In the News

By JENNIFER EPSTEIN 

 

Vice President Joe Biden offered a personal thanks Thursday to lawmakers for voting to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act, a law he drafted while serving in the Senate in the early 1990s and has advocated for from his position in the Obama administration.

 

"I consider almost a sacred commitment we have ... to protect our mothers, our daughters, our sisters and in some cases young men as well," he said at an event on dating violence prevention in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

 

"The social consciousness of this country is changing for the better," he said.

 

Earlier, Biden issued a statement hailing Congress for having "put politics aside" in voting to reauthorize VAWA. His statement followed one in which President Obama said he will sign the bill as soon as it arrives on his desk.

 

"The urgent need for this bill cannot be more obvious," Biden said. "Consider just one fact — that 40 percent of all mass shootings started with the murderer targeting their girlfriend, or their wife, or their ex-wife. Among many other important provisions, the new VAWA will increase the use of proven models of reducing domestic violence homicides"

 

Biden met earlier Thursday with the parents of several young women killed by abusive boyfriends. "Nothing puts this legislation in to perspective more than their stories," he said.

 

Like Obama, vice president also thanked Sens. Patrick Leahy and Mike Crapo, and Reps. Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Gwen Moore for their work on the bill, and bipartisan majorities for passing it. "This issue should be beyond politics," he said.

 

In his public remarks, Biden also thanked Rep. Eric Cantor, someone generally seen as an "anti-administration person."

 

It will "probably hurt him," Biden said, but "I want to publicly thank him" for not blocking a vote on the bill. "He kept his word."