[Congressional Record Volume 164, Number 58 (Wednesday, April 11, 2018)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2053-S2055]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                    Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act

  Finally, Mr. President, for the skeptics who like to say that nothing 
good ever gets done here in Washington, I will mention one other item 
and the real positive consequences of a bill we just passed and that is 
being signed into law by the President today--the Fight Online Sex 
Trafficking Act, FOSTA.
  The effort to pass it was led by our colleague, the junior Senator 
from Ohio, Mr. Portman. I and others were honored to serve as original 
cosponsors of this legislation in the Senate. We have been working on 
this issue since at least 2012, when I introduced a resolution, along 
with a bipartisan group of my colleagues, that called for backpage.com 
to cease its facilitation of human trafficking, including of children, 
and prostitution by eliminating the adult section of the website. We 
had to pass this law because, when it would go to court, under the 
Communications Decency Act, it was able to claim that Congress had not 
carved out a provision for trafficking, just merely for child 
pornography. Thus, it had escaped our attempts to bring it to justice 
in the past.
  This important legislation goes along with a bill we passed in 2015, 
called the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which refocused our 
efforts on fighting the sex trade here in the United States by 
targeting those who purchased human trafficking victims, providing 
services to the survivors of this crime, and giving law enforcement new 
tools to target the organized networks that are responsible for 
commercial sexual exploitation. That was just a few years ago. Yet, 
just this last month, as I said, we changed section 230 of the 
Communications Decency Act to allow State attorneys general and victims 
to seek justice against websites that knowingly assist or facilitate 
commercial sexual exploitation and child sex trafficking.
  The good news is that since that time, a grand jury in Arizona has 
indicted 7 people, who are affiliated with backpage, on 93 counts of 
money laundering, facilitating prostitution, and other crimes. The 
indictment alleged that the website essentially operated as a highly 
lucrative online brothel.
  After we passed FOSTA, the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, some 
websites announced major policy changes and shut down sections that may 
have helped to enslave and entrap young women. So it has not just been 
the indictment and, hopefully, the conviction of people who facilitated 
backpage over the years, but it has also had a deterrent effect on 
other websites that have done similar things and has encouraged them, 
in their own self-interests, to shut down those sections that have 
helped to facilitate human trafficking.
  Backpage has now been seized by Federal law enforcement. It can no 
longer serve as an open forum for the exploitation of children and the 
purchase of human beings for sexual slavery. These are all positive 
signs that the law we have enacted is making a real difference, 
ensuring that this malignant conduct does not go unpunished. The 
prosecution and dismantling of backpage has sent a clear message to the 
pimps and the buyers responsible for sexual slavery, resulting in the 
shutdown of many other sites involved in the commercial sex trade. This 
includes message boards where individuals post accounts of the sexual 
assaults of women and children as if they were reviewing a restaurant 
menu or product.

[[Page S2054]]

  As I said yesterday, with reference to Facebook, the internet can be 
a very good thing, but we can't be naive in ignoring the dangers it 
represents when put to a perverse use to women, children, and others. 
What we did with FOSTA, or the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act, is an 
unqualified good thing. It is something that Republicans and Democrats 
worked on together with the President to pass and to sign into law. It 
is a good thing that we changed the provisions that inadvertently 
shielded the facilitators of sex trafficking online. It is one way we 
can make the internet a safer place for everyone.
  I applaud the bipartisan efforts of the Members here in both Chambers 
of Congress, as well as the President for his support. For those who 
think nothing good ever comes out of Washington these days and that 
Democrats and Republicans can't get along to pursue the public 
interest, this is exhibit No. 1, which I would offer, of the most 
recent efforts we have made to shut down this modern day human slavery.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, today the Senate will vote on the 
confirmation of John Ring to be a member of the National Labor 
Relations Board, NLRB. I am glad that we are voting on this nomination 
because, once Mr. Ring is confirmed, we will once again have a full 
five-member National Labor Relations Board.
  Created in 1935, the NLRB administers the National Labor Relations 
Act, which seeks to mitigate and eliminate labor-related impediments to 
the free flow of commerce. The 5 board members have 5-year, staggered 
terms, and the general counsel has a 4-year term.
  The NLRB should be a neutral umpire in labor disputes. While Board 
partisanship did not start under President Obama, it became worse under 
him. An overly partisan Board creates instability in our Nation's 
workplaces and does not serve the intent of the law, which is to create 
stable labor relations and the free flow of commerce.
  The NLRB under President Obama took two particularly harmful actions 
that are still in place today. First, the joint employer decision 
threatens the American dream for owners of the Nation's 780,000 
franchise locations. Under that decision, companies could find it much 
more practical to own all their stores and restaurants and daycare 
centers themselves, rather than encourage more franchisee-owned small 
businesses.
  Second is the ambush election rule, which can force a union election 
before employers and employees have a chance to figure out what is 
going on. The rule also forces employers to provide union organizers 
with a list of employees' work locations, shifts, job classifications, 
personal email addresses, and home and cellular telephone numbers. This 
information is highly personal, and employees may not want it shared, 
but workers do not have a choice. I am pleased the Board is accepting 
comments on whether this rule should be revised.
  A fully staffed board is vital to both employees and employers, and I 
am not the only one who thinks that is important. At a Senate Committee 
on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, HELP, hearing in September 
2014, then-Chairman Harkin said, ``Keeping the NLRB fully staffed and 
able to do its work will send a strong message to the American people 
that yes, Washington can work, and our government can function.''
  While attending the Catholic University Columbus School of Law in the 
evening, Mr. Ring worked for the International Brotherhood of 
Teamsters. After law school, he joined the law firm Morgan, Lewis & 
Bockius, where he has worked since 1988. Mr. Ring flourished at the 
firm, where he worked his way up from summer associate to coleader of 
the firm's labor and management relations practice.
  Mr. Ring was nominated to be a member of the NLRB on January 18, 
2018. The HELP Committee held Mr. Ring's hearing on March 1, 2018, and 
he completed all paperwork in accordance with the committee's rules, 
practices, and procedures. We received Mr. Ring's HELP Committee 
paperwork and his Office of Government Ethics paperwork on January 24, 
2018, 36 days before his hearing. Mr. Ring offered to meet with all 
HELP Committee members and met with five of them, including two 
Democrats. Following his hearing, Mr. Ring responded to 97 questions 
for the record, or 158, if you include subquestions. These responses 
were provided to Senators prior to the markup, and the HELP Committee 
favorably reported Mr. Ring's nomination on March 14, 2018.
  I look forward to voting for John Ring, and I trust that he will 
serve with distinction.
  Mr. CARDIN. Mr. President, this week the Senate is considering two 
important labor-related nominations: the nominations of John Ring to 
serve as a Member of the National Labor Relations Board, NLRB, and 
Patrick Pizzella to serve as Deputy Secretary of Labor, DOL. 
Unfortunately, given the nominees' well-documented hostility to the 
collective bargaining rights of working men and women, I will not vote 
to confirm either of them.
  If Mr. Ring is confirmed, he will restore the Board to the 3-2 anti-
labor majority, with no assurances that President Trump will fill the 
Democratic seat of former chairman Mark Gaston Pearce expiring this 
summer. It is important to note here that nominations to the NLRB have 
traditionally been confirmed in bipartisan pairs.
  Mr. Ring authored blog posts calling the NLRB an ``activist'' 
organization during the Obama administration. In other blog posts, he 
characterized the NLRB's union election procedures as ``some of the 
biggest assaults on employer rights in recent history.'' In fact, the 
election rule simply modernized union election procedures and has 
actually resulted in slightly fewer union elections.
  During the brief 3-2 Republican majority late last year before then-
Board Chairman Phillip Miscimarra completed his term on December 16, 
2017, the NLRB rushed to overturn landmark decisions, weakening 
workers' rights under the National Labor Relations Act, NLRA, and 
undermining the statute's core purpose of promoting collective 
bargaining, including the Browning-Ferris Industries joint employer 
standard decision. The Board's inspector general has faulted those 
efforts, and the Board has been forced to vacate the joint employer 
decision. A new Republican majority may reorganize the NLRB in ways 
that are unfavorable to workers and their collective bargaining rights.
  Mr. Pizzella is a vocal advocate of so-called right-to-work laws. 
They really ought to be called right-to-be-exploited laws. As Ross 
Eisenbray of the Economic Policy Institute reported last year, ``Wages 
are 3.1 percent lower in so-called `right to work' (RTW) states, for 
union and nonunion workers alike--after correctly accounting for 
differences in cost of living, demographics, and labor market 
characteristics. The negative impact of RTW laws translates to $1,558 
less a year in earnings for a typical full-time worker.''
  There is a clear correlation between the decline in union membership 
and stagnant wages. If the Senate confirms Mr. Pizzella and Mr. Ring, 
the Republican assault on unions and collective bargaining rights 
enshrined in the National Labor Relations Act, NLRA, will gain 
momentum, and working people and their families will suffer as a 
result.
  Mr. Pizzella previously served at the Department of Labor, as 
Assistant Secretary of Labor for Administration and Management under 
President George W. Bush. During Mr. Pizzella's previous tenure at DOL, 
the Government Accountability Office, GAO, determined that the 
Department left workers vulnerable to unscrupulous employers while 
investigating complaints of minimum wage, overtime, and child labor 
violations. GAO found that the Wage and Hour Division's complaint 
intake, complaint resolution, and investigation processes were 
ineffective and discouraged workers from lodging wage-theft complaints.
  Mr. Pizzella also has expressed his antipathy to Federal workers and 
their unions. I am proud to represent many of these public servants. 
The Federal workforce is one of our Nation's finest assets, and public 
sector unions make it more productive.
  It is ironic that the Senate is considering two nominees this week 
who are

[[Page S2055]]

openly hostile to the collective bargaining rights of working people. 
Yesterday was Equal Pay Day, which symbolizes the number of extra days 
a typical woman who works full-time, year-round must work into 2018 to 
be paid what a typical man was paid in 2017. Women are still only paid 
80 cents for every dollar paid to a man, a yearly pay difference of 
$10,086, and the disparity is even worse for many women of color.

  Based on an analysis of Census Bureau data, the National Partnership 
for Women and Families is releasing a study which concludes that, in 
sum, women employed full time in the U.S. will lose nearly $900 billion 
to the wage gap this year. If the wage gap were closed, on average, a 
working woman in this country would be able to afford more than 1 
additional year of tuition and fees for a 4-year public university, 74 
more weeks of food for her family, nearly 7 more months of mortgage and 
utility payments, or 14 more months of childcare.
  If Mr. Ring and Mr. Pizzella and President Trump are unwilling to 
protect female workers and try to close that pay gap, which seems 
likely, then let us let us arm women with the most powerful tool in our 
legal system: the U.S. Constitution. Let us finally pass the Equal 
Rights Amendment, ERA.
  The ERA is barely longer than a tweet, but it would finally give 
women full and equal protection under the Constitution. Section 1 of 
the ERA states, quite simply, that ``Equality of rights under the law 
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on 
account of sex.''
  When Congress proposed the ERA in 1972, it provided that the measure 
had to be ratified by three-fourths of the States--38 States--within 7 
years. This deadline was later extended to 10 years by a joint 
resolution, but ultimately only 35 out of 38 States had ratified the 
ERA when the deadline expired in 1982. Note that the deadline wasn't 
contained in the amendment itself; the deadline was in the text of the 
joint resolution.
  Article V of the Constitution contains no time limits for the 
ratification of amendments, so the ERA deadline is arbitrary. To put 
the matter in context, the 27th Amendment to the Constitution, which 
prohibits congressional pay raises without an intervening election, was 
ratified in 1992, 203 years after it was first proposed.
  The Senate should vote on a Senate Joint Resolution I have 
introduced--S.J. Res. 5--to remove the ERA deadline, and every State in 
our Union that has not yet taken up its consideration should do so 
without any further delay.
  Nevada became the 36th State to ratify the amendment last March, 
leaving the ERA just two States short of the required three-fourths of 
the States threshold under the Constitution if the deadline were to be 
abolished.
  The ERA would incorporate a ban on gender-based discrimination, 
explicitly written or otherwise, into the Constitution. It could change 
outcomes in discrimination cases by requiring the Supreme Court to use 
the higher standard of ``strict scrutiny'' when assessing those cases, 
the same standard used in racial and religious discrimination cases.
  I think many--perhaps most--Americans would be shocked to learn that 
our Constitution has no provision expressly prohibiting gender 
discrimination.
  In a 2011 interview, the late Justice Antonin Scalia summed up the 
need for an Equal Rights Amendment best. He said, ``Certainly the 
Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The 
only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't.''
  So I ask my Senate colleagues this question most sincerely: Are we 
willing to do what must be done to prohibit gender discrimination in 
the Constitution? The people being affected by systemic gender 
inequality are our constituents. They are our mothers, sisters, wives, 
daughters, and our granddaughters. They are American citizens who 
deserve basic respect and equality.
  It is time to end the assault on working families in this country. 
Let's end discrimination by making it possible to ratify the ERA. Let's 
close the pay gap. Let's stop denigrating Federal workers. Let's 
support, not attack, the collective bargaining rights that are the 
cornerstone of a strong middle class. I regret that the Senate is 
poised to confirm two individuals who are unlikely to assist these 
efforts. We can and must do better.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.