Outdated Laws Preserve HIV Stigma

Our nation and our science have come a long way since HIV/AIDS began mysteriously claiming lives in the United States. Unfortunately, many of our laws haven’t kept up.

Thirty-two states have criminal statutes based on perceived exposure to HIV — regardless of the actual risk of transmission — and 13 states have laws that criminalize certain acts, like spitting, by people with HIV/AIDS. (It’s not possible to transmit HIV by saliva.)

Aside from being charged under HIV-specific criminalization statutes, people living with HIV have even been charged under aggravated assault, attempted murder, and bioterrorism statutes.

It’s simply not fair that someone having been diagnosed with a treatable medical condition should automatically be subject to a different set of criminal laws. It’s time our laws catch up to our science.

Today I’m introducing the Repeal Existing Policies that Encourage and Allow Legal (“REPEAL”) HIV Discrimination Act, a bill to require an interagency review of federal and state laws that criminalize certain actions by people living with HIV.

These laws run counter to effective public health strategies, discourage HIV testing, and perpetuate unfair stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV/AIDS — people who are our friends, family, and neighbors. Rather than recognizing that HIV/AIDS is a treatable medical condition, these laws perpetuate the idea that HIV is a deadly weapon and people with HIV/AIDS are dangerous criminals.

Earlier this year, the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS issued a resolution saying that “current criminal laws require modernization to eliminate HIV-specific statutes or application of general criminal law that treats HIV status, or the use of condoms or other measures to prevent HIV transmission, as the basis for criminal prosecution or sentence enhancement.” The Council called for exactly the type of federal review that the REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act would require.

U.S. Representatives Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.) introduced the same legislation in the House of Representatives back in May. H.R. 1843 now has 34 cosponsors.

These bills are supported by more than 150 HIV/AIDS, LGBT, military, public health, racial justice, religious, and women’s organizations have endorsed the legislation, including the Center for HIV Law and Policy, AIDS United, Sero Project, National Minority AIDS Council, American Civil Liberties Union, OutServe — Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, Human Rights Campaign, American Academy of HIV Medicine, Black AIDS Institute, American Psychological Association, Lambda Legal, and National Council of Jewish Women.

As divided and dysfunctional as Congress has been these last few years, HIV/AIDS is one issue that has been and remains bipartisan. While right now the Senate bill lacks a Republican cosponsor, I am hopeful that will change soon.

Click here to read the op-ed on the Huffington Post’s website.

Washington Needs to Refocus on Manufacturing Jobs

Congress hasn’t given Americans much reason this year to believe it can work together in the country’s best interest to help create jobs. That needs to change.

It’s time for Washington to refocus on manufacturing jobs instead of manufactured crises.

The United States is primed for a manufacturing revival, and there’s a lot Congress can do to restart this vital economic engine. Although you wouldn’t know it from watching the news, there’s actually no shortage of good ideas from both parties for helping our manufacturers grow and create jobs.

On Tuesday, 21 of my Senate colleagues and I are launching a new effort, dubbed Manufacturing Jobs for America, to help translate those good ideas into good manufacturing jobs across the country.

The campaign features more than 40 measures — many that have bipartisan support — to spur job creation in manufacturing and lay the foundation for stronger economic growth far into the future. These senators will work together to build bipartisan support for these bills, to get them hearings and ultimately to earn votes on the floor.

Manufacturing jobs are high-quality jobs — they pay more on average and have better benefits than jobs in other industries — and they lead to gains throughout the economy. Every new manufacturing job we create adds another 1.6 local service jobs, and each dollar in manufacturing sales adds another $1.34 to the local economy.

Investments in manufacturing fuel innovation. Manufacturers are the country’s number one investors in research and development, filing 90 percent of all patents and funding two-thirds of research and development in the private sector.

While it’s true that a tough combination of lower wages and weaker labor and environmental protections abroad and higher productivity here at home has meant a loss of millions of manufacturing jobs over the past 20 years, there’s no reason to believe these developments spell the end for American manufacturing. Manufacturing in the 21st century is fundamentally different than it was in the post-war 20th-century boom, but the United States still holds key advantages that should make us optimistic about a new era of American manufacturing.

The good news is, we already have the tools to modernize our manufacturing sector. As a result of dramatic changes in energy costs, ongoing investments in research and development, and a relatively skilled workforce, American manufacturing is poised to take off. Half a million manufacturing jobs have already been created in the past three years.

We also face a better competitive landscape, as rising wages throughout the developing world and growing concerns about protecting American inventions and innovation make the idea of shipping American manufacturing overseas less attractive.

With a concerted effort at congressional leadership across at least four areas, we can help our resurgent manufacturing sector reach its full potential.

First, we must strengthen America’s modern workforce. We need to build better coordination between our schools and manufacturers so that Americans of all ages can acquire and sharpen the skills companies are looking for. Studies by the Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte Consulting show a persistent gap between skills needed for advanced manufacturing and the training delivered in our high schools and community colleges. They estimate more than 600,000 manufacturing jobs went unfilled in 2012 due to a lack of skilled workers.

Click here to read the op-ed on Roll Call’s website.

Time for Washington to refocus on manufacturing

Surveillance debate echoes Founders’ struggle

While the words of the Bill of Rights have not changed in the more than 200 years since their ratification, their meaning, their relevance and their impact have changed significantly.

Like the soaring rhetoric of the Preamble and the Declaration of Independence before it, it took many years for the simple and powerful principles laid out in the Bill of Rights to be tested in court cases, and for the Founders’ vision to be made real and relevant. Their struggle to balance liberty and security, and privacy and protection, mirrors our own modern-day debate.

It is a testament to our Founders’ genius that when Americans consider the appropriate balance between personal privacy and the government’s national security imperative, the Bill of Rights remains our guide.

It might be counterintuitive to think the ideas of men living in a quill-pen world could be relevant to protection of email or cellphone calls from unwarranted government snooping, but the American public’s justifiable concern over our government’s extensive digital surveillance programs is startlingly reminiscent of our Founders’ revolt against the British colonial practice of general searches and seizures.

In Colonial times, British authorities issued “writs of assistance” to enforce revenue laws. These general warrants gave officials unlimited, permanent authority to enter any house for the purpose of searching for and seizing illegal goods. Two decades before he represented Delaware at the Constitutional Convention, John Dickinson wrote that the broad, unchecked powers granted by these writs were “dangerous to freedom, and expressly contrary to the common law, which ever regarded a man’s house as his castle, or a place of perfect security.”

So dangerous was this invasion of private property that our Founders wrote and adopted the Fourth Amendment to protect citizens from unreasonable searches and seizures. The amendment outlaws the use of general warrants by requiring all warrants issued be specific in nature and based on probable cause.

Delaware’s own state bill of rights, which predates the nation’s by nearly a decade, included a specific bar on general warrants and helped inspire the Third Amendment, which protects Americans from the quartering of troops in their homes. It reinforced Dickinson’s argument that the Founders tried to preserve a sphere of privacy in the homes of citizens.

Today, the protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment are being challenged by a technological development our Founding Fathers could never have foreseen – general searches, conducted online, that are broad in scope and yet invisible to ordinary citizens. In this uncharted digital territory, our nation’s law under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act – also known as FISA – has granted the government the modern equivalent of “writs of assistance.”

The law, as applied and practiced, permits the government to collect and store intercepted communications without clear legal limits on what can be done with this information and without sufficient safeguards for protecting Americans from unwarranted surveillance. The courts tasked with approving government requests to expand surveillance authority do so in a secretive process where only the government agency collecting the data is heard. FISA courts have the authority to approve searches without the legal basis for their decisions being known or reviewed.

It is unnerving that not even the Congress elected and expected to oversee these programs has full access to critical information detailing the scope and impact of domestic surveillance activities on the privacy of American citizens. As a result, Congress has failed to be an effective check on these activities to ensure they do not infringe upon Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.

Reconciling this shortcoming with our security needs is a challenge. The Senate Judiciary Committee, on which I serve, worked hard to address the lack of sunlight on these activities late last year, but Congress cast aside that work and instead opted to remain in the dark.

We live in a dangerous world that necessitates a robust defense and intelligence capability to defend us, and the people charged with protecting our national security are doing their important jobs, but now Congress must do its job by passing legislation that will introduce more accountability and transparency into the surveillance process.

One bill, the FISA Accountability and Privacy Protection Act, would demand the government be more transparent about the impact of surveillance authorities on Americans’ privacy, allowing Congress to evaluate these programs with a complete understanding of their magnitude.

Another, the FISA Court Reform Act, would place a special advocate in the courtroom to argue for legal interpretations that minimize the scope of intrusion into Americans’ privacy, ensuring that FISA courts asked by the government to expand surveillance authority have the benefit of both sides of the argument.

I’m proud to have sponsored both of these measures, each of which can help ensure the government is able to protect the American people while still upholding and preserving their fundamental right to privacy.

Our Founders would expect and accept no less.

Click here to read the op-ed on the News Journal’s website.

Washington must put focus back on jobs

Visiting with businesses large and small, meeting with workers, and listening to folks at our job fairs these last few months, I’ve heard one message loudly and clearly: Delawareans are frustrated with Washington and want to know when Congress is going to refocus its attention on jobs and our economy.

I share their frustration.

 With our nation pausing to celebrate Labor Day, and with 12 million Americans – including 32,000 Delawareans – still looking for work, Congress has seemed startlingly unmoved. When Congress reconvenes next week, it should make helping businesses create jobs its top priority.

Although we’re adding an average of nearly 200,000 jobs a month, our nation is still only on pace to reach full employment by 2017.

Worse, the job growth numbers mask an even deeper and more concerning structural problem in our economy – long-term unemployment. Almost 40 percent of those currently unemployed have been out of a job for six months or longer. Although short-term unemployment has dropped, the ranks of the long-term unemployed remain stubbornly swollen.

The problem is especially difficult because the longer someone is out of a job, the harder it becomes for him or her to find a new one. As weeks and months pass, skills become rusty or unaligned with the needs of would-be employers. At the same time, the confidence one needs to thrive in the job hunt wanes just as the stigma of unemployment increases.

Congress’ lack of attention to these challenges is striking.

Washington has been paralyzed by a partisan battle over a fundamental disagreement about whether the government can and should play a positive role in our nation’s economy, and support the businesses and workers that drive it. Tea Party Republicans in the House of Representatives believe they can make more of a difference by repealing the Affordable Care Act or imposing reckless across-the-board spending cuts on the economy we’re trying to revive. 

To help our businesses grow and create jobs, we need to be making smarter investments in their success and focusing on skills training and the continued growth of the American manufacturing sector.

A few weeks ago, I visited the production facility of Beracah Homes in Greenwood, whose leaders told me that if not for the Delaware Manufacturing Extension Partnership, the modular homebuilder might not have survived the recession. The advice and support of the federally funded network of manufacturing experts helped the company streamline its work processes, better manage its inventories, and improve the administration of every aspect of modern manufacturing. I’ve heard similar success stories from the leaders of PATS Aviation in Georgetown, Miller Metal Fabrication in Bridgeville, ILC Dover, Masley Enterprises in Wilmington, and other Delaware manufacturers.

The Manufacturing Extension Partnership is one of the best examples of a federal program that is having a direct and positive impact on jobs here in Delaware, but the budget passed by House Republicans this year zeroed-out the funding the program needs to keep helping manufacturing businesses thrive and create jobs.

How is hurting manufacturers a smart investment in our country?

This Congress has had fewer than 20 bills signed into law so far this year – during a time of enormous challenges at home and abroad – and although Democrats and many Republicans view this inaction as an utter embarrassment, the Tea Party and its conservative ideologues see it as an accomplishment to be celebrated. Americans have good reason to be frustrated.

Unemployed Delawareans have already waited too long for help, which is why Sen. Carper, Congressman Carney, and I have tried to get around the Washington gridlock by hosting job fairs throughout Delaware. We’ve convened 15 job fairs over the last three years to put more than 12,000 Delawareans in the room with hundreds of local employers. Nothing makes me happier as a senator than hearing from Delawareans who got a job that they applied for at one of our fairs.

Washington needs to take decisive action on jobs, and it needs to take it now. Too many Delawareans have been forced to wait too long to get back into the workforce.

It is my sincere hope that when Congress goes back into session next month, it will get past the politics and get back to doing what our country needs us to do – to focus again on jobs.

Click here to read the op-ed on the News Journal’s website.

For Americans, freedom and safety are not either-or choice

News stories this week reporting on two alleged aspects of the U.S. government’s extensive digital surveillance of American citizens have shined a light on intelligence-gathering practices that have not received the public scrutiny they deserve. These surveillance programs were permitted under judicial orders that have been deemed classified by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, preventing the kinds of public oversight required for traditional domestic surveillance.

Protection from an intrusive government has always been a central thread of our democracy, but as Americans, the choice between liberty and safety is not a choice between one or the other – we expect both, and I believe both are possible with thoughtful public scrutiny and meaningful Congressional oversight.

Today, email traffic between American citizens comes through the same servers and networks as traffic between foreign nationals, and it’s getting harder and harder to distinguish between them. This is a daily challenge for an intelligence community charged with keeping us safe from those who would do us harm, and for a Congress forced to consider whether those efforts unduly infringe on the privacy of those who are not a threat.

Congress, however, is failing to be an effective check of these activities.

In December, I voted against the reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act explicitly because of its lack of safeguards for Americans’ privacy. Instead of making modest and reasonable changes to this law to increase public accountability, Congress abdicated its responsibility and reauthorized the law without changes. I voted against the reauthorization of the Patriot Act almost a year and a half prior for similar reasons.

Congress has a responsibility to ensure these surveillance programs are run in a manner that is transparent and accountable. The intelligence community should provide the public with specifics on the full breadth of information that has been captured under the FISA Amendments Act, and what it is doing with that information. The administration should also establish a framework for declassifying FISA court opinions about warrantless wiretapping activities performed under this law. I voted for amendments that would have accomplished both.

Delawareans deserve a full and informed debate about our nation’s intelligence-gathering procedures and their intrusion on our privacy rights, as well as a Congress that insists on keeping our nation safe and respects our most cherished privacy protections.

Click here to read the op-ed on the News Journal’s website.

Creating jobs in Delaware by embracing Africa’s economic potential

Creating jobs in Delaware means making sure our local businesses can sell their goods and services to more customers – no matter where in the world they live. In today’s global economy, we can’t ignore the fact that 95 percent of the world’s consumers live beyond our borders. Many of them live in Africa, which is home to seven of the ten fastest growing economies in the world and is poised for an economic takeoff led by an exploding middle class.

When American businesses sell their products in Africa, they grow and create jobs in their offices, headquarters and factories here at home. Nearly 10 million American jobs are supported by exports – including well over 11,000 in Delaware – and every billion dollars of U.S. exports could create as many as 5,000 new jobs. So it is in our economic interest to dramatically scale up our economic engagement with Africa. If we don’t, our international competitors will – and in some cases, they already have. At a meeting about U.S. export opportunities, an African head of state told me that while they “would prefer to work with the United States, the Chinese are already here.”

We cannot allow our competitors in the global economy to lock American companies out of fast-growing African markets, which have as many as 900 million potential consumers. Large and small businesses in Delaware, from DuPont-Pioneer to Baltimore Air Coil, based in Milford, are already selling their goods and services to African customers, but we have to do more to provide the tools and resources they need to succeed.

As chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on African Affairs, I recently released a report based on hearings and research on Africa’s economic potential. This report includes concrete recommendations for increasing U.S.-Africa investment and trade. Implementing these recommendations will strengthen our trade relationships, open new markets to American businesses, support domestic economic growth and job creation and ensure we do not continue to cede political and economic leadership on the continent to our global competitors.

We have to implement a smarter, more cohesive strategy for broad U.S. engagement with Africa in the public and the private sectors. This is a race for access to the fastest-growing markets anywhere in the world – and that’s a race I want the United States to win. I have been encouraged in the last year to see a new policy from the Obama administration that includes ways to increase trade and improve economic engagement with Africa, but there is still more that we can do.

The good news is that the report recommendations will give us a better strategy without spending a dime of additional taxpayer money. In fact, we are finding ways to prioritize, reallocate and spend existing money more wisely. In order to get the most bang for our buck, we can work with our African partners to remove barriers to trade; reauthorize and strengthen the African Growth and Opportunity Act; improve coordination between U.S. government agencies; increase the presence of U.S. Foreign Commercial Service officers in the region; bolster support for agencies that finance U.S. commercial engagement overseas; and engage the community of African-born individuals who now live in the United States to bolster economic ties.

Delawareans are already leading the way in engaging with Africa. Whether they are doing humanitarian work through faith-based or community organizations, participating in student or academic exchanges, or doing business and creating jobs, Delaware has deep ties with many African countries. In 2011, Delaware businesses sold more than $5.5 billion in goods and services to foreign markets – and 88 percent of companies that exported were small- or medium-sized businesses. Job creation and economic growth in Delaware depend on our engagement overseas, and we have to do more to reach fast-growing new markets in Africa if we want to stay competitive.

We have an opportunity to seize this moment and promote economic engagement that strengthens the U.S. economy and creates jobs. To do that, we must do more to coordinate strategy and use existing resources more efficiently and effectively. Otherwise, we will look up in a few short years and wonder how we let this opportunity pass us by – and why our international competitors have a head start on Delaware businesses in African markets.

Click here to read the op-ed on the News Journal’s website.

Delaware Is Ready to Fight for Marriage Equality

Last week, the Supreme Court heard arguments in two potentially landmark cases on marriage equality in the United States — one that challenges state laws that prohibit full marriage equality and another challenging the federal law that limits rights for married couples based on sexual orientation.

While we wait for these important court decisions, the Delaware General Assembly is moving forward on legislation that will make ours the tenth state (the eleventh, if you include the District of Columbia) to extend marriage equality to all of our citizens.

This is going to be a big year for equality in this country. As a nation, we’re poised to make historic progress, and in Delaware, we have the opportunity to make sure that everyone has the same right to marry the person they love.

Equality is the birthright of every American, and it’s up to all of us to work to ensure that everyone — no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity — can access the equal rights and protections due every American.

Delaware legalized civil unions for same-sex couples in 2011, and I was proud to stand with two close friends at their wedding the same day the law went into effect. They were the first couple in our state to get married under the new law.

It was a beautiful New Year’s Day service at Trinity Episcopal Church in Wilmington. The pews were packed with loved ones — family members, friends, neighbors, and members of the congregation. The couple’s kids stood at their sides.

“Just as every marriage performed in this church has been,” I said in my sermon, “this union is about two people who proudly and passionately love each other celebrating that love and demonstrating their commitment to one another in front of God, their families, their friends, and our community.”

Winning civil unions in Delaware was a critical brick on the path to full equality, but it only got us part of the way. Civil unions still relegate gay and lesbian couples to a second-class status that ought not be acceptable in this country.

We’re trying to fix that in Delaware.

We’ve done a whip count and, frankly, if the Delaware General Assembly’s vote on marriage equality were held today, it would be close. Really close. The organization leading the fight here, Equality Delaware, has my full support, but it needs the support of allies around the country, too.

We’re trying to make sure that every member of the state House and Senate hears directly from their constituents in support of marriage equality, and Equality Delaware has mobilized an impressive field and voter outreach program to do it. Volunteers are phone-banking and canvassing in key communities. Rallies are being organized on college campuses.

To learn more about the fight for marriage equality in Delaware and how you can get involved, visit EqualityDelaware.org.                                       

Click here to read the op-ed on Huffington Post’s website.

R&D tax credit spurs innovation

Start-ups and small businesses all across this country take chances everyday to turn their ideas into innovations and their innovations into products that can be made right here in America. It’s time our government takes a chance on them.

These entrepreneurs are critical to our economic growth. Between 1980 and 2005, all net new jobs created in the United States were created by firms five years old or younger.

The bipartisan Startup Innovation Credit Act, which would make the highly successful research and development tax credit available to startup companies, is fundamentally a jobs bill. It would provide access to critical capital at a time when innovative new businesses need it most and would give a vital shot in the arm to American manufacturing.

Nearly 70 percent of America’s private-sector research and development and about 90 percent of our patents are in manufacturing — a sector that creates high-quality jobs but needs the right support to compete in the global economy.

While the private sector will create jobs, Congress can help create an environment that incentivizes innovation and supports entrepreneurs and small businesses — and that is exactly what our legislation does.

The R&D tax credit is an important part of creating that environment and has helped tens of thousands of American companies succeed and create jobs. The problem is, right now, it isn’t available to startups, because they are not yet profitable and don’t have an income tax liability against which to take a credit. In fact, more than half the R&D credit in recent years was taken by companies with revenue of more than $1 billion.

The Startup Innovation Credit Act of 2013 would level the playing field. It says that in order to spur research and development, we should allow companies to claim the R&D tax credit against their employment taxes. That would open this credit to new companies that don’t yet have an income tax liability.

Our bipartisan legislation has been endorsed by a remarkable list of independent organizations for its potential to unleash innovation and support entrepreneurs, including the Silicon Valley Leadership Group; Revolution, led by AOL founder Steve Case; the Association for Manufacturing Technology; the American Small Manufacturers Coalition, the American Chemical Society; and BIO, a national organization that supports companies doing research and development in the biotechnology space.

Credits just like this have been offered before in states like Iowa, Arizona, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and they have been game changers, helping companies get off the ground and keep their doors open during those demanding first years.

This credit is specifically designed for new, risk-taking firms. It does not pick winners and losers but, instead, supports all private-sector judgments and decisions that prioritize investment in research and development.

We are depending on our innovators and our small-business owners to help grow and strengthen our economy and fuel a new generation of job creation. Let’s give them the support they deserve at a time when they need it most.

Rather than shutting our startups out of the R&D tax credit, let’s open the doors to these innovators and see what they can do. We are confident this will prove a wise investment in opening the doors of innovation and job creation for our future.

Sen. Chris Coons is a Democrat from Delaware. Sen. Mike Enzi is a Republican from Wyoming and is a member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Click here to read the op-ed on POLITICO’s website.

Reauthorize Violence Against Women Act

Domestic violence rips at the fabric of our community, tearing too many Delaware homes apart. These crimes devastate the emotional and physical well-being of individual victims and have a multigenerational effect on the children of those victims.

Among the best tools law enforcement officers have for combatting crimes of domestic violence are the programs created and sustained by the Violence Against Women Act, landmark legislation first authored by Delaware’s Joe Biden.

Since its initial passage in 1994, the rate of intimate partner violence in this country has declined by 67 percent. VAWA funds are used to train over half a million law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges and other personnel every year, and since its last reauthorization, nearly 3,400 women and children sought the safety of shelters in Delaware and over 21,000 calls were made to local crisis hotlines.

The Violence Against Women Act is working – but we still have much to do to address evolving needs in the fight against domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking.

That’s why it is long past time for the Violence Against Women Act to be reauthorized by Congress. Programs that Delaware victims of domestic violence depend on for transitional housing, legal assistance and more are at stake, as well as support for a coordinated community response to domestic violence.

The Senate passed a reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act by a broad bipartisan majority last year. I worked to strengthen the bill on the Judiciary Committee, so I was proud to co-sponsor it.

This bill would have provided critical support to law enforcement, promoted accountability and made tough cuts to save money while protecting the programs that have been the most successful.

Yet, Republicans in the House of Representatives refused to act on it before the end of the last Congress.

On Tuesday the Senate passed the bipartisan legislation for a second time.

Despite earning overwhelming bipartisan support in the Senate, action in the House is anything but guaranteed.

Delawareans are tired of waiting for this long overdue reauthorization. This week, some of our state’s top law enforcement officers and community leaders spoke out to call for action without delay.

Carol Post, the executive director of the Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said the Violence Against Women Act is one of the major reasons for Delaware’s improved, strengthened and coordinated community response to domestic violence, sexual assault and stalking. She said that we cannot afford to lose the ground we have gained over the last 20 years.

Wilmington Police Chief Christine Dunning echoed her call for quick action, saying that violence against women is a pervasive issue, not only in the City of Wilmington, but throughout the state.

Dunning added that in order to combat this violence, additional resources must be dedicated to ensure women’s safety.

There is no question that the Violence Against Women Act has been effective. It has saved lives, brought what was once a crime cloaked in silence and darkness out into the light, and dramatically increased arrests and prosecutions for crimes of domestic and sexual violence.

Delawareans have spoken out, loudly and clearly, to say that no matter who you are and no matter whom you love, you deserve the chance to live free from violence and fear.

Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act is a first step toward delivering that fundamental freedom to men, women and children across this country. 

Now, it is time for the United States House of Representatives to act and take that step forward – without any further delay.

To read the op-ed on the News Journal’s website, click here:

http://delonline.us/VU0bOn