Con­gress expe­ri­enced a thaw in frozen posi­tions and grid­lock late this win­ter, its dura­tion unknown but wor­thy of recog­ni­tion. Up for reelec­tion, Sen­a­tor Pat­ty Mur­ray, D‑Washington, could take to the evening news with a pair of achievements.

Repub­li­cans didn’t shut down the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, which bespeaks their hopes of cap­tur­ing Con­gress in the 2022 midterm elections.

The Sen­ate passed, on a bipar­ti­san 68–31 vote, a 2,700-page, $1.5 tril­lion omnibus bill that will keep the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment run­ning until September.

Okay, it was five months into the cur­rent fis­cal year, but craft­ing a com­pro­mise can take that long. The leg­is­la­tion pro­vides a $46 bil­lion or 6.7 per­cent increase in non-defense spend­ing, insist­ed on by Democ­rats, with a $2 bil­lion, 5.6 per­cent defense boost at the insis­tence of Republicans.

Repub­li­can attacks on vac­cine man­dates were bat­ted away. A $13.8 bil­lion Ukrain­ian aid pack­age was includ­ed, opposed only by the far, far right.

The spend­ing bill reau­tho­rizes, until 2027, the land­mark Vio­lence Against Women Act, orig­i­nal­ly enact­ed in 1994 with Mur­ray and then-Sen­a­tor Joe Biden, D‑Delaware, as lead spon­sors. The act had expired in Feb­ru­ary of 2019, and expired ear­ly in the past decade as Con­gress fought over its 2013 extension.

VAWA emerged stronger. It expands spe­cial crim­i­nal juris­dic­tion of trib­al courts to cov­er non-Native per­pe­tra­tors of sex­u­al assault, child abuse, stalk­ing, sex traf­fick­ing and assaults on trib­al police that take place on trib­al lands.

Scene from a Get VAWA Done ral­ly in 2013 with US Sen­a­tor Daniel Aka­ka. NCAI First Vice Pres­i­dent Jua­na Majel Dixon, Tulalip Tribes Vice Pres­i­dent Deb­o­rah Park­er, and Ter­ri Hen­ry, Co-chair of the NCAI Task Force on Vio­lence Against Women (Pho­to: Nation­al Con­gress of Amer­i­can Indi­ans, repro­duced under a Cre­ative Com­mons license)

The leg­is­la­tion boosts ser­vices and sup­port for under­served and mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties – includ­ing LGBTQ+ sur­vivors of domes­tic vio­lence, vic­tims of dat­ing vio­lence, and stalk­ing. It pro­vides mon­ey for sur­vivor-based, com­mu­ni­ty cen­tered sup­port services.

“The trib­al pro­vi­sions in the VAWA reau­tho­riza­tion is real­ly a big deal,” said Sen­a­tor Kyrsten Sine­ma, D‑Arizona. It didn’t come with­out a pro­longed fight.

A decade ago, Repub­li­cans were cool to trib­al pro­tec­tion, and opposed pro­tec­tion of same-sex vic­tims, and fought against allow­ing bat­tered undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants tem­po­rary visas while their cas­es were heard.

Democ­rats have yet to secure pro­vi­sions bar­ring those con­vict­ed of vio­lence against women from the future pur­chase of firearms.

The VAWA bat­tles have shown Murray’s tenacity.

The Repub­li­can-run House tried to run a weak­er bill in 2013, recruit­ing Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, R‑Washington, as prime sponsor.

They final­ly yield­ed to a vote.

The weak­er Repub­li­can bill went down to defeat, the stronger leg­is­la­tion cham­pi­oned by Mur­ray was sent to Pres­i­dent Oba­ma for signature.

A sec­ond major accom­plish­ment of Con­gress, the long-sought Postal Ser­vice Reform Act, will put the U.S. Postal Ser­vice back on its fis­cal feet. It passed on bipar­ti­san votes of 79–19 in the Sen­ate and 342–92 in the House.

The leg­is­la­tion requires retired Postal Ser­vice employ­ees to enroll in Medicare, drop­ping Con­gress’ pre­vi­ous man­date that forced the USPS to cov­er its health care costs years in advance.

The Act will save an esti­mat­ed $50 bil­lion over the com­ing decade.

The Post Office gets no appro­pri­a­tion but must rely on its own revenues.

The Postal Ser­vice Reform Act would require that USPS cre­ate an online dash­board with local and nation­al data on the deliv­ery of mail.

It also ensures con­tin­u­a­tion of six-day mail deliv­ery: Dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, many Amer­i­cans have depend­ed on the Post Office for com­merce and per­son­al communication.

With­out removal of the health care require­ment, the USPS was in dan­ger of run­ning out of mon­ey in 2024. As Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer not­ed, “The Post Office usu­al­ly deliv­ers for us, but today we’re going to deliv­er for them.”

On short notice, the U.S. Sen­ate has also approved on a voice vote leg­is­la­tion that would make Day­light Sav­ing Time per­ma­nent across Amer­i­ca, except in Ari­zona and Hawaii, where res­i­dents do not switch their clocks. If approved by the House, the Sun­shine Pro­tec­tion Act would take effect in Novem­ber of 2023.

The coun­try tried year-around Day­light Sav­ing Time in the 1970s, dur­ing the Arab Oil Embar­go, but dark ear­ly morn­ings caused Con­gress to go back to semi­an­nu­al clock switch­es. The Sun­shine Pro­tec­tion Act was cham­pi­oned by the unusu­al duo of Mur­ray and Mar­co Rubio, R‑Florida. “We’re one step clos­er to nev­er hav­ing to change our clocks again,” Mur­ray said after the Sen­ate vote.

The leg­is­la­tion elicit­ed a grumpy response from Washington’s Repub­li­can State Chair­man Caleb Heim­lich. “I am glad we are doing away with chang­ing our clocks,” Heim­lich tweet­ed. “I just wish Pat­ty Mur­ray had any oth­er leg­isla­tive accom­plish­ments over the past thir­ty years.”

What about the Vio­lence Against Women Act, passed twen­ty-eight years ago and reen­act­ed with­in the same week? Doesn’t go with the Repub­li­can nar­ra­tive, espe­cial­ly when Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers tried to weak­en VAWA and fel­low Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Doc Hast­ings vot­ed against the 2013 VAWA reauthorization.