[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 41 (Wednesday, March 11, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1403-S1423]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
JUSTICE FOR VICTIMS OF TRAFFICKING ACT OF 2015
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will
resume consideration of S. 178, which the clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
A bill (S. 178) to provide justice for the victims of
trafficking.
Pending:
Portman amendment No. 270, to amend the Child Abuse
Prevention and Treatment Act to enable State child protective
services systems to improve the identification and assessment
of child victims of sex trafficking.
Portman amendment No. 271, to amend the definition of
``homeless person'' under the McKinney-Vento Homeless
Assistance Act to include certain homeless children and
youth.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the Senate is presently considering a
series of human trafficking bills that will help law enforcement and
nongovernmental organizations to take swift aggressive action to
protect our most vulnerable populations and work to ensure justice,
restitution, and healing for victims of these most horrific crimes.
Human trafficking--modern-day slavery--is not a vestige of the past.
It is an evil presence here and now. Children and young adults are
being bought and sold in our back yard. This problem knows no borders.
It is happening in communities across Ohio. It is a particular problem
in Toledo--northwest Ohio--where several north-south and east-west
highways come together.
It is difficult even to obtain accurate information on this depraved
crime
[[Page S1404]]
that happens in the shadows. But we know that as many as 17,000
individuals may be trafficked into our Nation each year, and some
estimate that as many as 100,000 American children may be victims of
trafficking within the United States each year.
The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act will give the Department
of Justice additional tools to help victims and to crack down on this
crime. It would enhance services for victims of human trafficking, and
it would expand victim restitution, as well as provide additional
resources to law enforcement to help improve human trafficking
reporting and investigation.
There is bipartisan and bicameral support for the tracking provisions
of this bill. This is a bill about human trafficking. We should not let
it become a fight about abortion. I hope my colleagues on the other
side of the aisle will agree with this and strip out the Hyde language
that has become such a point of controversy. I know reasonable people
can disagree about the Hyde amendment, but now is not the time or place
to debate it.
There is agreement--broad, wide, deep agreement--on the need to
address trafficking. Americans from all walks of life have come to us
asking that we do something. We can and we should. These new tools
would be essential in assisting the Department of Justice, which has
made combating trafficking a priority.
I would like to commend Attorney General Holder for his leadership on
this issue. Under his management, DOJ's commitment to preventing human
trafficking and bringing these criminals to justice has never been
stronger. The Attorney General has really stepped up on this. This bill
will give our next Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, the tools she needs
to build upon Holder's efforts.
Another area where we can do more to prevent human trafficking is
giving law enforcement in our communities the resources to find kids
before they fall prey to traffickers. That is why I plan to introduce
an amendment that would provide grants to local law enforcement for
tracking down homeless and runaway youth, and that will include
assistance for retired Federal agents to assist local law enforcement
in these investigations. We must find these at-risk children and teens
and bring them home before their youthful rebellion becomes something
so much worse.
A group of retired FBI agents in northwest Ohio came to my office and
asked for our help in the creation of a pilot program that would allow
retired agents to assist local law enforcement in finding runaway kids
and teens. Generally, northwest Ohio children who become involved in
trafficking do so within about 2 weeks of running away from home. So
finding them quickly is essential. About one-third of runaways become
victims of trafficking. Think of that. One-third of runaways become
victims of trafficking.
Toledo has just one detective working on cases of missing children,
both adult and children. These retired FBI agents want to help local
law enforcement investigate the 18,000 runaways in Ohio every year, but
they need help. Police don't have the manpower to track these children,
but every city has retired agents who could assist the overworked
departments.
I will also be introducing a series of amendments, which I hope will
be bipartisan, including the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act, a bill I
introduced in the last Congress with Senator Ayotte. We know that human
trafficking victims are especially vulnerable to sexual assault. Women
who give birth to a child conceived through rape can often face
intimidation from attackers who pursue, amazingly enough, parental
rights.
My amendment would help protect these survivors by encouraging States
to pass laws allowing women to petition for the termination of their
attacker's parental rights, if there is clear and convincing evidence
the child was conceived through rape. These women have already been
subjected to horrific crimes. They should not have to suffer a life of
intrusion by the man who raped them.
I was first moved to introduce this bill because of the case of Ariel
Castro in Cleveland. He was on trial in Ohio for kidnapping, raping,
and holding prisoner three women for nearly a decade. He asked the
judge for parental rights to visit his 6-year-old daughter he conceived
through rape.
While the judge denied his request, Ohio has no law that prevents
rapists such as Castro from claiming parental rights and forcing their
victims to let these criminals into their children's lives. I hope this
law encourages Ohio and other States to pass laws making it clear that
anyone who commits such a terrible act forfeits any right to parent a
child he forced on his victim. This amendment will help protect rape
survivors, ensuring their right to care for their children free from
fear.
Senators Klobuchar, Corker, and Leahy also have their own bill, which
they plan to offer as amendments, and which will help us to work to
stamp out this terrible crime.
Finally, I want to commend those in my State who have helped lead the
way on this issue. There is a history of strong bipartisanship on this
issue that cuts across all ideological lines. State Representative
Teresa Fedor helped to lead a successful fight for passage of the safe
harbor bill in the Ohio legislature 3 years ago.
Dr. Celia Williamson, a professor of social work at the University of
Toledo, is recognized nationally, and even internationally, as a leader
in human trafficking research and activism. She has been a tremendous
force on this issue. With her help and leadership, the University of
Toledo just established the Human Trafficking and Social Justice
Institute. The university has hosted annual human trafficking
conferences, and the formation of this institute is a terrific next
step in its commitment to addressing a problem that plagues Toledo and
too often goes unacknowledged and unaddressed.
Finally, I want to commend the members of the Lucas County Human
Trafficking Coalition, which has had some very diverse membership and
has worked for several years to better coordinate and provide services
to victims.
Human trafficking is a problem that knows no borders and, of course,
knows no political party. I hope we can continue to work together to
combat this awful epidemic. I hope we will be able to work through our
issues to resolve the issue with the Hyde amendment language.
We must take swift and aggressive language to prevent these crimes
and work to ensure justice and restitution and healing for its victims.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, we are debating a bill today that should
be about an issue we can all agree on--eliminating human trafficking.
This bill should be about protecting women's health and rights and
about fighting back against the unacceptable presence of human slavery
in our country. In other words, if anything should be bipartisan, this
bill is it.
I know many of us were hoping this bill--the Justice for Victims of
Trafficking Act--would be an example of Republicans and Democrats
working together because surely we can agree these problems need to be
addressed--and urgently--and that the gridlock and dysfunction we see
far too often in Congress should have absolutely no place in this
discussion. So I am appalled that on a bill intended to help women,
Republicans actually have chosen to double down on their political
fight against women's health. Republicans have tried to sneak in a
provision that would hurt women and drag this bill into yet another
partisan fight. They just can't seem to help themselves.
The provision the Republicans are hoping to sneak in--again, on a
human trafficking bill--would be a permanent extension of the so-called
Hyde amendment. It would move beyond the status quo, which only applies
to appropriated taxpayer money, and expand it into the new nontax-
funding streams this bill would authorize. That means if this law
passes--a law intended to help women who have experienced truly
horrific violence and hardship--Congress would at the same time allow
politicians to interfere even more with the most deeply personal health
decisions a woman can make.
Trying to slip a women's health restriction into a women's safety
bill is akin to slipping a tractor ban into the farm bill. It doesn't
make sense.
This isn't the first time Republicans have tried this political
stunt. Again
[[Page S1405]]
and again Republicans in Congress have picked completely unnecessary
political fights over women's health. They threatened a government
shutdown over Planned Parenthood funding in 2011. They have tried to
jam through reproductive health riders on appropriations legislation.
House Republicans even attached women's health restrictions to the
education bill they tried to pass this month. It is shocking to see it
happening again.
The good news is that the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act can
still be the bipartisan legislation it should be. Democrats are here
and ready to work with Republicans to fix this bill and move past this
partisan debate over women's health. We are very hopeful that once that
happens, we can get this bill passed and take a step toward solving a
horrible problem we all know needs a solution.
I hope my Republican colleagues agree with me that women deserve
better than one step backward for every step forward when it comes to
their health and their rights. I hope they agree that a bill to end
modern-day slavery in the United States is not the right time to try to
sneak in a political victory for their base. If they agree, they will
prove that by working with us rather than focusing on political fights
we have seen more than enough of in this Congress.
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the
pending amendment to call up my amendment No. 285.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. BROWN. I object on behalf of a number of Members on this side.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Mr. TOOMEY. Mr. President, it is hard to adequately express my
frustration that we can't get moving on this bill.
First of all, the underlying bill that our friends on the other side
are blocking progress on is a very sensible, important, constructive
bill. I commend Senator Cornyn for having introduced this. I am proud
to be a cosponsor.
This is the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act.
Let's be clear what this is about. We have a huge problem in this
country. In all 50 States there are people who actually engage in the
buying and selling of human beings, mostly women and young children, in
a sex trade. That is what is happening. And this is a bill that would
enhance the penalties and thereby discourage this activity. It would
take some of the proceeds from the penalties paid by these monsters who
would engage in this kind of activity and it would use those proceeds
to help victims. I don't understand where the objection comes from for
a bill such as this, and now we can't move ahead on my amendment.
My amendment is a little bit different but it is in a similar vein.
It is designed to help protect children from sexual predators in
schools, and we just heard the objection. The folks on the other side
of the aisle somehow object to legislation that would enhance a
protection for the kids in our schools. Let me explain why this is so
important.
The inspiration for this bipartisan bill that I have introduced with
Senator Manchin and which I just tried to call up as an amendment and I
was prevented from doing so--the inspiration for this is an absolutely
horrendous story that begins in Delaware County, PA.
There was a schoolteacher who for years was molesting boys in his
care. He raped one of the boys. The prosecutors discovered what was
going on, but they never had enough evidence to actually press charges.
The school knew what was going on, so they decided: Why don't we make
this monster someone else's problem? And that is exactly what they did.
They wrote a letter of recommendation so this animal could go across
the State line--which he did--get hired by a school in West Virginia--
which he did--and become a teacher, eventually rise to be principal,
and along the way continue molesting we don't know how many kids, but
we do know in the end he raped and killed a 12-year-old boy. Because
that is what these people do. And there is a practice that happens--as
hard as this is to talk about, as unbelievable as this is in practice,
it is a reality that some schools would like these people to become
someone else's problem, and they actually give them a letter of
recommendation so they can go somewhere. And they do indeed become
someone else's problem. That is what I am trying to stop here. That is
what we are trying to stop.
This happened with a teacher who left Pennsylvania and went to West
Virginia, and the little boy's name was Jeremy Bell.
Senator Manchin from West Virginia and I have teamed up on a bill
that would make this practice of knowingly and willfully aiding a known
pedophile from getting a job somewhere else--we would make that
illegal.
We wouldn't think we should have to do that because we wouldn't think
anybody with a conscience could do it, but it happens. We know it
happens. We have heard these stories time and again.
By the way, this is not such an isolated event as we would like to
think it is. Last year alone, 459 teachers and other school employees
across America were arrested for sexual misconduct with the kids they
were supposed to be taking care of and looking after.
We all know that for the vast majority of schoolteachers it would
never occur to them. It would never cross their mind, they would never
do such a thing. But there are a number of pedophiles--monsters who
prey on kids. And they know where the kids are. So they try to find
their way into these schools so they can prey on the victims.
The 459 who were arrested last year were the ones we knew enough
about that prosecutors felt they could prosecute, so they made an
arrest. How many more are happening but we don't know enough of the
specifics, we don't have a strong enough case to actually make an
arrest?
So far this year, we are not off to a much better start. We are 69
days into the new school year, and already 82 people have been arrested
across America.
This isn't some isolated one-time problem. This is a genuine problem
we need to do something to solve, so Senator Manchin and I have come
together with a bill that addresses this.
The whole idea, the whole goal, is very simple: Let's make sure
schools are not hiring these predators and we are protecting our kids
from them. It does that with two mechanisms, two simple provisions that
achieve this.
One is it requires background checks that will get the job done and
screen out those who have a previous conviction; and it will also make
it illegal to have this terrible practice of passing the trash--this
terrible practice of recommending a teacher who is a known pedophile.
Neither of these mechanisms should be controversial.
This is almost identical legislation which passed the House
unanimously. The House is not exactly known for not having any partisan
divides, and yet it passed unanimously. We have Members of this body
who were Members of the House in the last Congress and voted for it
then, are now cosponsors of this legislation, and amazingly to me we
are having this discussion.
I am being blocked from offering this amendment. The language in my
amendment is almost identical to the language we had in the child care
development block grant, which this body voted for and all but one
Member voted in favor of that bill, which would provide exactly this
kind of criminal background check on employees for daycare.
This body has voted to ensure the protection of really young kids, as
it should have. I fully supported that. Why would we block providing
comparable protection to kids who are just a little bit older? How can
it be that we want to make sure pedophiles don't get into our daycare
centers but it is OK for them to be in elementary schools, in middle
schools, and in high schools? This makes no sense at all. And it is
necessary, because while every State
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has some kind of background check system, there are huge loopholes,
there are huge gaps, there are huge inconsistencies that are allowing
people to get through.
Our legislation would require background checks on any adult hired by
a school who would come in unsupervised contact with kids--teachers,
contractors, schoolbus drivers, a sports coach--anybody so that we
would be protecting our kids from pedophiles who actively seek the
opportunity to prey on these kids.
One of the things we do to make sure the background check would be
thorough is we require that the school districts would check both the
State and Federal databases. Let me give a story about why this is so
important.
In Alaska, parents got a very rude awakening when they discovered
this story. It was on August 29 of last year. Alaska State troopers
arrested a middle school teacher in Kiana, AK.
The teacher had fled Missouri 4 years earlier to escape an arrest
warrant. Multiple witnesses accused the teacher of over a decade of
sexual and physical abuse of his own adopted kids. He had raped and
starved his own children. These kids literally burrowed a hole through
the wall so they could take frozen food out of the freezer. They heated
it up on a furnace just to survive. It is just one of those
unbelievable horror stories--while this monster was able to obtain a
teaching certificate in Alaska and teach there--teaching kids for 4
years.
When asked how this could possibly happen, the Alaska Department of
Education explained that Alaska's background checks only check the
State's criminal registry. Now, had our legislation been in force, they
would have been required to check the Federal registry, and they would
have learned that he was a fugitive with an arrest warrant and a
criminal record in another State. That is the kind of ability we have
to have to prevent these people from going across States and committing
these kinds of crimes.
The other provision that I mentioned earlier is a provision that
would preclude--make it illegal--for someone knowingly to recommend a
pedophile to be hired at another school. Again, you would like to think
that something like that wouldn't even be necessary. But it is, and
another story reveals this recently.
A Las Vegas, NV, kindergarten teacher was arrested for kidnapping a
16-year-old girl and infecting her with a sexually transmitted disease.
That same teacher had molested six children, all fourth and fifth
graders, several years before when that teacher was working in the Los
Angeles school district.
The Los Angeles school district knew all about these allegations. In
2009, in fact, the school district recommended settling a lawsuit they
were facing because the teacher had molested the children. The Nevada
school district to which the pedophile went had specifically asked if
there were any criminal concerns regarding the teacher, and the Los
Angeles school district not only hid the truth that they knew about
this guy's predations, but they actually provided three references so
that he could get hired in Las Vegas.
So for people who say the States can solve these problems themselves,
I would ask: What was that 16-year-old girl supposed to do? What could
Nevada have done about the Los Angeles school district's behavior?
So I am not going away on this. This is something that we need to do.
I have three young kids. When any one of us parents anywhere in America
puts our children on the school bus in the morning, we have every right
to expect they are going to a place where they will be safe--as safe as
they could possibly be. We know that there is more that we could be
doing here to make them safer. It is unconscionable that we don't act
on it.
So I will be back, because we are going to have a vote on this one
way or another, and I am very disappointed we couldn't have it this
morning.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. GRASSLEY. I would like to follow up on something that the Senator
from Pennsylvania just said on the process--not on the substance of
these amendments.
We are in a situation where we have a bill before the Senate that has
broad bipartisan support, and it came out of the committee I chaired,
the Senate Judiciary Committee, on a unanimous vote. Now we are stalled
on proceedings, and I would like to emphasize what is different and why
this bill should be moving forward in the year 2015 as opposed to the
last few years when the other political party controlled the Senate.
In the U.S. political system, elections are supposed to have
consequences, and as a consequence of the last election, there is a new
majority in the Senate. That new majority results from campaign
positions taken in the last election that if we had a new majority, the
Senate was going to be run in the way that James Madison implied that
it ought to run--as a deliberative body, as a body where every Member
could participate, where you would reach consensus, and where you give
very serious thought to legislation that comes before this body--and do
it in a way differently than the House of Representatives was meant to
do business and has done business for the 230 years under our
Constitution.
So we ran on a platform that we would have the Senate debate and be
open for amendments, and the leader announced that when this bill was
going to come up, it would be an open amendment process. Everybody
could participate. Now we are in a situation where the minority is not
allowing us to move forward on amendments because they have objections
to a provision that was in this bill since its introduction. Every
Member had not only days but weeks to consider it before it came out of
committee on a unanimous vote. And those provisions that were in this
bill from the introduction--and every Senator knew they were in there,
and every Senator's staff knew they were in there. If they didn't know
that this language was in there, then they didn't read the legislation.
There are plenty of people to read legislation around here, even beyond
the Members of the committee.
So this language deals with what is called the Hyde amendment, which
for either 39 or 40 years has basically said that taxpayers' money
should never be used to finance abortions. So all of a sudden there is
objection to that language in this bill, which was in the bill when the
very same Members who are objecting to it now on the floor of the
Senate knew it was in there, and we can't move forward because they
object to the amendment.
So I proposed to them that they offer an amendment to strike what
they don't like and find out where the votes are. If they win, they
win. If they don't win, we move forward. But you can't hardly hold up a
piece of legislation over language that is in the bill that has been
part of the law of this country for 39 or 40 years and then say that
you didn't know it was in there, when it was in there when you voted to
get it out of committee.
Senator Toomey just gave a speech about his amendment. He asked
unanimous consent to bring it up. The minority in the Senate, which has
the same right to offer amendments that any other Senator can offer,
refused to let him get a vote on his amendment or even disputed the
fact of laying an amendment aside to move forward on it. So we are at a
standstill.
Statistically, I would like to show how the new majority is intending
to operate the Senate on a different basis than had been operated on in
previous years and use statistics of last year. If the statistics are
off by 1 or 2 numbers, I hope somebody will forgive me. But roughly, we
had 18 rollcalls on amendments last year, because there was every
effort to be made to stall the Senate so amendments couldn't come up
for a vote. Already this year we have had approximately 40-some
rollcall votes on amendments, and more than a majority of those have
been amendments offered by the minority party in the Senate.
So the elections showed that people want the Senate to work as a
deliberative body, where every Senator can participate, and we ought to
move forward on that.
I would ask the people who object to moving forward on this amendment
to offer an amendment to strike the provisions they don't like and move
on so that the other several Members of the Senate who are stalled now
on offering their amendments can offer their
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amendments and eventually we can get through those amendments and vote
on a bill that got out of the Senate Judiciary Committee without a
single dissenting vote from either Republicans or Democrats.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, of course I also would like to see the
trafficking bill go forward.
I am looking around the floor of the Senate, and I think I am the
only person standing on the floor who has actually prosecuted people
for molestation and endangerment of children.
I am not going to repeat what I said yesterday. I talked about some
of those horrible cases, and I did mention having young children of my
own at the time and how hard working on those cases hit me. When
normally preparing for trials--in the evenings, in most cases--I could
just work at home preparing for the trial. When preparing for these
types of cases however, I didn't come home. I would work in my office
for two reasons. I didn't want to take any chance, inadvertently, that
one of my children would see any of the pictures or the exhibits that
we were going to have in the trial, as graphic as they were. But also,
I didn't want them to see their father crying, which I did as I would
read these files, and have them ask me why I was crying, because I
couldn't lie to them. It was better just to stay in the office.
I say that because we have to approach this not just in the after-
the-fact manner expressed. I like the idea of having the $30 million to
help those who have been hurt--the victims. I worry, as the House of
Representatives worried, that if it is simply money that comes from
fines, we are never going to see that money. All the people I
prosecuted on crimes against young people went to prison. If you could
have given them a $50 million fine or a $50 fine, they weren't going to
pay it. They had no money. After their defense was over, they had no
funds.
At some point we are going to have to correct that. Say $30 million
is a good target, and any fines will go into that fund, but we should
take taxpayers' funds to make up any difference.
When we lock these people up, we spend $25,000 or $35,000 a year to
lock them up. But half of the time we tell the victim: It is terrible
what happened to you. Sorry, we can't do anything for you.
We also have to approach the things necessary to prevent what
happened. I am filing a Leahy-Collins amendment, the Runaway and
Homeless Youth Trafficking Prevention Act. I will file that. The
amendment will help runaways such as Holly Austin Smith. She was 14
years old when she was lured away from home by a man who promised her a
glamorous life in California. Instead, he sold this 14-year-old for
sex. She told her devastating story to the Senate Judiciary Committee
last month. Both Senator Grassley and I were there and heard it. I was
certainly moved by her words and call for action.
She told us to protect girls such as her, saying that ``policies on
prevention should be one of our highest priorities.'' I agree. That is
why Senator Collins and I are offering this amendment.
Of course we should have the ability to go after somebody who has
committed these crimes. But wouldn't it be better for the victims if we
could stop the crime from happening in the first place? If we can do
something to help people such as this 14-year-old and we can stop it
from happening in the first place, we would be much better off.
Too many of the runaway and homeless youth in this country have no
place to go. They have no place to sleep at night. They are alone on
the street without resources or adults to protect them, and human
traffickers know that. One shelter survey found that 50 percent of the
homeless youth have been solicited for sex by an adult within 48 hours
of leaving home.
I ask any parent or grandparent in this Senate: What would you think
if your children or grandchildren were put in that situation?
This is not a Republican or a Democratic issue, this is a human
issue--this is an American issue.
It is our hope that we can work around what I hope is a momentary
glitch in this bill so we can get to these things.
I will say again, based on my own experience as a prosecutor and
based on everything I have heard over the years--part of the time as
the ranking member and part of the time as chairman of the Judiciary
Committee during the past 40 years--that when it comes to the fight
against human trafficking, we cannot simply focus on ending demand and
arrest our way out of this problem. We have to eliminate the conditions
that make these children so vulnerable.
The good news is the program supported by this amendment has helped
thousands of young people get back on their feet by providing shelter,
job training, and caring adults to counsel and guide them. These
programs work. They keep kids safe, and they save lives.
A growing number of homeless and runaway youth are LGBT, and many of
them have been thrown out of their homes for who they are. Again, as a
parent and grandparent, that is heartbreaking to me. We have to ensure
that these particularly vulnerable children, who have already been
rejected once, do not face rejection again, and that is why Senator
Collins and I included a nondiscrimination provision in our amendment
that will make clear that any program accepting Federal dollars must
help care for all of these children. They can't turn these young people
away because they do not like the way they look or dress or who they
love. No program that takes Federal money should be allowed to
discriminate, period.
The nondiscrimination language in this bill is nearly identical to
the language that 78 Senators--Republicans and Democrats alike--
supported in this body when we passed the Violence Against Women Act in
the last Congress, the Leahy-Crapo bill. It is the same language the
Republican-controlled House passed and the President signed into law 2
years ago.
Last year, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I moved
this legislation through committee and Senator Grassley and Senator
Cornyn, to their credit, and almost every Republican on the Judiciary
Committee voted for it. If these protections are acceptable for adult
victims of domestic and sexual violence, why shouldn't they be for
children? No one should be discriminated against, but especially not
these vulnerable children who have already faced more adversity than
many of us will ever know.
We, as Senators, lead a privileged and sheltered life. We work hard,
but it is still a privileged and sheltered life. We are not facing what
these children are facing--a scared, vulnerable, lonely child at a bus
stop or trying to get somebody to buy them a pizza because they are
hungry or looking for a place where they can sleep out of the cold. We
are never going to face that, but too many Americans do.
Some may argue and say that the antidiscrimination language somehow
threatens religious freedom. That is not true. No one's religious
freedom is threatened by this language. This is not about religion, it
about supporting all of the children who most desperately need our
help.
I understand their concerns. We have narrowed the scope of this
provision so it applies only to these programs being reauthorized in
this amendment. We have also clarified that nothing in this bill stops
organizations from providing necessary sex-specific programming, such
as shelters for homeless, runaway, or trafficked girls.
I have heard from dozens of service providers in my State of Vermont,
and also across the country, that these programs work.
As Cyndi Lauper, a long-time advocate for homeless and runaway youth,
wrote in an op-ed for The Hill yesterday, ``The time to act is now,
because homeless youth don't have the time for us to wait until
tomorrow.''
Who will help these young people if we do not? These children are too
often left behind, and for too many being left behind means being
trafficked. We cannot and should not leave them behind today.
I urge all Senators that when the amendment is called up to support
it. I ask unanimous consent that the op-ed that was in The Hill be
printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[[Page S1408]]
[From The Hill, March 10, 2015]
Don't Let the Senate Throw Away 40 Percent of America's Homeless Youth
(By Cyndi Lauper)
``Enough is enough.'' It's a phrase that is said all too
often about so many issues in our society, but unfortunately
not enough when it comes to our nation's most vulnerable
young people.
Congress must reauthorize the Runaway and Homeless Youth
Act (RHYA), our nation's only federal law that specifically
funds vital services for homeless youth. Republicans and
Democrats have come together to ensure that our Federal
Government offers much needed support to all homeless youth.
Sens. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine)
have introduced bipartisan legislation to reauthorize RHYA,
which will likely be brought up for a floor vote in the
Senate this week--possibly as soon as today.
The act includes a non-discrimination clause that will help
ensure lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)
homeless youth not only have access to critical services, but
that those services are safe, welcoming, and tailored to meet
the needs of all youth.
We need that clause and some groups are trying to push to
have it taken out. I was taught to listen to Proverbs 31:
Speak up for those who cannot speak up for themselves. Our
kids need us to protect them, not to discriminate against
them.
Research shows that while LGBT youth make up to seven
percent of the general youth population, they comprise, on
average, 40 percent of the 1.6 million youth that are
homeless in this country each year. Think about that. It's
impossible to ignore.
There is no getting around the fact that these kids are too
often being thrown out of their homes and left to fend for
themselves on the streets. The fact that this occurs each and
every day in our country is simply a tragedy--a tragedy that
does not have to continue.
At the True Colors Fund, we continue to hear stories of
young people being discriminated against, offered improper
services, and even turned away by service providers just
because they happen to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, or
transgender. By continuing to leave 40 percent of our
homeless youth unprotected, we are cutting our society off at
the knees.
Kids actually ARE our future. What kind of future do we
have in store if we do not care for all of our youth? ALL
deserve to have their needs met so that these incredible and
courageous young people can achieve their dreams and become
healthy, happy, and contributing members of our society.
These are our future teachers, parents, and leaders and we
cannot afford to leave even one of them behind.
Programs and services receiving federal funding must be
inclusive of all youth. Congress can start by passing the
Runaway and Homeless Youth and Trafficking Prevention Act to
ensure that all youth are protected in the vital programs
that it would reauthorize. The time to act is now, because
homeless youth don't have the time for us to wait until
tomorrow.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from New York.
Mrs. GILLIBRAND. Mr. President, I rise to offer an amendment to
Senator Cornyn's bill, S. 178, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking
Act.
Under current law, there are many trafficking victims who, even after
gaining freedom from their captors, have to live their lives stuck with
a criminal record because of things they were forced to do in
captivity.
Imagine being freed from the hell of sexual slavery only to find
yourself unable to get a job or stable housing because the law
considers you a criminal.
My amendment, the Federal Criminal Procedure Post-Conviction Relief
For Victims of Trafficking Act, would vacate the criminal convictions
of trafficking victims who were forced to break the law while they were
trafficked. It would expunge the criminal records of trafficking
victims and it would give trafficking victims a chance to restart their
lives without stigma and without a criminal record.
These boys and girls were snatched into captivity. They were forced
into sexual slavery, and they were denied the freedom to make their own
decisions, including the chance to say no to committing a crime.
These victims are not criminals. Their bodies are scarred. Their
memories are shaken by trauma. The least Congress can do is give them
the dignity of a clean record and a new chance to lead a fulfilling
life. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.
I also wish to urge my colleagues to support a bill Senator Rubio and
I introduced called the Strengthening the Child Welfare Response to
Trafficking Act. This bill would require each State to develop a plan
to protect young victims of labor and sex trafficking from falling back
into captivity after they have escaped.
As it stands now, many of the various services and programs that are
meant to keep children from these dangerous, oppressive cycles are
failing to do their jobs. Instead of being protected and comforted as
victims of violent crime, young trafficking survivors are sent into the
juvenile justice system and treated as criminals--as if it were their
own fault and their own choice that they were held in captivity and
forced into exploitation. This is just not the case.
This bill would give American children better trained protective
service workers, better lines of communication between victims and
protective services, and better data on where trafficking crimes are
actually occurring, how often, and whom traffickers are targeting.
I commend my colleagues for bringing this issue of human trafficking
so boldly to the Senate floor, and I encourage everyone in this Chamber
to support these legislative efforts to solve our country's trafficking
problem.
I yield the floor.
Mr. GRASSLEY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Amendment No. 284 to Amendment No. 271
Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, I send a second-degree amendment to the
desk, Vitter amendment No. 284, to Portman amendment No. 271, and ask
for its immediate consideration.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The Senator from Louisiana [Mr. Vitter] proposes an
amendment numbered 284 to amendment No. 271.
Mr. VITTER. I ask unanimous consent that the reading of the amendment
be dispensed with.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment is as follows:
(Purpose: To amend section 301 of the Immigration and Nationality Act
to clarify those classes of individuals born in the United States who
are nationals and citizens of the United States at birth)
At the appropriate place, insert the following:
SEC. _. CITIZENSHIP AT BIRTH FOR CERTAIN PERSONS BORN IN THE
UNITED STATES.
(a) In General.--Section 301 of the Immigration and
Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1401) is amended--
(1) by inserting ``(a) In General.--'' before ``The
following'';
(2) by redesignating subsections (a) through (h) as
paragraphs (1) through (8), respectively, and indenting such
paragraphs, as redesignated, an additional 2 ems to the
right; and
(3) by adding at the end the following:
``(b) Definition.--Acknowledging the right of birthright
citizenship established by section 1 of the 14th Amendment to
the Constitution of the United States, a person born in the
United States shall be considered `subject to the
jurisdiction' of the United States for purposes of subsection
(a)(1) only if the person is born in the United States and at
least 1 of the person's parents is--
``(1) a citizen or national of the United States;
``(2) an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence in
the United States whose residence is in the United States; or
``(3) an alien performing active service in the armed
forces (as defined in section 101 of title 10, United States
Code).''.
(b) Applicability.--The amendment made by subsection (a)(3)
may not be construed to affect the citizenship or nationality
status of any person born before the date of the enactment of
this Act.
(c) Severability.--If any provision of this section or any
amendment made by this section, or any application of such
provision or amendment to any person or circumstance, is held
to be unconstitutional, the remainder of the provisions of
this Act and the amendments made by this Act and the
application of the provision or amendment to any other person
or circumstance shall not be affected.
Mr. VITTER. Mr. President, this is the same amendment I presented--
tried to present--and discussed on the floor of the Senate yesterday.
It addresses a very serious problem with our
[[Page S1409]]
broken immigration system as well as a problem that leads to serious
abuse and trafficking, which is why it is certainly relevant and
pertinent in this ongoing discussion of the bill on the floor.
First of all, let me again compliment Senator Cornyn and everyone who
has joined him on a bipartisan basis in support of his antihuman
trafficking amendment. I think that underlying bill is very positive
and very significant. I certainly fully support it, apart from how my
amendment fares. Obviously I hope my now second-degree amendment to the
Portman amendment is adopted, but I certainly support this underlying
effort, which is very important.
As I said, my amendment pertains to birthright citizenship and the
fact that that now acts as an enormous magnet to increase and encourage
illegal crossings into our country. It also has spawned an entire
subculture and industry, quite frankly, that has given rise to
significant abuse--often very dangerous and horrific conditions for the
women and families who are caught in it.
Yesterday, as part of my floor statement, I submitted for the Record
several news reports that underscored these cases of abuse. This came
to light in part because of the raid by Federal agencies just within
the last few weeks of these so-called birth tourism businesses, and
those Federal raids uncovered some truly grizzly situations in
California and elsewhere that underscore my point.
This ad, which is an ad on behalf of one of these birth tourism
companies in China, also underscores my point. The Presiding Officer
and I couldn't come up with a cartoon such as this and call it fiction
if we were challenged to, but this is real. This is an actual cartoon
ad enticing birth mothers in China to go to the United States, to come
back with their baby having been born in the United States, and the
baby wrapped in the American flag means automatic U.S. citizen. That of
course triggers all sorts of significant benefits and opportunities for
the immediate family of that baby to in the future come to the United
States and become citizens.
This birthright citizenship has clearly mushroomed into a significant
problem and a significant form of abuse of our immigration system.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, every year about
300,000 to 400,000 children are born to illegal aliens in the United
States, and under this practice--and I underscore ``practice''--of
birthright citizenship--and I will come back to that word because it is
not mandated by the Constitution--they automatically are recognized as
U.S. citizens simply and purely because of the physical location of
their physical birth.
I said ``practice'' for a reason. It is not mandated by the
Constitution as opposed to what we hear on a regular basis. It isn't
even mandated by statutory law. It is the practice of several
administrations, including this one. It is a very uncommon practice if
we look worldwide. Only Canada, among advanced or industrialized
countries, follows this practice along with the United States. No other
advanced or industrialized country--for instance, no European country--
follows this practice of counting folks, giving them citizenship based
purely on the fact, on the accident of the location of their physical
birth.
My amendment would change this. It would simply say a person can only
be a citizen if they were born in this country and at least one parent
is a U.S. citizen or a legal, valid green card holder or a serving
member of the U.S. military. That is a commonsense rule that I think
the vast--in fact, I know from public polling and other means--the vast
majority of Americans of all stripes, of all walks of life, and of both
parties support.
Again, let me be clear. My amendment would say a child born in this
country is a U.S. citizen if they are born in this country and at least
one of the parents is a U.S. citizen or a valid green card holder or a
member of the U.S. military.
If there is any policy reason why that rule is unreasonable, I would
love to hear it. I have been promoting this debate, I have been pushing
this change of policy for several years now, and I have never heard a
real debate on the policy, on the merits. There are lots of excuses
that people don't want to bring this up, don't want to have a vote, but
I have never heard a real debate and objection on the merits.
That being said, let me move to one of the excuses, and the most
popular excuse given is that somehow this is embedded in the
Constitution--specifically, the 14th Amendment--and we can't change
this absent a constitutional amendment. I am absolutely convinced that
is not true, and I will explain why.
The first reason I think we can glean that it is not true is the
language of the 14th Amendment. That is a good place to start, right?
We are talking about the 14th Amendment. We are talking about a
specific constitutional provision, so let's start by going there and
see what it says. Does it say everyone physically born in this country
is a U.S. citizen, period? No, it does not. So what does it say? It
extends citizenship to ``all persons born or naturalized in the United
States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.'' The key phrase is
``and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.''
As the Presiding Officer knows, our Founding Fathers, including our
later Founding Fathers who came up with the language of the 14th
Amendment, chose their words carefully, and it is a fundamental rule of
either constitutional or statutory construction that any word there,
any phrase there must be there for a reason. It is not there just to
add extra words without adding meaning.
So that phrase absolutely has to mean something. It has to be there
for a reason. When we look at the history of the 14th Amendment, the
debate, the discussion in Congress, it is very clear it was there for a
reason. It was there to exclude persons born in the United States who
had allegiance, who had some calling to another country. Specifically,
the folks participating in that debate talking about this language
said, We are not including American Indians; they have an allegiance to
the tribe. We are not including aliens. Aliens--that word was broadly
used. We are not including aliens. That certainly includes in today's
language illegal aliens who have an allegiance to another country. They
are citizens of another country. We are not including the children of
diplomats who happen to be born here during their diplomat parents'
stay. They clearly are citizens of another country. They have an
allegiance to another country.
This line of thought was further elucidated by court decisions. In
fact, there is a specific court decision with regard to American
Indians. The Court directly said in that case, no, the 14th Amendment
does not make American Indian children automatically U.S. citizens--
based on the specific language I am citing. Because of that, it wasn't
until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 was passed, explicitly making
those children American citizens, that they became American citizens.
Much more recently, respected jurists such as Judge Richard Posner of
the Seventh Circuit wrote in a 2003 case:
Congress would not be flouting the Constitution if it
amended the Immigration and Nationality Act to put an end to
the nonsense.
Talking specifically about birthright citizenship. So I hope we get
through these excuses, these flawed constitutional arguments, these
flawed arguments. Really, they are excuses to avoid the debate, to
avoid the issue, to avoid giving any reason why we should not go to the
rule I am proposing. Why we should, in fact, recognize any child
physically born in this country as automatically a U.S. citizen, even
if neither parent is a citizen, neither parent is here in the country
legally, neither parent is a green card holder, neither parent is a
serving member of the U.S. Armed Services.
As I explained at the beginning, this is a very real, in fact,
exploding phenomenon. There is a whole industry, an underworld, that is
selling so-called birth tourism. This ridiculous but true cartoon is an
example. This acts as a magnet--a potent, powerful magnet growing in
power by the year to lure more and more folks to come across the border
in specific cases to have their babies here, 300,000 to 400,000 per
year.
In the last few weeks, as I mentioned earlier, there was a raid by
the relevant Federal agencies on some of
[[Page S1410]]
these underworld and trafficking operations related to birth tourism.
It hit the news. It made significant news, as it should have. It was a
significant law enforcement action. I applaud that action. It is a
dangerous element. It is an underworld, usually criminal elements in
the midst of that, oftentimes abusing the women and children who have
been placed into their hands.
Clearly, the most effective way to put an immediate end to all of
this is not simply conducting a law enforcement raid once every 5 years
or once every 3 years or even once a week. Clearly, the most effective
way to end this is to end the practice of birthright citizenship. That
is what my amendment--now a second-degree amendment pending to the
Portman amendment--would do.
I urge all of my colleagues to put an end to this nonsense, as Judge
Posner said in his dicta, to set our policy straight, to adopt the
commonsense position of the vast majority of the American people, to
adopt the same policy of every advanced industrialized country now save
us and Canada, and to adopt this language on the present bill.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Capito). The Senator from Missouri.
Mr. BLUNT. Madam President, I want to talk about the bill we are
looking at now, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. Certainly
there is nothing more hideous, nothing more morally offensive than the
sexual exploitation of a human being. Take that exploitation today at a
level that happens over and over again with children and with adults.
This is modern-day slavery. It exists right here in our country and all
over the world. Slavery officially ended in the United States 150 years
ago. Worldwide there may be more people involved in enslaved activity
and labor or in sex trafficking than at any other time.
According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
at least 100,000 American children each year are victims of commercial
child prostitution, child trafficking, other children brought to this
country. Certainly this is not a tragedy that is isolated in the United
States. In fact, it is worse than other places, but it is unacceptable
in all places.
Women and children, especially young girls, are advertised online
where buyers purchase them with ease, generally with anonymity, and
usually with impunity. We are told this happens in most cities in our
country and in every State in our country. But this fight against sex
trafficking and labor trafficking isn't just a law enforcement issue,
it is a human rights issue, and we should take it as seriously as we
possibly can take anything.
That is why I was pleased to join Senator Cornyn and Senator Ayotte
and others in cosponsoring and supporting the Justice for Victims of
Trafficking Act. This act would provide law enforcement, the courts,
and antitrafficking task forces with the necessary tools to help them
track down traffickers; and it would also help victims restore their
lives.
Last year we were able to pass the continuation of the Victims of
Child Abuse Act, of which in our State we have 22 centers. We have
hundreds of centers in the country where the beginning of restoration
comes with that first interview, that first determination. We are
putting this behind us and moving forward. That same thing needs to
happen with victims of exploitation. This bill helps victims of
trafficking who are often invisible, often underserved, often unknown
by anybody in the community where they have been taken except a person
who somehow has seized control of them and the people with whom that
person deals.
This bill would create grants for State and local governments to
develop comprehensive systems to address these crimes and to provide
services for the victims of these crimes. This legislation would allow
wiretaps obtained through State courts to be used to stop child sex
trafficking. This would train Federal prosecutors and judges on the
importance of requesting and ordering restitution.
In the last few days we passed a law that hopefully will wind up on
the President's desk so there could be some compensation for victims of
child pornography. We need to have that same kind of restitution and
seizing of assets of these criminals who use people in this way, and
this bill allows some of those things to happen. It trains law
enforcement on the physical and mental services that are immediately
necessary, and necessary in a longer term, for victims of trafficking.
The Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act has been endorsed by 200
advocacy groups. Those would include the NAACP, the National Center for
Missing and Exploited Children, Rights4Girls, the National Association
to Protect Children, the Fraternal Order of Police, and the National
Conference of State Legislators. We need to get this done.
The elimination of sex trafficking has to be also focused on the
demand side. Without the buyers and facilitators, sex trafficking
wouldn't happen. Labor trafficking wouldn't happen unless there were
buyers of that unwilling labor. Neither of these things should be
allowed to continue. This bill deals with this topic in our country. I
know the Foreign Relations Committee is looking at what we can do to
encourage the elimination of this travesty and tragedy all over the
world.
We have to take a stand against this modern-day slavery. This is a
problem that I hope we see Senators on both sides of the aisle step up
to in the next few days and hopefully this week and figure out how to
serve.
Remembering Tom Schweich
Madam President, this is the first chance I have had to be on the
floor since I attended a memorial service a week ago yesterday in our
State memorializing the life of our State auditor, Tom Schweich. Tom
Schweich was very smart. He was very capable. He was very good at his
job. He had a wonderful family. He had established such a record as
State auditor that at the end of his first term, Tom Schweich, a
Republican, wasn't even opposed by a Democrat. I think it was the first
time in our State since the 1880s that the Democrats had not offered a
candidate for any State office.
Sometimes people with great capacity and great opportunity can face
challenges that others do not see. Tom's family is missing him. His
friends are missing him. Missouri will miss him but certainly benefited
from his good work. I am thinking today, as I have every day since I
heard the news of his death, about the service he provided, the lost
opportunity of not having him with us any longer, and I am thinking
about his family.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the
order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Madam President, I first want to thank my colleagues
who are continuing to work on this very important issue of sex
trafficking, Senator Grassley, the chairman of the Committee on the
Judiciary, and Senator Leahy, the ranking member, who has long been
working on this issue and has a very important bill of his own related
to this, as well as Senator Cornyn. Senator Cornyn and I have worked
together on the sex trafficking issue for the past year. We are
cosponsors of each other's bills. We have worked in the past on other
judiciary issues, including a successful bill on prescription drug
take-backs, where we just recently were able to get the rules out and
got to work on that very important issue. I thank him for his good
work. We continue to work on the bill, the Justice for Victims of
Trafficking Act. We know there are some major issues that have come up,
and we continue to look for a path forward on that issue.
I do want to point out that sometimes in all of the disagreements,
what gets lost is the good that needs to be done and why this bill is
so important. It would support victims by taking fines and criminal
assets from convicted human traffickers and directing them toward
services and treatment to help these victims restore their lives.
I know as a prosecutor in my former job that if people get the help
they need--if they can go to a shelter and they have an alternative to
a pimp--they will have a fighting chance of getting their life together
again and not going back into that cycle of violence.
[[Page S1411]]
They also, by doing this--and we have done a lot of this in
Minnesota--if we give them the support they need, then they will
testify against the person who is running that sex trafficking ring,
against the perpetrator. We had a 40-year sentence last year in St.
Paul, MN, against someone who was running a sex trafficking ring. That
was because we were able to provide the support the victims need, and
that is what Senator Cornyn's bill is about. It doesn't only help
victims, as I said, it also helps law enforcement and ensures that the
criminals, including johns, are brought to justice under our law
because a financial transaction should not mask a sexual assault or
rape on a child.
I think people often think of sex trafficking as something that is
just happening in another country, in another part of the world. It is,
in fact, the third largest enterprise in the world. First is illegal
drugs, then illegal guns, and then the illegal trafficking of people,
primarily kids. That is going on in our world right now. But what
people don't always expect is that in the United States, when we have
sex trafficking cases, 83 percent of the victims are from our own
country. Eighty-three percent of the victims are from the oil patches
in North Dakota, from the streets of Minneapolis, and from the hills of
West Virginia. This is happening in our country right now.
That is why this pair of bills, Senator Cornyn's bill and the bill I
have--the safe harbor bill that passed through the Judiciary Committee
unanimously last week--is designed to focus on domestic trafficking. It
does have international implications because if we do our job and we
show as a country that we take this seriously, it will help us partner
with other countries.
Senator Heitkamp, Cindy McCain, and I went down to Mexico last spring
to focus on partnering with Mexico. They have been enormous help in
some of the Federal prosecutions for sex trafficking rings we have had
in our country--girls who have been brought across the border from
Mexico. They have helped with that. We have met with the Attorney
General as well as the head of their Federal Police on more work that
can be done.
But just think about what is happening right now in our country. Just
in the last few weeks, five St. Paul, MN, residents were charged with
running a multistate sex trafficking ring. One of the alleged victims
was 16 years old. Last month a man was indicted in Federal court under
the leadership of our U.S. attorney in Minnesota. What was he indicted
for? He was indicted for trafficking a 12-year-old girl, a young girl
in Rochester, MN, who got a text that said: Come to a party. The girl
shows up where she is supposed to go; it is the parking lot of a
McDonald's. She gets shoved in the car, along with her friend. They are
brought up to the Twin Cities. The man rapes her and takes sexually
explicit pictures of her and puts them on Craigslist. The next day she
is sold to two guys, and she is raped by those two men. That happened
in Minnesota. The charges were just filed.
The average age of a victim of sex trafficking is 12 years old--not
old enough to go to a high school prom, not old enough to drive. That
is what is happening in our country right now.
What can we do? Well, I discussed Senator Cornyn's bill and the
importance of that bill. I hope we can work through these issues. There
is also the other bill, the Stop Exploitation Through Trafficking Act.
That would make sure victims of sex trafficking, like the 12-year-old
Rochester girl, are treated as victims. This is a bill that passed
through the Judiciary Committee. I thank 26 of my colleagues across the
Senate for cosponsoring this bill. It has been an honor to work with
them, with Senator Cornyn as the Republican lead.
I appreciate the help of the National Conference of State
Legislatures, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
the Fraternal Order of Police, Shared Hope International, and the
National Alliance to End Sexual Violence.
This bill is different from the bill we have in front of us on the
floor, but it has the same focus. What this bill does is it says: Let's
look at some of these models that have worked across the country. One
of them is my State, and it is called the safe harbor law. What it does
is that when States do this, they basically aren't prosecuting these
12-year-old or 15-year-old girls or 16-year-old boys; they are seeing
them as victims, and then they give them the kinds of services they
need. A version of this bill, led by Erik Paulsen, one of my Republican
Congressmen, passed through the House last year. I know the Presiding
Officer was there at that time. So I feel good about this bill's
chances in the House as well as in the Senate.
Fifteen States across the country already have these safe harbor
laws, and another 12 States are making good progress in the direction
that we need, so we are not starting from scratch. What the bill does
is simply give incentives for States to adopt these kinds of laws.
The bill also creates a national strategy to combat human trafficking
which would encourage cooperation and coordination among all the
agencies that work on the problem--Federal, State, tribal, and local.
Our law enforcement officers and prosecutors, as I mentioned, have to
work together on this issue at all levels, but law enforcement can't do
it alone. We need to make sure we are giving them the right support,
and that is what this national strategy is about.
Other parts of the bill include allowing victims of sex trafficking
to be eligible for the Job Corps program to help them get back on their
feet.
I am also pleased to have included in this safe harbor bill, in the
Stop Exploitation Through Trafficking Act, a provision that Senators
Whitehouse and Sessions worked on that got included in our bill to
clarify the authority of the U.S. Marshals Service to assist local law
enforcement agencies in locating missing children.
I also know Senator Leahy and Senator Collins have a very important
bill that I am a cosponsor of, the Runaway and Homeless Youth and
Trafficking Prevention Act, which we would like to be considered either
as a part of this bill, if we can work out these other issues, or on
its own. It is a very important bill.
I have been very impressed by the bipartisan work we have done today.
I was also very excited when all the women Senators, including the
Presiding Officer, came together and asked for a hearing under Senator
Grassley's and Senator Leahy's leadership. We had a very good hearing,
and I think we can move from there.
This is one of those issues which people haven't talked about a lot
in our country for a long time. I think one of the reasons it has come
to the forefront is because of the Internet--something we love. More
and more of these kinds of purchases can be made behind closed doors
and out of the jurisdiction of any law enforcement officers if they
don't see it happening. Well, that is what happened with that 12-year-
old girl in Rochester; she just received a text.
This is not only going to take Congress getting the bills done, it
will also take the work of the private sector. I have been impressed by
the work by our hotels and transportation companies, places such as the
Radisson hotels and our various transportation companies that have
really stepped up and trained their employees because they are on the
frontlines, they can look for problems, and they can report them to law
enforcement. That is something which we can not legislate; that is
something which is just happening.
I know there are a number of amendments--some I like and some I do
not. I hope we can work through those as well.
I thank the Presiding Officer and thank all of those--especially
Senator Leahy, whose chair I am temporarily filling here on the floor,
as he has spent a lot of time watching over this bill the last 2 days.
I again thank Senator Cornyn for his good work.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. LEE. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Tribute to Brian Phillips
Mr. LEE. Madam President, I rise today to pay tribute to a gentleman
from Rosebud, TX, who has helped this
[[Page S1412]]
Senator from Utah on occasions too numerous to count and in ways
impossible to measure. For over 4 years Brian Phillips has dutifully
served as my communications director. As he prepares to pursue new
opportunities, I want to pause and acknowledge his service to me, to my
office, to the people of Utah, and to our Nation.
The role of communications director in a Senate office is not for the
faint of heart nor is it for the arrogant or overconfident. Many
believe the job of a communications director is to rack up style
points, political positioning, and positive spin. I have learned from
Brian that a true communications director is laser-focused on
substance, rock solid in his principles, and devoted to creating a
space for people to hear and understand a message. He has expanded my
view of what communication truly is and what it can be--what it should
be.
Brian brought to my office the grittiness of his Texas roots, his
passion from years on the campaign trail, the wisdom of one who has
been tested in tough times, and the vision of a conservative reformer
who has seen the view from higher up. I am certain there were times
when Brian wondered what in the world he had gotten himself into with a
freshman Senator and a ragtag team from Utah. I am also certain we are
all better in what we do because he was willing to stand with us.
Brian is more than a communications director. He is a trusted
counselor. I trust Brian's assessment of complex situations and count
on his counsel to navigate challenging circumstances and to maximize
seemingly hidden opportunities. No one has prepared me better to answer
hard questions or deliver vital messages at critical moments. I would
put Brian's uncanny sixth sense--his ``Spidey'' sense, as he calls it--
about what lurks around corners up against anyone's communications
professional anywhere. Brian is a master at leading people into
strategic thinking, sometimes through heated discussions, but always to
the higher ground of meaningful dialog.
Brian is comfortable with and capable of engaging people from across
the professional and personal spectrum. I have watched him work with
Senators and staff, with interns and individual Utahns, jaded
journalists and passionate groups of grass-roots activists. He sets
everyone at ease, provides an honest assessment, pushes when needed,
pulls when necessary, and through pushes, pulls, nudges, and shoves,
gets everyone to the best possible place. To watch him work is
extraordinary.
There are many in this town who simply look out for themselves. There
are many who judge their success by their own headlines, bylines, and
story lines. I am most thankful that Brian Phillips put me and my
staff, along with the people of Utah and the people of this Nation,
ahead of his own interests. Because he put others first, he has created
a legacy that will last.
Madam President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. MORAN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MORAN. Madam President, we are here today and apparently this
week to discuss legislation pending before the Senate, the Justice for
Victims of Trafficking Act.
We have a serious problem in this country and around the globe in
regard to human trafficking. This legislation is an issue that needs to
be addressed and ought not be delayed. In fact, many from across the
country are asking us to do just that, including hundreds of Kansans
who are concerned about the rights of individuals, the rights of women
and men across the country. Congress has legislation now pending that
seems to me to be very straightforward and common sense in trying to
eliminate this scourge from our country.
I want to highlight what I think is unfortunately developing in the
Senate. I would refer back to the elections of November 2014, in which,
I thought, at least one of the messages the American people delivered
to us through their votes was a desire to see that legislation--
particularly legislation such as this--be addressed, that the Senate
consider it, amendments be offered, votes be taken, and ultimately
legislation be approved or disapproved by the Senate. Unfortunately, we
still find ourselves in a position in which we are unable to move
forward on this legislation to consider amendments.
I would guess that some of my colleagues on the other side of the
aisle would indicate that when the Republicans were in the minority
they from time to time blocked consideration of legislation pending. I
would tell you, that in my view, when I was a participant in that
process, it was because of the belief that we would have no opportunity
to offer amendments to legislation then pending. What I want to see is
how the Senate can process legislation, and what I want is for every
Member of the Senate to have the opportunity to offer amendments, to
have them considered, to be voted on, and that right should exist for
every Republican Senator and every Democratic Senator. We should be in
a position in which we can resolve our differences not by blocking the
consideration of an important piece of legislation but by taking a vote
on an amendment offered by a Senator from a State here in the United
States and that the Senators have an opportunity to present their case,
votes be taken, and issues be resolved. Unfortunately, we are in a
position where we are even unable to consider this legislation, and I
would ask that this circumstance come to an end.
Again, in my view, a message from November 2014--the last time voters
spoke in the United States--was, could we at least have a Congress that
can function, that can consider issues, and where votes can be cast and
decisions made. We find ourselves one more time in a situation in which
we are unable even to get to the bill to enable that consideration to
occur.
At least as stated in the press, there is an argument about a
provision in the legislation. I would again say that if there is a
provision in the legislation, despite the fact that it was unanimously
approved by the committee--every Republican and Democrat voted for it.
And now there is this claim that they are opposed to that. If you are
opposed to something, the way to solve it is not to block consideration
of the bill. The way to solve it is to allow the bill to be considered,
and if you oppose something in the bill, offer an amendment, have a
debate, and let the votes decide here on the Senate floor whether that
provision should remain in or be removed.
That provision that people are indicating is causing problems is one
that is related to the public funding of abortions. It is a provision
that has been law since the 1970s. It was voted on many times in the
Senate, and 23 Senators voted for that provision in a spending bill in
2014--just last year.
It appears we are manufacturing problems that don't really exist.
This provision was in the bill when the committee considered it, when
the committee approved it. Now as we bring this bipartisan bill to the
Senate floor, there are those who are saying we can't consider it
because this provision is included. I would indicate that the idea of
public funding--the use of taxpayer dollars to support abortion--is
disapproved by 7 out of 10 Americans. This is not a radical kind of
issue or proposal. But my point is that we should have the opportunity
to debate this and every other item within the bill, reach a
conclusion, and move forward on a piece of legislation that is
important in trying to protect the lives and safety of people across
our country, particularly women and children.
So my plea to my colleagues is this. Could we again get to the point
where the Senate functions, where we debate bills, votes are taken, and
issues of importance are considered. I hope I learn later today that is
the case--that we can move forward in resolution of this legislation.
I am here to indicate I oppose public funding of abortion. I support
the trafficking legislation now pending. But I will never have the
opportunity to demonstrate that because we are at a point in which no
legislation is able to be considered.
Madam President, I thank you for the opportunity to address the
Senate.
I notice the Senator from Wyoming is on the floor, and I would be
happy to yield the floor for him.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
[[Page S1413]]
Mr. BARRASSO. Madam President, I agree entirely with my friend, the
Senator from Kansas, and I thank him for his leadership and thoughtful
deliberation on this matter.
I would like for a moment to talk about this bill that is on the
floor, S. 178, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. I have an
amendment that I am offering today on human trafficking in Indian
Country. I will tell you that human trafficking is widespread in Indian
Country, and we have to do everything we can to stop it. Violent crime
rates against women and girls in Native American communities are far
higher than the national averages. This amendment delivers help to
trafficking survivors and gives tribes the resources they need to
battle human trafficking in their own backyards. This amendment has
broad support and is a vital addition to the bill on the floor today.
My amendment would provide tribes the opportunity to access funding
for recovery programs for survivors and special training for local law
enforcement in order to combat human trafficking specifically in Indian
Country. This amendment would allow Indian tribes to be able to compete
for resources for programs to prevent human trafficking. It would
provide for training for local tribal law enforcement so they would be
better able to track trafficking activities. These trainings and
additional resources will better equip the tribal resources to better
spot human trafficking in local communities and to act quickly to
respond.
This funding would also help the survivors of sex and labor
trafficking in their recovery. Programs such as this assist survivors
in human trafficking and enable them to begin to heal and restore their
lives. The bill, S. 178, allows for more protections for victims of
human trafficking in our country, and my amendment would extend those
protections to the tribes in Indian Country as well.
ObamaCare
Madam President, I noticed earlier today the minority leader as well
as the minority whip on the Senate floor talking about the President's
health care law.
I would like to point out that the Congressional Budget Office
released a report Monday about the Obama health care law--ObamaCare. I
see the White House is actually championing the report. They call it
great news for America.
Let's be clear. This report contains significant amounts of bad news
for people--bad news for people who signed up on the ObamaCare
exchanges for getting their health insurance coverage.
In fact, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that health care
premiums will increase more than 8 percent a year this coming year for
ObamaCare enrollees. They also predict it will increase 8 percent next
year for ObamaCare enrollees through the exchange for the benchmark
plan, and they predict it will increase another 8 percent a year after
that. Most Americans can't afford to pay 8 percent more a year in
premiums each and every year, which is what the Congressional Budget
Office is proposing, but you don't hear the Democrats on the floor
talking about that.
Wasn't it the President of the United States who said that premium
rates would go down for families by $2,500 a year?
Isn't it so that many Senators on the other side of the aisle came to
the floor and said rates would go down. Nancy Pelosi said they would go
down for everyone. Why are the Democrats not mentioning what the CBO is
saying, that year after year after year the rates are going to go up 8
percent, another 8 percent, another 8 percent?
So we know the reality of what is happening to people all across the
country, which is why this health care law continues to be unpopular,
unaffordable, and unworkable. So I think it is time for the White House
to stop celebrating and start thinking about the people who have been
impacted specifically by this expensive and unworkable piece of
legislation.
I found it interesting that on Monday, the Secretary of Health and
Human Services held an event to celebrate the number of people who had
signed up for coverage this year. Secretary Burwell said she was
``pleased with the results to date.'' She repeated the administration's
sound bite about the health care law working.
Well, that is not what I am hearing from people at home in Wyoming.
It is not what I am hearing from my friends, neighbors, and patients.
As a doctor who has been taking care of patients in Wyoming for 25
years, I talk to lots of patients every weekend at home. It is also not
what I read in the papers. Papers all across the country, from the east
coast to the west coast, talk about hard working Americans who have
been devastated by the impacts of this terrible health care law. It
seems that every day there is more bad news about more ways that
ObamaCare is hurting American families and failing to live up to the
many promises made by the President and the Democrats in this body who
voted for it--the promises they made.
When you take a look at the Congressional Budget Office's new
estimates of how many people are going to sign up for ObamaCare this
year, they had originally said there would be 14 million people who
would sign up for ObamaCare plans by the end of the year. Now they have
dropped that number down to 11 million people. So it is not a surprise
when fewer people--3 million fewer people--sign up, that it is going to
cost the taxpayers less than the very high number they were expecting
to have to pay. So that number has dropped, but it is because fewer
people are choosing to sign up for the Obama health care plan. Is the
Obama administration pleased that the President's health care law is so
much less popular with the public than the President and Democrats
expected it to be?
As I talk about some of the stories that are coming out from the east
to the west coast, I would like to start with a story from the Portland
Press Herald newspaper in Portland, ME. On February 27, the headline
was: ``Many insured under Affordable Care Act taking a hit at tax
time.''
The article tells the story of Diana Newman, who lives in Southwest
Harbor. She had ObamaCare insurance last year. She went to file her
taxes a few weeks ago. The article says that ``she got a $400
surprise.'' That is how much she owed on her taxes specifically because
of the new health care law. She told the newspaper that her tax
troubles are just another stumbling block in what she said was a long,
difficult year trying to figure out how to use and how to pay for her
new insurance.
She said: ``At the end of all this confusion, I was hit with hundreds
of dollars at tax time.'' She said: ``It's frightening.''
Frightening--that is how somebody whom the President is claiming has
been helped by the law is describing the impact on her life. It is
frightening. It turns out she was one of almost a million people who
got bad information from the government about their tax forms.
Well, that just made things more confusing for her. She said: ``At
this point, I don't know what to think. I may owe more, or less, or
about the same.''
Is the Obama administration--and all the Democrats who voted for this
health care law--pleased about the way it is frightening this woman in
Maine? I don't hear the Senate minority leader or the whip talking
about that.
Does the administration think that ObamaCare is working for Diana
Newman?
The tax preparation company H&R Block says that more than half of
their clients--more than half of their clients--have had their refunds
reduced because of the health care law. On average H&R Block says their
customers owe the IRS an extra $530. That is a lot of money for hard-
working taxpayers. A lot of people count on getting that tax refund to
help them pay their bills this time of year.
Is the Obama administration pleased to see the IRS take another $530
from hard-working American families? Some of these people who owe money
to the IRS didn't sign up for ObamaCare insurance at all last year.
Many are now finding out for the first time that they owe a tax
penalty because the health care law's mandate says they have to buy
health insurance and not just necessarily insurance that works for them
and their family and their family's needs. Oh, no, the mandate states
they have to buy insurance President Obama says works for them, even
though they know it doesn't work
[[Page S1414]]
for them. It may be too much insurance or insurance they don't need,
don't want, can't afford, and they don't have the freedom or
flexibility to even make that choice. President Obama says he knows
what is best for them because they don't.
The problem is that by the time many of these people figured that
out, it was already too late to sign up for ObamaCare insurance for
this year so now they are getting taxed--penalized. People who didn't
understand the tax penalties feel as though the Obama administration
has pulled a fast one on them.
Again, as we approach the 5-year anniversary, ObamaCare continues to
be unpopular with the American people. There is so much anger about the
timing of the tax issues that the administration had to backtrack and
allow extra time for people to sign up this year.
The President made a YouTube video saying the deadline was February
15. February 15 came and went, and then the President said: Well, we
better open it up again. This President is making it up as he goes
along. We have seen it time and time again with this President and this
law. He is making it up as he goes along.
Is the Obama administration pleased with this confusion and anger
that a lot of Americans are feeling because of the IRS penalties?
It is not just Washington that is causing trouble for people who have
to sign up for the President's health care. We are seeing bad news all
across America.
I talked about Maine earlier. Let's go over to the other coast. Let's
go to Oregon. Oregon tried to set up its own health insurance exchange.
They did such an awful job that not one single person was ever able to
sign up on the State Web site--not one, no one. People had to fill out
paper applications if they wanted to try to buy insurance last year.
How much did it cost the State to set up this exchange where not one
person was able to buy insurance from the Web site? It cost taxpayers
$248 million.
Last Friday the Governor of Oregon officially gave up. He signed a
law dissolving the State exchange. Oregon will just use the Federal
Government's exchange and the Federal Web site.
Does the Obama administration think that the failed Web site and the
wasting of $248 million in taxpayer money is a sign that the health
care law is working? Is this administration pleased with the way
Oregon's ObamaCare exchange wasted nearly one-quarter of a billion
dollars? That is one State alone.
Just next door in Washington State, they are having troubles of their
own. There was an article in The Hill newspaper here in Washington, DC,
on February 25 titled ``State's ObamaCare overcharges 13K.'' There were
13,000 people overcharged in the State's ObamaCare exchange in
Washington State.
According to the article, the Washington State ObamaCare exchange
said it withdrew the incorrect amount of money from the bank accounts
of 13,000 people. Think about that in reference to your own checking
account, where there may be an automatic withdrawal based on a cable
bill, cell phone bill or whatever. Many people--13,000 in this case in
Washington State--had an incorrect withdrawal from the Washington State
ObamaCare exchange. It says that some of the people say that more than
three times the correct amount was withdrawn for their monthly premium
for health insurance.
Can you imagine if the electric company or one of the utilities--your
cell phone provider or your cable company--withdrew three times the
amount expected from your checking account for that monthly bill. For
some people that glitch in the State system probably meant their
accounts were going to end up overdrawn.
Even if the States get the problem fixed right away, that is an
alarming failure by that ObamaCare exchange.
Is the Obama administration pleased with the anxiety the exchange is
causing 13,000 people in Washington State? These are just a few of the
ways ObamaCare is not living up to the promises that Democrats and the
administration made to the American people.
Later this month, on March 23, we will hit the fifth anniversary of
President Obama signing this health care bill into law. If Monday's
event with Secretary Burwell was any indication, the White House is
going to throw a celebration. Once again they will say they are pleased
and they will say ObamaCare is working. The Obama administration should
not be pleased with its health care law. The Obama administration, and
every Democrat who voted for it, should be embarrassed by it.
It is not what Democrats promised, and it is not what people wanted.
People wanted something very simple when it came to their health care
and health care reform. People want the care they need, from a doctor
they choose, at a lower cost, and that is what Republicans in the
Senate are planning to give them.
We can do it without a 2,000-page law, and we can do it without all
of the negative side effects of ObamaCare. That will be health care
reform worth celebrating.
I thank the Presiding Officer, and I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Tillis). The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I rise today to join Senator Leahy, the
ranking member of the Committee on the Judiciary, in explaining an
amendment we have filed, amendment No. 290, to the Justice for Victims
of Trafficking Act. I wish to take this opportunity to thank Senators
Ayotte, Murkowski, Heitkamp, and Baldwin for also cosponsoring our
amendment and for their strong support.
Our amendment would reauthorize the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act
programs which expired in 2013. These three programs--the Street
Outreach Program, the Basic Center Program, and the Transitional Living
Program--have helped thousands of our homeless youth meet their
immediate needs and provide long-term residential services for those
who, sadly, cannot be safely reunited with their families.
The Street Outreach Program helps homeless and runaway youth find
stable housing and connects them with the treatment, counseling, and
crisis prevention they need. A central goal of this program is to
prevent sexual exploitation and abuse.
The Basic Center Program helps community-based providers meet the
basic needs of shelter, food, and clothing for homeless youth.
The Transitional Living Program supports long-term housing services
that help our homeless youth enter stable living environments and
develop critical life skills.
The amendment Senator Leahy and I and our cosponsors are offering
complements the underlying bill by addressing prevention, intervention,
and recovery services for the victims of sex trafficking--particularly
among one of the most vulnerable populations, and that is our homeless
youth. According to the Institute of Medicine and the National Resource
Council, homelessness is one of the most common risk factors for sex
trafficking. Without access to food, shelter, and social supports,
homeless youth too often turn to what is termed survival sex--a way to
trade sex for a place to sleep and other basic necessities. Another
recent report found that one in four homeless youth are victims of sex
trafficking or engaged in survival sex. Approximately 48 percent of
homeless youth have done so because they did not have a safe place to
stay. Our amendment strengthens the existing programs by ensuring that
service providers know how to identify trafficking victims and give
these youth the support they need.
In Maine, our homeless shelters are critical partners in the fight to
end human trafficking. In Portland, the Preble Street Resource Center
has used Runaway and Homeless Youth Act resources to connect young
people who need food, safe shelter, health services, and educational
support with those who can provide those services. The Preble Street
Anti-Trafficking Coalition is currently helping approximately 50
trafficking victims--whose ages range from 15 to 42--start new
[[Page S1415]]
lives. There are more than 1.6 million homeless teens in the United
States, an astonishing number. A growing number of homeless youth
identify as LGBT, and it is estimated that up to 40 percent of runaway
and homeless youth are LGBT. Our amendment would also ensure that those
seeking services through these Federal programs are not denied
assistance based on their race, color, religion, national origin, sex,
sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. All homeless young
people need access to safe beds at night and services during the day so
they will never have to choose between selling their bodies and a safe
place to sleep.
The stand-alone bill on which our amendment is based was reported out
of the Committee on the Judiciary during the last Congress with an
overwhelmingly strong bipartisan vote of 15 to 3. It has the support of
nearly 270 organizations, including service providers, anti-trafficking
advocates, and many faith-based organizations that serve homeless youth
each and every day. Covenant House, the largest service provider for
runaway and homeless youth, strongly supports our reauthorization of
these programs.
Let me thank Senator Leahy for working so hard and for working to
incorporate important feedback into our amendment, such as applying the
nondiscrimination clause only to the runaway and homeless youth
programs and clarifying the continued ability to provide sex-specific
shelters and programming, such as all-girls shelters or all-male
shelters.
Let me take this opportunity to also commend Senator Cornyn and
Senator Klobuchar for their work on the Justice for Victims of
Trafficking Act, a bill I have proudly cosponsored. The policies and
tools included in this bill are important pieces of the Federal
response to the horrific crime of human trafficking. Congress must do
more to provide law enforcement with the tools it needs to pursue to
end sex trafficking and to also support preventive programs such as the
runaway and homeless youth programs that help those who fall victim to
traffickers. In many ways our bill is the bookend for the bill that is
pending on the Senate floor because it focuses on the service end in
helping those who are most vulnerable, our young people.
By providing homeless young people with the support and services they
need, we can help prevent them from ever being trafficked in the first
place. The runaway and homeless youth programs have provided a lifeline
and housing for America's homeless and for its human trafficked youth
for 40 years. They are a vital tool in addressing these serious
problems. I urge my colleagues to support our bipartisan amendment.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. Madam President, I want to thank the distinguished senior
Senator from Maine, my New England neighbor, for her comments, speaking
on Leahy-Collins amendment No. 290. She and I and others have worked on
this for a very long time. In her comments, she talked about shelters
for homeless teens, and I think about how much better this whole
country would be if this homeless teen could turn to a shelter and not
to a trafficker.
As I said earlier on the floor, traffickers often find their victims
soon after they runaway or become homeless.
In a couple of States, such as mine and the Senator from Maine's,
especially at this time of year, people need shelter or they die. They
literally die in a relatively short period of time from the cold.
We see what happens. Listen to the stories of these trafficking
survivors. Many of them began as a homeless or runaway teen. They are
scared, desperate for affection, for food, for safety, and for a safe
place to sleep.
Our children and our grandchildren don't have to be scared. They have
a safe place to sleep. They have food. But for a lot of these runaways,
that is not the case.
That is a problem we can fix. We can reauthorize the Runaway and
Homeless Youth Act. We can ensure that no child is turned away,
regardless of their religion or their race or whom they love. A child
is a child is a child. They all deserve our protection.
We don't say: OK, you four homeless children, we will take care of
you but not you because you are the wrong race or you are the wrong
religion or you love the wrong person. So you have to just stay out and
be prey to the traffickers.
We will recount some of the stories I told before, the traffickers I
prosecuted years ago and the horrible stories. I know the distinguished
Senator from Maine has heard these stories, and she has visited these
shelters. She has seen and heard the stories. When you do, it tears
your heart. So I hope the amendment that she, Senator Murkowski, I, and
others have written will be in the final bill when it is passed. I
thank my friend from Maine for her hard work.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mrs. Fischer). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I am just going to say that I know the
distinguished Senators from Vermont and Maine have been on the floor
talking about an amendment they hope to offer to this anti-trafficking
bill. But the sad fact is that no one is going to get to offer any
amendments to this bill unless the Democratic leader, Senator Reid,
decides that we are going to have an open amendment process because
right now there are objections to anyone setting any of the amendments
for votes, much less asking to set aside the pending amendment and
making your amendment the pending amendment so it could be considered
and scheduled for a vote.
I wish to make sure our colleagues understand the rationale because I
have had conversations with a number of members of the Judiciary
Committee, which voted unanimously to support this bill. That doesn't
happen very often, that we have that kind of unanimous support. Ten of
our Democratic colleagues are cosponsors on the original bill.
So it might sound strange that after 10 Democrats have cosponsored
the bill, after all of the Republicans and all of the Democrats on the
Judiciary Committee have voted to support this bill--and the minority
leader, Senator Reid, has agreed to dispense with the normal procedural
process to get the bill on the floor--that we would now have this
unusual situation where this bill is being hijacked and being used to
debate something that it really doesn't have very much to do about, and
that is the subject of abortion.
Some of our colleagues raised this issue yesterday for the first
time, and they said they were surprised to find some language in the
bill that limited the use of the funds in this bill consistent with the
Hyde amendment. The Hyde amendment is a prohibition against using
taxpayer funds for abortion, and it has been the law of the land for 39
years--39 years. All our bill does is preserve the status quo when it
comes to the Hyde amendment.
Then, all of a sudden, some of our colleagues woke up I guess
yesterday morning and discovered this and said that they were outraged
and that it was totally unacceptable. Well, when we offered them an
opportunity to offer an amendment to change that, they said: No, we
don't want an amendment. We don't want to change it by a vote of the
Senate. We just want to block the bill. We want to kill the bill.
Unless something changes between now and the time we vote on cloture
on the bill, that is what is going to happen because they don't want to
amend the bill; they don't want to allow others the opportunity--such
as the Senator from Maine and the Senator from Vermont--to amend the
bill; they just want to kill the bill.
It really is baffling to me, on a topic we all ought to agree is an
important one, where some of the most vulnerable individuals in our
society--children who have been sex-trafficked--would be the
beneficiaries of the bill, that we are for some reason debating a
provision in the bill that was in the bill when 10 Democrats agreed to
cosponsor it, when all members of the Judiciary Committee, including
those same Democrats, agreed to vote for the bill, and when the
Democratic leader agreed
[[Page S1416]]
to bring it to the floor unanimously by a vote of the Senate. All of a
sudden we want to try to revisit a provision that has been the law of
the land for 39 years.
I hope something happens between now and the end of the week that
causes some of our friends to reconsider this idea that they are going
to filibuster this bill which many of them cosponsored and for which
many of them voted. It would be a real shame and a tragedy if something
that was designed to help these vulnerable kids was killed in the
Senate because this became a political football. That would be a shame.
I know the distinguished Senator from Utah is on the floor and ready
to speak.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Utah.
Mr. HATCH. Madam President, I will speak for a few seconds on what
the distinguished Senator from Texas said.
It would be absolutely pathetic if this bill were stopped--a bill
this important that means so much to our families and to our children--
because of the long-term language that has been, as I say, for 39
years--I can't believe this Senate has become so political that we
would raise that issue at this time on this bill that almost everybody
with any brains at all would be for. I would be ashamed of myself. And
then not be willing to bring up an amendment if they don't like the
language, go through the regular order, and act like the Senate and act
like Senators--it is pathetic. What have we come to around here that we
are so doggone partisan that we can't even pass a bill to protect
children? I think it is pathetic, is all I can say.
Ukraine
Madam President, in my nearly 40 years of public service, I have
become very concerned with the state of our national security.
From the firestorm of terrorism that has swept Syria and Iraq, to the
looming specter of a nuclear Iran, our Nation faces yet another
potential catastrophe in Ukraine, where Russian separatists and
soldiers continue their drive to consume as much of that nation as
President Putin desires. It is particularly vexing that each of these
catastrophes could have been prevented or at least greatly mitigated
had the instigators of these events believed that the United States
intended to use its national power to deter and, if necessary, repulse
those seeking to use aggression against our national interests.
As I mentioned before, Ukraine is the latest example. Almost 1 year
ago Russian forces seized and then annexed the Crimean peninsula. Ever
since then, Russian separatists and Russian forces have snapped up
large parts of eastern Ukraine.
Until last year, the areas controlled by Russian separatists and
Russian forces could be loosely grouped into two areas along the
Russian border--specifically, a northern area around the city of
Luhansk and a southern area around the city of Donetsk. In between
these two Russian-controlled areas lies the town called Debaltseve,
which is a vital transportation hub. By seizing this strategic town,
Russia can transport troops and supplies more easily between the
Russian-controlled areas in the north and the South.
However, after weeks of fighting in and around Debaltseve, a
ceasefire called Minsk II was brokered. Unfortunately, as many realists
warned, Minsk II was not worth the paper it was written on.
Predictably, 72 hours after the ceasefire was signed, Russian forces
violated the protocol and Ukrainian soldiers retreated from the town
under heavy fire.
Adding insult to injury, President Putin was quoted by the New York
Times, after the fall of Debaltseve, saying:
Life is life. It just goes on. No need to dwell on it.
What is the response of the United States to this aggression? Well,
until today the only concrete action, as reported by ABC News, is that
the administration has decided to send fewer than 10 soldiers to
western Ukraine to provide combat medical training to Ukrainian forces.
This would not be so laughable if I did not believe the Ukrainians will
require far greater medical assistance if Russian aggression continues
unabated. But now that Russian-backed forces have solidified their
control over whole swathes of eastern Ukraine, what comes next? Will
Mr. Putin be appeased and go home? I very much doubt it. Recent reports
indicate that both sides have moved some heavy weapons away from the
battlefield; nevertheless, I believe this could just be a lull in the
storm.
As I mentioned earlier, Russian forces have annexed Crimea, which is
a peninsula between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. To supply their
forces in Crimea, Russians must fly over or cross a narrow strip of
water between the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov called the Kerch
Strait. But if Russians controlled the land between Crimea and the
Russian border, they could ship those supplies more efficiently and at
lower cost. This stretch of land, of course, is Ukrainian sovereign
territory. Therefore, it is very possible that the Russians will move
to conquer this region to establish a land corridor between Russia and
Crimea.
Many military experts believe this is Russia's objective since
Russian-backed separatists have intensified their military activities
around the port city of Mariupol.
The New York Times reports that the city ``is a bustling port in a
strategic location on the Sea of Azov, near the Russian border.''
Mariupol is the only major obstacle to the Russians realizing a long-
held goal of opening a land route between Russia and Crimea and taking
complete control of the Sea of Azov and its rich industrial
infrastructure.
In addition, the highly regarded Institute for the Study of War has
noted that a village approximately 8 miles from Mariupol has ``become
the most actively contested area'' in the region.
So what has been our response to this aggression? How is this
administration preserving what is arguably one of the greatest American
national security accomplishments in the past 100 years--ensuring a
safe, secure and democratic Europe? Well, to be honest, not much.
Before the events of the past 12 months, this administration's
Pollyanna policy toward Russia was defined by the so-called reset. It
was my impression this policy was designed to convince the Russians we
were not a threat and therefore we should work together for the common
good. Unfortunately, the Russians exploited the former and did not give
a darn about the latter.
Then, as the situation in Crimea and eastern Ukraine continued to
grow more dire, we instituted a series of economic sanctions--first
against Russian officials, then later against banks and businesses
associated with Putin's cronies. These economic sanctions have grown
against a number of key Russian energy, banking, and defense firms. To
be fair, today the administration announced a modest increase in the
number of individuals to which economic sanctions will be directed
against.
However, one would be hard-pressed to call these sanctions robust.
Individuals' assets were frozen and companies find it harder to raise
capital, but they are hardly enough to make Mr. Putin think twice
before proceeding to use force against his next objective.
What about our diplomatic efforts? As the Congressional Research
Service has stated, ``The administration has appeared to leave the
leading role in negotiating such a [peace] settlement [regarding
Ukraine] to France and Germany.''
What about U.S. military aid? According to the Congressional Research
Service, the United States has allocated $120 million in security
assistance so far. Today our government announced a modest increase in
aid. Of the aid previously announced, funds were used for body armor,
helmets, vehicles, night and thermal vision devices, heavy engineering
equipment, advanced radios, patrol boats, rations, tents, countermortar
radars, uniforms, and first aid equipment and supplies. Glaringly
absent from this list are the pieces of equipment that could tilt the
balance of power and change Mr. Putin's calculations. Specifically,
where are the intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, heavy weapons
and logistics assets?
What is the administration's response? Just this week Brian McKeon,
the Principal Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Policy stated--more
than 1 year after the Russian invasion of Crimea--that the Obama
administration is ``still working in the interagency group on reviewing
a number of
[[Page S1417]]
options including lethal defensive weapons, but I can't give you a
timetable on when we might have a decision on additional assistance.''
That is pathetic. By any measure that is pathetic. I am flabbergasted
not only by Mr. McKeon's comment but the thought that the
administration believes anyone would see that as a legitimate answer.
In other areas, what about the deployment of more U.S. military units
to Europe to reassure our allies? While the United States has deployed
some troops to the region, that is not enough to convince Moscow this
administration is determined to give a resolute response to further
Russian aggression.
Specifically, the initial deployment of U.S. land forces were in
company-size units. A company-size unit has less than 150 soldiers, an
insufficient force to amount to an effective deterrent. Then the
administration announced that a single armored brigade--which consists
of less than 100 tanks--would be deployed on a rotational basis. Once
again, this is a relatively small force to deter what historically has
been one of the great land armies.
Deterrence comes through strength. The world has changed since the
fall of the Berlin Wall, but it appears this has been lost on President
Putin. Indeed, it appears President Obama believes the world has
changed more than it has. Regardless, the United States must take more
forceful and dynamic actions. Otherwise, our policy of appeasement
could result in more than just the loss of eastern Ukraine.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, I thought I might take just a few
minutes during this lull in our schedule. If other Senators come down
to talk, I will yield to them, but I would like to talk a little about
what is in this piece of legislation--the Justice for Victims of
Trafficking Act. While I am on the Judiciary Committee and the Senator
from Vermont is on the Judiciary Committee--he has worked together with
me and others on this piece of legislation--I am aware of the fact
there are many Senators for whom this is a relatively new topic and who
have not been as immersed in it.
First, I would just say by way of major support that there are 200
victims' rights groups and law enforcement organizations that have
endorsed this legislation--200 of them. I am looking forward to having
a conference call with them this afternoon, where I can explain to them
how we are currently stuck and to solicit their help in getting us
unstuck so we can hopefully move this legislation along, have an open
amendment process, and working with our colleagues in the House, send
this important piece of legislation to the President.
As I said, more than 200 victims' rights and law enforcement
organizations have endorsed this legislation, including Shared Hope
International, Rights4Girls, the Fraternal Order of Police, the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National
Children's Alliance, the National Criminal Justice Association, the End
Child Prostitution and Trafficking organization, PROTECT, Alliance to
End Slavery and Trafficking, the National Association of Police
Organizations, the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the
National District Attorneys Association.
I read that rather long list of supporting organizations to point out
there is nothing political about this particular bill. This is neither
a Republican bill nor a Democratic bill. This is, I think, in the best
traditions of the Senate, the Congress, when Members of Congress on
both sides of the aisle work together to come up with a policy solution
that makes sense and that will help.
One of the key features of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act
is the creation of a special Crime Victims Compensation Fund. It is
called the Domestic Trafficking Victims Fund.
When I had the honor of serving as attorney general of Texas, we had
a Crime Victims Compensation Fund--much like I suspect most States
have--where people who commit crimes and who pay fines and penalties
pay into that fund, and those moneys are then distributed on a grant
basis by the State to help organizations such as the Court Appointed
Special Advocates Groups--CASA--which I worked closely with as attorney
general, and a number of crime victims' groups and other survivors of
crime.
What we do is use that same model here. We take the money that is
paid by people convicted of human trafficking, sexual abuse, child
pornography, child sexual exploitation, interstate transportation for
illegal sexual activity, commercial human smuggling, and we require a
special additional assessment of $5,000 upon conviction for any one of
this class of crimes.
In other words, one of the things we are trying to do is move from
this model of just dealing with the supply side of a problem and deal
with the demand side. We are trying to focus on the people who purchase
these illicit services from trafficking victims and then use that fund
to do some good, to provide grants to various faith-based
organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and the like that help
treat the victims of child trafficking and hopefully help them begin to
heal once they are rescued from their abusers and their assailants.
The other thing we do, sort of from a structural point of view, is we
don't treat a young girl who has been trafficked as the criminal. In
other words, in the past there has been a tendency to say we are going
to arrest the 15-year-old girl and charge her for being a prostitute,
when in fact she has no choice in the matter. She is being compelled by
either violence or some other coercive means to do what she is doing.
So it is not a voluntary act on her part.
So what we do is we don't treat them as a criminal. We treat the
purchaser of these services as the criminal. We fine them. We use that
money then to supply services to help that victim get rescued and get
better, to heal, and to get on with their lives.
That is what is a little different here because we are not actually
using tax dollars. We are using the fines and the penalties assessed
against these perpetrators to help these victims heal once they are
rescued. That is one of the most important parts of this bill.
We expect there would be roughly $30 million a year available for
that out of this bill alone. That would be in addition to other things
we are doing and other things that are being done at the local and
State level.
We also make sure that we clarify the benefits and protections
offered to victims of domestic human trafficking. Under current law,
U.S. citizens are sometimes placed at a disadvantage when seeking
services to restore them to their well-being and to offer them
protection. But now we would make sure that those services are
available without regard to citizenship and would make sure that people
who would otherwise not get benefits will get benefits. This disparity
in certification has led to some confusion, as we might imagine.
For example, under current law, a young person who has been
trafficked from Central America through Mexico and into the United
States would be eligible for a temporary visa while they cooperate with
law enforcement because that testimony would be essential to convict
the person who trafficked them. This clarifies that U.S. citizens and
lawful permanent residents should never be denied services due to the
fact that they have not received that kind of special certification. It
is a little technical, but it is an important area.
We also provide child human trafficking deterrence block grants paid
entirely through the Crime Victims Compensation Fund I mentioned a
moment ago. These funds would be granted to qualifying organizations
based on their focus on victim rescue and restoration.
Collaboration among law enforcement, social services, emergency
responders, children's advocacy centers, victims service providers, and
nonprofits would be encouraged to help communities and government work
together to develop a holistic approach to figure out what works best
to protect these victims of trafficking and to serve victims.
[[Page S1418]]
It also would create a new purpose area under the Victims of Child
Abuse Act for the 900 children's advocacy centers across the country
that provide restorative services for victims of child pornography, and
it requires that not less than $2 million a year be dedicated to this
purpose.
In my experience, in Texas, the children's advocacy centers are some
of the most outstanding organizations that exist for the treatment of
victims of abuse and trafficking. One of the key features in the
children's advocacy centers that I have visited is--imagine that a
child who has been assaulted or a victim of human trafficking is not
only going to be terrified by the experience, but they are also
terrified by the law enforcement authorities who try to question them
and to get evidence so they can make a case and conviction against the
person who did harm to the child. The children's advocacy centers do an
amazing job of creating a more relaxed atmosphere, where law
enforcement and social service providers can work together in an
environment where a child does not feel threatened and where the child
can actually not only begin to get better but also cooperate with law
enforcement authorities and provide more reliable testimony and
evidence that can be used to convict the perpetrators.
Also in the bill, we would amend the human trafficking asset
forfeiture statute to track the asset forfeiture statute for money
laundering and eliminate the need for prosecutors to show direct
traceability to the underlying crime and the targeted proceeds when
they can show that the assets involved in the crime are used to conceal
the source of criminal assets. This is basically taking another
provision of current law. I realize that the whole issue of asset
forfeiture, when taken to the extreme--I know Chairman Grassley is
interested in holding hearings on the subject. But I think the part of
this which is not controversial is taking the assets used in the
commission of a crime and forfeiting that by the perpetrator, again,
using those funds in part to help their victims get better.
We also have a provision in the bill that would allow for the
streamlining of criminal investigations of human trafficking.
Under current law, State and local law enforcement may obtain a
wiretap warrant in State court upon showing that the investigation may
provide evidence of murder, kidnapping, gambling, robbery, bribery,
extortion or dealing with narcotic drugs, including marijuana or other
dangerous drugs, or other crimes dangerous to life, limb or property
and punishable by imprisonment for more than 1 year.
What we would do here is provide additional tools for law enforcement
to conduct lawful wiretaps in order to get evidence important to
convicting the perpetrators of these terrible crimes.
We also would require better reporting of this terrible crime of
human trafficking. I remember a few years ago, when the Super Bowl was
in Dallas, actually working with local law enforcement there where I
learned for the first time that, unfortunately, at the same time that
the Super Bowl is held in different cities around the country, there is
a spike in the amount of trafficking that occurs in conjunction with
these huge public events. That was quite an eye-opening experience for
me.
Part of what we need to do is to get the facts, and to make sure that
human trafficking is treated as the serious crime that it is for
purposes of the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program. This legislation
would encourage law enforcement to investigate and report human
trafficking activity by classifying this as a part I violent crime and
requiring it to be included in the calculation of index crime rates--
again, making sure we understand what the facts are, because I think
the fact is that so much of this crime and this sort of activity is
hidden from public view. So most Americans probably don't know that
this sort of activity goes on in their cities, in their States, and
across the country. This would help us deal with that.
Under another provision of the bill, we would also make sure we use
existing task forces to target offenders who exploit children, and we
would, in particular, target child predators.
One of the things we learn, as we get deeper into this topic, is the
sad fact that somebody who sexually abuses a child is likely to do it
more than once. In other words, these twisted individuals unfortunately
are going to commit crime after crime after crime until they are caught
and taken out of commission.
This is one reason why I feel so strongly that we had to eliminate
the rape kit backlogs around the country, and we worked closely with a
courageous woman named Debbie Smith to reauthorize the Debbie Smith Act
to make sure the money that Congress appropriated for the rape kit
backlog was adequately funded. Due to the power of DNA testing, we can
identify people who commit these serial offenses, and law enforcement
can connect the dots better and at the same time exonerate people who
have perhaps been falsely accused because they are excluded through a
DNA test through this rape kit backlog elimination effort.
So trying to make sure we take these serial offenders off the streets
is a priority under our bill.
As I said, we worked very closely with a number of colleagues,
including the Senator from Vermont, the Senator Feinstein of
California, Senator Coons, Senator Wyden, and Senator Klobuchar on the
other side. On our side, we have had a lot of great effort by Senator
Portman and Senator Kirk, among others. Senator Collins has certainly
made important contributions. But I wish to particularly recognize the
contributions by the Senator from California, Mrs. Feinstein.
We added a second title, title II in the legislation, entitled
``Combating Human Trafficking.'' Senator Feinstein was the person who
made that major contribution to this effort.
My point is that this has really been a bipartisan collaborative
effort--something we don't see enough of here in Washington, DC--
untainted by politics and ideology, where we are actually trying to do
some good for people who need our help the most.
Senator Feinstein contributed much of the meat of title II, including
amendments to the Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, response to victims
of child trafficking provision, creating an interagency task force
report on child trafficking primary prevention and also requiring a
General Accountability Office report to Congress that includes
information on Federal and State law enforcement agencies to combat
trafficking in the United States and requiring that it include
information on each available grant program intended to combat human
trafficking or assist victims of trafficking.
On our side of the aisle, I mentioned that one of the people who has
been a relentless warrior on this has been our friend the junior
Senator from Illinois, Mr. Kirk, who contributed the HERO Act to this
legislation. That is title III under the HERO Act.
Under that important part of the legislation that makes up this
overall bill, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, the HERO Act
would provide express statutory authorization for the existing ICE
Cyber Crimes Center--Immigration and Customs Enforcement--recognizing
that so much of what happens in terms of the marketing and the
solicitation for people to engage in these crimes occurs now on the
Internet.
I had the privilege of being here with the Senator from Illinois on
the floor yesterday afternoon, and he talked about this one particular
site that has been responsible for the trafficking of so much human
flesh, mainly in the form of minor children, and his efforts to combat
that. But part of what the HERO Act would do is to make sure that we
have this powerful tool in the fight against sexual exploitation of
children and the production, advertisement, and distribution of child
pornography and child sex tourism--if you can imagine such a thing.
The HERO Act would also authorize the Cyber Crimes Center to
collaborate with the Department of Defense and the National Association
to Protect Children for the purpose of recruiting, training, and hiring
wounded and transitioning military veterans to serve as law enforcement
officials in the investigation and prosecution of these crimes. This
child exploitation section uses sophisticated investigative tools to
target violators who operate on the Internet, which has been one of the
primary focuses of the Senator from Illinois in his efforts, targeting
the use of Web sites, email chat rooms, and file-sharing applications.
[[Page S1419]]
Major initiatives, including Operation Predator, an Immigration and
Customs Enforcement office within the Department of Homeland Security's
flagship investigative initiative for targeting sexual predators, child
pornographers, and child sex.
It includes the National Child Victim Identification System, which
was developed to assist law enforcement agencies in identifying victims
of child sexual exploitation, and the virtual global task force and
international alliance of law enforcement agencies working together to
fight online child exploitation and abuse.
I realize this has been rather lengthy, but I thought it was worth
making sure that all of our colleagues and anybody within the sound of
my voice who cared to listen understood what was in this important
piece of legislation, the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act.
To summarize, 200 organizations across the country who are focused
like a laser on the bane and evil that child sex trafficking is have
endorsed this legislation. The original piece of legislation had 10
Democratic cosponsors, about an equal number--perhaps; I can't remember
the exact number--of Republican cosponsors, and it passed by unanimous
vote of the Senate Judiciary Committee in February.
Coming to the floor, we had something that hadn't happened often
enough, in my view, which was that Democrats and Republicans together
agreed to bypass the usual cumbersome procedure to get a bill to the
floor, known as cloture, and we all agreed we should take up this bill
together. That is when things went off the rails, sadly. But I am an
optimistic person and I am hopeful cooler heads will prevail.
I have had some private conversations with a number of Senators who
are really very disturbed by the possibility that legislation as
important as this is to the victims of human trafficking might be
kicked to the curb because of some phony diversion and argument about
restrictions on funding.
Again, the provisions of this bill that limit the use of the funds
under the Hyde amendment has been the law of the land for 39 years. It
was originally started in 1976. Basically, the Hyde amendment says that
no taxpayer funds may be used for abortion services. This has been one
of the rare areas in an area of great controversy--the subject of
abortion--where Congress has come together on a bipartisan basis to say
we are going to draw a bright line there to say no matter what your
views are on abortion, we are not going to allow taxpayer funds to be
used for abortion. Again, that started in 1976 and it has been the law
of the land since that time.
Every appropriations bill that has passed, including the CRomnibus,
the continuing resolution omnibus bill that was passed last fall in the
lameduck session of Congress, included a restriction known as the Hyde
amendment restriction in it. As a matter of fact, we specifically
referenced that provision in the Justice for Victims of Trafficking
Act.
So you could imagine my surprise when I think it was yesterday that I
got calls, letters, and heard speeches that people were surprised--
shocked--that this provision was in the legislation when it was filed
in January--I think January 13--and made public to the world. If
anybody thought it was hidden, it was hidden in plain sight to anybody
who cared to read it. And to me, what was so surprising about some of
the reaction is that this maintains the status quo. This doesn't change
anything, and has been the law of the land for 39 years since the
original Hyde amendment was adopted.
So my hope is we can break out of this terrible cycle of dysfunction
which I think, frankly, reflects Congress in a very negative light. I
certainly hear it back home in Texas. People say: Well, can't you all
get along? Can't you do anything? They don't want us to compromise our
principles, and we won't. I don't think we should. But there are so
many areas like this where we are united together in trying to do
everything we can to help law enforcement investigate and prosecute
human trafficking and to help the victims of human trafficking to heal
after they are rescued--to heal, get better, and to get on with their
lives. That is all this legislation does.
I say that is all. That is a pretty big deal. It provides $30 million
a year--not tax dollars. These are fines and penalties paid by the
people who commit these terrible crimes. It provides $30 million a year
as funds that can go toward grants to faith-based organizations, child
advocacy centers--you name it--organizations that will spend their
lives trying to help these children try to get better and get on with
their lives. That money is available to them.
But if we don't pass this bill this week, that is not going to
happen. How tragic it would be if somehow we let the politics of the
day and this feigned outrage over a provision that has been a law of
the land for 39 years derail us from doing our job.
I have every confidence that the heart of every Member of this body
is in the right place when it comes to trying to help these victims of
human trafficking. I just ask us to get our heads screwed on right. I
know our hearts are in the right place, but frankly I am a little
worried about people's heads not being screwed on right when it comes
to focusing on a solution that is within our reach and one that has I
think enjoyed so much support all across the country--as I mentioned,
more than 200 victims rights and law enforcement organizations across
the country. I am looking forward in probably the next 10 minutes or so
joining a conference call with various members of these organizations,
where I can update them on where they are and basically ask them for
their help.
Call your Senator. Call your Congressman. Tell them we need to get
this done, because in all likelihood tomorrow we are going to have a
very important vote in the Senate.
I said I wasn't going to get mired down in procedure, but we do have
an important vote tomorrow which is called a cloture vote. In other
words, in order to get to a final passage of this bill, we need to have
at least 60 Senators out of 100 vote for ending debate on the bill.
That is called a cloture vote. But if we don't have 60 Senators vote to
end debate on this bill, then basically we are dead in the water.
We have 54 Senators on our side of the aisle. There are 46 on the
other side of the aisle. You would think on a bill that does as much as
this bill does for the victims of human trafficking and that is so
devoid of politics that we could get 60 votes or more. I wish we could
get 100 votes to close off debate and finally pass this bill. If we did
that in short order, I know we could work with our colleagues in the
House of Representatives, who have already passed a similar although a
little bit different bill, to try to reconcile those two pieces of
legislation and get them to President Obama's desk for his signature.
The sooner we do that, the sooner these victims of human trafficking
will get the help they need that this bill would provide.
So I hope that Senators will think long and hard about their vote on
closing off debate tomorrow and getting us to the finish line on this
legislation. Again, we don't need everybody. We don't need 100 Senators
to vote to close off debate tomorrow, but we do need 60. If we don't
get 60, this bill is going to be dead in the water.
I would ask all of our colleagues to examine their conscience and to
think about what we are doing here and how much good we could do if we
come together. I know from talking to some of our colleagues on the
other side of the aisle, they have had some sleepless nights. Several
of our colleagues have said they basically have had a hard time
sleeping thinking about the human tragedy reflected in human
trafficking, and they worried whether we will actually be able to get
this bill over the finish line. I hope and pray we will. We will find
out tomorrow.
This is something that is in our hands. We can't control a lot of
things in the world, but we can control whether we produce 60 votes
here in the Senate tomorrow to close off debate, to get to final
passage by a majority vote in the Senate. And if we can, then we are
going to be able to expedite the help these victims of human
trafficking need. We are going to be able to make sure the predators
who prey on innocent children and other victims of human trafficking
pay the price, but that out of that bad comes some good when children
are rescued and these victims begin the process of healing.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
[[Page S1420]]
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. REID. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for
the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. REID. Madam President, I was stunned a few minutes ago to hear
the assistant Republican leader on the floor speaking about trafficking
legislation that is now before the Senate. I am glad he is speaking
about the legislation. He has done that quite a bit. But as he spoke
about the bill, it is very stunning what he said.
He said:
This bill is being hijacked and being used to debate
something that it really doesn't have very much to do about,
and that is the subject of abortion.
I totally agree with my friend from Texas. This bill has been
hijacked by an issue completely unrelated to human trafficking.
I suggest that the majority take it out. We can debate on how it is
in the bill. Some said that it was by sleight of hand, and some said
that the Democratic staff should have seen that it was in there. It is
in there, and it has to come out.
Unless that language is taken out of the bill, there will be no bill.
We cannot have this legislation hijacked by an abortion issue.
My friend the President pro tempore of the Senate and the chairman of
the Finance Committee said:
I can't believe that this Senate has become so political
that we would raise that issue at this time on this bill.
``Raise the issue''--he took the words right out of my mouth. I can't
believe it either.
I say to my friends the majority, take the abortion language out of
the bill. It has nothing to do with abortion.
I hope my Republican friends will choose to do the right thing and
eliminate this unrelated issue on an otherwise good piece of
legislation.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Toomey). The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I wish to talk about a couple of
amendments on the legislation that we are considering this week, which
is the human trafficking legislation.
Up to this point, this has been a bipartisan exercise. In fact,
Senator Blumenthal, the Senator from Connecticut, and I started a
caucus here in the Senate on human trafficking about 3\1/2\ years ago,
understanding that there was an increasing concern and awareness about
this issue around the country, and we wanted to bring colleagues
together to talk about the issue. We now have many other Members of the
Senate who are a part of that.
We had monthly meetings--holding up people who were doing great
things around the country--describing the problem so that all of us,
Members of the Senate and their staff, understand the seriousness of
this issue and why we need to address it. That has always been
nonpartisan--not just bipartisan but nonpartisan.
I think it is time for us to move forward with this debate and to
have these amendments offered and to actually vote on this legislation
that would help to deal with this problem all around the country, and
unfortunately it is everywhere.
Often people think that this is an international issue, that the only
human trafficking concern we should have would be in Africa or Asia or
other countries. But it actually happens right here, and it happens in
my home State of Ohio.
I first became involved in this issue when a school outside the city
of Toledo came to me and told me their concern about it and how these
young people were getting involved and engaged in it. The more we
learned, the more I looked into it, and the more I realized this is
something which is very real in the communities I represent in Ohio,
and unfortunately I believe the same is true in every State represented
in this Chamber.
We have had an interesting debate so far. Sometimes we have gotten a
little sidetracked, such as the issue we saw a moment ago, but for the
most part I have been pleased that over the last few days we have
talked about the scope of the problem, talked about some of the
solutions to it, and we talked about some of the good legislation that
is in the underlying bill.
There are two pieces of legislation that I offered that are part of
the underlying bill, and I am happy about that. They are both
bipartisan amendments. There are also a couple of amendments that I
think would be helpful for us to include in the legislation. I offered
those amendments earlier this week with the hopes that they would have
already been considered. They have not been considered yet, but I hope
to move forward with this legislation. The longer we wait, the more
difficult it becomes for us to move forward. I hope we can resolve
whatever differences there are and go ahead and start voting on
amendments and moving this legislation forward so we can actually help
those victims of trafficking who are looking for our support. Again, if
we are not going to act here in the Senate and are not going to move
this forward in the House and get it to the President for signature--
every day more and more people are in danger, particularly children, of
falling into the hands of human traffickers.
Amendment No. 270
I have a couple of amendments I wish to talk about briefly today. The
first amendment is called Ensuring a Better Response for Victims of Sex
Trafficking. This amendment contains a piece of the legislation I
actually offered a couple of years ago with Senator Wyden of Oregon.
Senator Wyden's legislation and my legislation called the Child Sex
Trafficking Data and Response Act was partly enacted into law last
year, and that was the data part of the bill--in other words, the part
of the bill that relates to how we needed to improve the information we
are getting on sex trafficking so we can better address the problem.
Law enforcement officials have been looking for better information
around the country. They want to know what the best practices are and
how to deal with it. It is important to understand the problem in order
to come up with solutions.
Now we need to get to the second part of the legislation that was not
enacted last year, and that is on the response portion. The amendment
does just that. The response portion of the bill changes the way we
treat victims of sex trafficking. Right now many of these victims are
falling between the cracks. Currently children are only eligible for
help through the child welfare system if they are abused by their
parents. Currently, because children are only allowed to be eligible
for help in that category, some kids just cannot get the help they
need. This legislation ensures that all children who are trafficked are
considered victims of sexual abuse and can be eligible for services as
they go through what is sometimes a long and arduous process of
recovery.
Amendment No. 271
The second amendment I wish to include gets at some of the underlying
problems that make it more likely that a child will be trafficked. We
heard a lot about this on the floor the last couple of days. I have
talked about it in terms of our missing children. One of the elements
of the underlying bill is a bill we put forward in the last couple of
years on how to identify missing children. Why? Because those children
who are runaways or go missing tend to be some of the most vulnerable
to sex traffickers. So the idea is to get the best information we can
on those kids as soon as possible so we can find them.
As an example, there have been about 67 kids who have gone missing in
Ohio in the last month and a half. Yet we only have records for, I
believe, 26 kids in terms of photographs. This legislation would
require photographs for all of these kids so that the kids who are not
currently able to be found because we can't find a photograph of them
can be more easily found--not just by law enforcement but by citizens
who are being vigilant and diligent.
There is another issue, too, and it is something that is addressed in
this amendment, which is cosponsored by Senator Feinstein. The first
one is one from a Wyden-Portman amendment, and this is from a
Feinstein-Portman amendment. These are bipartisan bills.
It currently is true that there is an over-narrow definition of
``homelessness'' by the Department of Housing and Urban Development
that does not enable homeless kids to get the help they need. That is
current law. We are trying to change that to ensure that we can expand
that definition to include the kinds of children who unfortunately many
times are vulnerable to trafficking.
[[Page S1421]]
I will give an example of the scope of this problem. During this last
school year--2 years ago, 2012 to 2013--there were 24,236 kids in Ohio
who were homeless at one point during the school year; however, the
Federal Department responsible for preventing child homelessness
counted only 4,700 cases. So we have over 24,000 kids who are homeless;
yet this Department says only 4,700. In other words, the very program
meant to help these kids undercounted by a factor of five. So the
amendment simply updates the definition of ``homelessness'' to ensure
that these kids are not forgotten and do not fall between the cracks.
We know this action alone will not end child homelessness, but it
will help deal with this problem and will help to put a roof over their
heads, for thousands of these kids and their families, and prevent some
of the long-term emotional, developmental effects that are caused by
homelessness, as well as keep these kids off the streets and hopefully
away from these traffickers so they are not vulnerable, as I said, to
being sex-trafficked.
We hope for a day when every single child in America is protected,
when every child is able to follow their dreams and can live in a home
with a family who is protecting and watching over them. We know that if
we are going to see that hope realized, we have to fight for it. In the
meantime, we have important work to do here on the floor of the Senate
to ensure that we are doing everything we possibly can to protect these
kids.
These two amendments will help make this underlying legislation even
stronger. I hope my colleagues will support both of them. Again, I hope
we can now get over whatever is holding up movement on these
amendments, get the amendments enacted into law, and get the bill over
to the House of Representatives. And I believe they will pass it and
get it to the President for his signature so we can indeed begin to
address this horrific practice of human trafficking.
I yield back my time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Cornyn for his important
leadership on this issue. I thank Senator Klobuchar, whom I have
enjoyed working with on a related bill, the Stop Exploitation Through
Trafficking Act, which I hope will also be considered during the course
of this debate.
We must commit to eliminating all forms of modern-day slavery and
human trafficking. These are horrendous crimes that undermine the most
basic human right of freedom and sadly target the most vulnerable and
at-risk individuals in our society.
For too long we in the United States have assumed this is a problem
for others but not for ourselves. We heard heartbreaking stories of the
underground trafficking of humans but believed this was a tragedy
unique to places in the world where a poor economy and weak rule of law
allow vulnerable women and children to fall into these unspeakable
circumstances. This is no longer the case. Reports and research have
brought this crime out of the dark here at home, revealing that
trafficking in humans is a reality in our own States and communities.
Ignorance and denial are no longer options.
I am proud to support the legislation we are considering today which
would improve services and restitution available to victims of human
trafficking. It would make changes to our criminal law to allow law
enforcement to hold accountable those offenders who perpetrate these
heinous crimes and also better protect those at risk of becoming
victims.
I am proud to say that my home State of Arizona has been a leader on
this issue. In April 2013 then-Governor Jan Brewer launched a task
force on human trafficking which brought together local policymakers,
law enforcement, nonprofits, think tanks, and universities in Arizona
to examine the issue and explore ways to reduce trafficking and protect
victims. The work of this task force led to these results: In 2014 the
Arizona Human Trafficking Council was established to build on the
efforts of the task force in the longer term by improving the State's
awareness of human trafficking, promoting cooperation among law
enforcement, State agencies, and the community, and improving victims'
services.
The task force yielded legislative accomplishments. Based on
recommendations of the task force, Arizona passed a law in April 2014
that increased penalties for traffickers, makes it easier for
prosecutors to hold accountable those engaged in prostitution with a
minor, and protects victims' identities in criminal proceedings.
In an effort to equip those who are in a position to intervene, the
members of the task force have worked to improve training for social
workers, health care providers, and probation officers, among others.
These efforts provide them with the knowledge and tools needed to stop
this exploitation and connect victims with resources to help.
I would be remiss if I failed to mention the hard work of my wife
Cindy to bring attention to the suffering of those who are victims of
human trafficking. She has dedicated herself to their cause, and
through her service on both the Arizona Human Trafficking Task Force
and Council as well as international efforts to combat trafficking, she
has become a well-respected and persuasive voice on this vital issue,
driving change both in Arizona and abroad.
America's leadership furthering human rights around the world means
that we must hold ourselves to the highest standards when basic human
rights are being undermined right here. I am grateful for the Senate's
action. We must commit to continued efforts to restoring the freedom of
those caught in the horrors of modern slavery and eliminating this
crime wherever it occurs.
Finally, here in the Senate we have gridlock on numerous issues.
There are differences of opinion and philosophies. How in the world
have we got differences on an issue such as this? Is the issue of right
to life or abortion such an overwhelming issue that we can't address an
issue which is the most egregious crime against innocent women and
children?
This is really not an honorable time or a laudable time for the U.S.
Senate. We should be taking up amendments and passing this legislation
today. We are letting partisanship over an issue that has been
discussed and debated--and will be many times in the future--prevent us
from moving forward with this legislation. It is not honorable. It is
not honorable for us to hold up this legislation because we have a
difference on the issue of abortion.
I say to my friends on the other side of the aisle, let's not let
this issue prevent us from doing the right thing.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
The Budget
Mr. SANDERS. Mr. President, as the ranking member of the Budget
Committee, I wish to take a few minutes to discuss the budget
situation.
My understanding is that Senator Enzi, the chairman of the committee,
intends to have a Budget Committee markup on Wednesday, March 18, and
Thursday, March 19. My understanding is the resolution will come to the
floor the following week of March 23. Unless I am mistaken, we will
engage in what is called within the Beltway a vote-arama, where there
will be a very significant number of amendments that will be allowed to
be offered.
Before we discuss a budget, whether it is at the Federal level, the
State level, or one's family, I think it is imperative to understand
the conditions that exist as one prepares a budget. A budget reflects
what our country is about. It reflects our national priorities. It
reflects how we attempt to address the problems we face. It attempts to
address how we go forward as a people into the future.
So the first issue at hand when we discuss a budget is to, in fact,
determine what is going on in America today. What are our problems?
What should we be doing and what should we not be doing?
I start off with the premise that I think is shared by the vast
majority of the American people, which is that the middle class of this
country over the last 40 years has been disappearing; that people
today, by the millions, in Vermont and throughout this Nation, are
working longer hours for low wages, despite a huge increase in
productivity. That is the reality that faces most people in this
country. But there is another reality, and that is that the people on
top and the largest corporations are doing phenomenally well.
[[Page S1422]]
Today, real median family income is almost $5,000 less than it was in
1999 in inflation accounted-for dollars. Why is that? How does that
happen? The typical male worker--that man right in the middle of the
American economy--made $783 less last year than he did 42 years ago,
after adjusting for inflation. How does that happen? We have an
explosion of technology, a huge increase in productivity; we have the
so-called great global economy, $3 trillion all over the world; and the
typical male worker--the guy in the middle of the economy--makes $783
less last year than he did 42 years ago.
The typical female worker is making $1,337 less than she did in 2007.
Today, despite the modest gains of the Affordable Care Act--legislation
I supported--40 million Americans continue to have no health insurance
and we remain the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee
health care to all people as a right.
Then we have today, because many people were driven from the middle
class into poverty, more people today living in poverty than almost any
time in the modern history of America. How does that happen?
Despite a very significant improvement in the economy since President
Bush left office, real unemployment is not 5.5 percent, it is 11
percent. Youth unemployment, which we never talk about, is 17 percent,
and African-American youth unemployment is much higher than that.
Throughout this country, a significant number of young people have
given up on the dream of college. Here we are in a competitive global
economy and we have bright young people from working-class families and
they are looking at the cost of college and they are saying, Sorry,
ain't for me. I am not going to come out of school $50,000, $60,000 in
debt. What sense does that make when we are engaged in enormous
economic competition with countries all over the world?
Then we have another group of young people graduating college or
graduate school in debt to the tune of $50,000, $100,000. I talked to a
young doctor in Burlington, VT, some months ago. She graduated medical
school $300,000 in debt for the crime of wanting to be a primary care
physician. Does that make any sense?
While the middle class continues to disappear, the people on top and
the largest corporations have never had it so good. That is the other
reality of America today. The middle class shrinks--a whole lot of
people living in poverty, people have no health insurance, kids can't
afford to go to college--but people on top are doing phenomenally well.
Today, the top 1 percent earns more income than the bottom 50
percent. And since the Wall Street crash of 2008, over 99 percent of
all new income goes to the top 1 percent. Over 99 percent of all new
income goes to the top 1 percent.
Corporate profits are soaring. The stock market is up. CEOs now earn
270 times what their average employee makes. Today, the top one-tenth
of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. The
top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90
percent. And the wealthiest family in this country alone--one family--
owns more wealth than the bottom 42 percent of the American family.
Does that sound like the America we want to see, that we believe in,
where so few have so much and so many have so little?
It is an extraordinary fact that between 1985 and 2013, the bottom 90
percent of our people lost $10.7 trillion in wealth that it otherwise
would have had if the distribution of wealth had remained at the same
level as it was in 1985. If we had the same distribution of wealth, the
bottom 90 percent would have had close to $11 trillion more wealth.
Meanwhile, the top one-tenth of 1 percent experienced an $8 trillion
increase in wealth as the distribution of wealth became increasingly
unequal.
What a phenomenon, this huge transfer of wealth from working people
to the millionaires and billionaires.
Now let me get to the budget, because when we deal with a budget, we
can't ignore that reality. If the rich get much richer and the middle
class declines, it makes no sense at all to say we are going to give
more tax breaks to the rich and we are going to cut programs for the
middle class and working families. This is the Robin Hood principle in
reverse. It is taking from the middle class and working families and
giving to the very rich.
I worry very much that this is exactly what will be in the Republican
budget that we debate next week in committee. I expect--and I may be
mistaken and I hope I am but I don't think I am--I expect the
Republican budget in the Senate this year will be very close to what
the so-called Ryan budget did last year which was passed by the
Republican House. There may be nuances of differences, I don't know,
but I think it will be very close.
Let me tell my colleagues what the Republican budget will be about.
The Republican budget will oppose ending tax loopholes for the wealthy
and large corporations--loopholes that allow billionaire hedge fund
managers to pay a lower tax rate than electricians and schoolteachers.
I expect that the Republican budget will continue to allow major
profitable corporations such as General Electric, Verizon, and many
others to go through a given year paying absolutely nothing in Federal
income tax. I expect that the Republican budget will attempt to
voucherize Medicare--end it as we know it to be--and I expect there
will be massive cuts in Medicaid, education, nutrition programs, Pell
grants, and the kinds of programs that working families absolutely
depend upon.
We need a very different budget than what I believe the Republicans
are going to propose. We need a budget that stands for the working
families of this country and not just the millionaires and
billionaires.
Let me tell my colleagues what that budget should include, although I
don't think the Republican budget will include these ideas. When real
unemployment is 11 percent, we need a budget that creates millions of
decent-paying jobs. In my view, and in the view of many economists, the
fastest way to create those jobs and address a real national crisis is
to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure--our roads, our bridges, water
systems, wastewater plants, airports, dams, levees, and expand
broadband to rural America. According to the American Society of Civil
Engineers, we need to invest over $3 trillion to rebuild our
infrastructure. We are not going to do that, but we need to make a
major investment. When we do that, we make America more productive and
safer, and we also create millions of jobs.
A serious budget needs to make our Tax Code fairer and to bring
substantial new revenue into Federal coffers. We need a budget that
ends unfair tax loopholes and asks the wealthiest people and largest
corporations to pay their fair share of taxes.
Today at the hearing we had in the Committee on the Budget, a
Republican witness testified that he thought that corporate taxes
should be zero--zero. Well, that does not make a lot of sense to me.
We need a budget that understands when the Federal minimum wage is a
starvation wage of $7.25 an hour, we need to substantially raise the
minimum wage. We need to deal with the overtime scandal we currently
see. We need to raise wages for low- and moderate-income families.
At a time when large numbers of our young people have given up on the
dream of higher education and college is increasingly unaffordable, we
need a budget that says to every kid in America that if you have the
ability and you have the desire, you are going to get a higher
education regardless of the income of your family. At a time when
corporations have shipped millions of decent-paying jobs to China and
other low-wage countries, we need a budget that rewards companies for
investing in America and for creating jobs here, not abroad.
At a time when millions of people still lack health insurance, we
need a budget that ensures quality, affordable health care for all
Americans by supporting the implementation of the Affordable Care Act,
strengthening Medicare and Medicaid, and extending funding for the
Children's Health Insurance Program, community health centers, and the
National Health Service Corporation.
Let me conclude by making this simple and obvious point: A budget is
about priorities. A budget is about choices. And what we have to
determine is whether our budget coming out
[[Page S1423]]
of the Senate is a budget that represents the needs of the rich and
large corporations and their wealthy campaign donors, or whether we
produce a budget which represents the needs of working families and the
middle class and the millions and millions of families who are
struggling economically to keep their heads above water.
I hope we make the right choice. I hope we stand with the working
families of this country.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Order For Recess
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I rise for the purpose of a unanimous
consent request. I ask unanimous consent that the Senate stand in
recess from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. today.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRASSLEY. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I am on the floor to discuss the Human
Trafficking Survivors Relief and Empowerment Act, which is legislation
I introduced last week to aid the recovery of survivors of human
trafficking.
This bill, which I have also filed as an amendment to Senator
Cornyn's Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, will make important
strides toward helping survivors of human trafficking free themselves
from the social stigma that is associated with their victimization and
help them rebuild their lives as productive members of society.
I wish to start by sharing the story of a young woman who was
featured on NPR several weeks ago. She is a human trafficking survivor.
Her story is far too common.
She was raped for the first time at age 11. At 13, she was lured away
from her family and eventually forced into engaging in commercial sex.
She talked about the physical trauma she endured at the hands of her
captor--her skull was cracked, all of her ribs broken, and she endured
regular beatings and black eyes.
For roughly 7 years, her entire teenage life--a life she should have
been spending in school and among friends--she endured the worst kinds
of physical and emotional torture. Finally, at age 20, she was rescued
by a thoughtful police officer nearly 1,400 miles from her home.
Fortunately, this young woman is now in the process of rebuilding her
life. She has moved home near her family, she has a young son, and she
is hoping to go to school for nursing and to make a better life for
herself and her family. However, she is constantly confronted by the
reality of the criminal record she accumulated as the result of being a
trafficking victim. Every application she fills out, every job
interview she attends, she is forced to relive and explain the most
painful moments of her life.
As this victim told NPR, ``I'm not ever going to forget what I've
done, but at the same time, I don't want it thrown in my face every
time I'm trying to seek employment.''
Human traffickers use force, fraud, and coercion to compel their
victims to engage in criminal activity, particularly prostitution, yet
it is often the trafficking victims who are arrested, detained,
prosecuted, and convicted.
My legislation is simple. It provides an incentive for States to
enact laws that allow human trafficking survivors to clear their State
criminal records of prostitution and other low-level, nonviolent crimes
that result from being trafficked.
Specifically, these vacatur statutes allow trafficking survivors to
file a motion in court to expunge their criminal record for crimes they
can reasonably demonstrate were the result of being trafficked.
My colleague Senator Gillibrand has filed a similar amendment that
would address this issue at the Federal level or in Federal court. Her
amendment would ensure that victims charged with Federal crimes have
the opportunity to clear their record of the most serious types of
charges associated with trafficking.
My amendment would encourage States to provide a remedy for the most
common types of charges that trafficking victims face.
I urge my colleagues to support my legislation and my amendment. I
hope we can get trafficking legislation done in a way that will help
the victims in the future.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
____________________