A bipartisan bill to reauthorize VAWA, as it is known, was introduced in the House earlier this month by Democratic MPs Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas and New York City Mayor Jerry Nadler and Pennsylvania Republican Deputy Brain Fitzpatrick .
According to a bulletin from the House Judiciary Committee, the project would improve and expand aid and services for victims and survivors. Comprehensive legislation includes provisions to make safe housing more accessible and strengthen economic security, ensuring that state unemployment benefits cannot be denied to individuals who leave their jobs due to sexual harassment or assault, domestic violence or dating or persecution .
Biden applauded the effort to reauthorize VAWA, saying in a statement about the recent introduction of the bill that Congress should “meet in a bipartisan manner to ensure rapid approval of VAWA legislation in both the House and the Senate.”
Biden went on to say, “Domestic violence is being called a pandemic within the Covid-19 pandemic, with increasing evidence that conditions in the pandemic have resulted in increasing rates of intimate partner violence and, in some cases, more serious injuries.”
The Democratic-controlled House voted in 2019 to reauthorize the legislation after it expired, but the reauthorization did not pass the Republican-controlled Senate.
Now, the majority of Democrats in the House are about to approve reauthorization again. This time, Democrats control the Senate, but the effort will still face an uncertain future in the House. With a 50-50 party split, it is unclear whether there would be enough Republican support to overcome an obstruction.
When asked whether he would support the reauthorization bill, Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said on Tuesday that Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa “has been our leader on this issue.”
Ernst later told reporters, “We are working on a bill again, taking what we worked on in the last Congress and we will probably reintroduce it,” adding that “it will be different from the House bill”.
The Iowa Republican said she hoped it would be possible to “resolve these differences in the two projects, find the areas of agreement and move forward with a modernized project.”
“We are willing to work with the Democrats on this and, fortunately, by combining forces, we can reach the necessary 60 votes,” said Ernst.
CNN’s Chandelis Duster and Ashley Killough contributed to this report.