[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 48 (Tuesday, March 20, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1827-S1834]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
ALLOW STATES AND VICTIMS TO FIGHT ONLINE SEX TRAFFICKING ACT OF 2017--
MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, last night I came to the floor to talk
about legislation we are debating in the Senate this week that has to
do with combating human trafficking, an issue that every Senator in the
Chamber cares about. Last night, I talked about some of the women and
children who have been exploited online, their stories--some of the
heartbreaking stories.
This opportunity we have before us is to pass legislation that
addresses that very directly because we are seeing in this country, in
this century, unbelievably, an increase in trafficking right now. The
experts all say it is for one primary reason; that is, because the
trafficking is moved online.
The ruthless efficiency of the internet, the dark side of the
internet--Mr. President, you have been involved with this issue in our
committee. As you know, we spent a couple of years coming to this
point, an 18-month investigation of what is happening online, why it is
happening, and then coming up with a legislative solution. The reports
of human trafficking to one of the major anti-trafficking groups in the
country, called Polaris, through their hotline and through their text
line, have increased 842 percent over the past 10 years. This is
consistent across the board in talking to other experts. There is this
increase. When they look at it, where they see it is happening is
online. Victims have told me, have told you and other Members, this has
now moved from the street to the smartphone, from the street corner to
the internet.
According to National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
nearly 75 percent of the child trafficking reports it receives from the
public involve one single website; that is, backpage. That is why we
spend a lot of time looking into backpage, why this was happening, and
how we could address it.
According to Shared Hope International--another advocacy group--the
number is even higher than 75 percent. We researched this through a
process that many in this body were involved with. Claire McCaskill was
the ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee On Investigations. We
investigated that. I see she is on the floor now. She and I, along with
our subcommittee, along with you, Mr. President, and other members of
the full committee, looked into this issue. What we found was even more
shocking than we expected. We knew people were being trafficked online
by this website. We knew they had to be complicit with some of this.
What we didn't know was they were actually taking ads and altering the
ads, editing the ads to try to hide the fact that people were selling
underaged girls online. As they put it, they were cleaning the ads for
illegal transactions and then covering up the evidence of these crimes
in order to increase their profits.
Last night, I talked about three brave mothers who shared the tragic
stories of their daughters who were exploited and sold for sex on
backpage.com. Their daughters were between the ages of 14 and 16 when
they were trafficked. Kubiiki Pride was one of the women we talked
about. She is also part of a documentary called ``I am Jane Doe.'' It
tells the stories of her family and other families. It is a powerful,
powerful presentation, and it is powerful in that you can feel their
frustration, feel their pain. It is not easy to see, but it is
important to see, and I recommend it. You can go on Netflix and find
``I am Jane Doe.''
Unfortunately, for those mothers and countless others, backpage has
gotten away with this. It is not because people haven't tried to sue
them, prosecutors haven't tried to go after them; it is because the
courts have consistently said they are shielded from prosecution, they
are shielded from these lawsuits. They are shielded by a Federal law,
one we passed in this Chamber 21 years ago.
[[Page S1828]]
It is called the Communications Decency Act. It was a well-intended
law. In 1996, the focus was, when the internet was in its infancy,
trying to ensure there could be freedom of the internet.
Ironically, part of the original intention of the Communications
Decency Act was to protect children from indecent material on the
internet by letting websites remove and block some of that explicit
material. Now that same law is being used as a shield by online sex
traffickers who promote and engage in this with immunity. This Federal
law is being used by websites to get away with something that would be
illegal, criminal if they were to do it on the street corner.
Congress did not intend this broad immunity, but numerous courts
across the country have made it clear their hands are tied because of
the illegal precedents that have been set the way the courts have
interpreted this law. As the lawmaking branch of the Federal
Government, it is up to us to fix this injustice. No one else can do
it.
One of the Federal courts said this cannot be fixed by litigation; it
has to be fixed by legislation. That is why America's district
attorneys, 50 of the State attorneys general in this country, judges
all over the country, and many others have called on Congress to amend
the Communications Decency Act and fix this injustice.
In one of the most direct calls for congressional action yet, in
August of last year, a Sacramento judge cited the broad Communications
Decency Act in dismissing pimping charges against backpage.com. The
court opinion stated: ``If and until Congress sees fit to amend the
immunity law, the broad reach of Section 230 of the Communications
Decency Act even applies to those alleged to support the exploitation
of others by human trafficking.''
This judge issued an invitation to Congress to act. Others have as
well. Websites that knowingly sell vulnerable women and children for
sex are profiting and getting away with sex trafficking because of a
Federal law. It is up to Congress to do the right thing, to fix this
loophole. That is why my coauthor, Richard Blumenthal, who is on the
floor this evening, and I introduced the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers
Act, or SESTA, alongside a bipartisan group of four other original
cosponsors: Senator John McCain, Senator Claire McCaskill, Senator John
Cornyn, and Senator Heidi Heitkamp. Soon, others joined us. In that
first day, we had 24 cosponsors, bipartisan. Soon, we had a majority of
Republicans and majority of Democrats cosponsoring this legislation. I
want to thank those five original cosponsors because they helped us put
together legislation that was targeted, focused, and actually fixes the
problem.
SESTA will provide justice for victims of online sex trafficking and
hold accountable the websites that knowingly facilitate these crimes by
making two very narrowly focused changes to Federal law. First, it
allows victims to get the justice they deserve by removing the
Communications Decency Act's broad liability protections for a narrow
set of bad actors, specifically for websites that knowingly facilitate
sex trafficking crimes. Second, it will allow State prosecutors and
State attorneys general to prosecute these websites that violate
Federal trafficking laws.
SESTA says if you are violating sex trafficking laws and you are
doing it knowingly, you are facilitating it, then you have to be held
to account. That is common sense. This bill includes legislation from
the House side that creates new criminal penalties. It creates a new
Federal crime for websites that have the intent to promote or
facilitate illegal prostitution.
All of these changes will help to hold bad actors accountable while
doing nothing to impair the free internet. In fact, SESTA will protect
websites that do not actively and knowingly engage in online sex
trafficking. We do that by preserving the Communications Decency Act's
Good Samaritan provision, which protects good actors who proactively
block, and screen for, offensive material, thus shielding them from
frivolous lawsuits.
SESTA's fair, commonsense approach is why this bill has an
extraordinary coalition of support. National law enforcement
organizations, including the Fraternal Order of Police, faith-based
groups, the civil rights community, major businesses, even including a
number of tech companies, support this legislation. Most importantly,
anti-trafficking advocates and trafficking survivors are the ones who
support SESTA. They are the ones we listened to when we drafted this
legislation. They are the folks back in Ohio, back in Connecticut--back
in our States--who came to us and talked to us about this issue. They
are the ones we not just listened to but actually worked with to help
draft something that would work to close this loophole.
This bill makes all the sense in the world, and it will do its part
in helping to close this gap, in helping to deal, in this century, in
this country with the amazing ability that people have to exploit
someone online criminally and not be held liable.
I thank Leader Mitch McConnell for his leadership, for his commitment
to combat sex trafficking, and for putting this bill on the floor for a
vote.
I thank Senator John Thune, who chairs the Commerce, Science, and
Transportation Committee, and Bill Nelson, who is the ranking member.
They held a hearing on this bill and marked it up, and it addressed
some of the concerns that had been expressed by the tech community.
Here in the Senate, we now have over 60 cosponsors. This has not been
an issue of politics or partisanship. It has been an issue of the
heart. It is about preventing exploitation. It is about providing
justice. There are some in this Chamber who will want to change this
legislation over the next couple of days as we debate it.
I have a great deal of respect for my colleague from Oregon, Senator
Ron Wyden. I talked about him last night on the floor. I talked about
the work he has done to combat human trafficking. I talked about the
legislation I did with him to provide better data for sex trafficking,
which was his legislation. He was also a leader in passing the
Communications Decency Act, which we are amending through this
legislation. I understand he is passionate about that bill that passed
21 years ago.
We took a very targeted approach here, which is why the Internet
Association, which represents much of the tech community--not all but
much of it--actually endorses our efforts. This is the Senate's
immediate opportunity to help stop online sex trafficking while
protecting a free and open internet. It is the right balance. It has
already passed the House of Representatives. The White House has shown
a commitment to it and is willing to sign the legislation. Now it is
the Senate's turn to act.
So let me tell you where I stand. I stand with law enforcement
officials all around the country and with prosecutors all around the
country who have asked us to pass this legislation to give them the
tools they need to stop this exploitation. I stand with Kubiiki Pride,
whom I talked about earlier, Nacole S., Yvonne Ambrose, and the mothers
across the country who have had their children exploited at the hands
of online sex traffickers. I stand with the young women and children I
have met in Dayton and Columbus and Akron and Toledo and Cincinnati and
Cleveland--all over Ohio--who are sex trafficking survivors, who are
victims who want justice.
I know that, together, we will all stand on the right side of history
when the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act is voted on, has passed this
Chamber, and eventually becomes law so as to immediately help provide
justice for these victims. Justice cannot be seen, but its absence is
felt. Those who have been trafficked online, who see the websites that
have knowingly facilitated in this prosper and escape legal
consequences, are the ones who have experienced real injustice. They
have felt that injustice. We can right this wrong. Let's pass the Stop
Enabling Sex Traffickers Act to provide these victims the justice they
deserve.
I notice again, as I mentioned earlier, the coauthor of this
legislation--my colleague--is on the floor. He is a former Federal
prosecutor. He has dealt with these issues both as a prosecutor and as
a legislator. We are the cochairs and cofounders of the Caucus to End
Human Trafficking, which we started 6 or 7 years ago. I thank him for
his work on this important legislation.
I yield my time to Senator Blumenthal.
[[Page S1829]]
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, at the very start, I am grateful, and
I praise my cosponsor, Senator Portman, who has helped to lead in the
championing of this measure. He has really been steadfast in the face
of a lot of challenges. It was a difficult bill to draft and then to
redraft and change again in response to suggestions that we received
from friends and adversaries, but Senator Portman has been really
stalwart throughout it.
I join him in thanking our partners, Senator McCaskill, Senator
McCain, Senator Heitkamp, Senator Cornyn, and, of course, Senator
Thune, who is the chairman of the committee, and Ranking Member Nelson.
This road began for me more than 10 years ago when I was the State
attorney general in Connecticut, and I wanted to pursue legal remedies
against the websites. Back then, it was craigslist or MySpace that
promoted sex trafficking and prostitution as well as pornography. My
staff informed me that there was a provision of Federal law--section
230 of the Communications Decency Act--that would stop me in my tracks.
Indeed, it has stopped others, most recently some of the survivors of
sex trafficking who were told by a Federal court of appeals, in effect,
that what happened to you is outrageous, and there should be a remedy
for you, but section 230 of the Communications Decency Act blocks your
day in court. It closes the courthouse doors to you in your seeking a
legal remedy.
Along the way, there were many who said to Senator Portman and to me
that we could never pass this legislation because it would hold
trafficking websites accountable. They said the opponents of this
change were too powerful, too big, too entrenched. They said the
victims and survivors were too powerless, too invisible.
We have met them. We know their stories. They are heartbreaking. They
are children--some younger than the pages in this Chamber today--who
have endured torture that is unspeakable and unthinkable for anyone of
any age, and they deserve their day in court, rights, and remedies--
real remedies that make the rights real.
So I thank Senator Portman, and I thank, as he has also done, those
survivors who have come forward and been the faces and voices of our
cause. Their courage and strength and that of their family members have
enabled us to reach this point.
I emphasize that this measure is very carefully and narrowly written
to address a specific harm, and I want to take a couple of minutes to
correct any misunderstanding that there may be in this Chamber.
First, some of the legislation's critics have claimed it will impose
liability on the so-called Good Samaritan. In reality, this bill
explicitly preserves subsection 230(c)(2)(A) of the Communications
Decency Act, commonly called the Good Samaritan provision. This
provision ensures that websites cannot be held liable on account of
actions taken in good faith to restrict objectionable material. SESTA
is crystal clear on this point. A website operator's good deeds cannot
be used against him.
This measure is also technology neutral. It imposes no requirement
that website operators use a particular technology to screen their
sites for objectionable content. They are free to use whatever
technology they wish. That is why the Internet Association and its
member companies support this legislation. They know that if technology
companies work to prevent human trafficking and not to profit from it,
they have nothing to fear from this measure.
I understand that an amendment has been offered to restate SESTA's
Good Samaritan provision. Even if the amendment only protected Good
Samaritans, it would be unnecessary and potentially confusing to the
courts. I emphasize that point. It would obfuscate and confuse the good
intent of the Good Samaritan provision. It would also derail this
widely popular legislation by sending it back to the House, where
special interests will have another chance to kill it. Unfortunately,
this proposed amendment--perhaps unintentionally--would not simply
protect Good Samaritans; it would also protect websites that operate in
bad faith. It would also protect websites that identify sex trafficking
ads and then leave them up in order to continue profiting from them.
I will briefly talk about one other amendment that has been offered--
again, while being well-intentioned--that threatens to derail this
legislation.
The amendment would provide additional money to Attorney General
Sessions to investigate and prosecute websites that criminally
facilitate human trafficking. I believe law enforcement ought to have
additional resources. I firmly support more funding to investigate and
prosecute this criminal activity, but this bill is not the means by
which to do it.
In fact, law enforcement and the community against human trafficking
are strongly against these amendments. Let me repeat. These law
enforcement groups include the Fraternal Order of Police, the
Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, the FBI Agents
Association, and I could go down the list. In fact, there is no need
to.
I ask unanimous consent that the letters from these groups be printed
in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
National Fraternal Order of Police,
Washigton, DC, March 19, 2017.
Hon. Mitch McConnell,
Majority Leader, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Charles E. Schumer,
Minority Leader, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Senators McConnell and Schumer: I am writing on behalf
of the members of the Fraternal Order of Police to advise you
of our strong support for H.R 1865, the ``Allow States and
Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act,'' which includes
language from S. 1693, the ``Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers
Act,'' which the FOP also supports.
This legislation will allow law enforcement to investigate
and prosecute individuals and businesses that advertise or
facilitate sex trafficking more effectively. The bill will
create a new Federal offense prohibiting the use or operation
of an instate facility, like a website, that promotes or
facilitates illegal prostitution.
The FOP is opposed to the two pending amendments because
they may have the unintended consequence of derailing this
important legislation. Amendments to this bill will only
continue to deprive the survivors and victims of sex
trafficking of getting justice.
On behalf of the more than 335,000 members of the Fraternal
Order of Police, we urge you both to pass this legislation
without any amendments on the Senate floor. If we can be of
any additional assistance, please do not hesitate to contact
me or my Senior Advisor, Jim Pasco, in my Washington office.
Sincerely,
Chuck Canterbury,
National President.
____
March 19, 2018.
Hon. Mitch McConnell,
Majority Leader, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Hon. Chuck Schumer,
Democratic Leader, U.S. Senate,
Washington, DC.
Dear Majority Leader McConnell and Democratic Leader
Schumer: We, the undersigned organizations, representing
prosecutors, chiefs of police, sheriffs, rank and file
officers and chief executives of state investigative agencies
at the federal, state, and local level, write to urge a clean
vote this week in the Senate on the House-passed FOSTA/SESTA
package so that victims and federal and state law enforcement
can better seek to hold all responsible parties accountable
for the facilitation of sex trafficking. At the same time, we
urge you to reject the proposed amendment that would create a
shield for companies vaguely attempting to filter content on
their websites and the proposed amendment that would provide
additional funding through the Department of Justice to
investigate and prosecute website operators that criminally
facilitate sex trafficking. Simply put, the amendment to
create a liability shield is bad public policy and the
funding amendment is a poison pill that is dead on arrival if
sent back to the House.
As membership organizations charged with protecting our
communities, we can't afford to sacrifice the opportunity to
pass good public policy to hold facilitators of sex
trafficking accountable. Through extensive discussions over
the past couple of years, a delicate balance has been struck
among a wide variety of stakeholders to achieve the
legislation pending before the Senate. The House passed
version, which included language from the Senate SESTA
version, was a carefully crafted piece of legislation to help
state and local law enforcement bring more of these sex
trafficking cases forward and we
[[Page S1830]]
encourage you to provide us with the tools needed to achieve
that goal.
Sincerely,
Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies;
FBI Agents Association;
Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association;
International Association of Chiefs of Police;
Major Cities Chiefs Association;
Major County Sheriffs of America;
National Association of Police Organizations;
National District Attorneys Association;
National Fusion Center Association;
National Sheriffs' Association.
____
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, my colleagues should take heed of what
these groups are saying because they see through the potentially
derailing impact of these amendments.
I close by again thanking my friend and partner, Senator Portman, as
well as Senator McCaskill, Senator Heitkamp, Senator Cornyn, and
Senator McCain.
This measure is truly bipartisan, as it should be. There is nothing
partisan about sex trafficking. There is nothing excusable or tolerable
about it. I hope the Senate will do its job tomorrow and send this
legislation to the President's desk.
I yield the floor to my partner, Senator Portman, with my thanks.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I know there are other Members who are
interested in speaking.
Let me just say, Senator Blumenthal's role as a prosecutor has
informed him; therefore, the legislation is better for it.
We just heard what Senator Blumenthal said. He understands this bill
inside and out and the fact that there are well-meaning amendments that
are being offered that would derail this legislation, which is
something we want to avoid. We want to get this to the President's desk
for his signature and begin to save people.
I notice my other colleague, Senator McCaskill, whom I mentioned
earlier a couple of times, is on the floor. She was the ranking
Democrat on the subcommittee that investigated this issue of looking at
the websites and that came up with not just how it was happening and
why it was happening but a legislative response.
I yield a few minutes to Senator McCaskill.
Mrs. McCASKILL. Mr. President, I thank Senator Portman, Senator
Blumenthal, Senator Whitehouse, and my other colleagues for allowing me
to jump in here for a couple of minutes.
This body--this entire body--is really responsible for where we are
right now because it was during the investigation package that we
realized that section 230 was being used as a shield for the bad guys.
All of the attorneys general around the country and various law
enforcement agencies and individuals who were trying to sue backpage
were met every time with a 230 defense. They were not even able to
penetrate to get the documents from backpage in order to learn about
what backpage was really up to. It was an investigation by which
backpage thought it would be able to win again in court and deny us our
opportunity to look at the documents and to look at the underlying
evidence that one should always look at in an investigation.
Frankly, our getting the contempt-of-the-Senate resolution through
this body almost unanimously--I think it was unanimously, wasn't it, I
ask Senator Portman?
Mr. PORTMAN. Yes.
Mrs. McCASKILL. And then our going all the way to the Supreme Court
and winning was finally the first time backpage had to turn over the
dirty evidence of its knowingly facilitating sex trafficking on its
page. That is why this language is ``knowingly facilitate''--just to
make sure that in going forward, no bad guys can hide behind section
230.
The other part of this bill that, I think, is very important and
that, I think, a lot of people forget--and with all due respect to my
friends who are in this Chamber who were U.S. attorneys--is that over
90 percent of the crime that is prosecuted in this country is
prosecuted by local prosecutors, State prosecutors, who are called
prosecutors or district attorneys, depending on the State's term that
is used. They have been handcuffed in terms of being able to bring
these kinds of cases. This legislation not only opens up the courthouse
doors to victims who have been victimized by this but also so that the
full force of American law enforcement can be brought to bear on this
problem, not just the limited jurisdiction that was available around
the problem of sex trafficking.
This is so important to getting to the bottom of it because many U.S.
attorneys don't have the time, and, frankly, many attorneys general
don't have the time or the jurisdiction to get after crime, but the
local prosecutors don't get to decide which cases to go after. If there
is a 9-1-1 call, they have it. The Feds can come in later and say: We
have it, and we are going to take it. But they are the ones who day
after day are in the trenches of sex crimes, and they are the ones who
now have the ability to go after these cases in a way that will be very
meaningful.
I am proud of the bipartisan nature of this. I am proud of the
partnership we have, Senator Portman, on the Subcommittee on
Investigations. I know we will get a big vote on this. I think people
see through these amendments as ways to slow this bill down or possibly
kill it, and I hope we will all can join together and take this to the
finish line tomorrow.
I thank my colleagues for giving me a few minutes.
Mr. PORTMAN. I thank Senator McCaskill, Senator Blumenthal, and the
other Members who came to speak. We will continue this dialogue
tomorrow on the floor before passage.
I yield back.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Rubio). The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I thank Senator Portman and Senator
Blumenthal for their work on this. Senator Portman and I have spent
untold hours, and he has been a leader on this. I thank him for his
leadership, in Toledo and Cincinnati, but especially in Toledo, where
the sheriff, the community, Celia Williamson, and so many others have
been so important in combating this terrible affliction in our society.
I thank them.
Wall Street and American Workers
Mr. President, last week, the House passed another giveaway to Wall
Street, siding with special interests and rolling back accountability
on some of the biggest banks at the expense of taxpayers. It comes on
the heels of last year's tax giveaway that will benefit those same
megabanks. This Congress bends over backward to help Wall Street while
working families continue to struggle.
It is not just that we are helping Wall Street with tax breaks, we
are helping Wall Street with rolling back regulations. Let me outline
what exactly all that means.
In a series over several months, I am laying out the case for how
Wall Street undermines America's workers and some of the changes we
need to make in this country to grow our middle class and make work pay
off.
Remember, one of the points I made was that American Airlines
announced that they were going to increase workers' wages, as did
Chipotle, and Wall Street hit them with a lower stock price as a
result.
In each installment of this series, we have talked about these
issues. I want to talk specifically this time about what Wall Street's
war on workers does to employment. You can follow each installment on
my medium page at www.medium.com/@SenatorBrown.
Last time, I talked about workers' paychecks. Today, I want to talk
about layoffs.
Wall Street's singular focus on padding their own pockets is bad
enough, but worse, it comes at the direct expense of American workers.
Corporations focus almost exclusively on their quarterly performance on
the stock market. That is how a CEO's performance is evaluated. They
are compensated in large part with company shares. They do better when
their stock price goes up. They do things to make their stock price go
up, and then they do even better because they are compensated in large
part with company shares.
Wall Street analysts like it when corporations minimize their cost to
boost their short-term profits; hence the stock price goes up even when
the company is already profitable, and that leads directly to layoffs.
Corporations lay off workers to show they are serious about cutting
expenses, and their stock prices often rise as a result. Wall
[[Page S1831]]
Street's war on workers means not only smaller paychecks but also pink
slips for those workers.
How did we get to a point where stock prices are more important than
workers? It didn't happen overnight.
I was talking with Senator Whitehouse about this, and whether it is
Cranston, RI, or Mansfield, OH, companies used to consider their
employees, their customers, and even the people in the town they did
business in, as stakeholders. They cared about their community, they
cared about their workers, and they cared about their customers. They
felt a duty to fulfill obligations to a broader community, not just
their own corporate board members and their own corporate executives.
I grew up in Mansfield, OH, a city of about 50,000 in North Central
Ohio halfway between our State's two largest cities, Cleveland and
Columbus. I remember that there were so many companies in our town. I
didn't know those company presidents--they were the big people in town,
and I was a kid--but I do remember what those companies did. They
sponsored Little League teams. They were involved in local Kiwanis
clubs. They cared about workers, and they cared about the community.
They cared about their customers. They weren't always interested in
shareholders; they were interested in stakeholders, in all of us as a
community. All the workers, all the customers, and all of the community
were stakeholders. But now the focus has narrowed to just shareholders.
As Wall Street's influence has grown, corporate priorities have
shifted from shareholders kind of writ large, and the way success is
measured has changed fundamentally to stockholders. Businesses have
become beholden to those quarterly earnings reports. They have left
employees, communities, and customers behind in many ways. They do
everything possible, including laying off workers, to make sure their
balance sheets and profit margins look as good as they can--the impact
on the workers and the long-term health of the company be damned.
In the 1980s, investors began to pursue hostile takeovers of
companies that failed to maximize profits. Executives at other
companies began to fear takeovers if they didn't keep profits and stock
prices high. The pay packages of top management became greater and
greater and became more and more closely tied to short-term stock
performance.
Wall Street's and Main Street's interests began to diverge. Folks in
the corporate boardroom were no longer forced to consider what was in
the long-term interests of their workers and of their small-time
investors. For top corporate executives, workers became nothing more
than a line item in the budget, a cost to be minimized.
By the 1990s, even profitable companies started laying off workers to
boost profits even further. Look at what happened to Xerox, an iconic
American company that had never had a major layoff in its history. In
1993, the company announced plans to cut 10,000 workers despite being
profitable. The company was doing fine. It wasn't a case of an industry
moving south, facing an agonizing decision with bad options, but the
CEO justified the job cuts as necessary ``to compete effectively'' and
to have a ``lean and flexible organization.'' He also said he expected
to see higher profits because of the layoffs the following year.
Xerox wasn't alone. In the first 10 months of 1998, when the economy
was booming, corporations laid off over half a million U.S. workers--
200,000 more than were laid off the year before. This is the definition
of profits before people, and things have gotten worse and worse since
the late 1990s.
In 2015, Sysco announced a 3-year plan that included reducing its
workforce--corporate-speak for laying off workers. It might have made
sense if the company had experienced a year of sluggish sales, but
guess what--the opposite was true. Their sales had increased. They
generated $1 billion in cash flow, and they were able to pay $700
million in dividends to the company shareholders. If the large dividend
payout the year before wasn't generous enough, the CEO said that one of
the goals of the 3-year plan and its layoffs was to ``maximize
shareholder returns''--not stakeholders, not employees, not the
communities, not the customers, but shareholder returns.
The next year, 2016, Tyson Foods announced layoffs despite having a
good quarter in beef sales. The following year, the company's president
touted ``exceptional financial results.'' What was the reason for those
results? Cost-cutting. It is always cost-cutting--more corporate-speak
for laying off workers. Do you know what else he cited as the company's
good health? Not great sales, not new products or investments in more
workers, but the ability of the company to buy back billions of dollars
of its own stock. So an accounting trick that funnels money to
executives is what the company cited as a measure of its success.
Buying back means executive compensation goes up. That is the key to
what it was doing with cost-cutting. The company buys up shares of its
own stock to drive up the price and increase the value for shareholders
and the compensation for executives whose pay is tied to stock
performance. Sounds familiar.
It is no coincidence that since the biggest corporations reaped their
tax windfalls in September, they have announced billions of dollars in
buybacks. It is always about the executives--about the executives' tax
cuts, about the executives' compensation, about the executives'
buybacks. Again and again, we see Wall Street consider workers as
simply a cost to be cut but executive pay as essential to a company.
Last year, Humana announced that it was eliminating 2,700 jobs
despite $13 billion in revenue. In the same call that the CEO announced
the layoffs, he also announced an increase in executive pay. Workers
lose their jobs to pay for more money for corporate executives. Sound
familiar again and again and again? And the cherry on top? A month
later, Humana announced $3 billion in stock buybacks. Again, what is
that about? Higher executive compensation.
Of course, cost-cutting measures typically include workers losing
their jobs. Cost-cutting measures almost never include pay cuts for
corporate executives. In each of these examples, the company cited cost
cuts that were so necessary, they had to fire workers, upend thousands
of employees. I wonder how many of those executives and how many of
those corporate leaders actually brought some of those workers into
their offices and looked them in the eye and told them they were laying
them off. My guess is that they had a much lower paid employee make
that announcement and face the media and, more importantly, face the
employees who lost their jobs.
How many of these executives actually listened to the story of an
employee who loses her job, loses her house, whose total life is
upended? How many of them ever listened to the stories of what happened
to their workers who got fired? The company cited cost cuts that were
so necessary, they had to fire those workers.
The shortsighted approach to running a company may work for top
executives who can squeeze as much value out of the company in the
short term without considering the business's long-term value. It is
not just bad for the employees and communities, it is usually bad for
the long-term health of the company. Making short-term decisions pays
off if you are already well paid, but it doesn't work for those
employees. Mainstream investors and workers only make a profit when a
company's stock value continues to rise over time, but the corporate
executives are no longer forced to consider what is in the long-term
interest of workers and small-time investors. As long as Wall Street's
analysis of one-size-fits-all measure of corporate success continues to
be cost-cutting, workers are at constant risk of losing their jobs. As
long as CEOs get paid based on stock prices instead of the company's
long-term success, workers will keep getting fired from hostile
companies.
We need to break this cycle of greed between Wall Street and CEOs. In
the end, companies can't be profitable without good workers. We need
policies that restructure our economy so workers share in the profits
they create and Wall Street doesn't determine when workers keep their
jobs or how much is in their paycheck.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
[[Page S1832]]
Climate Change
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, we are more aware than ever of the
accelerating pace of climate change and of the serious threat that
rising seas, higher temperatures, and changing weather poses. I suppose
I don't need to lecture the Presiding Officer from Florida on the
threat of rising seas.
The real-time effects of climate change are becoming clearer and
clearer every year. Here is a telling example unfolding right now in
the Arctic.
In this graphic, we see the mean area of Arctic sea ice over the last
several decades. The maximum yearly extent of the ice, which occurs
around this time of year, continues to shrink each decade.
This line tracks the sea ice in the Arctic in millions of square
kilometers, running from February through to May. This is the track of
the sea ice extent during the 1980s. If you take all the years in the
1980s and you average them together and you run through the calendar,
it is like a clock going this way through these months. You would see
the sea ice growing and fading away as spring came to the Arctic.
That is where the ice was when averaging the 1980s. This green line
is the exact same thing; it is just for the 1990s. So we can see how
much sea ice has been lost averaged decade over decade.
The blue line here is for 2000. Once again, we see a loss of sea
ice--a considerable loss from the levels back as recently as the 1980s.
The purple line right here is the average of the years in this decade
so far, from 2010 to 2017--that is the average of those 7 years. This
dot is the high, the maximum ice extent recorded in 2016. This lower
dot is the lower high of the ice recorded in 2017. So you can see that
even though this is the average, the trend remains downward.
This red line is what we have measured so far in 2018. Here we are
right now in March of 2018, and it is well below. Decade after decade,
we see the ice melting away.
As these facts and so many others relentlessly pile up, it has become
harder and harder for the fossil fuel industry and the web of front
groups and the Trump administration officials who do its bidding to
claim that there is nothing to see here: Folks, move along; it is all
just a big hoax.
The University of Alaska is our closest university to the Arctic. The
University of Alaska actually has a climate science center where they
are studying and teaching the science of climate change. The University
of Alaska also actually has the Ocean Acidification Research Center. As
I have pointed out in these speeches over the years, one of the most
obvious and pernicious consequences of climate change is that when you
ramp the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, the oceans,
which cover 70 percent of the surface of the world, absorb not only
excess heat, but they actually chemically absorb the carbon dioxide.
When that happens, they become more acidic. In the wee hours of a
morning months and months ago, I actually did the experiment right
here, where I blew the carbon dioxide from my breath through an
aquarium bubbler into a glass of water that had pH-sensitive dye in it,
and you could see, in the moment that it took for me to exhale that
carbon-dioxide-rich breath through the water, how the color changed,
and you could measure it against the color chart for pH and see how
just that one breath changed the acidity of the water and made it more
acid.
That is happening across the planet, and it affects creatures like
terrapods, which are a very important species for salmon, which is, in
turn, a very important industry for Alaska. That is why Alaska has the
Ocean Acidification Research Center--some hoax.
For this, my 201st ``Time to Wake Up'' speech, I wish to get into
some of the reasons why I remain optimistic even in the face of
relentless attacks on the environment, both from the fossil fuel
industry and from the Trump administration. There are success stories,
including bipartisan wins in Congress and major advances outside of
Congress. We are still making progress on climate and energy policy,
even under political siege by the fossil fuel industry.
First, there is an explosion in renewable energy. In 2017, renewables
provided nearly 20 percent of electricity generation in the United
States. Wind and solar energy costs fell, and utilities across the
country, even in red States, invested heavily. The renewable energy
industry in America hit 3.3 million jobs--more than all fossil fuel
jobs combined. The private sector is leading renewables purchases. One
example is AT&T. AT&T recently signed onto the World Wildlife Fund's
Corporate Renewable Energy Buyers' Principles, a criteria to help
energy producers meet the needs of large customers like AT&T. As part
of that commitment with the World Wildlife Fund, AT&T has signed two
agreements with NextEra Energy for wind power--220 megawatts from an
Oklahoma wind farm and 300 megawatts from a Texas wind farm. It is one
of the largest corporate renewable energy purchases in history. I
congratulate my Texas and Oklahoma colleagues for these new, home-
State, renewable energy jobs, and I congratulate AT&T for its foresight
and leadership.
Another business breakthrough came when the massive asset manager
BlackRock helped break Exxon's and Occidental Petroleum's resistance
and forced through shareholder resolutions requiring those oil
producers to report their climate risk to their shareholders, to their
investors. I, for one, don't think those shareholders are yet getting
the full story.
The multinational insurance firm, AXA, announced that it would divest
from its tar sands holdings and it would stop providing insurance for
pipelines that transport tar sands oil.
Credit rating agency Moody's announced that it will consider climate
risk in rating coastal communities' municipal bonds. So our coastal
municipalities in Rhode Island, the Presiding Officer's coastal
communities in Florida, and coastal communities across the country are
now going to have to take into account the climate risk, what
infrastructure and what hazards they face from sea level rise and
increased storm activity, and all of the things we associate with
climate change. It is going to be part of how the rating agencies value
their municipal bonds. That is going to change behavior, and it doesn't
matter whether you are a red State or a blue State.
Companies like Microsoft and Unilever have baked into their own
internal accounting their own internal carbon prices to help them
reduce the carbon intensity of their operations. And, of course,
virtually every Republican who has thought the climate change problem
through to a solution has come to a price on carbon as being the
market-based solution to that problem.
When the President announced that he would withdraw the United States
from the historic Paris Agreement, leaving us as the pariah nation--the
only one in the world to reject this global pledge--many American
companies pledged that, as to that Paris Agreement, they are still in.
The corruption of the Trump administration by fossil fuel interests
has not affected many State and local officials. In Colorado, for
instance, the Colorado State Public Utility Commission is working with
Xcel Energy to build out a cleaner energy mix and retire older fossil
fuel units. Specifically, Colorado is looking to retire 660 megawatts
of coal-fired generation--close it down--and replace it with
renewables. Their recent request for bids brought a flood of new
renewable energy proposals at costs that came in beating out existing
coal and natural gas facilities. New-built renewables on price beat out
existing fossil fuel. The market is speaking, and it is saying that
fossil fuel, even with all its scandalous and well-defended subsidies,
can't compete. Fossil can't compete.
On the Paris Agreement, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, New York,
North Carolina, Oregon, Virginia, Washington State and--I am proud to
say--Rhode Island all declared that they, too, are still in. They will
meet their goals. Alaska announced that it would meet its Paris
Agreement goals. What is more, California and Washington State have
combined with Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico in a plan
to put a price on carbon that would reach up and down virtually the
entire Pacific coast of the Americas--from Canada all the way down
through Chile.
One problem for the fossil fuel folks' political influence, which is
so deadly
[[Page S1833]]
effective here in Congress, is that it doesn't do so well in government
agencies where the rule of law, not politics, prevails. So the Federal
Energy Regulatory Commission, a Federal administrative agency bound by
rule of law, more or less blew off a preposterous proposal by fossil
fuel flunkies at the Department of Energy to subsidize coal even more.
Instead, FERC recently finalized a rule for energy storage in America's
electric grids. This will not only expand energy storage, but it will
also accelerate renewables like wind and solar. A recent study
predicted that the rule could spur--hold on--50,000 megawatts of
additional energy storage across the United States, enough to power
roughly 35 million homes. This estimate could turn out to be
conservative, if renewables prices keep heading in their current
trajectories. That FERC rule, by the way, was unanimous and bipartisan.
FERC oversees the system operators, like ISO-New England, which are
steadily improving the role of renewables in regional markets, removing
the obstacles that had kept renewables from competing fairly in
capacity auctions and dispatch decisions. With wind power being such a
large part of Iowa's energy mix, for example, its midwestern ISO
figured out the algorithms to treat wind as reliable, baseload power.
FERC's storage rule will give these system operators a new avenue for
further progress on clean, renewable energy.
Believe it or not, even Congress has acted. Just last month, Congress
passed a bipartisan budget agreement that included legislation I
cosponsored with Senators Heitkamp, Capito, and Barrasso to spur
investment and innovation in next-generation carbon capture,
utilization, and storage technologies. Our bill attracted what I would
call an unlikely coalition of energy, industrial, agricultural, and
technology companies, as well as environment and labor groups.
This bill puts a positive price on carbon reduction through a tax
credit for projects that capture and utilize or store carbon dioxide
emissions. Without that price signal, there was little incentive to
innovate how to turn carbon pollution from powerplants and industrial
facilities into something safe or even useful. The bill even incents
technologies to pull carbon pollution directly from the atmosphere. The
key is that Congress, for the first time, put a dollar value on
reducing carbon pollution.
The Senate also just passed a nuclear innovation bill written by
Senator Crapo and me to increase collaboration between private
industry, universities, and national laboratories in advanced nuclear
technologies. Our bill was also cosponsored by Senators Booker,
Murkowski, Risch, Hatch, and Durbin. It would put private innovators
together with our National Labs, with the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, and with the Energy Department--all working together on
safe, new nuclear technologies.
My goal here is not only to help bring new carbon-free technologies
forward, ultimately to a carbon-free power grid, but also to explore
technologies that just may allow us to turn our present hazardous
nuclear waste stockpiles to productive use--to generate clean energy,
to move those waste stockpiles from the liability to the asset column
on our Nation's books. What an achievement that would be.
Although Congress may be blockaded still by fossil fuel interests, it
is nevertheless the law of the land that administrative agencies must
take into account the social cost of carbon--the cost that fossil fuels
carbon pollution imposes on society--in making energy-related
decisions. That test will remain, and lawsuits are slowly closing in on
the moment of discovery, when lawyers finally get access to the fossil
fuel industry's files, and decades of lies, denial, and political
manipulation are exposed for all to see.
The well-funded climate denial machine, with its front groups and
trick-pony scientists and political muscle operation, can only keep the
denial castle propped up for so long. But until that battlement of lies
collapses--and it will--until it collapses, nevertheless, progress
still continues all around us.
Thank you, Mr. President.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Dakota.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, we are quickly turning to the Stop Enabling
Sex Traffickers Act legislation, coupled with the legislation that has
come over from the House of Representatives, and I hope we will get a
big bipartisan vote in support of that legislation when it is voted on,
probably tomorrow.
Let me just say that for more than two decades, the commercial
internet has been an undeniable force for good. It has delivered
economic opportunity to people who would not otherwise have had it. It
has empowered marginalized citizens around the world to fight back
against oppressors. It has expanded educational opportunities and made
news and information more accessible, and more. But like any tool, the
internet can be used for evil as well as good, and right now, certain
corners of the internet are being exploited to facilitate sex
trafficking, including the widespread trafficking of children.
Each year, thousands of children are sexually trafficked within the
United States. That is right. Thousands of children are trafficked each
year in the United States--not in some faraway country but right here
at home in our communities. More and more every day, this trafficking
is being facilitated via the internet. Three out of four children who
have been sexually trafficked in this country have been trafficked
online.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reported an
846-percent increase in reports of suspected child sex trafficking from
2010 to 2015. The increase, the national center reports, is ``directly
correlated to the increased use of the internet to sell children for
sex.''
Obviously, dedicated prosecutors and law enforcement around the
country are working every day to combat the proliferation of sex
trafficking on the internet, but some of their efforts have been
stymied by a provision of a 1996 law called the Communications Decency
Act. The provision in question--section 230--was meant to protect
websites from being held accountable for material people create and
post on their sites. It is thanks in part to this provision that such
popular sites as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have been able to
flourish. But certain websites have used this provision to defend
themselves in court cases dealing with criminal activity that they have
knowingly allowed or participated in--specifically, sex trafficking.
Needless to say, Congress never intended this provision to be used to
protect websites that knowingly and deliberately facilitate
trafficking, but courts have generally held that this provision does
not permit them to hold websites accountable for knowingly facilitating
sex trafficking.
Courts have also made clear that if Congress wants to ensure that
these trafficking accomplices can be prosecuted, it needs to provide
some more clarity on this provision. That is what we are here to do
today.
Senator Rob Portman of Ohio has been a leading voice in the Senate in
the fight against human trafficking, and the legislation before us
today includes his legislation, the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act,
which will prevent section 230 from being used as a defense by those
who are knowingly cooperating with sex traffickers. Under this Stop
Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, State law enforcement officials will be
able to prosecute websites that knowingly assist in or facilitate sex
trafficking, and victims will be allowed to sue websites that violate
the Federal sex trafficking statute. State attorneys general will now
also be allowed to file civil suits against websites that knowingly
facilitate trafficking.
The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act is an outstanding bill and a
great credit to Senator Portman and the others he worked with to get it
considered here on the Senate floor. It addresses a hole in our laws
that is allowing sex traffickers to exploit the internet to facilitate
their trafficking, but it ensures that only bad actors are targeted,
and it maintains the key freedoms that have allowed the internet to
flourish. Under this legislation, websites can only be prosecuted if
they knowingly facilitate or support trafficking.
This bill is strongly supported by Members of both parties. In fact,
67 out of the 100 U.S. Senators are cosponsors of this bill. This bill
is supported by
[[Page S1834]]
the White House. It is supported by law enforcement organizations. It
is supported by organizations that fight sex trafficking. It is
supported by faith-based organizations. It is also supported by a
number of major technology companies. I was proud to help facilitate
conversations with a number of technology companies that resulted in
solid support for this bill among members of the technology community.
The process of getting this bill to the Senate floor today has been
characterized by a wonderful degree of bipartisanship. I am hoping that
continues as we debate this bill over the next couple of days, and I
encourage my colleagues to reject any attempts to slow this bill down
with amendments. We have a remarkable degree of consensus on the Stop
Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, both within and without Congress, and we
should not disturb this momentum. We need to get this bill over the
finish line. Every day that we wait for this bill to be enacted into
law is another day in which websites in the dark corners of the
internet can facilitate the heinous practice of sexually exploiting
vulnerable human beings.
During the Commerce Committee hearing that I chaired on this bill, we
heard testimony from Yvonne Ambrose, whose daughter, Desiree Robinson,
was sexually trafficked repeatedly before being murdered. Desiree was
just 16, a bright and loving girl who dreamed of becoming a doctor in
the Air Force. Instead, she was raped and murdered by a man twice her
age who had sought her for sex after seeing her advertised on an
internet site.
Every day across this country, there is another Desiree being
trafficked. Some of these children are not yet teenagers. They should
be going to basketball games and birthday parties. Instead, they are
being taken to homes and hotels and being violated by strangers. Some,
like Desiree, will die there.
Fighting trafficking has to be a priority for all of us.
I am proud to have helped draft two bills that became law earlier
this year to address human trafficking in commercial vehicles. But
while we have passed some good legislation over the past few years,
there is a lot more work that needs to be done. There are many more
Desirees out there in danger, and we have an obligation to do
everything we can to protected them.
The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act will strike an important blow
against this new wave of traffickers exploiting the internet to sell
children, and the bill it is now part of, a bill that we are
considering today--the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex
Trafficking Act--will further boost SESTA's impact by establishing new
criminal penalties for facilitating sex trafficking.
I urge my colleagues to pass this bill and to get it to the President
as soon as possible. There are a lot of children out there who are
waiting for our help.
Mr. President, 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. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
____________________