Appropriations
As you all know, Congress completed its FY ‘12 Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) Appropriations bill in mid-November. This bill includes funding for the DOJ-funded VAWA programs. The updated appropriations chart with funding details is available here. Along with the CJS bill Congress passed another Continuing Resolution, giving them until December 16th complete all nine remaining FY ‘12 spending bills (or pass another Continuing Resolution). Among the spending bills left to be completed is the Labor, Health and Human Services (L-HHS) bill that provides funding for FVPSA, DELTA, and the Hotline among other programs. As we’ve already reported, this bill in particular remains very contentious. At this stage, it appears most likely that another Continuing Resolution will be passed to continue government funding through February. We will keep you posted as more updates are available.
Super Committee
As you’ve all heard, the Super Committee was unable to reach agreement on a deficit reduction plan. This failure means that automatic cuts should be triggered (also referred to as sequestration). These cuts would not take effect until January 2013 – a little more than one year from today. These automatic spending cuts would be in place for 2013 – 2021 to reach a total of $1.2 trillion in savings over that period. The cuts would reportedly represent approximately a 9% annual cut to affected non-defense programs and would also cut defense and mandatory programs.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in FY ‘13 approximately $38.6 billion would be cut from non-defense discretionary programs. This includes VAWA, FVPSA, and many other federally funded programs. For FY ‘13 the cuts would occur through across-the-board cuts. For FY 2014-2021 the cuts would occur by lowering the caps on total non-defense discretionary programs. In these years, the Appropriations Committee would have the flexibility to determine how to distribute funding under these new levels – meaning that some programs could take larger cuts than others. The New York Times and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities both have good pieces with more details on the automatic cuts.
At this point there is still very much an air of uncertainty about what will happen next, although the general outlook is gloomy. All discretionary programs funded by all departments are under threat of cuts, including VAWA and FVPSA. The automatic cuts aren’t scheduled to come into effect until January 2013, meaning that there’s still a lot of time for things to change. Already some Members of Congress are vowing to block the automatic cuts to defense programs, and President Obama has said he will veto any bill that tries to undo the sequestration. With the elections next year it’s likely that this will continue to get a lot of attention. And of course there’s the possibility that Congress will come up with a large deficit reduction plan between now and January 2013. We will continue to monitor this and take action when appropriate to reduce the possible harm to VAW A and FVPSA funding.
VAWA Reauthorization
On Wednesday, November 30, 2011, our Senate Champions, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman, Patrick Leahy (VT) and Senator Michael Crapo (ID) introduced, S.1925, the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2011 (VAWA IV)! As of today, we are hearing that Senator Kirk (R-IL) will also be coming on as a co-sponsor! And House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith (TX) and Ranking Member John Conyers (MI) are primed to a House VAWA Reauthorization bill shortly! Following the tradition of the original VAWA in 1994 and its 2000 and 2005 reauthorizations, S. 1925 is a bipartisan bill with an over-arching goal of ensuring that all members of our various communities have access to the services, safety and support systems which are our core responses to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking. S. 1925’s enhancements include: increasing legal services, housing protections, and court responses for the four VAWA crimes; providing additional opportunities to ensure that victims voices are keenly heard within all administrative levels by formalizing the process for DV and SA Coalitions, as well as other key stakeholders, to shape state implementation plans and OVW policies on grant administration, unmet needs, promising practices and emerging issues; and including West Virginia and Mississippi in the definition of “rural state”. As we move forward in the legislative process, NNEDV continues to work with all of our House and Senate champions on specific language adjustments. Our ask of YOU, in the interim, is that you continue to keep the VAWA reauthorization effort moving forward by urging your Senators and Representatives to fully support our reauthorization efforts. No one, better than you, is in the position of keeping VAWA’s Reauthorization on the radar screen of your Members of Congress. They need to hear from you—repeatedly—that VAWA must be reauthorized NOW!
