The heart of the dispute is that Democrats want to expand coverage on college campuses and apply protections to Native Americans, the LGBT community and illegal immigrants. The Senate-passed bill includes those provisions. The GOP version excludes them and also narrows avenues for abused undocumented victims to seek legal status.There is a powerful article concerning the breadth of the problem on reservations today that led me to look into this matter some. The latest in this struggle, which has various constitutional/moral/policy aspects, was reported by TPM -- the House claims a provision in the Senate version makes it a revenue bill, which has to originate in the House. This means there would not be a "Senate version," which passed with enough Republican votes to be seen as bipartisan. Obama has threatened to veto the more restrictive House bill (which does not merely address the most controversial measures involving Native Americans, undocumented people and LGBT groups*) and Senate Democrats would be loathe to pass it without change. There is room to maneuver.
One op-ed, who holds "hold both parties in equal contempt" (red flag alert) notes there are reasonable grounds to oppose aspects of the new version. But, it only covers two basic aspects, so even there, it takes you only so far. This baby of Sen. Biden already has went to the Supreme Court in the important Commerce Clause case U.S. v. Morrison. The idea of giving concurrent power to tribal courts threatens to involve another trip, since some think it is unconstitutional to require non-tribal members to submit to to tribal jurisdictions, particularly since the courts don't have the exact same due process protections. Law professors already addressed the concern and a Supreme Court ruling from a few years back seems to address it:
Several considerations lead us to the conclusion that Congress does possess the constitutional power to lift the restrictions on the tribes’ criminal jurisdiction over nonmember Indians as the statute seeks to do.A Senate version without this provision seems to be in the works and it is unclear how horrible it would be; on this front, the problems with tribal authorities as spelled out by the NYT (hard to tell really -- there are so many tribes here; it would be akin to treat Texas like New York) didn't help matters. From what the article says, the most important thing would be resources for local centers to report and treat victims, less a matter of what court to try them -- at least, except in certain areas where non-tribe courts are so out of the way to be unmanageable. If the jurisdiction is unconstitutional, which seems to be questionable, let the courts settle it.
In pretend reasonable land, I can imagine some compromise that provides something for each side. The college campuses thing seems more a spending matter. The undocumented aliens matter also touches upon a hot button issue, especially to the degree it provides some extension on right to stay.** The op-ed also thinks the Democrats are playing politics for inserting LGBT language. To the degree this involves women, the fact a person is lesbian or transsexual shouldn't matter. To the extent not, it's a small subset and dealing with violence against gay men seems to be something for Republicans to latch on to show there aren't total reprobates on these issues. As to playing politics, again, many of these people are women, and the renewal would be a good spot to deal with that community. Particularly as they are starting to truly get respect.
The Republican concerns are not just "anti-women" though that is the net effect in various instances. The Native American courts issue by itself is a hard place to justify drawing some line in the sand -- it's at best debatable. The GLBT thing is basically a policy issue and my idea would be to treat this as a violence against women bill -- lesbians and transsexuals count there too -- but if gay men are the stickler, address that in other legislation (a hate law was already passed). If the concern is that the law will protect them anyway, why are the Republicans upset about even a symbolic statement to protect them, to remind, e.g., lesbians abuse fellow lesbians too. The provisions involving aliens underlines the need to treat everyone with some basic respect. The college stuff also doesn't seem like something that Republicans should draw the line on but unfortunately might be the sort of thing tossed aside in a compromise measure. Overall, the Republicans are likely to force a sub-par law.
Such is how things go these days. I would end with a charming bait and switch. The Republicans force a restrictive amount of federal stimulus and then blame Obama and the Democrats for things not going well though they themselves (per the opinions of economic experts) are major problem. This is a different matter, but the flawed result is of a piece.
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* For instance, from Obama: "H.R. 4970 allows abusers to be notified when a victim files a VAWA self-petition for relief, and it eliminates the path to citizenship for U visa holders – victims of serious crimes such as torture, rape, and domestic violence – who are cooperating with law enforcement in the investigation or prosecution of these crimes."
** As one source notes:
Another point of contention is a provision that would increase the number of temporary U.S. visas for illegal immigrants who are victims of domestic violence. The new provision would expand the number of temporary visas available by allowing the unused visas from previous years to be added to the annual 10,000 U visas currently available to victims of domestic violence, rape, and sex trafficking. Opponents of the new provision argue that this would effectively grant a form of amnesty to illegal immigrants. Proponents argue that the visas are indispensable in helping victims whose abusers may be using the threat of deportation to control and exploit them.This underlines the controversy -- there is a lot here.