Vice President Joe Biden has been steadfast in his claim that if the president’s American Jobs Act does not pass, “rape will continue to rise.” Some have questioned Biden for invoking rape to push legislation, but the National Organization for Women is not among them.
After one version of Obama’s jobs bill failed to overcome a Senate filibuster last week, the administration has been working to paint Republicans as the ones to blame, and Biden has done so forcefully.
“Well let me tell you, it’s not temporary when that 911 call comes in and a woman’s being raped if a cop shows up in time to prevent the rape,” Biden said Tuesday in Philadelphia, responding to opponents who have called the jobs bill a temporary fix.
“It’s not temporary to that woman … I wish these guys that thought it’s temporary, I wish they had some notion what it’s like to be on the other side of a gun. Or a 200 pound man standing over you telling you to submit. Folks, it matters. It matters!”
On Wednesday Biden reinvigorated his claim that the incidence of rape would increase without the jobs bill, telling conservative journalist Jason Mattera, who questioned the appropriateness of using rape to win legislative votes, that all crime would increase without the administration’s legislation.
“Murder will continue to rise, rape will continue to rise, all crime will continue to rise,” Biden said.
According to NOW president Terry O’Neill, Biden’s rape concern is well-founded.
“I think he is concretely worried that with fewer police on the beat crime will go up,” O’Neill told The Daily Caller. “I think he is imagining the lives of real people. That is not a device — that is an actual ability to know what everyday people go through.”
O’Neill said the administration’s job creation initiative is essential to everyday Americans — and that obstructionists in Congress are being careless with other people’s lives.
“The people that are blocking jobs legislation really don’t care, and don’t have an idea of what its like,” O’Neill said. “They don’t have an idea what it’s like to have your child in a classroom of 45 kids and one teacher — and that is what we are looking at if these kinds of jobs are not restored.
“They don’t have a clue what its like to be threatened with rape, and there are not enough police officers to come and prevent it or stop it.”
“I think it is absolutely legitimate to demand that these uncaring un-empathic legislators get a clue,” O’Neill added.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney attempted to clarify Biden’s statements on Thursday. “It would be hard to find anyone who doesn’t agree with the simple equation that fewer police officers on the street has a direct effect on the crime rate,” Carney said. “That’s the point he was making, and that’s a point that the president absolutely does share.”
According to data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation — highlighted by The American Thinker — forcible rapes committed in the United states decreased from 42.3 for every 100,000 people in 1991 to 27.5 in 2010.