RADAR ALERT: HRES 590: Do You Know Where Your Taxpayer Dollars Are Today?

You may already know about the outlandish (and unsupported) claims made against men and fathers in House Resolution 590 (HRES-590). RADAR has critiqued (.pdf file) these extensively. But a little-noticed aspect of HRES-590 is one of its final "Whereas" clauses:

"Whereas there is a need to increase funding for programs carried out under the Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005 (VAWA 2005) ..." (p.4)

The stated purpose of HRES 590 is to promote even more funding for VAWA programs, such as services that include emergency shelter, counseling, and legal services for victims. In the 2005 reauthorization of VAWA, Congress added a requirement that the General Accounting Office (GAO) investigate and report on just what services are being provided to which people under the act. This is important because nearly half of VAWA funds go to such programs ($507 million in fiscal year 2007 alone).

Two months ago, the GAO released a report to Congress entitled "Services Provided to Victims of Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, Dating Violence, and Stalking." (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07846r.pdf) The findings in the report are damning. Programs that receive VAWA funds ("grant recipients") have not been providing reliable or consistent data about the people they serve. They have been accepting the VAWA money, but are not being held accountable for how they spend it. Per the report,

"... as a result of discussions with grant recipients, we could not be assured that any survey data we obtained would be consistent and reliable enough for analysis of the specific information required, i.e. the number, age, and gender of victims receiving each available service." (p.3)

What does all this mean? It means Congress is spending half a billion dollars each year on programs whose success it cannot adequately evaluate. It may mean that there is inadequate help for actual victims, or even that some victims (such as abused men) are being turned away with no reliable means of verifying or measuring this information. And now Congress is being approached with a resolution, HRES 590, which openly asserts the need to throw more money into VAWA.

Let's not throw any more VAWA money down a rat hole. Protecting actual victims means more transparency and accountability in the way we spend taxpayer dollars for that purpose. HRES 590 fails to recognize this fact, and if even for that reason alone, it deserves to be defeated.

We are asking you to call or fax Congressman Buck McKeon (R), ranking member of the Education and Labor Committee, and urge him to "Say NO to HRES 590!"

Phone: (202) 225-1956
Fax: (202) 226-0683

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Date of RADAR Release: September 17, 2007

Want to improve the chance that they'll pay attention to your letter? Click here.

R.A.D.A.R. – Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting – is a non-profit, non-partisan organization of men and women
working to improve the effectiveness of our nation's approach to solving domestic violence. http://www.mediaradar.org/.