

The Senate overwhelmingly passed its VAWA bill last week, authorizing $659 million over five years for various programs targeting domestic violence. The Senate bill includes new protections for LGBT and Native American victims of domestic violence, gives more attention to sexual assault prevention and takes steps to reduce a backlog in processing rape kits.

The news that the House is ready to act comes as a handful of House GOP lawmakers unveiled a separate bill that could provide a path forward on what has become the biggest obstacle to getting VAWA through Congress and to the president’s desk: a provision in the Senate bill that grants new authority to tribal courts to prosecute domestic abusers.

Currently, tribal courts have no authority over non-Native American men on tribal lands who domestically or sexually abuse Native American women, who endure such abuse at two-and-a-half times the rate of other women. The Senate VAWA bill includes a provision that would grant tribal courts the authority to prosecute in those cases, but many House Republicans oppose the provision and argue that tribal courts wouldn’t uphold the constitutional rights of non-Native Americans. This specific issue became so divisive in the last Congress — and both sides were so firm in their positions — that it ultimately led to the failure to reauthorize VAWA for the first time since 1994.

But Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Wednesday reintroduced his compromise proposal from last year, the Violence Against Indian Women Act, which would grant tribes the new authority over non-Native American domestic abusers but give those abusers the option to transfer their cases to a federal court if they felt their rights weren’t being upheld. The bill has seven Republican co-sponsors: Reps. Tom Cole (Okla.), Mark Amodei (Nev.), Jeff Denham (Calif.), John Kline (Minn.), Patrick McHenry (N.C.), David Schweikert (Ariz.) and Michael Simpson (Idaho).

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), one of the leading proponents of the Senate VAWA bill, told HuffPost earlier this month that she wasn’t sure if she could get behind Issa’s compromise language if it were what passed in the House. But she called his approach “responsible” and noted that, at least in the last Congress, it had the backing of Native American tribes.

“Until I have the language in front of me, and I’m sure it provides protections, I’m not going to commit either way,” Murray said. “But tribes have expressed to me that [Issa] is being fair and rational.”

Meanwhile, during the final days of the last Congress, Cole told HuffPost that he expected the House VAWA bill to include Issa’s proposal in this Congress. He predicted its inclusion would mean VAWA was “a done deal” in the House, and that it would ease certain Republicans’ fears that tribal courts wouldn’t honor the constitutional rights of non-Native Americans who came before their courts. As it is, tribal courts are already bound by the Constitution.

“People seem to have this fantasy that Indians and courts are going to try to make up for what happened to them for hundreds of years of history,” Cole, who is the only registered Native American in Congress, suggested as the reason some GOP lawmakers were so upset by the provision. “That’s just not true. Most tribes want non-tribal members to come in — if you’re gaming, for tourism, commerce. That’s their lifeblood.”

h/t: Jennifer Bendery at HuffPo

The Violence Against Women Act reauthorization passed through the Senate on Tuesday afternoon, by a vote of 78 to 22. Of those opposing the legislation, all 22 were Republican men. Every female Senator supported the bill.

Among the most notable votes against the bill were Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL).

VAWA expired during the previous Congress, and because of Republican opposition to provisions for Native American,undocumented, and LGBT victims of domestic violence, the different versions approved by the House and by the Senate were never reconciled, and the bill died without final passage at the end of 2012.

Since its inception in 1994, VAWA has established a system for helping women in danger. The law created the National Domestic Violence Hotline, made stalking illegal, and helped drive down the number of partner homicides.

The version passed by the Senate today will next go to the House for a vote, where it is expected to encounter some difficulties, particularly over the protections of tribal women included in the bill.

h/t: Annie-Rose Strasser at Think Progress Health

In a series of moves Wednesday that effectively isolate House Republicans, a bipartisan group of senators and House Democrats unveiled companion bills to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.

The two bills, a House version and a Senate version, are identical in re-authorizing the domestic violence legislation and in expanding coverage to protect gays, illegal immigrants and Native Americans. They weresimultaneously unveiled Wednesday in the House and Senate during back-to-back press conferences by House Democrats and the Senate group.

The Senate Republicans flanking Democrats were Sens. Mike Crapo (R-ID), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) and Susan Collins (R-ME) — all VAWA co-sponsors.

“This is not a partisan issue,” said Collins. “It cannot be a partisan issue.”

“As you can see from the representation here,” said Crapo, “it’s on a bipartisan basis that we have support for this in the Senate.”

The measure to reauthorize VAWA failed last year amid House GOP resistance to expanding coverage to abused LGBT, undocumented immigrant and tribal populations.

Both the House and Senate versions of the legislation unveiled Wednesday omits a provision to increase the number of U Visas available for abused illegal immigrants. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) last year refused to take up the Senate bill, observing that the Constitution requires legislation that raises revenues to originate in the House.

“We took that out so there’s no blue slip question here. They said that was [the reason they didn’t take it up],” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the chief sponsor of VAWA. He said he believes that “there is a strong willingness to move forward” in the House.

H/T: Sahil Kapur at TPM

The Violence Against Women Act first became law in 1994 and has since been routinely reauthorized without controversy. By providing resources for law enforcement to combat spousal abuse, it has protected countless women from domestic violence.

But the 2012 re-authorization, like many initiatives of the just-concluded Congress, fell prey to House Republican resistance — in this case, to expanding the Act to cover more women. In the end, House GOP leaders refused bring to a vote a bill that passed the Senate with a bipartisan supermajority.

“The House Republican leadership’s failure to take up and pass the Senate’s bipartisan and inclusive VAWA bill is inexcusable,” Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), a Democratic leadership member, told TPM. “This is a bill that passed with 68 votes in the Senate and that extends the bill’s protections to 30 million more women. But this seems to be how House Republican leadership operates. No matter how broad the bipartisan support, no matter who gets hurt in the process, the politics of the right wing of their party always comes first.”

A Republican source familiar with failed last-minute negotiations to save the measure between Vice President Joe Biden and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) disputed that view. The source blamed Senate Democrats for making a resolution impossible by “constantly shifting the goalposts” and adopting a “my way or the highway approach.”

But Senate Democrats peeled off enough Republicans for the new provisions. In April, they passed the expanded version by a whopping 68-31 vote, winning over 8 Republicans.

The legislation then moved to the House, where Republican leaders faced pressure to act, but had no intention of supporting the added provisions. So they introduced a scaled-back version that omitted them and made it harder for illegal-immigrant victims of domestic violence to obtain legal status under a special category called the U Visa.

Republican leaders deployed their female members to make the case for it, notably Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA), a leadership member, and Rep. Sandy Adams (FL), herself a victim of domestic violence. Over the objections of some advocates for abused victims, but with thesupport of a so-called men’s rights group, House GOP leaders passed their version on a partisan vote, despite a White House veto threat.

And that’s when the legislation stalled, never to recover.

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) invited the Senate to go to conference to resolve the differences. He also argued that the Senate bill was unconstitutional because it would raise new revenue with visa fees (bills with revenues are supposed to originate in the House, though leaders can dodge that problem if they want to). Republicans also said provisions involving tribal jurisdiction were constitutionally impermissible.

Democrats demanded that the GOP take up the Senate version, comparing its strong bipartisan support with the lack of cross-party appeal for the scaled-back re-authorization, and citing President Obama’s veto threat. Boehner stonewalled. The stalemate deepened.

A bipartisan letter authored by Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), two key sponsors of VAWA, urging Boehner to accept the Senate bill had no impact. Months later, a large House coalition including 10 Republican members pushed him to accept a Senate-like version — again, to no avail.

In December, there was a glimmer of hope for the measure when Biden, the chief architect of the original VAWA, entered negotiations with Cantor to see if they could resolve the disputes. But that, too, went nowhere.

A top Senate Democratic aide said Cantor refused to budge on the LGBT, undocumented immigrant and especially tribal jurisdiction provisions. A GOP source familiar with the negotiations countered that the vice president showed “good faith” but Senate Democrats kept throwing up “roadblock after roadblock” and showed no interest in compromising. 

The 112th Congress ended Wednesday, and the Violence Against Women Act perished with it. The new Congress now has to start all over. A spokesperson said Leahy was disappointed by the failure of VAWA re-authorization and looks forward to soon reintroducing an “inclusive, bipartisan bill covering vulnerable victims.”

h/t: TPM