[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3736-3766]
[From the U.S. 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 senior assistant legislative 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.
       Vitter amendment No. 284 (to amendment No. 271), 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.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Indiana.


                           Wasteful Spending

  Mr. COATS. Mr. President, I did not come down to speak on this 
particular bill. I am back for week No. 4 of waste of the week.
  In recent weeks, I have highlighted what I describe as excess 
spending of taxpayer dollars. We have talked about double dipping in 
unemployment insurance, where if we could close this loophole, we could 
save the taxpayer $5.7 billion in savings.
  We have also talked about duplication in Federal economic development 
programs. There are 50-some programs that provide for workforce 
training spread among a number of agencies. Surely we can reduce that 
number significantly. And if we could do so, we could save the taxpayer 
$200 million.
  And last week--somewhat tongue in cheek, nevertheless not small 
change--I talked about a $387,000 grant issued by the National 
Institutes of Health in which 18 New Zealand white rabbits were given, 
four times a day, 30-minute massages to determine whether they would be 
relieved of some soreness after they were given some physical exercise. 
Then four massages a day, 30 minutes apiece, costing $387,000, to prove 
that a massage helped to make them feel better or removed some of those 
aches and pains.
  I think we could have asked any athlete from any college. As we are 
moving into college basketball's March Madness and Final Four that we 
all engage in at this time of year, we could ask any college athlete, 
or any person for that matter who is doing work in the yard: Do you 
think 4 30-minute massages a day would help you feel a little better 
and help you with some of those aches and pains? Do we need to spend 
$387,000 of taxpayer dollars in order to prove this and give rabbits 
massages?
  So up we go with the chart. Waste of the week. This is week No. 4, 
and I would like to talk about a so-called bonus that has been given by 
our Federal Government that is quite egregious.
  I am sure many look forward to a potential bonus at the end of the 
year--though it doesn't apply in our business here. A bonus sounds like 
something that comes along with something that was earned, but what if 
it was a bonus you didn't earn? Is it still a bonus or does it become 
fraud?
  Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen recently 
confirmed to the Senate that unless action is taken, an amnesty bonus 
would be available to millions who have broken our immigration laws. 
All of this stems from the President's announcement in November of 2014 
to grant 3 years of tentative legal status to as many as 4 million 
individuals who crossed America's borders into this country illegally. 
Fortunately, President Obama's Executive amnesty has been temporarily 
blocked by a Federal court. Hopefully, that blockage will survive all 
legal challenges to undo it. But if this amnesty plan moves forward, 4 
million illegal individuals will be granted Social Security numbers.
  Why does this matter? Well, when you are granted a Social Security 
number, it triggers certain benefits, including eligibility for the 
earned income tax credit for up to 3 prior years in future tax filing 
years.
  The earned income tax credit is a benefit for working people who have 
low to moderate income. It is an incentive and a reward for those who 
choose to work, and it does help to reduce the number of those who are 
dependent on government welfare programs. It allows some individuals to 
receive payments from the U.S. Treasury just by filing a tax return. It 
reduces the amount of tax an individual owes and it may also provide a 
tax refund.
  Why is this issue qualified as waste of the week? Since the President 
is trying to legalize an additional 4 million individuals, if his 
action is upheld by the court, 4 million people will now have 
retroactive access to this benefit and taxpayers foot the bill for 
these 4 million illegal immigrants who will be in a position to earn 
this tax credit.
  The Joint Committee on Taxation says this so-called amnesty bonus for 
those who have come into our country illegally will drain about $2.1 
billion from the United States Treasury.
  I am for legal immigration. The United States has a rich history as a 
destination where people from all over the world can come to make a 
better life for themselves. We are a nation of immigrants. As a matter 
of fact, I am the son of an immigrant. My mother came here with her 
family, and it has been the narrative of our family. Legal immigration 
is what has made America the great prosperous country it is today. But 
we also are a nation of laws, and Congress should help ensure that 
legal immigrants to our country can benefit from the opportunities they 
need to succeed, but that doesn't include rewarding those who are 
gaming our immigration system to receive benefits they do not legally 
qualify for.
  To address this matter, I have joined with Senator Grassley and 
several other of my colleagues to introduce legislation that would 
correct this issue. If we can correct this issue, we will save the 
taxpayers an estimated $2.1 billion in future spending.
  So up we go with the thermometer here, and we will be adding another 
$2.1 billion to the money that can be saved our taxpayers by 
eliminating duplication, by pursuing awards that are not legally given, 
by looking at the way the Federal Government wastes money by giving 
rabbits back rubs, and we are going to continue to fill this up until 
we hopefully reach the $100 billion goal. That is not small change.
  I continue to hear from Hoosiers and others who write and say: Yes, 
we haven't been able to address the big issues of debt and deficit, but 
we can go after government waste. And those who say we can't afford to 
cut spending a nickel because we have cut so much so far clearly have 
not paid attention to the billions of dollars that can be saved the 
taxpayers simply by addressing the waste and illegal use of the 
taxpayer money.
  I look forward to sharing some more of these in coming weeks, and I 
thank the sponsor of the bill here for giving me the time to come down 
and add another waste of the week to the list climbing toward our goal 
of $100 billion in savings for the taxpayer, who is overtaxed already.
  With that, I yield the floor.
  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I wish to speak on the pending business, the 
Justice for Victims of Human Trafficking Bill.

[[Page 3737]]

  The Senate is now on the second week of the trafficking bill and my 
colleagues in the minority refuse to allow this body to amend or pass 
this bipartisan bill. When this legislation was reported out of 
committee, not a single Democrat on the committee raised any concern 
with the inclusion of the protections offered by the Hyde amendment. 
This was hardly surprising, after all, Democrats have previously voted 
in favor of legislation that includes similar long standing statutory 
protections--such as the Affordable Care Act. That is why it's so 
shocking that Democrats--out of nowhere--have had a change of heart on 
the Hyde amendment, and are now obstructing efforts to help victims of 
human trafficking.
  I urge my colleagues who are filibustering this legislation to 
consider the gravity of their actions. While Democrats play politics as 
usual, thousands of victims--many of whom are children--are assaulted 
and abused every day, hoping someone will hear their cries for help. We 
cannot and must not allow political gamesmanship to stand in the way of 
helping thousands of victims of human trafficking. Now is the time we 
must work together to protect our Nation's most vulnerable from a 
horrific trade that robs our children of their childhood and rejects 
the sanctity of life.
  Let us honor our commitment to protect children from abuse, neglect 
and rape. Let us put aside politics and do the right thing by moving 
forward on this bill.
  Mr. COATS. 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.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sullivan). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am here today for two reasons. One is 
to manage the bill at hand for the next few hours, and the other is to 
talk a little bit about Loretta Lynch, and how I hope we can resolve 
both these issues.
  I believe when it comes to the human trafficking bill on the floor, 
as well as my bill, the safe harbor bill--which is not the one on the 
floor, but it is also a strong bipartisan bill that passed out of the 
Judiciary Committee with every single person voting for it, 20 to 0. I 
want to talk a little bit about the bill so people don't forget it. It 
is expected to be an amendment to the bill on the floor when we get 
these issues resolved.
  I am hopeful that at some point here--and I hope it is today--we are 
going to turn the corner on some of the language we have been hearing 
on the floor. I think it is becoming a sad situation, especially sad 
for the victims of trafficking, and I think we have a moment in time 
today and tomorrow where we can actually work on this and try to 
resolve it. I believe this great august body, which has dealt with many 
large issues in the past--100 people who I think have come to this 
place with good will--should be able to resolve it in some way, get 
through this, and get this bill done.
  As we continue to work on the issues with the bill at hand, Senator 
Cornyn's bill, I also want to talk about the bill I have and why both 
these bills are important and actually work together.
  On trafficking. First, we know the numbers. More than 27 million 
people around the world are victims of some kind of trafficking each 
year. It is not always sex trafficking. Sometimes it is labor 
trafficking and other things. When it comes to sex trafficking, the 
average age of a victim when she is trafficked is 13 years old. She is 
not even old enough to go to a high school prom, not even old enough to 
get a driver's license.
  When you look at the statistics around the world, it is the third 
biggest international criminal enterprise in the world. The first is 
the illegal trafficking of drugs. I don't think that is a surprise. The 
second is the illegal trafficking of guns, and the third is the illegal 
trafficking of children, mostly little girls. But what people don't 
always realize when they think about trafficking--I think they often 
think about kids who are found in the bottom of a boat. That does 
happen, horrible stories like that. But when it comes to the United 
States of America, 83 percent of the victims--83 percent of the 
victims--are from our own country. They are from our own country. They 
are girls such as Tamara Vandermoon of Minnesota. She was 12 when she 
was first sold for sex. She was not even a teenager. She was just mad 
at her mom, and she ran away. A pimp found her and made her all kinds 
of promises--promises that sounded pretty good when you are a scared 
kid away from home. It happened when she was the most vulnerable. He 
took advantage of her before she even had a chance to grow up and be an 
adult. She has worked to change her life around through services and 
help in our State.
  Our State has been the leader in this area. That is one of the things 
why I introduced the safe harbor bill, which I hope will be the first 
amendment to this bill after we resolve these issues. My bill also is 
sponsored with Senator Cornyn. He and I have worked together on this 
bill.
  Another example--because people always use numbers. I used a bunch of 
numbers at the beginning of this speech, but I think sometimes people 
know behind those numbers, every single one of those numbers, is a 
child.
  Two weeks ago, out of the U.S. Attorney's office in Minnesota, our 
case was charged, and it happened a few months ago. It was a 12-year-
old in Rochester, MN, which is an idyllic community, a beautiful place. 
This little 12-year-old got a text. She was with a girl who was a 
little older than herself. The text invited them to a party. She 
thought that was pretty cool. She goes to the McDonald's parking lot. 
She is at the McDonald's parking lot, and this pimp puts her in the 
car. She thinks she is going to a party. She gets carted up to the Twin 
Cities. She gets raped. He takes sexually explicit pictures of her. He 
puts them on Craigslist. She gets sold the next day to two other guys, 
raped by two other guys.
  Finally they were able to track down this perpetrator. He has been 
charged with a very serious crime by the U.S. Attorney's office. This 
happened in Minnesota. We can ask Senator Heitkamp, who has been 
involved in this issue. It happens in the oil patches in North Dakota. 
It happens on the streets of Washington, DC. It happens all over this 
country.
  We may say, why is everyone talking about this now in this day and 
age? I look at this, as a former prosecutor, as back when people viewed 
domestic violence as a crime that was behind doors, that no one wanted 
to talk about it, and no one realized it was a crime. They thought of 
it as a family issue.
  When we start seeing kids who are in situations of domestic violence 
are multiple times more likely to commit crimes themselves because they 
grow up seeing it, we realize it is not just an issue between two 
people. As horrible as the injuries are to the immediate victim, it is 
also an issue for their entire family and for the entire community. We 
learned that about domestic violence. We learned that about child 
abuse. Now we are starting to see this about trafficking.
  We can't have a 12-year-old who is a criminal, right? The 12-year-old 
is a victim of this. The 12-year-old doesn't know what they are doing. 
They are only 12 years old, but they are a victim, they are not a 
criminal. That is the focus of the Safe Harbor Act.
  I want to thank my colleague, Republican Erik Paulsen in the House, 
who has taken this bill on. We have worked together on it. A version of 
it has passed the House. We like ours a little bit better because it 
has the national sex trafficking strategy in it, and that is the bill 
we are going to be putting on as an amendment. Erik has been a true 
leader on this issue, and we just talked yesterday about it. This bill 
actually now has--a version of it, my safe harbor bill--has passed the 
House twice. It doesn't have the issues with the Hyde amendment. 
Hopefully it will be the first bill, the first amendment, when we 
resolve these other issues.
  What does the bill do? What it does is looks at what has been working 
in

[[Page 3738]]

States across the country. According to a report by Polaris--a group 
that is among many groups as a leader on sex trafficking--it shows that 
15 States across the country have taken these safe harbor laws. The 
laws basically say we are not going to treat these kids as criminals. 
We are going to make sure they are treated as victims, that they get 
the services they need. And mostly then from a law enforcement 
perspective--from someone who was a prosecutor for 8 years, ran an 
office of 400 people and saw these cases coming in and out of our doors 
all the time--what it means is these victims will then better testify 
against the people whom we want to get. Those are the perps. Those are 
the people running the rings. Those are the johns who are buying the 
sex. By having this approach, we have a much better chance of going 
after the people who are doing this.
  The Ramsey County attorney's office out of St. Paul, MN, with their 
leader John Choi, was able to get a 40-year sentence last year of 
someone who was running one of these rings. We have had numerous 
prosecutions in Minnesota.
  This idea of having a shelter, a place for the victims to go--because 
otherwise what is going to happen if they don't think they are going to 
get help or maybe get some job training, have a place to stay, they are 
going to go right back to the pimp, and then they are not going to be 
willing to testify and tell their story. That is what has happened 
through history, and that has enabled the rings to get worse and worse.
  The other thing we know that has enabled them to get worse is the 
Internet. We love the Internet, but it has allowed people to market 
things on all kinds of Web sites and in all kinds of devious ways. They 
are able to sell young girls and young boys on these Web sites. They 
get a text and they show up and think they are going to a party. That 
is what is happening. It is behind closed doors and it is hidden. That 
is one of the reasons we are seeing this increase and these problems 
coming up, in addition to the realization we are not going to tolerate 
this anymore.
  We have 15 States across the country that already have the safe 
harbor laws. Another 12 States are making good progress in this 
direction. It is not starting from scratch. As I said, my home State is 
one of the first ones, but we are seeing them. What our bill does is 
create incentives for States to adopt these kinds of laws. It is not 
involving a lot of money. It is taking existing programs and trying to 
create incentives so that States will adopt these laws.
  The other piece of the bill is that it allows victims of these crimes 
to qualify for certain Federal job programs that they may not qualify 
for now. It also creates a national strategy, as I mentioned, to combat 
human trafficking.
  I always found when I was a prosecutor that people didn't care who 
took on the case, whether it was a local prosecutor or the State AG or 
the U.S. Attorney's office. They just wanted people to get the job 
done. They didn't actually understand the jurisdictional divisions. By 
making this national sex trafficking strategy the idea--and I have seen 
this with the Violence Against Women Act--it may not be that we are 
mandating people do a certain thing, but we put out there some best 
practices that local offices can cover. We look at what is working in 
certain States. Then we put those out there because we have a national 
sex trafficking strategy, and we give people ideas of what they can do 
best.
  Those are parts of the bill. It is pretty straightforward. Again, it 
is not the bill on the floor right now which, of course, has an 
important purpose, to help fund some of the shelters and pay for it by 
an increase on the fees on perpetrators, but it is a part of the 
solution.
  Another part of the solution we haven't talked too much about over 
the last few days, because there have been a lot of other things going 
on, I think we have to also remember the role of the private sector. We 
certainly have seen this in our State, where Marilyn Carlson Nelson, 
who is a wonderful business leader, headed up Carlson Companies for 
many years. Carlson Companies owns the Radisson Hotels. She has made 
training of her workforce a major part of this because it is the people 
on the frontline--and you can see Delta and all the others, American, 
United, a lot of the airlines are making this a priority as well. They 
are training their workers because they are on the frontline, and they 
are going to see this happen. They are going to see the victims. They 
are going to figure out something is going on that is wrong, so they 
can at least report it to their hotel's security or whatever 
authorities they think they need to; they can stop it right there on 
the ground floor and report it to the authorities.
  We shouldn't forget that. Because unless these private sector 
entities who see it happening come forward--this isn't in any of our 
bills. This is something they are doing on their own. Unless they do 
that, we can have all the laws we want on the books, but it is really 
hard to catch these things from happening. I am proud of the work they 
have done.
  My good friend Cindy McCain, Heidi Heitkamp, and I went to Mexico 
last spring with the major focus on sex trafficking. We met with the 
attorney general of Mexico and met with the head of their law 
enforcement in Mexico City about this very topic. Because Mexico, along 
with many other countries, has girls who do come in and are brought in 
for purposes of sex trafficking. I do want to emphasize, however, this 
is not just an international problem, but over 83 percent of the 
victims are from our country. But they have been coordinating with us 
on a number of successful prosecutions by giving us information so when 
the cases come to the United States, we view this. They have their own 
internal problems with this and other things as well, obviously, in 
Mexico. We went there not to say you are doing something wrong. We went 
there to say we have our own problems, and so do you. Let's figure out 
how we can work together on this issue.
  Again, Cindy McCain is an example of someone who on the private side 
has been very involved with her foundation in working on this issue and 
helping with shelters and other things. The private sector piece of 
this, they can be called trafficking facilitators, unknowingly, because 
they are allowing this to happen. But in a way, they are a major part 
of the solution. I do not want us to forget that as we go forward and 
as they work with us to address the needs of the victims, and mostly to 
be able to catch these cases and bring them to law enforcement.
  That is kind of a tour through what the safe harbor bill does. Again, 
Senator Cornyn and I have talked about it being the first amendment to 
the bill. I am very aware that we need to work out the issues on the 
underlying bill, and I am hopeful after days of acrimony that at some 
point we are going to be able to work together. I am hoping there will 
be a different flavor to people's discussions about this issue today.


                            Lynch Nomination

  The Loretta Lynch nomination now has been tied into this. I have a 
little bit of a different approach because I do not think we should be 
slowing it down anymore. I understand that we have to work out the 
issues on the sex trafficking, and there is plenty of blame that can go 
around. But I think the major focus should be on working it out instead 
of playing this blame game.
  Loretta Lynch, on the other hand--I do not understand why our friends 
on the other side of the aisle have been delaying this for so long. I 
understand this is a major job, but this is a woman who has had 900 
written questions and an 8-hour job interview, to my mind, where 
members of the Judiciary Committee could ask her whatever they wanted, 
in several rounds of questions, if they wanted. She also met with 
members of that committee. I am sure that anyone who wanted to met with 
her--I know she has met with at least 59 Senators to date. That is a 
pretty major job interview. Twenty-five U.S. Attorneys from Republican 
and Democratic administrations have approved

[[Page 3739]]

and suggested that she is more than fit for this job.
  How do I come down on this? I come down on this as a perspective of 
knowing that Attorney General Holder wants to leave. I think he has 
done some really good things. I know some of my colleagues have not 
been a big fan of his. This is an opportunity for them to put someone 
new in. We will start with that.
  The second thing is this is someone who is highly qualified. Coming 
from a State where we have indicted 20 people for criminal activity 
related to al-Shabaab with their terrorist activities in Somalia, we 
have recently indicted a number of people who decided they were going 
to go fight with ISIS, coming out of our State. And I am proud of our 
communities, our Muslim and Somali communities, that have been working 
with law enforcement on this. This has been an effort, because no kid 
should be going over there and no parent wants their kid to go join a 
terrorist organization.
  That being said, to keep our communities safe, we have to be very 
aggressive about these cases. So given that these cases are going on 
right in my hometown, I would really like to have the support of an 
Attorney General in place, and one who is nominated before this body. 
And as the nominee, she is someone who is uniquely qualified to handle 
these kinds of cases that the citizens in my State want to have 
handled, these terrorism cases. In fact, her office is No. 1 in the 
country when it comes to how many terrorism cases they have 
successfully handled in New York. So she is a seasoned U.S. attorney. 
She is not someone who comes from a political background; she is 
someone who comes from a prosecutor background and is a former 
prosecutor and someone who wants to see that kind of commonsense, no-
nonsense mentality in the Attorney General's office.
  I highly recommend that my colleagues not only vote for her 
confirmation but just let this come to the floor as soon as possible.
  Some of the critiques I have heard against her from some of my 
colleagues--some have said she has been lawless, and that doesn't quite 
make sense to me, especially when we look at who has been backing her 
from the law enforcement community, such as the 25 U.S. attorneys I 
mentioned. The New York police commissioner has endorsed her, as has 
the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Association and the 
president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. These 
people are not exactly known for supporting lawlessness.
  The other thing that has been mentioned by many of my colleagues that 
concerns me as to the reason they gave for blocking her nomination is 
that she said when she was at a hearing that she would be supportive, 
as the chief law enforcement person for our country, of the President's 
policies when it comes to immigration.
  Let's start with the law. We know this is now tied up in the courts, 
and there are different court decisions. One court is upholding the 
Executive order of the President, and another court has said it is not 
legal. We have had disputes on it in the courts. All right. But when we 
look through time, we realize every President since Dwight Eisenhower 
has done some kind of Executive order of varying degrees. George H.W. 
Bush did a major Executive order involving many immigrants. When we 
look at those through history, we realize those Presidents to some 
degree or other--I know the Liberian community in Minnesota. They have 
been for decades on an emergency order, and that is why they are in our 
State. Every year, they have to come back, and sometimes Congress does 
something and sometimes the President does something. But year after 
year, they need this Executive order because of the status under which 
they came to this country. They are law-abiding citizens. They are 
working throughout our State and have been here for 15 or 20 years. And 
that is just one example.
  These Executive orders on immigration have been going on since Dwight 
Eisenhower. I don't really have the time to look back and see what 
every Attorney General did at the time, but my guess is that the 
Attorneys General under Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon and both 
Bushes and Bill Clinton all said: OK, this is legal. You can go ahead 
and do this Executive order.
  I am not saying this one is not of more magnitude. It is. But there 
was a major Executive order when George Bush was President. We know 
that. So why we would then somehow take that history and extrapolate it 
into, OK, well, Loretta Lynch is somehow lawless just because she said 
the President could issue an Executive order--it just doesn't make any 
sense to me at all.
  We have a woman who has been prosecuting these cases of terrorism for 
years. We have someone who has significant support from Democratic and 
Republican U.S. attorneys from many administrations. We have someone 
who really did pass her senatorial job review. I understand that my 
colleagues feel strongly about immigration and that they didn't like 
what the President did, and the President himself said he would like to 
tear up that piece of paper that contained the Executive action if only 
this body and the House would pass comprehensive immigration reform.
  When I look back through this whole story, one of my proudest moments 
was when the Senate came together on comprehensive immigration reform. 
I am on the Judiciary Committee, and I believe that was the best moment 
for the Judiciary Committee in the last few years. Under Chairman 
Leahy's leadership, our committee was able to work together across 
party lines, starting with the Gang of 8 who came up with the base 
concept, which was half Democrats and half Republicans, including 
Senator Durbin, Senator McCain, Senator Schumer, Senator Bennet, 
Senator Menendez, Senator Flake, and the work of many other Members, 
which made it possible to get that bill done.
  So the Gang of 8 got that done, and from there we went to the 
committee with a bill, and we spent days voting on amendments. We voted 
on amendments that stretched over every part of the bill, whether it 
was the fence at the border or what would happen with undocumented 
workers or the work Senator Hatch and I did on making sure we had the 
green card and visa system up to date. We have a situation in our 
country right now where we have literally unlimited visas for wild 
hockey players. We love our hockey team in Minnesota, and they are able 
to recruit a bunch of Canadians. That is good for us, but doctors from 
the Mayo Clinic are not able to bring in a spouse if they want to come 
from another country.
  We have to look at this as to the undocumented workers who are here, 
we have the border issues, and we also have these issues related to 
agriculture and the innovation economy that make this comprehensive 
reform so important. Let's remember that when it comes to business 
issues, we have a case where 200 of our Fortune 500 companies were 
started by immigrants or kids of immigrants. Ninety of our Fortune 500 
companies were started by immigrants. Thirty percent of our U.S. Nobel 
laureates were born in other countries.
  I neglected to add Marco Rubio to the Gang of 8 as I recall in my 
mind everyone who was in it.
  That is why I was such a fan of the comprehensive immigration 
reform--because it was so important to look at all parts of the issue.
  So now I get to Loretta Lynch. We passed a bill with pretty strong 
support here--I think it was like 68 votes or something in that 
neighborhood--and then it went over to the House and it sat there in a 
deep freeze. That bill sat there for over a year somewhere between the 
chocolate ice cream and the frozen peas. We were never able to get it 
out of the House, and that is what led to the President's Executive 
order, and now somehow--OK, that is fine, it was bad enough that that 
all happened, and I am still hopeful we will be able to get this done, 
but how that story leads to Loretta Lynch's confirmation being held up 
is beyond belief to me. I think it is time to get her nomination voted 
on. I don't think it should be related to the present difficulties we 
are having with this bill that I care so much about

[[Page 3740]]

and mostly also with my safe harbor legislation, which has been slotted 
to be the first amendment.
  I am hopeful we will be able to work everything out with the bill 
that is on the floor right now--I truly am--because I don't think it is 
fitting of the Senate to keep up this fight when there are victims of 
sex trafficking every single day, such as that 12-year-old girl out of 
Rochester, MN. How are we going to explain this to that little girl, 
that we are fighting it out every single day instead of trying to come 
to a resolution?
  I remember when we were down in Mexico--Heidi Heitkamp and Cindy 
McCain and I--and visited one of the shelters there. We met all the 
girls who were there. There was one girl there named Paloma. All the 
other girls had an interpreter and they talked to us through the 
interpreter, but she spoke a little English. She introduced herself, 
and then she just started to cry and could not stop crying. As she 
cried, you just knew that whatever happened to her was so bad, she 
could not even talk about it.
  It reminded me of when Senator Gillibrand, Senator Graham, Senator 
Hoeven, and I were on a trip and went to a refugee camp in Jordan and 
met with a group of refugees. One of the women there said that what she 
had seen happen to her family in Syria was so sad that it would make 
stones cry. That is what I thought of when I saw Paloma, that what had 
happened to her--this little, young, beautiful, 12-, 13-year-old girl--
what had happened to her was so sad that it would make stones cry.
  I hope my colleagues keep this in mind as we work on these two bills. 
I am tired of talking about how this happened or how we got where we 
are. There is a way to resolve this problem, and certainly the 
nomination of the Attorney General of the United States should not be 
held up because of it.
  I yield the floor.
  I see my good friend Senator Isakson from Georgia is here.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.
  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I encourage the Members of the Senate to 
vote favorably on cloture so we can move forward on the important bill 
on human trafficking.
  Mr. President, I come to the floor to ask unanimous consent to 
address the Senate as in morning business.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.


                      Setting The Record Straight

  Mr. ISAKSON. Mr. President, I don't normally come to the floor and 
address a question that was asked rhetorically on the floor the night 
before, but I am compelled to do so today.
  There were two instances that happened in the last week where my name 
and the Coca-Cola name came up, and I thought I should set the record 
straight.
  This weekend, in an op-ed published in USA TODAY, the Democratic 
leader, Harry Reid, and Sheldon Whitehouse, the Senator from Rhode 
Island, made the following statement:

       Republicans in Congress who represent great corporations 
     headquartered in their states ignore those corporations--
     Walmart in Arkansas, Coca-Cola in Georgia, VF Corporation in 
     North Carolina--when they explain the business case for 
     addressing climate change and are already reducing their own 
     pollution.
       Republicans in Congress who root boisterously for their 
     state university sports teams ignore the warnings of 
     scientists and researchers at those very universities on 
     climate change.

  Then last night on the floor of the Senate, in his 93rd speech on 
global warming, Senator Whitehouse made the following statement and 
asked this rhetorical question: ``I don't know whether Coca-Cola has 
ever spoken about climate change to Senator Isakson . . . from Coca-
Cola's home State of Georgia.'' So I came to answer that rhetorical 
question and to answer the reference that was made in the editorial by 
Senator Reid and Senator Whitehouse.
  This is a picture of me and Senator Coons in Ghana, Africa. It is 5 
years old. At the request of the Coca-Cola Company, he and I traveled 
the continent of Africa looking at clean water projects all over that 
continent. African people who never had the opportunity to drink clean 
water now have sustainable clean water plants thanks to the Coca-Cola 
Company. These plants are environmentally safe, environmentally 
friendly, noncarbon-emitting water purification systems.
  During the course of the years I have been in the U.S. Senate, the 
Coca-Cola Company has briefed me on the following things about their 
business as it deals with climate change or carbon.
  They have saved 7 billion gallons of water in the United States with 
facility improvements in the United States. They have donated 70,000 
ingredient drums for reuse as rain barrels, have supported over 100 
watershed projects across North America, and have partnered with the 
National Forest Service to provide water to 60 million Americans.
  On energy and climate, they have improved cooling equipment 
efficiency by 60 percent in their operation since the year 2000. They 
own the largest heavy-duty hybrid electric truck fleet in North America 
and have improved energy efficiency in manufacturing by 8 percent since 
2008.
  In packaging, over 96 percent of total waste is diverted away from 
landfills.
  Since 2007, they have distributed 240,000 public recycling bins. They 
have achieved a 70 million-pound reduction in packaging material, and 
innovative packaging avoids 150,000 metric tons of CO2 
emissions--150,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions.
  As far as agriculture, they have invested over $1 million to support 
sustainable agriculture in Georgia and across the United States. They 
have supported the planting of 25,000 acres of new orange groves in 
Florida and 4,100 new jobs in energy efficiency.
  That is what the Coca-Cola Company has advised me of since I have 
been in the U.S. Senate in terms of their commitment to a clean 
environment for our world and country.
  I believe the climate does change, but I don't believe climate change 
is a religion, I think it is science. I have done everything I can as a 
Senator to educate myself on the carbon and climate change issue. Seven 
years ago, I went with Senator Boxer from California to Disko Bay in 
Greenland with Dr. Ally, the leading glaciologist in the world, to 
study what he says about the possibility of carbon being the cause of 
climate change. There are mixed reviews and mixed scientific evidence 
on that.
  I am the first person to say we should reduce our carbon footprint. 
It is good for the atmosphere and our health. Eight years ago, when I 
had just entered the U.S. Senate, I bought a hybrid vehicle. I still 
drive that hybrid Ford Escape today. I did so because I thought it was 
a good business and a good atmospheric decision. I didn't buy it 
because someone made me; I bought it because I cared. My wife and I 
recycle because we think it is a good idea.
  There are lots of things we can do to reduce the footprint of carbon, 
but to infer in USA TODAY or in a speech that we are not cognizant of 
the things that are done by our corporations to reduce carbon emissions 
and reduce the danger to the environment is just wrong and it is just 
unfair.
  Senator Whitehouse wrote a great book, which I read, called 
``Virtues.'' It is about the great virtues of living a good and healthy 
life, and one of those virtues is truth. The truth is that all of us 
care about the environment; we just don't all subscribe to the same 
theory about what happens.
  We should all be praising the good things that corporations are doing 
and recognize that it is not just Democrats and not just Republicans, 
but it is American politicians who make the policies that determine 
where we go in the future.
  I think it is very important that we reduce carbon emissions, but I 
think it is important to be practical in those reductions. We can pass 
all the great regulations in the world that are good for the 
environment, but if they shut down the American economy and American 
business, they are probably not a very good idea.
  The environment and business should work in harmony together rather 
than be adversaries and enemies. Publications like what appeared in USA

[[Page 3741]]

TODAY over the weekend or speeches like the one that was made last 
night don't do anything to foster harmony or a good commitment; 
instead, they raise controversy.
  I love Sheldon Whitehouse. He is a great U.S. Senator. I appreciate 
Leader Reid and what he does. But I don't appreciate the references 
that were made about Coca-Cola or about me in the article they wrote 
over the weekend or the speech that was made last night.
  In fact, as I thought about what I would do in terms of responding to 
what was said, I sat down last night and made an interesting 
observation. Monday of this week before I left Georgia to come up here, 
I met with the Southern Company, and one of the discussions that came 
up were the solar panels they put out in the Southwest to amend the 
grid out there with solar energy--something that is environmentally 
sound and doesn't emit carbon. They talked about Plant Vogtle, where 
they are adding three or four reactors, which is renewable energy and 
recyclable, and it emits no carbon and is now being generated in 
Georgia--reliable electricity with carbon-free generation through 
nuclear power.
  Yesterday, I had a meeting with the UPS corporation, which just 
happens to be one of the leaders in the world using nonfossil fuel-
burning waste to deliver their packages.
  You can go down the list of corporate America and the things they are 
doing to reduce carbon emissions every single day, and they deserve the 
credit. But they don't need to be criticized or lectured by Members of 
the Senate for not lobbying me because they do lobby me. They believe, 
as I believe, that reducing carbon is good, but it shouldn't be a 
religion; it should be dealt with scientifically. It is important that 
we understand that every contribution we can make to a carbonless 
environment is a good contribution, but we can't abolish it absolutely. 
Every regulation we pass to improve our environment is important, but 
if it shuts down American business, it probably is not the right 
decision to make.
  So since the question was asked rhetorically last night on the floor 
of the Senate, I thought I would come to the floor and answer it in 
person. I believe truth is a virtue. The truth is the Coca-Cola Company 
has informed me continuously about the efforts they have made to reduce 
carbon emissions and to improve their environmental contribution. There 
is no greater evidence of that than me drinking water that just came 
out of a purification plant in Ghana, Africa, out of a Coca-Cola cup. I 
think that is about the best evidence we can possibly find that they 
have delivered their message. They are doing their job. I am proud of 
the Coca Cola Company.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I wanted to clarify something I said 
when I spoke about the work the Senate did on comprehensive immigration 
reform in relation to the Loretta Lynch nomination. I mentioned the 
Gang of 8, and I think I got seven of them right. I wish to clarify 
exactly who was a Member of the Gang of 8: Senator Schumer, Senator 
Durbin, Senator Menendez, Senator Bennet, Senator McCain, Senator 
Flake, Senator Graham, and Senator Rubio. That was the starting-off 
point for the comprehensive immigration reform that passed through the 
Senate.
  I wish to get back to the matter at hand. As I stand in the Chamber 
today, I am going to keep reminding people of why we are really here, 
why the bill is on the floor--which is about sex trafficking--and the 
reason we want to try to resolve these issues and actually focus on the 
matter at hand and not on extraneous issues and other issues and other 
fights. My own Republican Congressman who carries my bill, the safe 
harbor bill--which of course is not the bill at issue but we hope will 
be the first amendment--has noted that we just need to move on and get 
these bills done and not play politics as usual. That is going to be my 
focus today as I manage this bill.
  So I thought I would read on the floor a book that has been a 
national bestseller by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times and his 
wife Sheryl WuDunn. It is a book about sex trafficking. It is an 
incredible book. It focuses more on international sex trafficking. As 
we know, our bills here--the one that is on the floor and the one I 
have authored--are about how our own country gets a handle on this, by 
getting better laws in place and creating incentives and working with 
the private sector and doings things so our country, I think from my 
perspective, internationally can be a true leader. We can't be a true 
leader and tell these states and democracies and countries that aren't 
even democracies across the world that they need to do a better job if 
we don't do a better job.
  To me, this should be a major tenet of our foreign policy. Once we 
get women so that they are not treated as slaves and they are not 
treated as chattel--once we get them to that circumstance--countries 
always do better. When we have women who can work and own businesses, 
women who can serve in government, it changes a whole society.
  So that is why the sex trafficking bill is on the floor and the one 
that I have that will be considered as an amendment. The reason we need 
to get through where we are right now and focus on the real issue at 
hand is that our country can not only help the victims in our own 
country, but by shining a light on this, by being a leader on this 
internationally, it will help us internationally. We want to be able to 
work with other countries--not saying they are doing something bad when 
we have our own problem, but saying, Here is what we did and here is 
how we are handling this and we want to work with you as partners and 
we want to have women be treated with respect throughout the world.
  So this book, as I said, focuses on international sex trafficking. It 
is called ``Half the Sky.'' I love this name. It is a Chinese proverb. 
It talks about how women basically are holding up half the sky. That is 
what it is about. Women are holding up half the sky. We can't forget 
about half the sky and just let half the sky go and let them be sold 
into slavery and not be treated equally and expect a society to 
function.
  So this is how the book starts out. It has a great quote from Mark 
Twain. I like jokes. Listen to this one: ``What would men be without 
women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.''
  It is making the point again that women hold up half the sky.
  So this is the book and how it starts:

       Srey Rath is a self-confident Cambodian teenager whose 
     black hair tumbles over a round, light brown face. She is in 
     a crowded street market, standing beside a pushcart and 
     telling her story calmly, with detachment. The only hint of 
     anxiety or trauma is the way she often pushes her hair in 
     front of her black eyes, perhaps a nervous tic. Then she 
     lowers her hand and her long fingers gesticulate and flutter 
     in the air with incongruous grace as she recounts her 
     odyssey.
       Rath is short and small-boned, pretty, vibrant, and bubbly, 
     a wisp of a girl whose negligible stature contrasts with an 
     outsized and outgoing personality. When the skies abruptly 
     release a tropical rain shower that drenches us, she simply 
     laughs and rushes us to cover under a tin roof, and then 
     cheerfully continues her story as the rain drums overhead. 
     But Rath's attractiveness and winning personality are 
     perilous bounties for a rural Cambodian girl, and her 
     trusting nature and optimistic self-assuredness compound the 
     hazard.
       When Rath was fifteen, her family ran out of money, so she 
     decided to go work as a dishwasher in Thailand for two months 
     to help pay the bills. Her parents fretted about her safety, 
     but they were reassured when Rath arranged to travel with 
     four friends who had been promised jobs in the same Thai 
     restaurant. The job agent took the girls deep into Thailand 
     and then handed them to gangsters who took them to Kuala 
     Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. Rath was dazzled by her 
     first glimpses of the city's clean avenues and gleaming high-
     rises, including at the time the world's tallest twin 
     buildings; it seemed safe and welcoming. But then thugs 
     sequestered Rath and two other girls inside a karaoke lounge 
     that operated as a brothel. One gangster in his late 
     thirties, a man known as ``the boss,'' took charge of the 
     girls and explained that he had paid money for them and that 
     they would now be obliged to repay him. ``You must find money 
     to pay off the debt, and then I will send you back home,'' he 
     said, repeatedly reassuring them that if they cooperated they 
     would eventually be released.
       Rath was shattered when what was happening dawned on her. 
     The boss locked her

[[Page 3742]]

     up with a customer, who tried to force her to have sex with 
     him. She fought back, enraging the customer. ``So the boss 
     got angry and hit me in the face, first with one hand and 
     then with the other,'' she remembers, telling her story with 
     simple resignation. ``The mark stayed on my face for two 
     weeks.'' Then the boss and the other gangsters raped her and 
     beat her with their fists.
       ``You have to serve the customers,'' the boss told her as 
     he punched her. ``If not, we will beat you to death. Do you 
     want that?'' Rath stopped protesting, but she sobbed and 
     refused to cooperate actively. The boss forced her to take a 
     pill; the gangsters called it ``the happy drug'' or ``the 
     shake drug.'' She doesn't know exactly what it has, but it 
     made her head shake and induced lethargy, happiness, and 
     compliance for about an hour. When she wasn't drugged, Rath 
     was teary and insufficiently compliant--she was required to 
     beam happily at all customers--so the boss said he would 
     waste no more time on her: She would agree to do as he 
     ordered or he would kill her. Rath then gave in. The girls 
     were forced to work in the brothel seven days a week, fifteen 
     hours a day. They were kept naked to make it more difficult 
     for them to run away or to keep tips or other money, and they 
     were forbidden to ask customers to use condoms. They were 
     battered until they smiled constantly and simulated joy at 
     the sight of customers, because men would not pay as much for 
     sex with girls with reddened eyes and haggard faces. The 
     girls were never allowed out on the street or paid a penny 
     for their work.
       ``They just gave us food to eat, but they didn't give us 
     much because the customers didn't like fat girls,'' Rath 
     says. The girls were bused, under guard, back and forth 
     between the brothel and a tenth-floor apartment where a dozen 
     of them were housed. The door of the apartment was locked 
     from the outside. However, one night, some of the girls went 
     out onto their balcony and pried loose a long, five-inch-wide 
     board from a rack used for drying clothes. They balanced it 
     precariously between their balcony and one on the next 
     building, twelve feet away. The board wobbled badly, but Rath 
     was desperate, so she sat astride the board and gradually 
     inched across.
       ``There were four of us who did that,'' she says. ``The 
     others were too scared, because it was very rickety. I was 
     scared, too, and I couldn't look down, but I was even more 
     scared to stay. We thought that even if we died it would be 
     better than staying behind. If we stayed we would die as 
     well.''
       Once on the far balcony, the girls pounded on the window 
     and woke the surprised tenant. They could hardly communicate 
     with him because none of them spoke the language, but the 
     tenant let them into his apartment and then out the front 
     door. The girls took the elevator down and wandered the 
     silent streets until they found a police station and walked 
     inside. The police first tried to shoo them away, then 
     arrested the girls for illegal immigration. Rath served a 
     year in prison under Malaysia's tough anti-immigrant laws, 
     and then she was supposed to be repatriated. She thought a 
     Malaysian policeman was escorting her home when he drove her 
     to the Thai border--but then he sold her to a trafficker, who 
     peddled her to a Thai brothel.

  So I say to my colleagues, this is what we are talking about. This 
story is in another country, but this same story is repeated in our 
country day in and day out. If we are going to try to lead in Cambodia 
and try to change the world for these girls, we have to lead in our own 
country. Certainly we have to lead by focusing on the issue at hand, 
which is sex trafficking, and what we can do in our country. What can 
we do? Well, we can have better services for the victims. We can set up 
our law enforcement system in a way that works by not treating--for so 
long, these young 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds were thought of as 
criminals when, in fact, they are victims. How can we say someone is 
not raped, how can we say the story of this girl, who thought she was 
going to work to have a better life for herself as a dishwasher, then 
gets raped--how can we say that is not rape, that it is prostitution or 
a crime? No. She is a victim.
  That is what the safe harbor bill--which I have introduced and which 
I am hopeful will be the first amendment once we work out these other 
issues--would do. It would treat these girls and boys as victims.
  So I wish to remind my colleagues what we are truly dealing with. 
This is not supposed to be a fight over abortion. This is a fight about 
how to help these young girls throughout our country and by virtue of 
us being a leader throughout the world.
  So I am going to continue reading from the book, just so we are all 
reminded what we are talking about.

       Rath's saga offers a glimpse of the brutality inflicted 
     routinely on women and girls in much of the world, a 
     malignancy that is slowly gaining recognition as one of the 
     paramount human rights problems of this century.
       The issues involved, however, have barely registered on the 
     global agenda. Indeed, when we began reporting about 
     international affairs in the 1980s--

  This is a book by Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl, whose book, 
``Half the Sky,'' is a national best seller. The subhead is ``Turning 
Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.''
  Again, why am I reading this? Because this is what we are supposed to 
be talking about here. This is a bill we are supposed to be getting 
done and not talking about extraneous issues that I think we should be 
able to resolve because they have been resolved in the past. To do 
that, we have to decide that these girls are important enough to do 
that.
  Continuing on, they talked about how these issues have barely 
registered on the global agenda:

       Indeed, when we began reporting about international affairs 
     in the 1980s, we couldn't have imagined writing this book. We 
     assumed that the foreign policy issues that properly furrowed 
     the brow were lofty and complex, like nuclear 
     nonproliferation. It was difficult back then to envision the 
     Council on Foreign Relations fretting about maternal 
     mortality or genital mutilation. Back then the oppression of 
     women was a fringe issue, the kind of worthy cause the girl 
     scouts might raise money for--

  And I hope that is not how we are treating this in the Senate. I hope 
that is not how we are treating it, and I hope we are not treating it 
as a political football.

       We preferred to probe the recondite ``serious issues.''
       So this book is the outgrowth--

  The writers write--

     of our own journey of awakening as we worked together as 
     journalists for The New York Times. The first milestone in 
     that journey came in China. Sheryl is a Chinese-American who 
     grew up in New York City, and Nicholas is an Oregonian who 
     grew up on a sheep and cherry farm near Yamhill, Oregon. 
     After we married, we moved to China, where seven months later 
     we found ourselves standing on the edge of Tiananmen Square 
     watching troops fire their automatic weapons at prodemocracy 
     protestors. The massacre claimed between four hundred and 
     eight hundred lives and transfixed the world. It was the 
     human rights story of the world. It was the human rights 
     story of the year, and it seemed just about the most shocking 
     violation imaginable.
       Then the following year, we came across an obscure but 
     meticulous demographic study that outlined a human rights 
     violation that had claimed tens of thousands more lives. This 
     study found that thirty-nine thousand baby girls die annually 
     in China because parents don't give them the same medical 
     care and attention that boys receive--and that is just in 
     their first year of life. One Chinese family-planning 
     official, Li Honggui, explained it this way: ``If a boy gets 
     sick, the parents may send him to the hospital at once. But 
     if a girl gets sick, the parents may say to themselves, 
     ``Well, let's see how she is tomorrow.''
       . . . A similar pattern emerged in other countries, 
     particularly in South Asia and the Muslim world. In India, a 
     ``bride burning''--to punish a woman for an inadequate dowry 
     or to eliminate her so a man can remarry--takes place 
     approximately once every two hours, but these rarely 
     constitute news.
       In . . . Pakistan, five thousand women and girls have been 
     doused in kerosene and set alight by family members or in-
     laws--or, perhaps worse, been seared with acid--for perceived 
     disobedience in the last nine years. Imagine the outcry if 
     the Pakistani or Indian governments were burning women alive 
     at those rates. Yet when the government is not directly 
     involved, people shrug.

  Again, how does this apply to the matter at hand? We know there are 
girls who are victims of trafficking who are put into slavery--sex 
slavery--every single day in this country. So if we think we can be a 
leader when it comes to what is going on around the world and we want 
to hold our Nation up, then we have to be a leader in this Chamber this 
week and get this bill done and get these extraneous issues behind us 
that people feel strongly about. But, as I said, somehow we have been 
able to handle these issues in the past on other bills, and I hope the 
girls we are talking about here are just as important as those other 
issues.

       When a prominent dissident was arrested in China--

  I go back to the book--

     we would write a front-page article; when 100,000 girls were 
     routinely kidnapped and trafficked into brothels, we didn't 
     even consider it news. Partly that is because we journalists 
     tend to be good at covering events

[[Page 3743]]

     that happen on a particular day, but we slip at covering 
     events that happen every day--such as the . . . cruelties 
     inflicted on women and girls. We journalists weren't the only 
     ones who dropped the ball on this subject. [A tiny portion] 
     of U.S. foreign aid is specifically targeted to women and 
     girls.

  They then go on to quote a Nobel Prize-winning economist who has 
developed a way to look at gender inequality that is a striking 
reminder of the stakes involved.

       ``More than 100 million are missing,'' Sen wrote in a 
     classic essay in 1990 in ``The New York Review of Books,'' 
     spurring a new field of research. Sen noted that in normal 
     circumstances women live longer than men, and so there are 
     more females than males in much of the world. Even poor 
     regions like most of Latin America and much of Africa have 
     more females than males. Yet in places where girls have a 
     deeply unequal status, they vanish. China has 107 males for 
     every 100 females in its overall population . . . India has 
     108, and Pakistan has 111.

  I remember at the McCain Institute, where Cindy McCain and Heidi 
Heitkamp and I spoke on a panel, that Senator McCain had just returned 
from a trip abroad and had been in a country that was experiencing 
enormous upheaval. He had asked: ``Where are the girls?'' And someone 
said to him: ``Most of them have been sold.'' They had been sold. So 
this is really happening, and the people in this Chamber know it is 
happening. That is why, again, I get back to the fact that if we want 
to do something about it here, we need to resolve these issues, we need 
to do it without going into a blame game, and we need to get this done 
so we can pass this bill--and not have a dispute over abortion--that, 
in fact, helps the very girls we are supposed to help. Only then can we 
be a leader in the world.
  I will go back to the book:

       The worst of these abuses tend to occur in poor nations, 
     but the United States and other western countries are not 
     immune. In America, millions of women and girls face beatings 
     or other violence from their husbands or boyfriends and more 
     than one in six undergo rape or attempted rape at some point 
     in her life, according to the National Violence Against Women 
     survey. Then there is forced prostitution. Teenage runaways 
     are beaten, threatened and branded (with tattoos) by pimps in 
     American cities, and thousands of foreign women are 
     trafficked into the United States as well. Still, in poor 
     countries gender discrimination is often lethal in a way that 
     is usually not in America. In India, for example, mothers are 
     less likely to take their daughters to be vaccinated than 
     their sons--that alone accounts for one fifth of India's 
     missing females--while studies have found that, on average, 
     girls are brought to the hospital only when they are sicker 
     than boys taken to the hospital. All told, girls in India 
     from 1 to 5 years of age are 50 percent more likely to die 
     than boys the same age. The best estimate is that a little 
     Indian girl dies from discrimination every four minutes.
       A big, bearded Afghan . . . once told us that his wife and 
     son were sick. He wanted both to survive, he said, but his 
     priorities were clear: A son is an indispensable treasure, 
     while a wife is replaceable. He had purchased medication for 
     the boy alone. ``She is always sick,'' he gruffly said of his 
     wife, ``so it's not worth buying medicine for her.''

  Again, why is this relevant to the matter at hand? I think these 
young girls and women in our own country and across the world deserve 
to be treated seriously. They deserve not to be treated as a political 
football on extraneous issues this Chamber likes to debate.
  This bill needs to be treated just as seriously--and my safe harbor 
bill--as any other bill. Somehow, the people in charge of these 
institutions have been able to work out the differences.

       Modernization and technology can aggravate the 
     discrimination. Since the 1990s, the spread of ultrasound 
     machines has allowed pregnant women to find out the sex of 
     their fetuses--and then get abortions if they are female.

  Again, we are talking about China.
  ``We don't have to have daughters anymore!'' someone said in China.

       To prevent sex-selective abortion, China and India now bar 
     doctors and ultrasound technicians from telling a pregnant 
     woman the sex of her fetus. Yet that is a flawed solution.

  According to the book:

       Research shows that when parents are banned from 
     selectively aborting female fetuses, more of their daughters 
     die as infants. Mothers do not deliberately dispatch infant 
     girls they are obligated to give birth to, but they are 
     lackadaisical about caring for them. A development economist 
     at Brown University . . . quantified the wrenching trade-off: 
     On average, the deaths of fifteen infant girls can be avoided 
     by allowing 100 female fetuses to [die].

  This is what is going on around the world right now.

       The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing. It 
     appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty 
     years, precisely because they were girls, than men were 
     killed in all the battles of the twentieth century. More 
     girls are killed in this routine ``gendercide'' in any one 
     decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of 
     the twentieth century. In the nineteenth century, the central 
     moral challenge was slavery. In the twentieth century, it was 
     the battle against totalitarianism. We believe that in this 
     century the paramount moral challenge will be the struggle 
     for gender equality around the world.

  That will be the struggle to help these girls.
  Maybe this is the battle we are having right now. Maybe this 
institution has to come up to speed. We have 20 Senators who are women. 
Twenty percent of the Senate are women. That is pretty good. It is the 
best we have ever gotten. But when you look at the numbers, the numbers 
aren't frequent when you look back through history. Maybe that is what 
we are going to have to do to have people take these bills seriously 
and not play king of the hill with a bill as serious as this one.
  I will continue to read ``Half the Sky'' by Nicholas Kristof and 
Sheryl WuDunn.

       The owners of the Thai brothel to which Rath was sold did 
     not beat her and did not constantly guard her. So two months 
     later, she was able to escape and make her way back to 
     Cambodia.
       Upon her return, Rath met a social worker who put her in 
     touch with an aid group that helps girls who have been 
     trafficked start new lives. The group, American Assistance 
     for Cambodia, used $400 in donated funds to buy a small cart 
     and a starter selection of goods so that Rath could become a 
     street peddler. She found a good spot in the open area 
     between the Thai and Cambodian customs offices. . . . 
     Travelers crossing between Thailand and Cambodia walk along 
     this strip, the size of a football field, and it is lined 
     with peddlers selling drinks, snacks and souvenirs.
       Rath outfitted her cart with shirts and hats, costume 
     jewelry, notebooks, pens and small toys. Now her good looks 
     and outgoing personality began to work in her favor, turning 
     her into an effective saleswoman. She saved and invested in 
     new merchandise, her business thrived, and she was able to 
     support her parents and two younger sisters. She married and 
     had a son, and she began saving for his education.
       In 2008, Rath turned her cart into a stall, and then also 
     acquired the stall next door. She also started a ``public 
     phone'' business by charging people to use her cell phone. So 
     if you ever cross from Thailand into Cambodia at Poipet, look 
     for a shop on your left, halfway down the strip, where a 
     teenage girl will call out to you, smile, and try to sell you 
     a souvenir cap. She'll laugh and claim she's giving you a 
     special price, and she's so bubbly and appealing she'll 
     probably make the sale.
       Rath's eventual triumph--

  If you remember from the first part of the book that I read, she was 
sold into slavery when she simply thought she was going to work as a 
dishwasher; she was sold into sex and repeatedly raped--

     is a reminder that if girls get a chance, in the form of an 
     education or a microloan, they can be more than baubles or 
     slaves; many of them can run businesses. Talk to Rath today--
     after you've purchased that cap--and you'll find that she 
     exudes confidence as she earns a solid income that will 
     provide a better future for her sisters and for her young 
     son.
       Many of the stories in this book are wrenching, but keep in 
     mind this central truth: Women aren't the problem but the 
     solution. The plight of girls is no more a tragedy than an 
     opportunity.

  I will repeat that:

       Women aren't the problem but the solution. The plight of 
     girls is no more a tragedy than an opportunity.
       That was a lesson we absorbed in Sheryl's ancestral 
     village, at the end of a dirt road amid the rice paddies of 
     southern China. For many years we have regularly trod the mud 
     paths of the Taishan region to . . . the hamlet in which 
     Sheryl's paternal grandfather grew up. China traditionally 
     has been one of the most oppressive and smothering places for 
     girls, and we could see hints of this in Sheryl's own family 
     history. Indeed, on our first visit, we accidentally 
     uncovered a family secret: a long-lost stepgrandmother. 
     Sheryl's grandfather had traveled to America with his first 
     wife, but she had given birth only to daughters. So Sheryl's 
     grandfather gave up on her and returned her to Shunshui, 
     where he married a younger

[[Page 3744]]

     woman as a second wife and took her to America. This was 
     Sheryl's grandmother, who duly gave birth to a son--Sheryl's 
     dad. The previous wife and daughters were then wiped out of 
     the family memory.
       Something bothered us each time we explored [the town] and 
     the surrounding villages: Where were the young women?

  This is, by the way, what Senator McCain said when he returned from a 
country that was repressed.

       Young men were toiling industriously in the paddies or 
     fanning themselves in the shade, but young women and girls 
     were scarce. We finally discovered them and we stopped in the 
     factories that were then spreading throughout the [Guangdong] 
     Province, the epicenter of China's economic eruption. These 
     factories produced the shoes, toys, and shirts that filled 
     America's shopping malls, generating economic growth rates 
     almost unprecedented in the history of the world--and 
     creating the most effective antipoverty program ever 
     recorded. The factories turned out to be cacophonous hives of 
     distaff bees.
       Eighty percent of the employees on the assembly lines in 
     coastal China are female, and the proportion across the 
     manufacturing belt of East Asia is at least 70 percent. The 
     economic explosion in Asia was, in large part, an outgrowth 
     of the economic empowerment of women. ``They have small 
     fingers, so they're better at stitching,'' the manager of a 
     purse factory explained to us. ``They're obedient and work 
     harder than men,'' said the head of a toy factory. ``And we 
     can pay them less.'' Women are indeed the linchpin of the 
     region's development strategy.
       Economists who scrutinized East Asia's success noted a 
     common pattern. These countries took young women who 
     previously had contributed negligibly to the gross national 
     product and injected them into the formal economy, hugely 
     increasing the labor force. The basic formula was to ease 
     repression, educate girls as well as boys, give the girls the 
     freedom to move to the cities and take factory jobs, and then 
     benefit from a demographic dividend as they delayed marriage 
     and reduced childbearing. The women meanwhile financed the 
     education of younger relatives, and saved enough of their pay 
     to boost national savings rates. This pattern has been ``the 
     girl effect.'' In a nod to the female chromosomes, it could 
     also be called ``the double X solution.''
       Evidence has mounted that helping women can be a successful 
     poverty-fighting strategy anywhere in the world, not just in 
     the booming economies of East Asia. The Self Employed Women's 
     Association was founded in India in 1972 and ever since has 
     supported the poorest women in starting businesses--raising 
     living standards in ways that have dazzled scholars and 
     foundations. In Bangladesh, Muhammad Yunus developed 
     microfinance at the Grameen Bank and targeted women 
     borrowers--eventually winning a Nobel Peace Prize for the 
     economic and social impact of his work.

  I would note here--just a little sidenote, as I am reading through 
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's book, to make everyone in this 
Chamber remember why we are here. We are here to help girls, not just 
in the United States, but in the world. We are here to hold up ``Half 
the Sky.'' We are here to show that this Chamber, at its best, can 
actually help the people we are supposed to help, the most vulnerable 
in our society, instead of debating extraneous issues that we are 
unable to resolve on this bill but that we seem able to resolve on 
other bills that just must be more important than the girls and the 
women of this world. That is all I can figure out.
  But I would like to note, as I read about one of their suggestions 
for things that help girls and women around the world, this idea of 
microcredit. My dad, who is kind of an adventurer and goes around the 
world, actually wrote a book on microcredit called ``The Miracles of 
Barefoot Capitalism''--in case he is watching on C-Span, I thought he 
would like that note--with his wife Susan Wilkes. They are big 
believers in helping women around the world with microcredit.
  So then they go on in the book to talk about helping people through 
microcredit.

       In the early 1990s, the United Nations and the World Bank 
     began to appreciate the potential resource that women and 
     girls represent. Investment in girls' education may well be 
     the highest return investment available in the developing 
     world.

  I think it is something that we need to remember in the United States 
as we look at the low numbers of girls that go into science and 
technology and head up companies, because for some reason they do not 
have the confidence to go into those fields or they are not encouraged 
to go into those fields. If we in the Senate cannot even say they 
should not be trafficked and we cannot do anything to help them, I do 
not think we are helping that cause very much.
  Larry Summers wrote, when he was the chief economist of the World 
Bank: ``The question is not whether countries can afford this 
investment, but whether countries can afford not to educate more 
girls.''

       In 2001, the World Bank produced an influential study, 
     Engendering Development Through Gender Equality in Rights, 
     Resources, and Voice, arguing that promoting gender equality 
     is crucial to combat global poverty. UNICEF issued a major 
     report arguing that gender equality yields a ``double 
     dividend'' by elevating not only women but also their 
     children and communities. The United Nation Development 
     Programme (UNDP) summed up the mounting research this way: 
     ``Women's empowerment helps raise economic productivity and 
     reduce infant mortality. It contributes to improved health 
     and nutrition. It increases the chances of education for the 
     next generation.''
       More and more, the most influential scholars of development 
     and public health--including Sen and Summers, Joseph 
     Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs, and Dr. Paul Farmer--are calling for 
     much greater attention to women and development.
       Private aid groups and foundations have shifted gears as 
     well. ``Women are the key to ending hunger in Africa,'' 
     declared the Hunger Project. French foreign minister Bernard 
     Kouchner, who founded Doctors Without Borders, bluntly 
     declared of development: ``Progress is achieved through 
     women.'' The Center for Global Development issued a major 
     report explaining ``why and how to put girls at the center of 
     development.'' CARE is taking women and girls as the 
     centerpiece of its antipoverty efforts. The Nike Foundation 
     and the NoVo Foundation are both focusing on building 
     opportunities for girls in the developing world. ``Gender 
     inequality hurts economic growth,'' Goldman Sachs concluded 
     in a 2008 research report that emphasized how much developing 
     countries could improve their economic performance by 
     educating girls. Partly as a result of that research, Goldman 
     Sachs committed $100 million to a ``10,000Women'' campaign 
     meant to give that many women a business education.

  I think this is actually a really good book. I just plan to keep 
reading it whenever I can over the next few days until we get a 
resolution to this problem.
  I am going to take a look at how many pages it is. Well, if you 
include the notes, it is 296 pages. I will obviously take breaks when 
our colleagues come down here. But I do think it is really important 
that we keep the pressure on, that the women and girls of this country 
demand that this get resolved, because as I said, we have somehow been 
able to resolve it on other bills. I think this bill and the bill that 
I have, the safe harbor bill, are just as important. I think our 
colleagues, in my discussions with them, know several ways we could 
resolve this problem, including just eliminating this extraneous 
provision. But there might be other ways as well. We know what they 
are. I hope they keep working on them.

       Concerns about terrorism after the 9/11 attacks triggered 
     interest in these issues as an unlikely constituency: the 
     military and counterterrorism agencies. Some security experts 
     noted that the countries that nurture terrorists are 
     disproportionately those where woman are marginalized. The 
     reason that there are so many Muslim terrorists, they argued, 
     has little to do with the Koran but a great deal to do with 
     the lack of robust female participation in the economy and 
     society of many Islamic countries. As the Pentagon gained a 
     deeper understanding of counterterrorism . . . it became 
     increasingly interested in grassroots projects such as girls' 
     education. Empowering girls, some in the military argued, 
     would disempower terrorists. When the Joint Chiefs of Staff 
     hold discussions of girls' education in Pakistan and 
     Afghanistan . . . you know that gender is a serious topic on 
     the international affairs agenda. That's evident also in the 
     Council on Foreign Relations. The wood-paneled halls that 
     have been used for discussions of MIRV warheads . . . are now 
     employed as well to host well-attended sessions on maternal 
     mortality.

  This is now Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn speaking in their 
book, which has been a national best seller, ``Half the Sky.'' It is 
about sex trafficking and how important it is to take this issue on--
not just in our own country but the world.

       We will try to lay out an agenda for the world's women 
     focusing on three particular abuses: sex trafficking and 
     forced prostitution; gender-based violence, including honor 
     killings and mass rape; and maternal mortality, which still 
     needlessly claims one

[[Page 3745]]

     woman a minute. We will lay out solutions such as girls' 
     education and microfinance, which are working right now.
       While the most urgent needs are in the developing world, 
     wealthy countries also need to clear up their own 
     neighborhoods. If we are to lead the way we must show greater 
     resolution in cracking down on domestic violence and sex 
     trafficking in our own neighborhoods, rather than just 
     sputter about abuses far away.
       It is true that there are many injustices in the world, 
     many worthy causes competing for attention and support, and 
     we all have divided allegiances.

  This sounds kind of like us, right? There are a lot of different 
topics and things that we have to take on, and there are many worthy 
causes that are calling for our attention and support. We all have 
divided allegiances. I think that is kind of what is going on in this 
Chamber. But why do we need to focus on this? Well, I will go back to 
the book.

       We focus on this topic because, to us, this kind of 
     oppression feels transcendent--and so does the opportunity. 
     We have seen that outsiders can truly make a significant 
     difference.
       Consider Rath once more.

  Now, remember, this was the girl that was sold into sex trafficking 
in Malaysia.

       We had been so shaken by her story that we wanted to locate 
     that brothel in Malaysia, interview its owners, and try to 
     free the girls still imprisoned there. Unfortunately, we 
     could not determine the brothel's name or address. (Rath 
     didn't know English or even the Roman alphabet, so she hadn't 
     been able to read signs when she was there.) When we asked 
     her if she would be willing to return to Kuala Lumpur and 
     help us find the brothel, she turned ashen. ``I don't know,'' 
     she said. ``I don't want to face that again.'' She wavered, 
     talked it over with her family, and ultimately agreed to go 
     back in the hope of rescuing her girlfriends.
       Rath voyaged back to Kuala Lumpur with the protection of an 
     interpreter and a local antitrafficking activist. 
     Nonetheless, she trembled in the red light district upon 
     seeing the cheerful neon signs that she associated with so 
     much pain. But since her escape, Malaysia has been 
     embarrassed by public criticism about trafficking, so the 
     police had cracked down on the worst brothels that imprisoned 
     girls against their will. One of those was Rath's. A modest 
     amount of international scolding had led a government to take 
     action, resulting in an observable improvement in the lives 
     of girls at the bottom of the power pyramid. The outcome 
     underscores that this is a hopeful cause, not a bleak one.
       Honor killings, sexual slavery, and genital cutting may 
     seem to Western readers to be tragic but inevitable in a 
     world far, far away. In much the same way, slavery was once 
     widely viewed by many decent Europeans and Americans as a 
     regrettable but ineluctable feature of human life. It was 
     just one more horror that has existed for thousands of years. 
     But then in the 1780s a few indignant Britons, led by William 
     Wilberforce, decided that slavery was so offensive that they 
     had to abolish it. And they did. Today, we see the seed of 
     something similar, a global movement to emancipate women and 
     girls.

  By the way, later in the book--since I have read it already, but now 
I will be able to read it again--they talk about how, in fact, it was 
the evidence of that brutality of the slavery, of the stench of the 
people who were slaves who were in the bottom of that ship that really 
drove action. Yes, the activists and William Wilberforce understandably 
get a lot of the attention and well-deserved credit for what happened, 
but it was the evidence that led to Britain, the people and their 
society, long before many other countries had even thought about 
abolishing slavery--it was the evidence of the brutality that led them 
to make a change.
  That is one of the things that we need to talk about and why I am 
talking about this here today. We have to get back on what really 
matters here, such as the story of the 12-year-old girl in Rochester, 
MN--a 12-year-old girl who just got a text message and went to a 
McDonald's parking lot and was shoved into a car and then brought to 
the Twin Cities and then raped. Then her pictures were taken--sexually 
explicit pictures--and put on Craigslist. Then she was sold the next 
day and raped by two men.
  That is what this is really about. It is not about these extraneous 
fights and what has been going on, dragging this Chamber down, and even 
stopping us from confirming a well-qualified person for the Attorney 
General of the United States. That is what they are talking about here. 
It is the evidence that the American people see. They start demanding 
change. I hope that is happening today.

       So let's be clear about this up front. We hope to recruit 
     you to join--

  These are the authors.

     --an incipient movement to emancipate women and fight global 
     poverty by unlocking women's power as economic catalysts. 
     That is the process underway--not a drama of victimization 
     but of empowerment, the kind that transforms bubbly teenage 
     girls from brothel slaves into successful businesswomen.
       This is a story of transformation. It has change that is 
     already taking place, and change that can accelerate if you 
     will just open your heart and join in.

  I think we need some opening of hearts here in the Chamber. I am 
going to take one break to talk to our staff, and then I will be back.
  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.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order 
for the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sasse). Without objection, it is so 
ordered.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am reading the book ``Half the Sky,'' 
by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. I think it is a beautiful 
book. It is on sex trafficking around the world and what has been 
happening around the world. A part of this is that I think we need to 
make the point that we can lead in our country when it comes to sex 
trafficking.
  We have Senator Cornyn's bill, and we know there is an issue with one 
of the provisions that needs to be resolved--and I don't think it is a 
provision that is related to this topic--but we are hopeful people of 
good will can come together and resolve this issue. The easiest way 
would be to take it out. We can have other discussions. Somehow, 
through history, the Senate has been able to come together and take 
care of this issue with the Hyde amendment and other bills.
  I think the point I am trying to make today is this bill is just as 
important as those bills and that these girls who are victims of sex 
trafficking are just as important as anyone else in this country.
  I am going to continue reading this book. I am hopeful--as I 
mentioned, it is very long, and I will obviously pause for my 
colleagues who come to the floor, but I am going to continue reading it 
until we get this resolved.
  We are now on chapter 1, ``Emancipating Twenty-First-Century 
Slaves.'' The quote on this is actually from Christopher Buckley, one 
of my favorite authors, from ``Florence of Arabia,'' from the beginning 
of the chapter: ``Women might just have something to contribute to 
civilization other than their vaginas.''
  That might not have been said on this floor that many times, but he 
is a humorous writer. Now, let's go on with the book:

       The red-light district in the town of Forbesgunge does not 
     actually have any red lights. Indeed, there is no 
     electricity. The brothels are simply mud-walled family 
     compounds along a dirt path, with thatch-roof shacks set 
     aside for customers.
       Children play and scurry along the dirt paths, and a one-
     room shop on the corner sells cooking oil, rice, and bits of 
     candy. Here, in the impoverished northern Indian state of 
     Bihar near the Nepalese border, there's not much else 
     available commercially--except sex.
       As Meena Hasina walks down the path, the children pause and 
     stare at her. The adults stop as well, some glowering and the 
     tension rises. Meena is a lovely, dark-skinned Indian woman 
     in her thirties with warm, crinkly eyes and a stud in her 
     left nostril. She wears a sari and ties her black hair back, 
     and she seems utterly relaxed as she strolls among people who 
     despise her.
       Meena is an Indian Muslim who for years was prostituted in 
     a brothel run by the Nutt, a low-caste tribe that controls 
     the local sex trade. The Nutt have traditionally engaged in 
     prostitution and petty crime, and theirs is the world of 
     intergenerational prostitution, in which mothers sell sex and 
     raise their daughters to do the same.
       Meena strolls through the brothels to a larger hut that 
     functions as a part-time school, sits down, and makes herself 
     comfortable. Behind her, the villagers gradually resume their 
     activities.
       ``I was eight or nine years old when I was kidnapped and 
     trafficked,'' Meena begins.

[[Page 3746]]

     She is from a poor family on the Nepal border and was sold to 
     a Nutt clan, then taken to a rural house where the brothel 
     owner kept prepubescent girls until they were mature enough 
     to attract customers. When she was twelve--she remembers that 
     it was five months before her first period--she was taken to 
     the brothel.
       ``They brought in the first client, and they'd taken lots 
     of money from him,'' Meena recounted, speaking clinically and 
     without emotion. The induction was similar to that endured by 
     Rath in Malaysia, for sex trafficking operates on the same 
     business model worldwide, and the same methods are used to 
     break girls everywhere. ``I started fighting and crying out, 
     so that he couldn't succeed,'' Meena said. ``I resisted so 
     much that they had to return the money to him. And they beat 
     me mercilessly, with a belt, with sticks, with iron rods. The 
     beating was tremendous.'' She shook her head to clear the 
     memory. ``But even then I resisted. They showed me swords and 
     said they would kill me if I didn't agree. Four or five 
     times, they brought customers in, and I still resisted, and 
     they kept beating me. Finally they drugged me: They gave me 
     wine in my drink and got me completely drunk.'' Then one of 
     the brothel owners raped her. She awoke, hungover and 
     hurting, and realized what had happened. ``Now I am wasted,'' 
     she thought, and so she gave in and stopped fighting 
     customers.
       In Meena's brothel, the tyrant was a family matriarch, 
     Ainul Bibi. Sometimes Ainul would beat the girls herself, and 
     sometimes she would delegate the task to her daughter-in-law 
     or her sons, who were brutal in inflicting punishment.
       ``I wasn't even allowed to cry,'' Meena remembers. ``If 
     even one tear fell, they would beat me. I used to think that 
     it was better to die than to live like this. Once I jumped 
     from the balcony, but nothing happened. I didn't even break a 
     leg.''
       Meena and the others girls were never allowed out of the 
     brothel and were never paid. They typically had ten or more 
     customers a day, seven days a week. If a girl fell asleep or 
     complained about a stomachache, the issue was resolved with a 
     beating. And when a girl showed any hint of resistance, all 
     the girls would be summoned to watch as the recalcitrant one 
     was tied up and savagely beaten.
       ``They turned the stereo up loud to cover the screams,'' 
     Meena said dryly.
       India almost certainly has more modern slaves, in 
     conditions like these, than any other country. There are 2 to 
     3 million prostitutes in India, and although many of them now 
     sell sex to some degree willingly, and are paid, a 
     significant share of them entered the sex industry 
     unwillingly. One 2008 study of Indian brothels found that of 
     Indian and Nepali prostitutes who started as teenagers, about 
     half said they had been coerced into the brothels; women who 
     began working in their twenties were more likely to have made 
     the choice themselves, often to feed their children. Those 
     who start out enslaved often accept their fate eventually and 
     sell sex willingly, because they know nothing else and are 
     too stigmatized to hold other jobs.
       China has more prostitutes than India--some estimates are 
     as high as 10 million or more--but fewer of them are forced 
     into brothels against their will. Indeed, China has few 
     brothels as such. Many of the prostitutes are freelancers 
     working as ding-dong xiaojie (so called because they ring 
     hotel rooms looking for business), and even those working in 
     massage parlors and saunas are typically there on commission 
     and can leave if they want to.
       Paradoxically, it is the countries with the most 
     straightlaced and sexually conservative societies, such as 
     India, Pakistan, and Iran, that have disproportionately large 
     numbers of forced prostitutes. Since young men in those 
     societies rarely sleep with their girlfriends, it has become 
     acceptable for them to relieve their sexual frustrations with 
     prostitutes.
       The implicit social contract is that upper-class girls will 
     keep their virtue, while young men will find satisfaction in 
     the brothels. And the brothels will be staffed with slave 
     girls trafficked from Nepal or Bangladesh or poor Indian 
     villages. As long as the girls are uneducated, low-caste 
     peasants like Meena, society will look the other way--just as 
     many antebellum Americans turned away from the horrors of 
     slavery because the people being lashed looked different from 
     them.
       In Meena's brothel, no one used condoms. Meena is healthy 
     for now, but she has never had an AIDS test. (While HIV 
     prevalence is low in India, prostitutes are at particular 
     risk because of their large number of customers.) Because 
     Meena didn't use condoms, she became pregnant, and this 
     filled her with despair.
       ``I used to think that I never wanted to be a mother, 
     because my life had been wasted, and I didn't want to waste 
     another life,'' Meena said. But Ainul's brothel, like many in 
     India, welcomed the pregnancy as a chance to breed a new 
     generation of victims. Girls are raised to be prostitutes, 
     and boys become servants to do the laundry and cooking.
       In the brothel, without medical help, Meena gave birth to a 
     baby girl, whom she named Naina. But soon afterward, Ainul 
     took the baby away from Meena, partly to stop her from 
     breast-feeding--customers dislike prostitutes who are 
     lactating--and partly to keep the baby as a hostage to ensure 
     that Meena would not try to flee.
       ``We will not let Naina stay with you,'' Ainul told her. 
     ``You are a prostitute, and you have no honor. So you might 
     run away.'' Later a son, Vivek, followed, and the owners also 
     took him away. So both of Meena's children were raised by 
     others in the brothel, mostly in sections of the compound 
     where she was not allowed to go.
       ``They held my children captive, so they thought I would 
     never try to escape,'' she said. To some degree, this 
     strategy worked. Meena once helped thirteen of the girls 
     escape, but didn't flee herself because she couldn't bear to 
     leave her children. The penalty for staying behind was a 
     brutal beating for complicity in the escape.
       Ainul had herself been a prostitute when she was young, so 
     she was unsympathetic to the younger girls. ``If my own 
     daughters can be prostituted, then you can be, too,'' Ainul 
     would tell the girls. And it was true that she had 
     prostituted her own two daughters. (``They had to be beaten 
     up to agree to it,'' Meena explained. ``No one wants to go 
     into this.'')

  That is a good place to stop and talk a little about what we are 
doing on the floor. No one wants to go into this. That is what these 
bills are about. These bills are about having a victims fund. These 
bills are about creating a safe harbor so we don't treat these young 
victims as criminals, like we have in Minnesota with the safe harbor 
law. And it is about trying to get something done.
  We know an extraneous provision is on this bill and that we need to 
resolve this one way or another. As I have noted, we have been able to 
resolve this in the past, and I welcome my colleagues to come and speak 
about this issue. I hope this blame game is behind us, and that we 
won't be making accusations but instead we will actually work on 
getting this bill done. Because lost in all of this is the fact this 
isn't just some game people can play. These are actual young girls.
  As I said, why is this international prostitution relevant to what we 
are talking about? It is relevant because our country can actually 
become a leader in this area. We can be a leader. We can actually do 
something in America to show we are taking this on. Our bill, the safe 
harbor bill I am leading, which we hope will be the first amendment to 
this bill, sets up a national sex trafficking strategy. We don't have 
one right now.
  As a former prosecutor, I know when we work between Federal and State 
and local authorities, and we take on these cases and do it in a smart 
way, we actually are able to get things done. We did it with the 
Violence Against Women Act, when everyone thought that was just a 
situation where you can beat your wife and no one is going to notice. 
It happened behind closed doors. But we took it on as a country and we 
changed things and changed things for women in this country. Now we can 
do this with prostitution.
  We can no longer see this as a victimless crime. There is a victim. 
The victim is 12 years old. She is someone in your State right now. So 
that is why these bills are so serious and why we need to continue to 
get them done. I am going to keep talking about this issue because I 
think at some point we have to realize why we are here and what we are 
talking about, instead of using it as a political football.
  So the story goes on:

       Meena estimates that in the dozen years she was in the 
     brothel, she was beaten on average five days a week. Most 
     girls were quickly broken and cowed, but Meena never quite 
     gave in. Her distinguishing characteristic is obstinacy. She 
     can be dogged and mulish, and that is one reason the 
     villagers find her so unpleasant. She breaches the pattern of 
     femininity in rural India by talking back--and fighting back.
       The police seemed unlikely saviors to girls in the brothels 
     because police officers regularly visited the brothels and 
     were serviced free. But Meena was so desperate that she once 
     slipped out and went to the police station to demand help.
       ``I was forced into prostitution by a brothel in town,'' 
     Meena told the astonished officer at the police station. 
     ``The pimps beat me up, and they're holding my children 
     hostage.'' Other policemen came out to see this unusual 
     sight, and they mocked her and told her to go back.
       ``You have great audacity to come here!'' one policeman 
     scolded her. In the end, the police sent her back after 
     extracting a promise from the brothel not to beat her. The

[[Page 3747]]

     brothel owners did not immediately punish her. But a friendly 
     neighbor warned Meena that the brothel owners had decided to 
     murder her. That doesn't happen often in red-light districts, 
     any more than farmers kill producing assets such as good milk 
     cows, but from time to time a prostitute becomes so 
     nettlesome that the owners kill her as a warning to the other 
     girls.
       Fearing for her life, Meena abandoned her children and fled 
     the brothel. She traveled several hours by train to 
     Forbesgunge. Someone there told one of Ainul's sons, Manooj, 
     of her whereabouts, and he soon arrived to beat up Meena. 
     Manooj didn't want her causing trouble in his brothel again, 
     so he told her that she could live on her own in Forbesgunge 
     and prostitute herself, but she would have to give him the 
     money. Not knowing how she could survive otherwise, Meena 
     agreed.
       Whenever Manooj returned to Forbesgunge to collect money, 
     he was dissatisfied with the amount Meena gave him and beat 
     her. Once Manooj threw Meena to the ground and was beating 
     her furiously with a belt when a respectful local man 
     intervened.
       ``You're already pimping her, you're already taking her 
     lifeblood,'' remonstrated her saviour, a pharmacist named 
     Kuduz. ``Why beat her to death as well?''
       It wasn't the same as leaping on Manooj to pull him off, 
     but for a woman like Meena, who was scorned by society, it 
     was startling to have anyone speak up for her.

  To have anyone speak up for her. That is what I hope we are going to 
be doing in this Chamber in the next few days, that we are going to 
speak up for these victims and show that we want to actually get 
something done and that they have value outside of being a political 
football.

       Manooj backed off, and Kuduz helped her up. Meena and Kuduz 
     lived near each other in Forbesgunge, and the incident 
     created a bond between them. Soon Kuduz and Meena were 
     chatting regularly, and then he offered to marry her. 
     Thrilled, she accepted.
       Manooj was furious when he heard about the marriage, and he 
     offered Kuduz 100,000 rupees ($2,500) to give Meena up--a sum 
     that perhaps reflected his concern that she might use her new 
     respectability as a married woman to cause trouble for the 
     brothel. Kuduz wasn't interested in a deal.
       ``Even if you offered me two hundred fifty thousand rupees, 
     I will not give her up,'' Kuduz said. ``Love has no price.''
       After they were married, Meena bore two daughters with 
     Kuduz, and she went back to her native village to look for 
     her parents. Her mother had died--neighbors said she had 
     cried constantly after Meena disappeared, then had gone mad--
     but her father was stunned and thrilled to see his daughter 
     resurrected.
       Life was clearly better, but Meena couldn't forget her 
     first two children left behind in the brothel. So she began 
     making journeys back--five hours by bus--to Ainul Bibi's 
     brothel. There she would stand outside and plead for Naina 
     and Vivek.
       ``As many times as I could, I would go back to fight for my 
     children,'' she remembered. ``I knew they would not let me 
     take my children. I knew they would beat me up. But I thought 
     I had to keep trying.''
       It didn't work. Ainul and Manooj didn't let Meena in the 
     brothel; they whipped her and drove her away. The police 
     wouldn't listen to her. The brothel owners not only 
     threatened to kill her, they also threatened to kidnap her 
     two young daughters with Kuduz and sell them to a brothel. 
     Once a couple of gangsters showed up at Meena's house in 
     Forbesgunge to steal the two little girls, but Kuduz grabbed 
     a knife and warned: ``If you even try to steal them, I'll cut 
     you into pieces.''
       Meena was terrified for her two younger girls, but she 
     couldn't forget Naina. She knew that Naina was approaching 
     puberty and would soon be on the market. But what could she 
     do?

  So these stories are pretty raw, and they are stories we usually 
don't tell on the floor of the United States Senate. But I think we 
need to, because maybe it is the only way people will remember why we 
are here and what we are supposed to be doing right now, which is to 
get these bills done and then hopefully confirm an Attorney General of 
the United States, which is something else we need to do that seems 
completely unrelated to these sex trafficking stories of these girls, 
except for one reason, and that is that we would want to have an 
attorney general in place so they can enforce the law.
  Some of these cases are actually Federal, such as the one we had in 
Minnesota involving the little girl from Rochester, or the case in 
Senator Heitkamp's State of North Dakota involving the incident of a 
sex trafficking ring in the oil patch. This is going on right now in 
this country. So what could an Attorney General do? I would ask: What 
can we do? What we can do is to get this bill done.
  Again, I welcome my colleagues to come and talk about this issue, but 
I hope when they talk about it we will actually focus on the matter at 
hand--not blame anyone anymore, not talk about the things we disagree 
on but what we agree on. And then, hopefully, that will lead to the 
discussions I know are going on to resolve this bill because we can get 
this resolved.
  Continuing to read, this is the writers talking now:

       Interviewing women like Meena over the years has led us to 
     change our own views on sex trafficking. Growing up in the 
     United States and then living in China and Japan, we thought 
     of prostitution as something women may turn to 
     opportunistically or out of economic desperation. In Hong 
     Kong, we knew an Australian prostitute who slipped Sheryl 
     into the locker room of her ``men's club'' to meet the local 
     girls, who were there because they saw a chance to enrich 
     themselves. We certainly didn't think of prostitutes as 
     slaves, forced to do what they do, for most prostitutes in 
     America, China, and Japan aren't truly enslaved.
       Yet it's hyperbole to say that millions of women and girls 
     are actually enslaved today. (The biggest difference from 
     nineteenth-century slavery is that many die of AIDS by their 
     late twenties.) The term that is usually used for this 
     phenomenon, ``sex trafficking,'' is a misnomer. The problem 
     isn't sex, nor is it prostitution as such. In many 
     countries--China, Brazil, and most of sub-Saharan Africa--
     prostitution is widespread but mostly voluntary (in the sense 
     it is driven by economic pressure rather than physical 
     compulsion). In those places, brothels do not lock up women, 
     and many women work on their own without pimps or brothels. 
     Nor is the problem exactly ``trafficking'' since forced 
     prostitution doesn't always depend on a girl's being 
     transported over a great distance by a middleman.

  The story I told, by the way, of the girl in Rochester, she just went 
about an hour-and-a-half drive. So this idea the trafficking is just 
about going from one nation to another or being in the hold of a boat 
or something like that is not necessarily always the case. So we use 
the words sex trafficking because people have to understand this is 
more than just one pimp and one prostitute, that these are usually 
rings and these girls are usually brought someplace where they do not 
want to be. But it doesn't necessarily mean they are brought long 
distances.
  So when we talk about the bills on the floor, let's remember that, 
and I think this is a good reminder from this book.
  And, by the way, if I ever mispronounce names or words, my apology to 
the authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. I have to say it is 
kind of small print, and I am trying my best. I know the Presiding 
Officer has a good command of English and will help me out or correct 
me if I make a mistake.

       The horror of sex trafficking can more properly be labeled 
     slavery.
       The total number of modern slaves is difficult to estimate. 
     The International Labour Organization, a UN agency, estimates 
     that at any one time there are 12.3 million people engaged in 
     forced labor of all kinds, not just sexual servitude. A UN 
     report estimated that 1 million children in Asia alone are 
     held in conditions indistinguishable from slavery. The 
     Lancet, a prominent medical journal in Britain, calculated 
     that ``1 million children are forced into prostitution every 
     year and the total number of prostituted children could be as 
     high as 10 million.''
       Antitrafficking campaigners tend to use higher numbers, 
     such as 27 million modern slaves. That figure originated in 
     research by Kevin Bales, who runs a fine organization called 
     Free the Slaves. Numbers are difficult to calculate in part 
     because sex workers can't be divided neatly into categories 
     of those working voluntarily and those working involuntarily. 
     Some commentators look at prostitutes and see only sex 
     slaves; others see only entrepreneurs. But in reality there 
     are some in each category and many other women who inhabit a 
     gray zone between freedom and slavery.

  I will note this number--I have always tried to get the right number 
of how many victims we are talking about--but as I noted at the 
beginning of my remarks this morning, the 27 million modern slaves 
includes victims of not just sex trafficking but also labor 
trafficking.
  Back to the book.

       An essential part of the brothel business model is to break 
     the spirit of girls through humiliation, rape, threats and 
     violence. We met a 15-year-old Thai girl whose initiation 
     consisted of being forced to eat dog droppings so as to 
     shatter her self-esteem. Once a girl is broken and terrified, 
     all hope of escape squeezed out of her, force may no longer

[[Page 3748]]

     be necessary to control her. She may smile and laugh at 
     passersby, and try to grab them and tug them into the 
     brothel. Many a foreigner would assume that she is there 
     voluntarily, but in that situation complying with the will of 
     the brothel owner does not signify consent.
       Our own estimate is that there are 3 million women and 
     girls (and a very small number of boys) worldwide who can be 
     fairly termed enslaved in the sex trade. That is a 
     conservative estimate that does not include many others who 
     are manipulated and intimidated into prostitution. Nor does 
     it include millions more who are under eighteen and cannot 
     meaningfully consent to work in brothels. We are talking 
     about 3 million people who in effect are the property of 
     another person and in many cases could be killed by their 
     owner with impunity.
       Technically, trafficking is often defined as taking someone 
     (by force or deception) across an international border. The 
     U.S. State Department has estimated that between 600,000 and 
     800,000 people are trafficked across international borders 
     each year, 80 percent of them women and girls, mostly for 
     sexual exploitation. Since Meena didn't cross a border, she 
     wasn't trafficked in the traditional sense. That's also true 
     of most people who are enslaved in brothels. As the U.S. 
     State Department notes, its estimate doesn't include 
     ``millions of victims around the world who are trafficked 
     within their own national borders.''

  The bills that we have--the one before us and my bill, the safe 
harbor bill, which we would like to see as the first amendment, which 
passed the Judiciary Committee with 20 votes on a bipartisan basis--
these bills are focused on sex trafficking within our own borders, 
although some of the victims will be brought in from other countries. 
This book, ``Half the Sky,'' is so good because it really is about what 
is going on all around the world and all these victims around the 
world. Every country has their own problems. Despite all of the 
political machinations and extraneous provisions and other things, what 
we are trying to get done today is to do something real to help the 
victims of sex trafficking through the fund Senator Cornyn has in his 
bill and then in my safe harbor bill, which is also a strong bipartisan 
bill, to make it clear there is a good model we can use across the 
country that has been used in 15 States and others, and one dozen more 
are working on them, where Minnesota has been one of the States leading 
the way to view these girls as victims and not as criminals, when the 
average age is 12 years old, not even old enough to go to a high school 
prom, not even old enough to drive the car.
  Again, I welcome my colleagues to come down and talk about this 
issue. I am just going to keep filling in reading this book when no one 
is on the floor. I only hope that when we talk about this bill and this 
issue, we do it with some respect for the victims of these crimes and 
the respect they deserve.

       Technically, trafficking is often defined as taking someone 
     (by force or deception) across an international border. The 
     U.S. State Department has estimated that between 600,000 and 
     800,000 people are trafficked across international borders 
     each year, 80 percent of them women and girls, mostly for 
     sexual exploitation. Since Meena didn't cross a border, she 
     wasn't trafficked in the traditional sense. That's also true 
     of most people who are enslaved in brothels. As the U.S. 
     State Department notes, its estimate doesn't include 
     ``millions of victims around the world who are trafficked 
     within their own national borders.''

  Again, as I have noted, 83 percent of the victims in the United 
States are from the United States, and I don't think that is what we 
think of when we first think about sex trafficking, but those are 
facts.

       In contrast, in the peak decade of the transatlantic slave 
     trade, the 1780s, an average of just under eighty thousand 
     slaves were shipped annually across the Atlantic from Africa 
     to the New World. The average then dropped to a bit more than 
     fifty thousand between 1811 and 1850. In other words, far 
     more women and girls are shipped into brothels each year in 
     the early twenty-first century than African slaves were 
     shipped into slave plantations each year in the eighteenth or 
     nineteenth centuries--although the overall population was of 
     course far smaller then. As the journal Foreign Affairs 
     observed: ``Whatever the exact number is, it seems almost 
     certain that the modern global slave trade is larger in 
     absolute terms than the Atlantic slave trade in the 
     eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was.''
       As on slave plantations two centuries ago, there are few 
     practical restraints on slave owners. In 1791, North Carolina 
     decreed that killing a slave amounted to ``murder,'' and 
     Georgia later established that killing or maiming a slave was 
     legally the same as killing or maiming a white person. But 
     those doctrines existed more on paper than on plantations, 
     just as Pakistani laws exist in the statute books but don't 
     impede brothel owners who choose to eliminate troublesome 
     girls.
       While there has been progress in addressing many 
     humanitarian issues in the last few decades, sex slavery has 
     actually worsened. One reason for that is the collapse of 
     Communism in Eastern Europe and Indochina. In Romania and 
     other countries, the immediate result was economic distress, 
     and everywhere criminal gangs arose and filled the power 
     vacuum. Capitalism created new markets for rice and potatoes, 
     but also for female flesh.
       A second reason for the growth of trafficking is 
     globalization. A generation ago, people stayed at home; now 
     it is easier and cheaper to set out for the city or a distant 
     country. A Nigerian girl whose mother never left her tribal 
     area may now find herself in a brothel in Italy. In rural 
     Moldolva, it is possible to drive from village to village and 
     not find a female between the ages of sixteen and thirty.

  I believe this is one of the countries that Senator McCain visited, 
when I talked to him after he came back last Easter, where he simply 
didn't see the girls. He asked: Where are the girls? And they said: 
Well, the girls--many of them have been sold into sex. So these are 
things that are happening right now in this world and in our own 
country.

       A third reason for the worsening situation is AIDS. Being 
     sold to a brothel was always a hideous fate, but not usually 
     a death sentence. Now it often is. And because of the fear of 
     AIDS, customers prefer younger girls whom they believe are 
     less likely to be infected. In both Asia and Africa, there is 
     also a legend that AIDS can be cured by sex with a virgin, 
     and that has nurtured demand for young girls kidnapped from 
     their villages.
       These factors explain our emphasis on sex slaves as opposed 
     to other kinds of forced labor. Anybody who has spent time in 
     Indian brothels and also, say, at Indian brick kilns knows 
     that it is better to be enslaved working a kiln. Kiln workers 
     most likely live together with their families, and their work 
     does not expose them to the risk of AIDS, so there's always 
     hope of escape down the road.
       Inside the brothel, Naina and Vivek were beaten, starved, 
     and abused. They were also confused about their parentage. 
     Naina grew up calling Ainul [the brothel's owner] Grandma, 
     and Ainul's son Vinod, Father. Naina sometimes was told that 
     Vinod's wife, Pinky, was her mother; at other times she was 
     told her mother had died and that Pinky was her stepmother. 
     But when Naina asked to go to school, Vinod refused and 
     described the relationship in blunter terms.
       ``You must obey me,'' he told Naina, ``because I am your 
     owner.''
       The neighbors tried to advise the children. ``People used 
     to say that they could not be my real parents, because they 
     tortured me so much,'' Naina recalled. Occasionally, the 
     children heard or even saw Meena coming to the door and 
     calling out to them. Once Meena saw Naina and told her, ``I 
     am your mother.''
       ``No,'' Naina replied. ``Pinky is my mother.''
       Vivek remembers Meena's visits as well. ``I used to see her 
     being beaten up and driven away,'' he says. ``They told me 
     that my mother was dead, but the neighbors told me that she 
     was my mother after all, and I saw her coming back to try to 
     fight for me.''
       Naina and Vivek never went to a day of school, never saw a 
     doctor, and were rarely allowed out. They were assigned 
     chores such as sweeping floors and washing clothes, and they 
     had only rags to wear--and no shoes, for that might encourage 
     them to run away. Then, when Naina was twelve, she was 
     paraded before an older man in a way that left her feeling 
     uncomfortable. ``When I asked `Mother' about the man,'' Naina 
     recalled, ``she beat me up and sent me to bed without 
     dinner.''
       A couple of days later, ``Mother'' told Naina to bathe and 
     took her to the market, where she bought her nice clothes and 
     a nose ring. ``When I asked her why she was buying me all 
     these things, she started scolding me. She told me that I had 
     to listen to everything the man says. She also told me, `Your 
     father has taken money from the man for you.' I started 
     crying out loudly.''
       Pinky told Naina to wear the clothes, but the girl threw 
     them away, crying inconsolably. Vivek was only eleven, a 
     short boy with a meek manner. But he had inherited his 
     mother's incomprehension of surrender. So he pleaded with his 
     ``parents'' and his ``grandma'' to let his sister go, or to 
     find a husband for her. Each appeal brought him only another 
     beating--administered with scorn. ``You don't earn any 
     income,'' ``Father'' told him mockingly, ``so how do you 
     think you can look after your sister?''
       Yet Vivek found the courage to confront his tormenters 
     again and again, begging for his sister's freedom. In a town 
     where police officers, government officials, Hindu priests, 
     and respectable middle-class citizens all

[[Page 3749]]

     averted their eyes from forced prostitution, the only audible 
     voice of conscience belonged to an eleven-year-old boy who 
     was battered each time he spoke up. His outspokenness gained 
     him nothing, though. Vinod and Pinky locked him up, forced 
     Naina into the new clothes, and the girl's career as a 
     prostitute began.

  So I think that is a pretty good place to break for a minute as we 
talk about ``the only audible voice of conscience belonged to an 
eleven-year-old boy.'' I think we have an opportunity in the Senate to 
be an audible voice of conscience and to move on this bill.
  When I came to the floor today, my job was to just manage the bill 
for 4 hours; then I just decided, after being somewhat disgusted by all 
of the anger that I have heard in this Chamber, that maybe I would just 
start reading from this book. I had no plan to do it. I happened to 
have it with me because I have used it when I have given speeches. This 
isn't an official filibuster, as I guess we have been asked. I am just 
going to keep reading from the book. When my colleagues want to come 
down, I welcome them. But I only ask them one thing--if maybe they 
could just focus on the issue at hand and stop all of this vengeance 
and anger, and then maybe we will have an opportunity, if we stop 
throwing darts, to get this done--and then also to confirm the next 
Attorney General of the United States, which is completely unrelated to 
this.
  So let me continue on with this story, as we have an 11-year-old boy 
in the story whose voice was the only voice of conscience.

       ``My `mother' was telling me not to get scared, as he is a 
     nice man,'' Naina remembered. ``Then they locked me inside 
     the room with the man. The man told me to lock the room from 
     the inside. I slapped him. . . . Then that man forced me. He 
     raped me.''
       Once a customer gave Naina a tip, and she secretly passed 
     on the money to Vivek. They thought that perhaps Vivek could 
     use a phone, a technology that they had no experience with, 
     to track down the mysterious woman who claimed to be their 
     real mother and seek help from her. But when Vivek tried to 
     use the telephone, the brothel owners found out and both 
     children were flogged.
       Ainul thought that Vivek could be distracted with girls, 
     and so he was told to try to have sex with the prostitutes. 
     He was overwhelmed and intimidated at the thought, and when 
     he balked, Pinky beat him up. Seething and fearful of what 
     would become of his sister, Vivek decided that their only 
     hope would be for him to run away and try to find the person 
     who claimed to be their mother. Somewhere Vivek had heard 
     that the woman's name was Meena and that she lived in 
     Forbesgunge, so he fled to the train station one morning and 
     used Naina's tip to buy a ticket.
       ``I was trembling because I thought that they would come 
     after me and cut me into pieces,'' he recalled. After 
     arriving in Forbesgunge, he asked directions to the brothel 
     district. He trudged down the road to the red-light area and 
     then asked one passerby after another: Where is Meena? Where 
     does she live?
       Finally, after a long walk and many missed turns, he knew 
     he was close to her home, and he called out: Meena! Meena! A 
     woman came out of one little home--Vivek's lip quivered as he 
     recounted this part of the story--and looked him over 
     wonderingly. The boy and the woman gazed at each other for a 
     long moment, and then the woman finally said in astonishment: 
     ``Are you Vivek?''
       The reunion was sublime. It was a blessed few weeks of 
     giddy, unadulterated joy, the first happiness that Vivek had 
     known in his life. Meena is a warm and emotional woman, and 
     Vivek was thrilled to feel a mother's love for the first 
     time. Yet now that Meena had news about Naina, her doggedness 
     came to the surface again: She was determined to recover her 
     daughter.
       ``I gave birth to her, and so I can never forget her,'' 
     Meena said. ``I must fight for her as long as I breathe. 
     Every day without Naina feels like a year.''
       Meena had noticed that Apne Aap Women Worldwide, an 
     organization that fights sex slavery in India, had opened an 
     office in Forbesgunge. Apne Aap is based in Kolkata, the city 
     formerly known as Calcutta, but its founder--a determined 
     former journalist named Ruchira Gupta--grew up partly in 
     Forbesgunge. Other aid groups are reluctant to work in rural 
     Bihar because of the widespread criminality, but Ruchira knew 
     the area and thought it was worth the risk to open a branch 
     office. One of the first people to drop in was Meena. 
     ``Please, please,'' Meena begged Ruchira, ``help me get my 
     daughter back!''
       There had never been a police raid on a brothel in Bihar 
     State, as far as anyone knew, but Ruchira decided that this 
     could be the first. While Ainul Bibi's brothel had warm ties 
     with the local police, Ruchira had strong connections with 
     national police officials. And Ruchira can be every bit as 
     intimidating as any brothel owner.
       So Apne Aap harangued the local police into raiding the 
     brothel to rescue Naina. The police burst in, found Naina, 
     and took her to the police station. But the girl had been so 
     drugged and broken that at the station she looked at Meena 
     and declared numbly: ``I'm not your daughter.'' Meena was 
     shattered.
       Naina explained later that she had felt alone and 
     terrified, partly because Ainul Bibi had told her that Vivek 
     had died. But after an hour in the police station, Naina 
     began to realize that maybe she could escape the brothel, and 
     she finally whispered, ``Yes, you're my mother.''
       So Apne Aap whisked Naina off to a hospital in Kolkata, 
     where she was treated for severe injuries and a morphine 
     addiction. The brothel had drugged Naina constantly to render 
     her compliant, and the morphine withdrawal was brutal to 
     watch. In Forbesgunge, life became more difficult and 
     dangerous for Meena and her family. Some of the brothel 
     owners there are related to Ainul and Manooj, and they were 
     furious at Meena. Even those in the Nutt community who didn't 
     like prostitution disapproved of the police raid, and so the 
     townspeople shunned Apne Aap's school and shelter. Meena and 
     her children were stigmatized, and a young man working with 
     Apne Aap was stabbed. Threats were made against Meena's two 
     daughters with Kuduz. Yet Meena was serene as she walked 
     about the streets. She laughed at the idea that she should 
     feel cowed.
       ``They think that good is bad,'' she scoffed, speaking of 
     the local villagers. ``They may not speak to me, but I know 
     what is right and I will stick to it. I will never accept 
     prostitution of myself or my children as long as I breathe.'' 
     Meena is working as a community organizer in Forbesgunge, 
     trying to discourage parents from prostituting their 
     daughters and urging them to educate their sons and daughters 
     alike. Over time the resentment against her has diminished a 
     bit, but she is still seen as pushy and unfeminine.
       Apne Aap later started a boarding school in Bihar, partly 
     with donations from American supporters, and Meena's children 
     were placed there. The school has a guard and is a much safer 
     place for them. Naina now studies at that boarding school and 
     hopes to become a teacher, and in particular to help 
     disadvantaged children.
       One afternoon, Meena was singing to her two young 
     daughters, teaching them a song.

  This is how it went:

     India will not be free,
     Until its women are free.
     What about the girls in this country?
     If girls are insulted and abused and enslaved in this 
           country,
     Put your hand on your heart and ask,
     Is this country truly independent?

  The next part of the chapter: ``Fighting Slavery from Seattle.'' This 
is a book, ``Half the Sky,'' by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It 
is about sex trafficking, and I am reading it, one, because it is a 
really good book and so people understand the issue, two, so people 
will refocus on why we have these bills on the floor and work together. 
We all know some potential ways to resolve this on both sides of the 
aisle so we can pass this bill and resolve this Hyde amendment 
provision which should not be on this bill. But there are ways to 
resolve this, and we know what they are, and then, also, hopefully, 
pass my safe harbor bill which was the bill that in addition to Senator 
Cornyn's bill passed through our Committee on the Judiciary 
unanimously. Every single person voted for it. It is slated to be the 
first amendment vote on this bill, and it establishes safe harbor 
incentives so that other States will do what Minnesota and about 15 
States have done, which is not to consider these victims as criminals 
but to consider them as victims. Then not only do we help these girls 
so they have a chance of turning their lives around but also so that we 
actually make better criminal cases.
  I know as a former prosecutor, running an office of 400 people for 8 
years--seeing some of these major cases come in our doors--the best way 
to make these cases, if you have victims who feel that they are 
protected, who feel they have another life they can lead, who feel they 
can do something with their lives between going back to their pimp and 
going back to the person who has beaten them up and gotten them hooked 
on drugs, is by doing something like that. So those are two worthy 
bills that are on the floor.
  Again, my colleagues are welcome to come down here and join me. I 
think it would be nice for a change if people focused on the issue at 
hand instead of a partisan fight that has been going on, because I 
think this institution is better than what we have seen in the last 
week.

[[Page 3750]]

  The next part of the chapter: ``Fighting Slavery from Seattle.''

       People always ask how they can help. Given concerns about 
     corruption, waste, and mismanagement, how can one actually 
     help women like Meena and defeat modern slavery? Is there 
     anything an ordinary person can do?

  That is a good question. I finally decided to start reading this book 
because I was sick of what was going on here. I think ordinary people 
around the country can do something about sex slavery by supporting 
strong laws and making sure Congress gets its job done but also doing 
work on their local and State level.
  The authors say:

       A starting point is to be brutally realistic about the 
     complexities of achieving change. To be blunt, humanitarians 
     sometimes exaggerate and oversell, eliding pitfalls. They 
     sometimes torture frail data until it yields the demanded 
     ``proof'' of success. Partly this is because the causes are 
     worthy and inspiring; those who study education for girls, 
     for example, naturally believe in it. As we'll see, the 
     result is that the research isn't often conducted with the 
     same rigor as is found in, say, examinations of the 
     effectiveness of toothpaste. Aid groups are also reluctant to 
     acknowledge mistakes, partly because frank discussion of 
     blunders is an impediment in soliciting contributions.

  The reality is that past efforts to assist girls have sometimes 
backfired. In 1993, Senator Tom Harkin wanted to help Bangladeshi girls 
laboring in sweatshops, so he introduced legislation that would ban 
imports made by workers under the age of fourteen. Bangladeshi 
factories promptly fired tens of thousands of young girls, and many of 
them ended up in brothels and are presumably now dead of AIDS.
  Again, I am reading from the book ``Half the Sky,'' by Nicholas 
Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, which is a great book about sex trafficking 
in order to refocus this Chamber on what we should be doing, which is 
getting these bills done and coming up with a way to resolve timeworn 
disputes which we somehow have been able do with other bills.
  I am trying to make the case here that these girls, as reflected in 
some of these stories, are just as important as some of the other work 
that we do in the Senate and deserve our greatest efforts.

       Yet many forms of assistance--particularly in health and 
     education--have an excellent record. Consider the work of 
     Frank Grijalva, the principal of the Overlake School in 
     Redmond, Washington, a fine private school with 450 students 
     in grades five through twelve. Annual tuition hovers around 
     $22,000, and most of the kids are raised in a sheltered 
     upper-middle class environment. Grijalva was looking for a 
     way to teach his students about how the other half lives.
       ``It became clear that we, as a very privileged community, 
     needed to be a bigger, more positive force in the world,'' 
     Grijalva recalled. Frank heard about Bernard Krisher, a 
     former Newsweek correspondent who was so appalled by poverty 
     in Cambodia that he formed an aid group, American Assistance 
     for Cambodia. Rescuing girls from brothels is important, 
     Krisher believes, but the best way to save them is to prevent 
     them from being trafficked in the first place--which means 
     keeping them in school. So American Assistance for Cambodia 
     focuses on educating rural children, especially girls. Bernie 
     Krisher's signature program is the Rural School Project. For 
     $13,000, a donor can establish a school in a Cambodian 
     village. The donation is matched by funds from the World Bank 
     and again by the Asian Development Bank.
       Grijalva had a brainstorm. His students could sponsor a 
     school in Cambodia and use it as a way of emphasizing the 
     importance of public service. Initially the response from 
     students and parents was polite but cautious, but then the 
     attacks of 9/11 took place, and suddenly the community was 
     passionately concerned with the larger world and engaged in 
     this project. The students conducted bake sales, car washes, 
     and talent shows, and also educated themselves about 
     Cambodia's history of war and genocide. The school was built 
     in Pailin, a Cambodian town on the Thai border that is 
     notorious for cheap brothels that cater to Thai men.
       In February 2003, the school construction was completed, 
     and Grijalva led a delegation of nineteen students from 
     Overlake School to Cambodia for the opening. A cynic might 
     say that the money for the visit would have been better spent 
     on building another Cambodian school, but in fact that visit 
     was an essential field trip and a learning opportunity for 
     those American students. They lugged along boxes of school 
     supplies, but as they approached Pailin by car, they realized 
     that Cambodia's needs were greater than they ever could have 
     imagined. The dirt-and-gravel road to Pailin was so deeply 
     rutted that it was barely passable, and they saw a bulldozer 
     overturned beside a crater--it had hit a land mine.
       When the Americans reached the Cambodian school, they saw a 
     sign declaring it the OVERLAKE SCHOOL in English and Kmer 
     script. At the ribbon cutting, the Americans were welcomed by 
     a sea of excited Cambodians--led by a principal who was 
     missing a leg, a land-mine victim himself. Cambodian men then 
     had an average of only 2.6 years of education, and Cambodian 
     women averaged just 1.7 years, so a new school was 
     appreciated in a way the Americans could barely fathom.
       The school dedication--and the full week in Cambodia--left 
     an indelible impression on the American students. So Overlake 
     students and parents decided to forge an ongoing relationship 
     with its namesake in Cambodia. The Americans funded an 
     English teacher at the school and arranged for an Internet 
     connection for e-mail. They built a playground and sent 
     books. Then, in 2006, the American school decided to send 
     delegations annually, dispatching students and teachers 
     during spring vacation to teach English and arts to the 
     Cambodian pupils. And in 2007, the group decided to assist a 
     school in Ghana as well, and to send a delegation there.

  ``This project is simply the most meaningful and worthwhile 
initiative that I have undertaken in my thirty-six years in 
education,'' Frank Grijalva said. The Overlake School in Cambodia is 
indeed an extraordinary place. A bridge has washed out, so you have to 
walk across a stream to reach it, but it looks nothing like the 
dilapidated buildings that you see in much of the developing world. 
There are 270 students, ranging in age from six to fifteen. The English 
teacher is university educated and speaks good English. Most stunning 
of all, when we dropped by, the sixth graders were busy sending e-mails 
from their Yahoo accounts--to the kids at Overlake School in America.

       One of those writing an e-mail was Kun Sokkea, a thirteen-
     year-old girl who would soon be the first in her family ever 
     to graduate from elementary school. Her father had died of 
     AIDS, and her mother was sick with the same disease and 
     needed to be nursed constantly. Kun Sokkea is rail-thin, a 
     bit gangly, with long, stringy black hair. She is reserved, 
     and her shoulders sag with the burdens of poverty.
       ``My mom encourages me to stay in school, but sometimes I 
     think I should go out and earn money,'' Kun Sokkea explained. 
     ``I have no dad to support Mom, so maybe I should provide for 
     her. In one day, I could earn seventy baht, [a bit more than 
     two dollars] cutting hay or planting corn.''
       To address these financial pressures, American Assistance 
     for Cambodia started a program called Girls Be Ambitious, 
     which in effect bribes families to keep girls in school. If a 
     girl has perfect attendance in school for one month, her 
     family gets $10. A similar approach has been used very 
     effectively and cheaply to increase education for girls in 
     Mexico and other countries. Kun Sokkea's family is now 
     getting the stipend. For donors who can't afford to fund an 
     entire school, it's a way to fight trafficking at a cost of 
     $120 per year per girl. The approach helps because it is 
     typically girls like Kun Sokkea who end up trafficked. Their 
     families are desperate for money, the girls are poorly 
     educated, and a trafficker promises them a great job selling 
     fruit in a distant city.

  Kun Sokkea showed us her home, a rickety shack built on stilts--to 
guard against flooding and vermin--in a field near the school. The 
house has no electricity, and her possessions were in one small bag. 
She never has to worry about choosing what to wear: She has just one 
shirt, and no shoes other than a pair of flip-flops. Kun Sokkea has 
never been to a dentist and to a doctor only once, and she gets the 
family's drinking water from the nearby creek. That's the same creek in 
which Kun Sokkea washes the family clothes (she borrows someone else's 
shirt to wear when she has to wash her own). She shares a mattress on 
the floor with her brother, as three other family members sleep a few 
feet way. Kun Sokkea has never touched a phone, ridden in a car, or had 
a soft drink; when she was asked if she ever drank milk, she looked 
confused and said as a baby she had drunk her mother's milk.

       Yet one thing Kun Sokkea has beside her bed is a photo of 
     the American Overlake students on their campus. In the 
     evenings before she goes to sleep, she sometimes picks up the 
     photo and studies the smiling families and neat lawns and 
     modern buildings. In her own shack, with her mother sick and 
     often crying, her siblings hungry, it is a window into a 
     magical land where people have plenty to eat and get cured 
     when they fall ill. In such a place, she thinks, everybody 
     must be happy all the time.


[[Page 3751]]


  For one thing, we know that is not quite true in our country. As we 
know, we have these same crimes occurring in our country every single 
day. Every single day, we have thousands of girls who are victims of 
sex trafficking. We had it happen in Minnesota. We have had it happen 
across the country. We have it happen when some girls are brought in 
from other countries. We know it is going on every day in our own 
Nation. We have an opportunity to do something about it, to tell the 
rest of the world that this place is a place where good things get 
done. But somehow we have gotten bogged down in a political game again 
with blame going back and forth and back and forth, and I just don't 
think that is dignified for the Senate.
  While we can battle it out--and we should--on issues such as the 
budget and on issues where we don't have an agreement when it comes to 
our country's international affairs, this is an issue on which we 
actually agree, but somehow we found a way to not agree, and I think we 
need to find our way back. That is why I am going to continue to read 
from this book.
  Someone asked me if this is a filibuster. It is not a filibuster 
because obviously I don't mind if my colleagues come down. I would like 
them to come down and talk about this important topic. But I will point 
out that at least when it comes to this issue of sex trafficking, we 
can stop going back and forth on who is to blame and who knew what when 
and what people did wrong and instead just focus on resolving this 
issue and getting a bill passed and certainly not attaching it to the 
Attorney General of the United States.
  I will say that it is attached to the Attorney General in one way, 
and that is when it comes to Federal sex trafficking cases. Most of 
these cases are on the local level, county level, State level, the DA's 
office, but there are cases that are handled federally. I know from 
talking to the nominated Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, that she 
cares very much about these cases. It would be good to have her in 
place so we can start working on this national sex trafficking 
strategy. So in that way they are connected, but they certainly are not 
connected, in my mind, procedurally.
  I know some of my colleagues have addressed this. I have spoken out 
for her several times. Not everyone knows about Loretta Lynch's 
background. Loretta Lynch is someone who grew up in a neighborhood--her 
family didn't have a lot of money. Her dad was a pastor at the church.
  When she was in elementary school, she took a test and did really 
well on that test. The teacher came to her and said: You know what, we 
don't really know if that was really you who took that test or if that 
was really your score. So she took the test again, and she scored even 
higher the second time.
  When Loretta Lynch graduated from high school, she was actually the 
valedictorian. The principal of that school came up to Loretta Lynch 
and said: You know what, it is a bit controversial to have you as our 
valedictorian, so you will have to share it with a White student. That 
happened to Loretta Lynch, and she just waited it out, and that is what 
she is going to do with this Chamber. She is going wait it out, and in 
the end she will be confirmed as the next Attorney General.
  Why is this relevant? Because some of our friends on the other side 
of the aisle are attaching it to the sex trafficking issue, and I don't 
think it should be attached to the sex trafficking issue. I think we 
should get her confirmed.
  But most importantly and the reason I am here on the floor reading 
from this book is just to say, can we just stop going back and forth 
and the vengeance and get this bill done?
  From the very beginning, Senator Cornyn and I have worked on my bill, 
the safe harbor bill--which is not the bill on the floor--together. 
While I was not involved in the beginning of the drafting of his bill, 
I believe that idea of helping victims in some way with some kind of 
funding with shelters is a really good idea as well.
  I hope we can resolve the issue on his bill, the Hyde amendment 
provision, and that we can then go on to pass my bill as the amendment. 
As we know, there is significant support in the House for these bills, 
and they are very important bills.
  I will continue with the book:

       Kun Sokkea and her family are not the only beneficiaries. 
     The Americans themselves have been transformed as much as the 
     Cambodians. And that is something you see routinely: Aid 
     projects have a mixed record in helping people abroad, but a 
     superb record in inspiring and educating the donors. 
     Sometimes the lessons are confusing, as Overlake found when 
     it tried to help Kun Sokkea get to middle school after 
     graduating from elementary school. She needed transport 
     because the middle school was far away, and young men in the 
     area often harassed girls on their way to school.
       So, at the teacher's suggestion, Overlake bought Kun Sokkea 
     a bicycle, and for several months that worked very well. Then 
     an older woman, a neighbor, asked to borrow Kun Sokkea's 
     bicycle; the girl felt she couldn't say no to an older 
     person. The woman then sold the bicycle and kept the money 
     she received for it. Frank Grijalva and the American students 
     were beside themselves, but they learned an important lesson 
     about how defeating poverty is more difficult than it seems 
     at first. The Americans decided they couldn't just buy Kun 
     Sokkea another bicycle, so the girl returned to walking an 
     hour each way to school and back. Perhaps in part because of 
     the distance involved and the risks of getting to school, Kun 
     Sokkea began to miss a fair number of days. Her grades 
     suffered. In early 2009, she dropped out of school.
       America's schools rarely convey much understanding of the 
     2.7 billion people (40 percent of the world's population) who 
     today live on less than $2 a day. So while the primary 
     purpose of a new movement on behalf of women is to stop 
     slavery and honor killings, another is to expose young 
     Americans to life abroad so that they, too, can learn and 
     grow and blossom--and then continue to tackle the problems as 
     adults.
       ``After going to Cambodia, my plans for the future have 
     changed,'' said Natalie Hammerquist, a seventeen-year-old at 
     Overlake who regularly e-mails two Cambodian students. ``This 
     year I'm taking three foreign languages, and I plan on 
     picking up more in college.''
       Natalie's Cambodian girlfriend wants to be a doctor but 
     can't afford to go to university. That grates on Natalie: A 
     girl just like me has to abandon her dreams because they're 
     unaffordable. Now Natalie plans on a career empowering young 
     people around the world: ``All anyone should do is to use 
     their gifts in what way they can, and this is how I can use 
     mine. That is the weight of how valuable seeing Cambodia was 
     for me.''

  This is now chapter 2 of Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's book 
``Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women 
Worldwide.'' And I noted that really most of the book is about sex 
trafficking and prostitution and why this is such a major problem 
worldwide.
  Look at what happened that night when those girls were doing nothing 
but learning at a school and Boko Haram came in and broke into that 
school and took those girls away. Their parents had nothing but 
motorcycles and bicycles and bows and arrows to try to chase them. They 
were never able to get their daughters back, and now Boko Haram said 
they sold many of those children into sex slavery.
  This should not be happening, but it is going on right now--and not 
just internationally. It is going on everywhere in this country, and 
that is why it is important. It is important not just for the victims 
in America, it is also important because of the victims 
internationally. We have an opportunity in this country to actually 
stand up and say: We want to be a leader on this internationally. We 
are going to cast this dysfunction aside and actually get this done and 
show the world we can be a leader when it comes to elevating girls and 
young women, when it comes to holding up half the sky.
  Chapter 2, ``Prohibition and Prostitution.'' It starts with a quote 
by Abraham Lincoln:

       Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a 
     good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the 
     good of it, by being a slave himself.
       After visiting Meena Hasina and Ruchira Gupta in Bihar, 
     Nick crossed from India into Nepal at a border village with 
     stalls selling clothing, snacks, and more sinister wares. 
     That border crossing is the one through which thousands of 
     Nepali girls are trafficked into India on their way to the 
     brothels of Kolkata. There they are valued for their light 
     skin, good looks, docility, and inability to speak the local 
     language. As Nick filled out some required paperwork at the 
     border post, Nepalis streamed into India, without filling out 
     a form.

[[Page 3752]]

       While sitting in the border shack, Nick began talking to 
     one Indian officer who spoke excellent English. The man said 
     he had been dispatched by the intelligence bureau to monitor 
     the border.
       ``So what exactly are you monitoring?'' Nick asked.
       ``We're looking for terrorists, or terror supplies,'' said 
     the man, who wasn't monitoring anything very closely, since 
     one truck after another was driving past. ``After 9/11, we've 
     tightened things up here. And we're also looking for smuggled 
     or pirated goods. If we find them, we will confiscate them.''
       ``What about trafficked girls?'' Nick asked. ``Are you 
     keeping an eye out for them? There must be a lot.''
       ``Oh, a lot. But we don't worry about them. There's nothing 
     that we can do about them.''
       ``Well, you could arrest the traffickers. Isn't trafficking 
     girls as important as pirating DVDs?''
       The intelligence officer laughed genially and threw up his 
     hands. ``Prostitution is inevitable.'' He chuckled. ``There 
     has always been prostitution in every country. And what's a 
     young man going to do from the time he turns eighteen until 
     he gets married at thirty?''
       ``Well, is the best solution really to kidnap Nepali girls 
     and imprison them in Indian brothels?''
       The officer shrugged, unperturbed. ``These girls are 
     sacrificed so we can have harmony in society. So that good 
     girls can be safe.''

  It is unfortunate. I hope that is not what we are going to be saying 
in this body--from the Senate to the rest of the world and to 
trafficked girls and to those groups who are advocating so hard, 
especially over the last 2 years, in trying to get this done. I hope we 
will not say: It is unfortunate. We were not able to resolve this. 
These are major fights, and this person did this, and this person knew 
about this, and this person didn't know about that.
  That is what has been going on over this past week, and we are better 
than that. People keep backstabbing and going after each other, but 
personally I have had it. So if anyone wants to join me here--I know 
the women in the Senate have always worked together--and at least talk 
about this issue instead of simply fighting with each other, I think we 
would really improve our chances of getting it done.

       ``But many of the Nepali girls being trafficked are good 
     girls, too.''
       ``Oh, yes, but those are peasant girls. They can't even 
     read. They're from the countryside. The good Indian middle-
     class girls are safe.''
       Nick, who had been gritting his teeth, offered an explosive 
     suggestion: ``I've got it! You know, in the United States we 
     have a lot of problems with harmony in society. So we should 
     start kidnapping Indian middle-class girls and forcing them 
     to work in brothels in the United States! Then young American 
     men could have fun, too, don't you think? That would improve 
     our harmony in society!''
       There was an ominous silence, but finally the police 
     officer roared with laughter.
       ``You are joking!'' the officer said beaming. ``That's very 
     funny!''
       Nick gave up.
       People get away with enslaving village girls for the same 
     reason that people got away with enslaving blacks 200 years 
     ago: The victims are perceived as discounted humans. India 
     had delegated an intelligence officer to look for pirated 
     goods because it knew that the United States cares about 
     intellectual property. When India feels that the West cares 
     as much about slavery as it does about pirated DVDs, it will 
     dispatch people to the borders to stop traffickers.
       The tools to crush modern slavery exist, but the political 
     will is lacking. That must be the starting point of any 
     abolitionist movement. We're not arguing that Westerners 
     should take up this cause because it is the fault of the 
     West; Western men do not play a central role in prostitution 
     in most poor countries. True, American and European sex 
     tourists are part of the problem in Thailand, the 
     Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Belize, but they are still only a 
     small percentage of the johns. The vast majority are local 
     men. Moreover, Western men usually go with girls who are more 
     or less voluntary prostitutes, because they want to take the 
     girls back to their hotel rooms, while forced prostitutes are 
     not normally allowed out of the brothels. So this is not a 
     case where we in the West have a responsibility to lead 
     because we are the source of the problem. Rather, we single 
     out the West because even though we are peripheral to the 
     slavery, our action is necessary to overcome a horrific evil.
       One reason the modern abolitionist movement has not been 
     more effective is the divisive politics of prostitution. In 
     the 1990s, the American left and right collaborated and 
     achieved the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000, 
     which was a milestone in raising awareness of international 
     trafficking in the global agenda. The anti-trafficking 
     movement then was unusually bipartisan, strongly backed by 
     some liberal Democrats, such as the late senator Paul 
     Wellstone, and by some conservative Republicans, such as 
     Senator Sam Brownback.

  I do want to pause from this book for a second to note that when I 
was at the McCain Institute out in Arizona, Cindy McCain and Heidi 
Heitkamp and I spoke about this issue to all of those gathered. At the 
end, a guy came up to me and said that he was with the State Department 
under a Republican administration, and he talked to me about how when 
Paul Wellstone died, they put forward some kind of a scholarship in his 
honor for students who wanted to work in the area of combating sex 
trafficking and trying to eliminate sex trafficking.
  It was at that moment last spring that I actually found out that Paul 
Wellstone, the Senator from Minnesota, whom we miss so dearly, who died 
in that tragic plane crash, had taken on this issue. He had taken on so 
many other issues, speaking for the voiceless, from mental health to 
domestic violence, that I did not know--and I think this shows how 
sometimes this issue gets second shrift--that he was such a hero when 
it came to sex trafficking.
  I think part of that was Paul always believed that there were a lot 
of causes around this building that had people advocating for them, 
that keep people busy at meetings all day or that they get called up 
for that are so important, but, in fact, those who can't afford that 
kind of help--the victims of domestic violence or those with mental 
illness or victims of sex trafficking--they don't have a lot of 
lobbyists coming over here to meet with people and they need someone to 
stand up for them, and they should not be forgotten or dismissed or 
marginalized in becoming a political football, that maybe they need 
someone advocating on their behalf.
  The other thing about Paul is he always embraced that immigrant 
experience. He believed that no matter where one comes from in this 
country, or no matter what one's roots were, they should be able to 
rise up. He also believed that everyone should be treated with dignity.
  I will never forget when I first came to the Senate, Darrell, the 
train driver who recently retired, came up to me and I told him I am a 
Senator from Minnesota, and all he said was, ``Paul Wellstone,'' 
because he remembered him. Whether it was the cops at the front desk or 
the secretaries, they remember Paul. So it is no surprise that Paul 
Wellstone, along with conservative Republican Sam Brownback, actually 
took this issue on.
  In this book, ``Half the Sky,'' Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn 
continue talking about who worked on this when people were actually 
working together. They say:

       Hillary Rodham Clinton was also a leader on this issue, and 
     no one has been a greater champion than Carolyn Maloney, a 
     Democratic Congresswoman from New York.

  In fact, Congresswoman Maloney, in conjunction with Congressman Poe, 
a Republican Congressman, are sponsoring a bill that is not exactly the 
same as Senator Cornyn's bill, but similar. They are also cosponsors of 
the bill I am carrying, the safe harbor bill that Erik Paulsen is 
carrying in the House. So we can see this work has continued. Some of 
the people are the same, but somehow back then, we were able to reach 
some kind of an agreement, and this was treated as a serious issue and 
a serious bill which we need to do.
  They go on to talk about who else worked on this.
  They say:

     . . . Paul Wellstone, Sam Brownback, Hillary Rodham Clinton, 
     Carolyn Maloney, a Democratic Congresswoman from New York. 
     Likewise, one of George W. Bush's few positive international 
     legacies was a big push against trafficking. Vital Voices and 
     other liberal groups were stalwart on sex trafficking, as 
     were International Justice Mission, and other conservative 
     evangelical groups. Yet, while the left and the right each do 
     important work fighting trafficking, they mostly do it 
     separately. The abolitionist movement would be far more 
     effective if it forged unity in its own rank.

  Now we get back to something I always remember Mike Enzi talking 
about, about how we can have disagreement on something like 20 percent 
of

[[Page 3753]]

the things, but we have agreement on 80 percent. Maybe that is what we 
have to remember with this bill. We know how Senator Enzi always worked 
well with Ted Kennedy, as did Senator Hatch, even with how different 
they were politically. But they were able to find some common ground.
  Certainly this bill should not be devolving into a fight over 
abortion. There is so much we agree on in this bill. There is also so 
much we agree on in the safe harbor bill which doesn't contain the Hyde 
provision.
  So this idea that we are going back and forth and dwelling on whose 
fault this was and how it happened--frankly, I think: Enough. I think 
we need to resolve this. I know there are ways to resolve this. I hope 
that is continuing to go on today. We have a lot of things, in addition 
to passing this bill, we need to get done. We need to get the vote on 
the next Attorney General of the United States. We have a major budget 
that we need to get done. The budget needs to be approved. I am looking 
at our staff and I know they are looking forward to one of those nights 
where we are going until 3 or 4 in the morning. Maybe we wouldn't have 
to do that if we could stop these kinds of fights.
  This is kind of a practical argument for getting this done, I know 
that, but one has to be slightly practical as we look at the fights 
before us on important matters that we need to resolve. One of the 
fights shouldn't be this. This is a fight against evil. This is a fight 
against those who are trafficking in little girls. It shouldn't be a 
fight across the aisle.
  The authors talk about the groups that have worked on it and how we 
would be more effective if we forged unity.
  They continue:

       One reason for discord is a dispute about how to regard 
     prostitution. The left often refers nonjudgmentally to ``sex 
     workers'' and tends to be tolerant of transactions among 
     consenting adults. The right . . . refers to ``prostitutes'' 
     or ``prostituted women''.

  Do my colleagues know what is so interesting about this--let me see 
when this book was written: 2009. So even since that time, what is sort 
of a cool thing is that we have gotten some agreement now on the fact 
that when we see a Republican House of Representatives being able to 
pass the safe harbor bill--the bill I wrote in the Senate, the bill 
that is not yet on the floor, to make clear, but the bill that would be 
considered as the first amendment--we have gotten some agreement here 
in these two Houses that these younger victims are, in fact, victims. I 
think that is really important for our country to hear that. Because 
when we do things such as that--such as when we pass the Violence 
Against Women Act, it changes the whole way people think about these 
crimes. Who is committing the crime? It is the people running the ring. 
It is the johns. It is not the victims.
  So I think that is why as we move forward, trying to get these bills 
passed, it is so important beyond the immediate bills.
  OK. So they are talking about this debate. I don't think we should 
dwell on debate. We have had enough of them in this Chamber, but that 
is what this part of the book is about.
  They continue:

       What policy should we pursue to try to eliminate that 
     slavery? Originally, we sympathized with the view that a 
     prohibition won't work any better in prostitution today than 
     it did against alcohol in America in the 1920s. Instead of 
     trying fruitlessly to ban prostitution, we believed it would 
     be preferable to legalize and regulate it. That pragmatic 
     ``harm reduction'' model is preferred by many aid groups 
     because it allows aid workers to pass out condoms and it 
     permits access to brothels so that they can be more easily 
     checked for underage girls.
       Over time, we've changed our minds. That legalize-and-
     regulate model simply hasn't worked very well in countries 
     where prostitution is often coerced.

  This is a change. I think we remember back decades ago where people 
were talking about legalizing prostitution. I think what we have 
realized, those of us who have worked as prosecutors, is that so often 
prostitution is not consensual. So often there are reasons--either the 
pimp is keeping someone hooked on drugs to keep someone being a 
prostitute or they are threatening their lives or threatening their 
family lives--and this is something that we don't want to have be 
legal.
  I am going to finish this paragraph, and then I see we have been 
joined by the great Senator from New Jersey who I am really happy has 
come so I can sit down and drink some water.
  It continues:

       That legalize-and-regulate model simply hasn't worked very 
     well in countries where prostitution is often coerced. 
     Partly, that is because governance is often poor so the 
     regulation is ineffective, and partly it is because the legal 
     brothels tend to attract a parallel illegal business in young 
     girls and forced prostitution. In contrast, there's empirical 
     evidence that crackdowns can succeed, when combined with 
     social services such as job retraining and drug 
     rehabilitation, and that is the approach we have come to 
     favor. In countries with widespread trafficking, we favor a 
     law enforcement strategy that pushes for fundamental change 
     in police attitudes and regular police inspections to check 
     for underage girls or anyone being held against their will. 
     That means holding governments accountable not just to pass 
     laws but also to enforce them, and monitoring how many 
     brothels are raided and pimps are arrested. Jail-like 
     brothels should be closed down, sting operations should be 
     mounted against buyers of virgin girls, and national police 
     chiefs must be under pressure to crack down on corruption as 
     it relates to trafficking. The idea is to reduce the brothel 
     owners' profit.

  With that, I will take a pause from this book. I will say that 
Senator Booker has done not only an amazing job as a Senator, but he 
also knows a little bit about being a mayor. He knows the struggle of 
poverty and also understands that to govern, we have to have a change 
of tone. I have always appreciated the work he has done across the 
aisle and the tone he brings to the Senate. We are really trying to 
push today as we try to come together to work on this bill.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Perdue). The Senator from New Jersey.
  Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I thank my colleague for those incredibly 
generous words. I recognize the Presiding Officer, Senator Perdue. I am 
grateful to be able to serve with him, and it is great seeing him in 
the captain's chair, to use my ``Star Trek'' parlance. I am happy to 
have the chance to formally welcome the Senator from Georgia to the 
Senate. It is good to serve with him as well.


                            Lynch Nomination

  Mr. President, I am honored to stand on the Senate floor to express 
my strong support for the historic nomination of Loretta Lynch to be 
the Attorney General of the United States. Our Nation is fortunate to 
have Ms. Lynch as the nominee for Attorney General. She is seasoned, 
competent, wise, extraordinarily dedicated, and has already served this 
Nation for many years, receiving accolades from across the country. She 
is historic in and of herself and exceptionally well qualified. I wish 
to tell everyone a little bit more about her.
  First, though, I want to ask--and this should not be necessary, but I 
want to ask: Why do we almost have a double standard for Ms. Lynch's 
nomination? She is the first African-American woman appointed to head 
the Department of Justice. She has had her nomination pending on the 
Senate floor longer than any nominee for Attorney General going back 
three decades. Ms. Lynch has had to wait 81 days for a hearing in 
committee--longer than any of President George W. Bush's nominees for 
Attorney General had to wait; more than twice as long for Attorneys 
General John Ashcroft and Michael Mukasey; and 24 days longer than 
Alberto Gonzalez. She waited 27 days for a committee vote after her 
hearing, again longer than any of George Bush's nominees to be Attorney 
General. Now her nomination has lingered on the Senate floor without a 
vote for 20 days, which is again longer than the wait for any of the 
last five Attorneys General combined. Her historic nomination has now 
been pending in the Senate for more than 130 days since the President 
first nominated her. I have not heard a single good reason germane to 
her qualifications, to her values, to her views, and to the kind of 
service she has rendered or will render, as to why she should not be 
promptly confirmed.

[[Page 3754]]

  She comes before the Senate having been twice appointed by two 
different Presidents and twice unanimously confirmed by this very body, 
to be a U.S. attorney. She has been a career Federal prosecutor for 
almost a decade, a partner at a prestigious law firm, and led one of 
the finest Federal prosecuting offices in the country, the Eastern 
District of New York.
  Her nomination has the support of dozens of law enforcement 
organizations, civil rights organizations, and outspoken citizens from 
across the country.
  So, again, I wonder why are we here today still waiting? Why does 
this President's exceptionally well-qualified nominee deserve such 
unfair treatment?
  Attorneys General are important because they lead the Department that 
keeps us safe and secure and protects our rights. From securing the 
right to vote to combating the violence of organized crime, to bringing 
terrorists to justice, this position is too important for any kind of 
political games and for any kind of delay.
  Seventy-five years ago, another Attorney General, Robert H. Jackson, 
spoke eloquently about the qualities of a good Federal prosecutor and 
hence a good Attorney General, when he said: ``The citizen's safety 
lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks 
truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, 
and who approaches her task with humility.''
  This is the type of prosecutor Ms. Lynch has always been and the type 
of Attorney General she will be.
  This appointment is historic. Once confirmed, Ms. Lynch will be the 
first Black woman to serve in the Nation's highest law enforcement 
position. She will be only the second woman and second African American 
to be Attorney General. Her story is our story. It is an American 
story. It reflects a long history of our Nation, the distance we have 
traveled as a country.
  It is a story of a Black woman who grew up in the Jim Crow South, the 
daughter of a fourth-generation minister and segregation-fighting 
mother who overcame discrimination and achieved the American dream 
despite the early obstacles she faced. Once, while a student at a 
predominantly White elementary school, her standardized test scores 
were so high that the disbelieving school demanded she retake her test. 
The great thing about that story is she retook the test and got a 
higher score. On one other occasion, she was named the valedictorian of 
her high school class which was a predominantly White high school, but 
the White administrators in the school did not think it was appropriate 
to have a Black girl as the top student, so they asked her to share 
that honor with a White student, and she did so with dignity and grace.
  She would go on to earn an Ivy League education, climb the highest 
ladders of her profession, and stand today nominated by the President 
of the United States of America, and when confirmed by the Senate, she 
will be our 83rd Attorney General. Only in this great Nation can a 
story such as this be possible, can a story such as this be told.
  Today, we continue our efforts. All of us--Republicans and 
Democrats--in this body are committed to building a more perfect Union. 
I know this confirmation will inspire people all across our country--
people who may have lost their faith in law enforcement or in our 
government's ability to get things done, to know that despite the odds 
or challenges, we are still a great nation, that we are devoted to 
overcoming our challenges.
  We celebrate someone who has broken glass ceilings, who has broken 
barrier after barrier, and now as a qualified candidate will hopefully 
soon ascend to this position. It is a reaffirmation of the American 
dream.
  While history is important, I don't want to overshadow those 
qualifications. I want to reiterate them.
  She is a well-qualified nominee. She graduated with Harvard College 
and Harvard Law School degrees, and went on to gain exceptional 
experience as a prosecutor and as a manager. As U.S. Attorney for the 
Eastern District of New York, she led one of the Nation's most 
challenging prosecutorial offices. I know this. I live right across the 
river from where she works. Her tough approach to fighting crime became 
almost legendary. She won acclaim throughout our metropolitan region as 
well as in the law enforcement community.
  In that office she established a record that would make any 
prosecutor proud. She led an office that had the tenacity to take on 
violent criminals, to confront political corruption, and to disrupt 
organized crime.
  At a time when the Senate is considering legislation to combat human 
trafficking, we need an Attorney General who will vigorously, 
unapologetically, and courageously prosecute traffickers. Ms. Lynch has 
been a leader on that very issue. Her office prosecuted over 100 child 
exploitation cases and brutal global trafficking cases. Her office 
tried more terrorism cases since 9/11 than any other office in the 
country.
  I was impressed when she first came to my office. She was candid, 
straightforward, and down to earth. What is clear from Ms. Lynch's 
record is not just that she is a tough prosecutor but that she is a 
leader with a vision and the right values to be Attorney General.
  Too many Americans distrust the ability of law enforcement to fairly 
enforce our laws. Ms. Lynch believes in the principles of equality and 
justice first and foremost, and she will restore even more faith in our 
system. In her committee testimony she articulated a vision about how 
in a great time of tension in our country we can rebuild the trust 
between dedicated, committed law enforcement officers on the streets 
and the communities they serve. Too many Americans, as I said time and 
again, go to prison for far too long. The majority of people 
incarcerated today in Federal prisons are there for nonviolent 
offenses. We have a nation that leads the globe in incarcerating 
people, and we do it often in a way that is discriminatory against poor 
people and minorities.
  Ms. Lynch has a vision of alternatives to incarceration for 
nonviolent offenders that are based on facts and based on her 
experience. She supported her district's drug court with a diversion 
program taking first-time nonviolent offenders out of the prosecution 
system and giving them access to drug treatment. Her innovation and 
successes speak volumes about her commitment to saving taxpayer dollars 
and addressing our swelling prison population while also driving down 
crime.
  So I say in conclusion, she has sterling character. She has 
incredible credentials. She has unflappable integrity. I am confident 
that as Attorney General she will ensure that the Department leads in a 
way that will make us proud.
  The road to building a more perfect Union in this country has been 
long, and the work still continues. We are at a time in this Nation 
when cynicism with government is at an all-time high. One of the 
highest-ranked concerns that Americans have right now--issues of 
employment and education are now being caught up to by concerns that 
Americans have about whether their very government will work together 
to do what is right.
  The delay in her nomination undermines the integrity of this body. It 
gives a signal to all those who are cynical to further surrender to 
that emotion. This great candidate passed through committee in 
bipartisan fashion. She is a great woman, a great African American, and 
most of all a great American and she should not be delayed on the 
sidelines when there is work to be done, when her very delay begins to 
undermine what we say this body can do when we all work together and 
put petty partisan politics aside and stand up for something far more 
important, which is the work to make this country a more perfect Union.
  We can do that together, all of us in the Senate, by confirming Ms. 
Lynch who will use that post to do the very same.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I wholeheartedly echo the passionate and 
cogent presentation that my colleague from New Jersey has just given,

[[Page 3755]]

that this body can be well served--very well served--for us to go 
immediately to the confirmation of Loretta Lynch. The delay in this 
critical position is unacceptable, does a disservice to the individual, 
a disservice to the office, a disservice to the executive branch, and a 
disservice to justice in America.
  Let's have that vote.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cruz). The majority leader.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to proceed to the motion to 
reconsider the vote by which cloture was not invoked on the committee-
reported amendment to S. 178.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to 
proceed.
  The motion was agreed to.
  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote by which 
cloture was not invoked on the committee-reported amendment to S. 178.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to 
reconsider.
  The motion was agreed to.


                             Cloture Motion

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before 
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
  The bill clerk read as follows:

                             Cloture Motion

       We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the 
     provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, 
     do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the committee-
     reported substitute amendment to S. 178, a bill to provide 
     justice for the victims of trafficking.
         Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn, Shelley Moore Capito, Steve 
           Daines, Roger F. Wicker, James Lankford, Deb Fischer, 
           Tom Cotton, Ron Johnson, Richard Burr, Daniel Coats, 
           Roy Blunt, Chuck Grassley, Tim Scott, Pat Roberts, Bill 
           Cassidy, Jerry Moran.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum 
call has been waived.
  The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the 
committee-reported substitute amendment to S. 178, a bill to provide 
justice for the victims of trafficking, shall be brought to a close, 
upon reconsideration?
  The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
  The clerk will call the roll.
  The bill clerk called the roll.
  Mr. CORNYN. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the Senator 
from Tennessee (Mr. Alexander).
  Further, if present and voting, the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. 
Alexander) would have voted ``yea.''
  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is 
necessarily absent.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber 
desiring to vote?
  The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 57, nays 41, as follows:

                      [Rollcall Vote No. 74 Leg.]

                                YEAS--57

     Ayotte
     Barrasso
     Blunt
     Boozman
     Burr
     Capito
     Casey
     Cassidy
     Coats
     Cochran
     Collins
     Corker
     Cornyn
     Cotton
     Crapo
     Cruz
     Daines
     Donnelly
     Enzi
     Ernst
     Fischer
     Flake
     Gardner
     Graham
     Grassley
     Hatch
     Heitkamp
     Heller
     Hoeven
     Inhofe
     Isakson
     Johnson
     Kirk
     Lankford
     Lee
     Manchin
     McCain
     McConnell
     Moran
     Murkowski
     Paul
     Perdue
     Portman
     Risch
     Roberts
     Rounds
     Rubio
     Sasse
     Scott
     Sessions
     Shelby
     Sullivan
     Thune
     Tillis
     Toomey
     Vitter
     Wicker

                                NAYS--41

     Baldwin
     Bennet
     Blumenthal
     Booker
     Boxer
     Cantwell
     Cardin
     Carper
     Coons
     Durbin
     Feinstein
     Franken
     Gillibrand
     Heinrich
     Hirono
     Kaine
     King
     Klobuchar
     Leahy
     Markey
     McCaskill
     Menendez
     Merkley
     Mikulski
     Murphy
     Murray
     Nelson
     Peters
     Reed
     Reid
     Sanders
     Schatz
     Schumer
     Shaheen
     Stabenow
     Tester
     Udall
     Warner
     Warren
     Whitehouse
     Wyden

                             NOT VOTING--2

     Alexander
     Brown
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 57, the nays are 
41.
  Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted 
in the affirmative, the motion, upon reconsideration, is rejected.
  The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I have had the opportunity in the 40 years 
I have been in the Senate to lead with others of both parties many 
efforts to help support victims--crime victims, domestic violence 
victims, victims of child abuse, and human trafficking victims.
  One of the things I have learned during that time is we have to pay 
attention to what the survivors tell us when they tell us what they 
need. None of us have walked in their shoes.
  We can offer advice, but we can't second-guess them. We can't assume 
we know best. Our job is to listen and try to help them rebuild their 
lives.
  If we would all just stop the political rhetoric and listen, the 
message from these survivors is clear.
  Earlier this week, the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic 
Violence Against Women--this, incidentally, is a coalition of thousands 
of organizations representing millions of survivors of domestic and 
sexual violence--wrote:

       We write today to express our deep concern about the 
     controversy of inserting the Hyde provision into the Justice 
     for Victims of Trafficking Act. The House passed a version of 
     that Act that did not include this new Hyde provision and we 
     ask the Senate to the do the same.

  I agree with them. I worked very closely with this group for more 
than 2 years as we drafted the Leahy-Crapo Violence Against Women 
Reauthorization Act. They are some of the most dedicated advocates I 
have ever worked with and I listen to what they say. I believe they are 
showing us the way forward.
  The House version of the very bill we are debating today does not 
contain the unnecessary destructive provision that wreaks such havoc 
here. Speaker John Boehner found a way to bring the House together--
Republicans and Democrats--and passed a bill without injecting abortion 
politics into the discussion. Now, if that deeply divided body can do 
it, I would assume we can do it here in the Senate.
  Some are being very casual about the divisive partisan provision that 
Senate Republicans injected into this Senate bill. They call it 
boilerplate. Well, it is not. It places limitations on the health care 
services victims can use as they access money collected from the very 
people who trafficked them.
  We are not talking about taxpayers' money. We are not talking about 
taxpayers' dollars. We are talking about traffickers' money. This is 
the money traffickers would pay in fines.
  Criminals have already taken away so many choices for these young 
women and girls, and we shouldn't be taking away their right to make 
their own health care choices. We certainly should not require these 
survivors to have to prove they were raped. That is offensive. It is 
wrong.
  Mr. DURBIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. LEAHY. I yield to the Senator for a question.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator for coming to the floor. I know how 
much he supports this bill to end human trafficking, sex trafficking, 
and what a frustration he must feel--and which I share--that we have 
been unable to bring a bill before us that has strong bipartisan 
support and with few amendments is likely to be considered and would 
pass very quickly in the Senate.
  I thank him for pointing out what I tried to point out this morning. 
In this 112-page bill, there is one sentence related to the Hyde 
amendment, which changes what we have been doing here for more than 30 
years and which is holding up the passage of this important bill. What 
we have been pleading with the Republican leaders to do is to remove 
this sentence, and then let's pass this bill.
  Mr. LEAHY. I say to the Senator from Illinois, that the Republican 
House of Representatives passed this Act without this provision, and 
Democrats and Republicans here in the Senate should do the same.
  Mr. DURBIN. Well, there may be partisan differences over this one 
sentence, but there is bipartisan support for ending the trafficking 
and helping the victims.

[[Page 3756]]

  Thank you, because I know you want to offer another amendment about 
runaways, which is very important. I have met so many of them, as you 
have. It is a heartbreaking story how so many are abused and exploited. 
Thank you for your leadership and for bringing this issue to our 
attention today.
  Mr. LEAHY. I thank the Senator from Illinois, who has worked on this 
throughout his career, both in the House and in the Senate. It means a 
lot. I will state what one survivor, Tina Frundt, a survivor of human 
trafficking who now helps counsel other young trafficking victims, 
said:

       It is not for us to judge the type of services a survivor 
     of sex trafficking needs. We need the basic rights of medical 
     services without judgment.

  I think, instead of our trying to be political about this, we should 
listen to survivors such as Tina. We can't pass a bill that ignores the 
requests of the various survivors it is designed to help.
  Experts across the political spectrum who treat survivors of 
trafficking are telling us to remove the language.
  I heard, for example, from a group called HEAL Trafficking, an 
organization of health care professionals who treat survivors. These 
are physicians, nurses, and counselors. They wrote a letter to me and 
said: ``We implore the Senate to pass S. 178 without the inclusion of 
Hyde amendment language, which would place limits on trafficking 
survivors' access to vital health services.''
  I also heard from the service providers, whom I know and respect, at 
the Vermont Coalition of Runaway and Homeless Youth. They work with 
young people who are exceptionally vulnerable to becoming victims of 
trafficking and sexual exploitation. They wrote: ``There should be no 
doubt that legislation involving the well-being of individuals who have 
been victimized by the most base of human behavior should be free of 
partisan wrangling.''
  It is time to listen to the people this bill is supposed to help. 
They say: Take out the provision; pass the bill.
  I hope that we will.
  I can only imagine what these victims of trafficking go through. I 
have said several times on the floor--I remember so vividly; I remember 
as though it were yesterday, listening to some of the victims when we 
were trying to prosecute the people who trafficked them or harmed them 
or exploited them. I thought, wouldn't it be great if we had some help 
to stop this horrible crime from happening in the first place.
  But at least we did not have politicians telling us: Well, you can 
offer this service, but you cannot offer that service. They simply 
said: Find the best experts you can and use their advice.
  The experts are there day by day by day. Let them do their work. 
Don't play politics with them.
  I have said before, when we considered the Leahy-Crapo Violence 
Against Women Reauthorization Act, a victim is a victim is a victim. We 
ought to do what we can to help them.


      SSCI Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program

  Mr. President, on another matter which goes into an interesting area, 
each year, Sunshine Week reminds us we cannot take for granted our 
democratic system of government. Our Nation's Founders understood that 
to maintain a true democracy, we have to have an open government. Only 
an open government can be truly accountable to the people.
  But pulling back the curtain on the internal workings of governmental 
agencies is not always easy. Sometimes, it is not even popular. In some 
cases, it generates great controversy, as was the case of Senator 
Feinstein's hard-fought efforts last year to declassify the executive 
summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's historic torture report.
  This extraordinary report thoroughly reviewed the CIA's use of 
torture during the Bush administration and revealed that it was far 
more brutal than we knew. Now, shedding light on the CIA's actions 
demonstrates to the world that America is different. We acknowledge our 
mistakes, so that we can learn from them. We do not sweep them under a 
rug and pretend they never happened. But some seem to want just that.
  When Senator Feinstein publically released the executive summary, she 
also provided the full report, which totaled, I am told, more than 
6,700 pages. She provided the full report to the President and the 
relevant executive branch agencies. The report details the failures 
that allowed this program to happen. She rightly put these details in 
the hands of those officials who had appropriate clearances who could 
learn from the mistakes and ensure that they do not happen again--
whether it is a Republican or a Democratic administration.
  Unfortunately, some of the program's defenders will stop at nothing 
in an effort to erase this ugly history. Immediately after the report 
was issued, there was an unabashed campaign to discredit it and an 
attempt to portray what happened as something other than what we all 
know it was--torture.
  I have had enough of the disingenuous euphemisms and acronyms used to 
mask the truly brutal nature of what was done to other human beings. We 
should acknowledge what it was. It was torture. The President has 
acknowledged that. And Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch did 
during her hearing, when she stated clearly and unequivocally that 
waterboarding is torture. Instead, defenders of this brutality call it 
something else. They claim it was justified, but then they offer no 
evidence to support their assertions and insist outright that they 
would do it again. Even though they have no evidence that it helped, 
they imply as much.
  But if that wasn't bad enough, some now want to make the report 
itself disappear. In January, the incoming chairman of the Senate 
Intelligence Committee asked the President and the agencies to return 
the full report to the Senate.
  That is essentially saying: let us pretend we made no mistakes. Let 
us erase history. Let us be able to open the history book and just see 
blank pages. We did nothing wrong.
  Well, that is outrageous. Neither this historic Senate report nor the 
shameful truths it reveals can be wiped out of existence.
  It is also appalling to learn that several of the agencies that 
received the full report in December haven't even opened it. In a 
Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking release of the full 
report, Justice Department and State Department officials submitted 
declarations stating that their copies remain locked away in unopened, 
sealed envelopes. So they can say: I see nothing. It is locked up. It 
is sealed.
  I don't know if this was done in an attempt to bolster the 
government's position in the FOIA lawsuit or to otherwise avoid Federal 
records laws. I certainly hope not. But regardless of the motivation, 
it was a mistake that should be rectified.
  The executive summary of the torture report, which they have seen, 
makes clear that both the State Department and the Justice Department 
have much to learn from the history of the CIA's torture program. Both 
agencies were misled by the CIA about the program. Both should consider 
systemic changes in how they deal with covert actions. Yet neither 
agency has bothered to open the final, full version of the report or, 
apparently, even those sections most relevant to them.
  The fight for government transparency and accountability is never 
complete. I have joined with the distinguished Senator from Texas, Mr. 
Cornyn, over the years to write and pass tougher provisions in FOIA. I 
think the importance of the public release of this report's executive 
summary cannot be overstated. It is one of the most important oversight 
achievements of this body. Now we must ensure the full report, 
containing the results of years of painstaking work, is put to good use 
by those within the executive branch.
  So today, as we recognize Sunshine Week, I send this message to the 
executive branch agencies who received the full Intelligence Committee 
torture report: Do not return your copy to the Senate. Ensure that the 
appropriate people in your agencies, with appropriate clearances, have 
access to it and learn from it. Initiate a process to consider the 
lessons your agency should

[[Page 3757]]

learn from this experience. Follow the example of FBI Director Comey, 
who last week testified he would designate appropriate people to 
consider the report and what improvements could be made, because there 
are no instances when torture is acceptable.
  The Convention Against Torture does not make exceptions. There is no 
doubt that if these actions were committed against American soldiers, 
by a hostile government, we would immediately condemn them as torture 
and a violation of international law. We have to make clear to the rest 
of the world we follow international law. We don't torture. We have to 
ensure that America never allows this to happen again.
  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. Mr. 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. Mr. President, again today, just like yesterday, we saw 
all but four Senate Democrats filibuster a bill that passed the Senate 
Judiciary Committee unanimously, including nine Democratic Senator 
votes. This is a bill that is cosponsored by 12 Democrats and a bill 
that came to the floor by unanimous consent of the Senate--all 100 
Senators. Any single Senator could have barred that from happening and 
forced us to go through procedural hoops. I would like to believe they 
did so because all of us agree--Democrat and Republican alike--that 
helping the victims of human trafficking should be our sole and 
solitary focus in this legislation. And that is what this bill does.
  This bill is probably the last bill you would imagine would be 
controversial--certainly one that people would be loath to politicize--
but, indeed, that is exactly what has happened. I just can't explain 
it. Maybe some of our colleagues who have done this can. How can you 
cosponsor a bill, how can you vote for it and then come to the floor of 
the Senate on two occasions and vote to kill it?
  Well, as I said earlier, we have four Senate Democrats who have 
joined with Republicans to pass this piece of legislation, then 
reconcile it with the House bill, and send it on to President Obama, 
where I am confident he would sign it. I am confident he would sign it 
because this is an issue where, if we can't do a bill to help victims 
of human trafficking, I wonder what we can possibly accomplish. If 
politics and the divisiveness here in Washington so polarizes people on 
this bill, how are we going to do the other things we need to do, such 
as pass a budget? How are we going to take care of our national 
security needs? How will we deal with the immigration issue? How will 
we deal with other things that are far more controversial?
  Just to reiterate what this bill does, it focuses on the people on 
the demand side of sex trafficking and the sex trade. In other words, 
the people who actually pay for the services provided by these 12-to-
14-year-old girls and the pimps that basically manage them.
  This takes the money from the people who create the demand. Once they 
have been convicted and penalized, they pay into a crime victims 
compensation fund. We estimate, if our calculations are correct, that 
could generate as much as $30 million a year--$30 million a year. That 
money would then be subject to grants to help organizations that are 
set up to help the victims of human trafficking.
  So not only are we interested in trying to rescue these children from 
the grasp of these criminal organizations that run human trafficking 
rings, we want to find a way to help them heal and get better. We have 
all heard story after story about the tragedy of human trafficking. I 
have talked to the distinguished ranking member of the Judiciary 
Committee, who, as a former prosecutor, understands this issue and the 
human wreckage left in the wake of the people who purchase these 
services and help facilitate these criminal organizations. So somehow, 
some way, we need to find a way to help the victims. Our focus ought to 
be on them and them alone.
  We have heard a lot of, to my mind, phony excuses about this bill. I 
actually had some Senators tell me they didn't know of this provision 
that limits the use of the fines and penalties. This is a rule that has 
prevailed for 39 years, known as the Hyde amendment. They say they 
didn't know it was there. They didn't read the bill, apparently.
  I don't actually quite believe that. I know that staff on both sides 
in the Judiciary Committee and generally the staff in the Senate are 
highly professional people. They are not going to let something slip 
by. But if there is a reason why they did, I believe it is because this 
language has become routine. It has become routine. It has been in 
literally every appropriations bill since 1976. It had been in things 
such as the Children's Health Insurance Program. It has been in Defense 
authorization bills. It has been in ObamaCare. All of our colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle have voted for this sort of language over 
and over and over again.
  I happen to be proudly pro-life, but we have many colleagues who 
consider themselves pro-choice who have said: Well, I don't think we 
ought to appropriate tax dollars to pay for abortions. I agree with the 
Hyde amendment. So they have clearly had an opportunity to read and 
understand the bill. I don't believe 12 Senators on the other side 
would cosponsor a bill they hadn't read and didn't understand. I don't 
believe nine members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the other 
side would vote for it, including the distinguished ranking member, 
without knowing what was in the bill.
  The reason why this was so unremarkable is because, as I said, it has 
become routine, and virtually all the legislation that touches on this 
area has passed since 1976. So why here and why now? Why are we 
threatening to kill this important piece of legislation to help the 
most vulnerable victims that exist in America?
  It is estimated that about 100,000 children are sex trafficked a year 
in the United States. It happens in Texas, sadly; it happens in 
Vermont; and it happens everywhere. The fact of the matter is, most 
Americans are simply unaware of it because this is an underbelly of 
life, a criminality that is really unbeknownst to most of us because it 
happens outside of our view and outside of our experience. But we have 
thousands of scared and abused children who need our help.
  By killing this bill, as our friends across the aisle have done, with 
the exception of four brave exceptions, instead of our helping hand we 
are giving them a shrug of indifference. We are saying: You know what. 
Our political fights here in Washington are more important than your 
future and your life and the fact that you have been treated as human 
baggage.
  I happen to believe--and I know many share this belief--that we are 
all created in the image of God, and it is a terrible sin and it is an 
evil thing to treat a human being created in the image of God as a 
commodity, as a thing to be bought and sold.
  We went through a terrible period in our Nation's history where we 
had African Americans treated as less than human. We fought a civil 
war, where 600,000 people died, and then we passed a constitutional 
amendment and other important legislation to try to heal those wounds 
that existed from the very beginning of our Nation. Indeed, it has not 
yet finished healing even today.
  Knowing what we know about human slavery and what that has been in 
our history, why in the world wouldn't we want to do something about 
modern-day human slavery to try to rectify, to try to rescue, to try to 
help heal these victims, which is what this legislation does?
  To summarize: We have a piece of legislation that contains a 
provision that has been the law of the land for 39 years. We have a 
bill on the floor that was cosponsored by 12 Democrats on the other 
side of the aisle. Unfortunately, most of them have voted to filibuster 
this bill now that it has come to the floor because of this provision 
they said they didn't know about or they weren't aware of or they 
object to.

[[Page 3758]]

  We have a piece of legislation that will not cost taxpayers anything 
because it is financed by the fines and penalties assessed against 
people who demand and purchase these illicit services. That is why this 
is the sort of bipartisan consensus legislation I think the American 
people would like to see us pass.
  We need to overcome this obstacle. I know the majority leader, 
Senator McConnell, is determined to give those who are filibustering 
this bill a chance to change their mind and a chance to let us finish 
this piece of legislation. Indeed, we need two, maybe three more 
Senators on that side. I would think that among the 12 people who 
cosponsored the bill, among the 9 who voted for it already in 
committee, we could find at least 3 more who would vote for this 
legislation and allow us to finish it.
  I know the distinguished ranking member from Vermont has an amendment 
he wants to offer on the bill, and he has that right. He should have 
that right. But we can't do it unless we get past this hurdle of the 
filibuster. This bill is simply too important to let politics get in 
the way of helping the innocent victims who need our support.
  So the Senate being the way it is, which is somewhat broken these 
days, how in the world do we get to the point where we can actually 
help the victims of human trafficking, given the filibuster? Well, 
Senator McConnell has said he is going to keep bringing this bill back 
again and again--and, indeed, this is now the second vote we have had 
on this--until we can recruit at least two more Democrats to vote to 
close off debate to allow us to finish the bill. He has also said we 
are not going to be able to get to the confirmation of Attorney General 
Loretta Lynch, which has been voted out of the Senate Judiciary 
Committee, until we finish this bill. I agree with that. I think the 
majority leader has made the right call, because, apparently, if the 
cries and the needs of the innocent victims of human trafficking aren't 
enough to move our friends across the aisle to let us finish this bill, 
then we are going to have to look for whatever leverage we can.
  Indeed, I would say this does not bode well for the future of the 
114th Congress if this is the way we are going to be operating. I don't 
know how many nominations will be voted out of committee and be 
eligible for floor action that will not be considered on the Senate 
floor because we are stuck in situations such as this--where we know 
what the right thing to do is, all of the Senators know what the right 
thing to do is, but somehow we can't quite seem to get it done. We have 
to get it done. We have to get all of the Senate's business done, 
including considering the President's nominees.
  So I hope we do. I look forward to having another opportunity, 
perhaps tomorrow, to vote to close off debate. My hope is that 
overnight, sometime during the next 24 hours, at least 2 more of our 
colleagues--we would be glad to have more--can examine their 
conscience, can think about why it is they actually ran for the Senate, 
why it is they are here. Is it to try to actually do something good to 
help people who can't help themselves? I believe it is. I think that is 
why all of us came here, to try to do that. But somehow, some way, we 
have gotten off track, and some people think that political games and 
obstruction are more important than actually doing what we got elected 
to do and the reason why we actually volunteered to serve in the United 
States Senate.
  So I hope we have at least two more Senators on the other side 
examine their conscience and reconsider their ``no'' vote and decide to 
close off debate by providing the votes. We need to do that tomorrow.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Toomey). The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I totally agree with the senior Senator 
from Texas that the Hyde amendment has been in a number of bills that 
spend tax dollars. I have been in the Appropriations Committee for 
nearly 40 years. I am aware of that. But as the distinguished senior 
Senator from Texas just stated, there are no tax dollars in this 
matter. The way he has drafted this bill, it would take moneys from 
fines levied against those who are convicted of sex exploitation.
  This would be the first time, to my knowledge--and I would stand 
corrected if I am wrong, but I cannot think of a time in the past 40 
years that we have applied the Hyde amendment to such funds. I think 
that is probably why--because there are tax dollars in the House 
companion bill--that the House of Representatives did not include the 
Hyde amendment.
  I have voted for appropriation bills with the Hyde amendment in it so 
we could move them to the floor. But to go to this expansion when all 
these different groups who have written in to us tell us please don't 
do this, and the groups who actually work with victims--they say don't 
include it. I agree with them.
  I think there can be a way forward. We came together in this body to 
pass the Leahy-Crapo Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act, with 
the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act as an amendment. 
We worked for some time, but we passed it.
  I also want to say that--again, based on my experience here--I cannot 
think of a time, whether the Senate was under Democratic control or 
Republican control, that a piece of legislation has been used like this 
to hold up a key member of the President's Cabinet. Loretta Lynch has 
been held up longer than the past four Attorney General nominees--four 
men--put together. She is still being held up. I think that is 
unfortunate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would say to my friend and colleague, 
the Senator from Vermont, whom I have worked with closely on a number 
of pieces of legislation and whom I would love to be able to work with 
to find a solution to the current impasse that we have on this 
legislation--I would say to my friend that if the objection is that 
this fund is not subject to the appropriations process, then that is 
something we ought to discuss and talk about.
  Why the fund is so important to me is because the fines and penalties 
that go into this save the taxpayers money. It actually takes the money 
from the people who create the demand and uses that to help heal and 
save and rescue the victims.
  I guess I would have a little difference of opinion--and maybe it is 
just semantics--that once the fines and penalties are paid to the 
Treasury, my view is they become public dollars although they 
technically aren't derived from taxes, per se. But beyond that point, I 
would say once this money is paid into the fund, I think we could come 
up with a mechanism that would then allow the Appropriations Committee 
to play its traditional role in directing the money to the purposes for 
which Congress designates. And I know, as a long-time member of the 
Appropriations Committee, the Senator believes--and I respect--that is 
an important part of the process.
  It is important, though, to note that this would still be subject to 
the same rule which has prevailed for 39 years, and that is the Hyde 
amendment. Here is where I don't understand the principle of the 
objection--because the Hyde amendment has an exception, as the Senator 
knows, for the physical health and mental health of the mother, as 
certified by a physician, and also in cases of rape. I can't imagine 
any case where a potential beneficiary of this fund would be excluded 
from services that would be allowed under the legislation as written. 
But I would say if the Senator thinks that might be a fruitful area for 
us to continue conversations and to figure a way to structure this so 
that it would be subject to an annual appropriation process--subject to 
those limitations that have prevailed now since 1976--I think there 
might be some room for discussion.
  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.
  Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.

[[Page 3759]]

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  (The remarks of Ms. Warren  pertaining to the introduction of S. 793 
are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills 
and Joint Resolutions.'')
  Ms. WARREN. 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. 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. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I was here for nearly 3 hours this 
morning when there was some spare time on the floor to get us refocused 
on the issue at hand, which is the issue of the victims of sex 
trafficking.
  As I noted this morning, this is now the third biggest criminal 
enterprise in the world. The first is illegal drugs, the second illegal 
guns, and the third is the illegal sale of children. The average age of 
a victim of sex trafficking is 12 years old--not even old enough to go 
to their first prom or not even old enough to get a driver's license. 
That is what we are talking about here.
  As I said, we have seen it in every part of the country. Just last 
week, there was a case out of Rochester, MN, of a 12-year-old girl who 
was charged by the U.S. Attorney's office. She got a text and went to a 
McDonald's parking lot. She thought she was going to go to a party. She 
got shoved in a car and got brought up to the Twin Cities, got raped. 
Sexually explicit pictures were taken and posted on Craigslist by the 
pimp. She was sold for sex to two men, raped by two men. Finally, the 
guys got caught and they have charged the case. So that is what we are 
talking about here.
  I know there are disagreements on the issues of our time, whether 
they are the issues of our economy and the budget fight that is going 
to be coming up next week, or whether it is the issues of foreign 
relations, but there shouldn't be a disagreement about this. This is a 
bipartisan bill. There is a provision in this bill that I don't believe 
needs to be in this bill. There are some potential solutions here and I 
hope my colleagues are talking about them.
  We have to refocus our efforts on what matters. That is what we have 
to remember. I am tired of looking back at who is blaming who and whose 
fault it is and now, somehow, it has gotten tied to the confirmation of 
the next Attorney General of the United States. This makes no sense at 
all. If these issues are connected at all, it is simply because the 
Attorney General of the United States helps to enforce the sex 
trafficking laws. Their office sometimes takes on Federal cases such as 
we saw in the oil patch of North Dakota. They enforce our other laws, 
such as what we care about right now in Minnesota where we have had a 
number of people indicted for going to help ISIS, or we have had 20 
people indicted and 9 convictions for helping al-Shabaab, and here we 
have an Attorney General who is immensely qualified and who literally 
has the highest number out of her office of terrorism prosecutions in 
the Nation. So let's just get Loretta Lynch confirmed. That is for 
starters.
  As to this bill, I would like to see a different tone as we discuss 
it. I would like to see people on both sides of the aisle talk about 
solutions and remember what we are dealing with here. We have been able 
to deal with this issue on other bills. I don't understand why we can't 
deal with it on this bill. Are these girls less important? Is this 
something that can just be a political football back and forth? I don't 
think so.
  I want to remind people that in addition to the bill that is on the 
floor, Senator Cornyn's bill, which sets up a victims fund, there is 
another bill, and that is the Stop Exploitation Through Trafficking 
Act. That is my bill. Senator Cornyn is the cosponsor. There are 19 
bipartisan cosponsors. It is a bill that went through the Judiciary 
Committee a few weeks ago--unanimously on the vote. Every single 
Senator voted for it. A similar version led by Representative Erik 
Paulsen of Minnesota has gone through the House. I like ours a little 
better because it includes a national sex trafficking strategy. Those 
two bills will be easily resolved to get this done.
  My hope is--my bill is supposed to be the first amendment once we can 
go on to this bill, once we get the fix of the bill--the provision of 
the bill that is in controversy. I want to remind people that this bill 
is equally important. It sets a standard--the safe harbor bill--so 
other States will start looking at Minnesota and what about 15 other 
States have done. It says these 12-year-olds are not criminals; they 
are victims.
  How can you say a 12-year-old is a criminal? They are victims. Once 
you start thinking like that, it changes the way you handle the cases. 
As a former prosecutor, what matters to me is that when you change the 
way you look at the case, you have a better case because then you have 
a victim who feels they have some place to go--a shelter. They can get 
a job. They can get an education. They are much more likely to turn on 
the pimp and to turn on the perpetrator that is running the sex ring.
  In Minnesota, last year we got a 40-year sentence against a guy. John 
Choi, the chief attorney for Ramsey County, got a guy that was running 
one of these rings. That is what is going on here when we talk about 
this bill and the importance of passing this bill.
  We have the 20 women Senators who came together and asked for a 
hearing on sex trafficking. We got that done. Now is the time where I 
hope we can come together and resolve this.
  So one of the things I have taken to doing is reading Nicholas 
Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's great book ``Half the Sky.''
  ``Half the Sky'' refers to women holding up half the sky. It refers 
to the fact that we have countries and systems that marginalize women 
and don't treat them as equal. This is not good for our world.
  We have seen countries that do it the worst, that treat them as sex 
slaves, that allow that to happen. Those countries tend to have very 
poor human rights records. They tend not to be good partners for our 
country. If we want to lead the way for the world, we have to start on 
our own turf, where 86 percent of the victims in sex trafficking in the 
United States are from the United States.
  If we are going to reach out to other countries, such as Heidi 
Heitkamp, Cindy McCain, and I did last spring--we went down to Mexico 
to work with them on some of the issues of cases on which they have 
actually helped in the United States with the U.S. attorney's office. 
We need to be able to show that our country is doing the right thing, 
and this is an opportunity to do that.
  So I have been reading from this book in part in the hope that we can 
change the tone and remember who we are here to protect. It is also a 
great book. They have actually written another book as well that is 
focused on domestic sex trafficking that I will be reading from 
tomorrow as well.
  I note this is not an official filibuster, but whenever I have time 
and there is time on the floor, I am simply going to come down here to 
remind people of the importance of getting this bill done.
  So we are talking in the book--I was in the chapter on ``Prohibition 
and Prostitution.'' I talked about the fact that ``the tools to crush 
modern slavery''--I am reading from the book--``but the political will 
is lacking.''
  That seems to be what is going on in this Chamber when extraneous 
bills are in the way of getting this done. When my Republican coauthor 
over in the House has said that these kinds of politics don't belong on 
these bills, I agree.

       The tools to crush modern slavery exist, but the political 
     will is lacking. That must be the starting point of any 
     abolitionist movement. We're not arguing that Westerners 
     should take up this cause because it's the fault of the West; 
     Western men do not play a central role in prostitution in 
     most poor countries. True, American and European sex tourists 
     are part of the problem in Thailand, the Philippines, Sri 
     Lanka, and Belize, but they are still only a small percentage 
     of the johns. The vast majority are

[[Page 3760]]

     local men. Moreover, Western men usually go with girls who 
     are more or less voluntary prostitutes, because they want to 
     take the girls back to their hotel rooms, while forced 
     prostitutes are not normally allowed out of the brothels. So 
     this is not a case where we in the West have a responsibility 
     to lead because we're the source of the problem. Rather, we 
     single out the West because, even though we're peripheral to 
     the slavery, our action is necessary to overcome a horrific 
     evil.

  So that is my argument here, that by doing something here in this 
Chamber and by showing that we care about these girls in the United 
States, then we show we care internationally and it should be a major 
tenet of our foreign policy.

       One reason the modern abolitionist movement hasn't been 
     more effective is the divisive politics of prostitution.

  I talked about this earlier today. The issue that we have is that a 
number of people way back--including the late great Senator Paul 
Wellstone of Minnesota, Senator Brownback of Kansas, Hillary Rodham 
Clinton, Carolyn Maloney, whom I just left on the Joint Economic 
Committee, and George W. Bush--showed great leadership in this area. So 
we have seen time and again people being able to come together across 
party lines to get this done.
  So they talk about how things have changed, and they say that ``over 
time, we've changed our minds'' about how we look at this. They talk 
about the fact that it used to be: Well, let's legalize prostitution 
and regulate. That will really work. I think we have learned that it 
will never really work. It doesn't work in those countries that have 
tried it, and it certainly doesn't work for these young girls who are 
victims of the sex trade. So they talk about how we, in fact, through 
law enforcement, need to go after the profits and we have to take this 
on. That is what the bills we are considering help to do. They give 
State and local prosecutors and shelters the tools that they need.
  They say:

       We won't eliminate prostitution. In Iran, brothels are 
     strictly banned, and the mayor of Tehran was a law-and-order 
     hard-liner until, according to Iranian news accounts, he was 
     arrested in a police raid on a brothel where he was in the 
     company of six naked prostitutes. So crackdowns don't work 
     perfectly, but they tend to lead nervous police to demand 
     higher bribes, which reduces profitability for the pimps. Or 
     the police will close down at least those brothels that 
     aren't managed by other police officers. With such methods, 
     we can almost certainly reduce the number of fourteen-year-
     old girls who are held in cages until they die of AIDS.

  This is happening in our world.

       ``It's pretty doable,'' says Gary Haugen, who runs 
     International Justice Mission. ``You don't have to arrest 
     everybody. You just have to get enough that it sends a ripple 
     effect and changes the calculations. That changes the pimps' 
     behavior. You can drive traffickers of virgin village girls 
     to fence stolen radios instead.''
       Many liberals and feminists are taken aback by the big 
     stick approach we advocate, arguing that it just drives sex 
     establishments underground. They argue instead for a 
     legalize-and-regulate model based on empowerment of sex 
     workers, and they cite a success: The Sonagachi Project.
       Sonagachi, which means ``golden tree,'' is a sprawling red-
     light district in Kolkata. In the 1700s and 1800s, it had 
     been a legendary locale for concubines. Today it has hundreds 
     of multistory brothels built along narrow alleys, housing 
     more than six thousand prostitutes. In the early 1990s, 
     health experts were deeply concerned about the spread of AIDS 
     in India, and in 1992 they started [this project]. . . . A 
     key element was to nurture a union of sex workers . . . which 
     would encourage condom use and thus reduce the spread of AIDS 
     through prostitution.
       DMSC seemed successful in encouraging the use of condoms. 
     It publicized its role as a pragmatic solution to the public 
     health problems of prostitution. One study found [this 
     project] increased . . . condom use by 25 percent.

  They go on to explain it.
  But then they say--and this is key to our approach to trying not to 
allow prostitution to continue:

       As we probed the numbers, however, we saw that they were 
     flimsier than they at first appeared. HIV prevalence was 
     inexplicably high among new arrivals . . . 27.7 percent among 
     sex workers aged twenty or younger. Research had also shown 
     that, initially, all sex workers interviewed . . . claimed to 
     use condoms nearly all the time. But when pressed, they 
     admitted lower rates. . . .

  This goes on and they talk about the problem with this. What we are 
talking about here is underage girls and what is really going on.
  I am going to quote from one story they told when they went to this 
brothel.

       While the madam spoke with others in the room, gushing 
     about the group's success, the three of us on the bed asked 
     the prostitute in Hindi to tell us if those things were true. 
     Afraid and timid, the prostitute remained silent until we 
     assured her that we wouldn't get her in trouble. Barely 
     audible, she told us that almost none of the prostitutes . . 
     . came with aspirations of being a sex worker. Most of them 
     like herself were trafficked. . . . When I asked her if she 
     wanted to leave Sonagachi, her eyes lit up; before she could 
     say anything, the DMSC official put her hand on my back and 
     said that it was time to move on. . . .

  These are stories about how it doesn't really work to have this model 
of allowing the prostitution to continue and regulate.

       In the developing world, however, this difficult, 
     polarizing debate is mostly just a distraction. In India, for 
     example, brothels are technically illegal--but, as we said 
     earlier, they are ubiquitous--the same is true in Cambodia. 
     In poor countries, the law is often irrelevant, particularly 
     outside the capital. Our focus has to be on changing reality, 
     not changing laws.
       Congress took an important step in that direction in 2000 
     by requiring the State Department to put out an annual 
     Trafficking in Persons report--the TIP report.

  I will remind again that this was done on a bipartisan basis. We 
didn't see the kind of fights we are having now because people decided 
that here is one thing that we could agree on--from Paul Wellstone to 
Sam Brownback--and that perhaps without having outside political 
debates, we can agree that we do not want young girls aged 12 to be sex 
trafficked.
  What did this report do?

       The report ranks countries according to how they tackle 
     trafficking, and those in the lowest tier are sanctioned. 
     This meant that for the first time U.S. embassies abroad had 
     to gather information on trafficking. American diplomats 
     began holding discussions with their foreign ministry 
     counterparts, who then had to add trafficking to the list of 
     major concerns such as proliferation and terrorism. As a 
     result, the foreign ministries made inquiries of the national 
     police agencies.
       Simply asking questions put the issue on the agenda. 
     Countries began passing laws, staging crackdowns, and 
     compiling fact sheets. Pimps found that the cost of bribing 
     police went up, eroding their profit margins.
       This approach can be taken further. Within the State 
     Department, the trafficking office has been marginalized, 
     even relegated to another building. If the secretary of state 
     publicly and actively embraced the trafficking office--

  I think we see this has happened since this book was written--since 
2009 under Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry.

     . . . that would elevate the issue's profile. The President 
     could visit a shelter . . .

  And, by the way, that is something that Heidi Heitkamp, Cindy McCain, 
and I did when we went to Mexico.

       Europe should have made trafficking an issue in negotiating 
     the accession of Eastern European countries wishing to enter 
     the European Union, and it can still make this an issue for 
     Turkey in that regard.
       The big-stick approach should focus in particular on the 
     sale of virgins. Such transactions, particularly in Asia, 
     account for a disproportionate share of trafficker profits 
     and kidnappings of young teenagers. And the girls, once 
     raped, frequently resign themselves to being prostitutes 
     until they die. It is often rich Asians, particularly 
     overseas Chinese, who are doing the buying--put a few of them 
     in jail, and good things will happen: The market for virgins 
     will quickly shrink, their price will drop, gangs will shift 
     to less risky and more profitable lines of business, the 
     average age of prostitutes will rise somewhat, and the degree 
     of compulsion in prostitution will diminish as well.

  This is from ``Half the Sky,'' written by New York Times reporter 
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. They have a more recent book that 
they have written called ``A Path Appears,'' and this is about domestic 
prostitution, which I will also be reading from. But I thought I would 
start that tomorrow, as we continue to focus on this, so people 
understand what we are really talking about.
  As we all know, the bills before the Senate today are about domestic 
trafficking. They are about what is happening in the United States 
right now in every town in this country.
  We talked earlier this morning about why this is happening, why we 
are seeing this kind of increase, and we are

[[Page 3761]]

talking about it more. The reason is that more and more because of the 
Internet people can anonymously advertise. They can send instant 
messages and texts. It is just more hidden, and it is harder to track 
down for law enforcement. That is part of why we are seeing this going 
on right now and why this is such a major issue in our country.
  I would tie it into our international theme, because, again, first of 
all, we have a percentage of these victims--mostly girls--who come from 
foreign countries. So it matters to us what goes on in foreign 
countries with their law, which is the focus of ``Half the Sky.''
  But it also matters to us because we want a better world, and we want 
these countries to do better. We don't want to put all our money in 
military spending. We want these countries to become democracies, to 
become trading partners, to become places that we can work with. 
Instead, if we allow these girls to be subjugated and we allow them to 
be chattel and we allow them to be treated like slaves, they are never 
going to get the kind of democracy that we want them to get to and that 
will allow for a better country. You are not going to have a woman 
elected to the Senate in one of these countries if they believe that 
women can be treated as chattel, as we are seeing in so many of these 
places.
  So I am going to go to the next part of the chapter, which is called 
``Rescuing Girls Is the Easy Part.''

       We became slave owners in the twenty-first century the old-
     fashioned way: We paid cash in exchange for two slave girls 
     and a couple of receipts. The girls were then ours to do with 
     as we liked.
       Rescuing girls from brothels is the easy part, however. The 
     challenge is keeping them from returning. The stigma that the 
     girls feel in their communities after being freed, coupled 
     with drug dependencies or threats from pimps, often lead them 
     to return to the red-light district. It's emotionally 
     dispiriting for well-meaning aid workers who oversee a 
     brothel raid to take the girls back to a shelter and give 
     them food and medical care, only to see the girls climb over 
     the back wall.

  That is what I talked about earlier. That is why, when we look at it 
from a U.S. perspective, what these bills focus on is trying to turn 
these girls' lives around and trying to set that standard. We are not 
mandating it in other States; we are simply creating some incentives 
and giving them some funding so that States can start doing these cases 
in a different way and start seeing them as victims and making it 
easier to go after the people who are running the ring.
  Back to the book:

       Our unusual purchase came about when Nick--

  Referring here to Nick Kristof--

     traveled with Naka Nathaniel, then a New York Times 
     videographer, to an area in northwestern Cambodia notorious 
     for its criminality. Nick and Naka arrived at the town of 
     Poipet and checked into an $8-a-night guest house that 
     doubled as a brothel. They focused their interviews on two 
     teenage girls, Srey Neth and Srey Momm, each in a different 
     brothel.
       Neth was very pretty, short and light-skinned. She looked 
     fourteen or fifteen, but she thought she was older than that; 
     she had no idea of her actual birth date. A woman pimp 
     brought her to Nick's room, and she sat on the bed, quivering 
     with fear. She had been in the brothel only a month, and Nick 
     would have been her first foreign customer. Nick needed his 
     interpreter present in the room as well, and this puzzled the 
     pimp, who nevertheless accommodated.
       Black hair fell over Neth's shoulders and onto her tight 
     pink T-shirt. Below, she wore equally tight blue jeans, and 
     sandals. Neth had plump cheeks, but the best of her was thin 
     and fragile; thick makeup caked her face in a way that seemed 
     incongruous, as if she were a child who had played with her 
     mother's cosmetics.
       After some awkward conversation through the interpreter, as 
     Nick asked Neth about how she had grown up and about her 
     family, she began to calm down. She stopped trembling and 
     mostly looked in the direction of the television in the 
     corner of the room, which Nick had put on to muffle the sound 
     of their voices. She responded to questions briefly and 
     without interest.

  Now we have been joined--I am going to stop reading from the book for 
a while. Senator Feinstein has come to the floor. Senator Feinstein has 
been a true leader on this issue of sex trafficking. She is a senior 
member of the Judiciary Committee--the only other woman on the 
Judiciary Committee besides me, with, I think, 20-some guys. She knows 
how important this issue is. I know she is going to talk a little bit 
about that as well as some other things. I welcome her to the floor.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Gardner). The Senator from California.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for 
such time as I may consume.
  As Senator Klobuchar stated, I come to the floor to speak on the sex 
trafficking bill. I know it is now held up by certain language, which I 
will go into in the details of my remarks, but briefly, I would like to 
begin by describing the bill's highlights. The bill clarifies that a 
person who buys a sex act from a minor or other trafficking victim can 
be prosecuted under the Federal commercial sex trafficking statute. The 
bill authorizes block grants for State and local governments to develop 
programs to rescue trafficking victims and investigate and prosecute 
traffickers. The bill also includes nearly all of the provisions from 
the Combat Human Trafficking Act which Senator Portman and I introduced 
in January.
  I am very grateful to the authors--Senator Klobuchar, Senator 
Cornyn--for adding these. Those provisions establish a minimum period 
of 5 years of supervised release for a person who conspires to violate 
the commercial sex trafficking statute.
  It would require the Justice Department to train on investigating and 
prosecuting buyers, on seeking restitution, and on connecting victims 
with health services. It would require reporting on sex trafficking 
prosecutions. It would expand wiretap authority to cover all human 
trafficking offenses. It would expand the rights of crime victims--
something I have been interested in since Senator Kyl and I did the 
Crime Victims' Bill of Rights.
  The bill, which is not controversial, should pass, except for the 
surreptitious inclusion--I use this word considered--of a provision 
that is known as the Hyde amendment. The provision was not included by 
language but by cross-reference to provisions in another previously 
enacted appropriations bill.
  Here is what it says:

       Limitations. Amounts in the Fund, or otherwise transferred 
     from the Fund, shall be subject to the limitations on the use 
     or expending of amounts described in sections 506 and 507 of 
     division H of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014 
     (Public Law 113-76; 128 Stat. 409) to the same extent as if 
     amounts in the Fund were funds appropriated under division H 
     of such Act.

  This provision was not included in the bill Senator Cornyn introduced 
last Congress, which I cosponsored. His staff approached my staff and 
staffs of other Senators early in 2015. They asked if I would cosponsor 
again. My staff asked whether the bill was identical to last year's 
bill and for an explanation of any changes that were made. Senator 
Cornyn's staff then sent back an email with a list of changes--seven 
changes in all. That list did not include the Hyde amendment language 
that had been added. That language was not mentioned to my staff at any 
point.
  In other words, an important and sensitive change was made to the 
bill and was not disclosed upon request. That does not excuse us for 
not catching this, but if you see the complicated and sort of 
obfuscated nature of this--I am not saying it is intended obfuscation, 
but all of the numbers that are in there--I think it makes it 
understandable.
  If the Hyde amendment--which is what this is--if that language comes 
out, this bill will pass easily.
  Let me address for a moment the enormous problem we are trying to 
address with this bill. Today, high demand and easy access fuels a huge 
amount of sex trafficking. Human trafficking today is the second 
largest criminal industry in the world. It is only behind illegal 
drugs.
  In 2005, human trafficking was a $32 billion criminal enterprise. 
Today, some 9 years later, it is a $150 billion estimate of illegal 
gains. Two-thirds of the proceeds from human trafficking come from sex 
trafficking.
  Children as young as 12, 13, and 14 can be found on the street or 
over the

[[Page 3762]]

Internet. It is not an exaggeration to say that this is modern-day 
slavery. Those victims are moved against their will to cities 
throughout the country and even to other countries, wherever demand is 
high.
  Trafficking rings are also run by gangs. In San Diego, for example, 
profits are so great and the risk of being caught so minimal that rival 
gangs do not fight each other over sex trafficking, as they do when 
drugs are involved.
  Some traffickers make as much as $33,000 per week. These are numbers 
gathered by the Urban Institute: Atlanta, gross take per trafficker per 
week, $32,833; Denver, $31,200; Seattle, $18,000; Miami, $17,741; 
Dallas, $12,025; Washington, DC, $11,588; and San Diego, $11,129. This 
is weekly gross cash intake per individual trafficker.
  Traffickers lure victims through promises of love and money or 
sometimes use an older trafficked girl as a recruiter. Those criminals 
prey on the most vulnerable children in our society, including those 
who are homeless or in the foster care system. They target children who 
have been victims of sexual abuse. Once they have a victim under their 
control, they may traffic him or her from city to city based on demand.
  For example, this is a slide of California. It is from the Orange 
County Human Trafficking Task Force, and it shows the route traffickers 
take to move victims around the State of California to meet demand. You 
can see these circles from Oakland to Sacramento and then down into the 
Inland Empire and then from Los Angeles all the way around into the 
Inland Empire. So you can actually track various routes. Orange County 
did this. The orange center here is meant to be Orange County.
  This particular task force is comprised of a number of Federal and 
local law enforcement agencies in Orange County, including Anaheim and 
Huntington Beach police departments, the U.S. Attorney's Office, the 
FBI, and the District Attorney's Office.
  Now, here it comes: Regardless of how children are first trafficked, 
one thing is almost universal--victims will be advertised on the 
Internet. By one estimate, 76 percent of child sex trafficking 
victims--76 percent of them are sold over the Internet.
  My staff and I have spoken with a number of law enforcement officials 
in California about the Internet's role in connecting sellers of 
underage children with buyers. Nearly every single official we spoke 
with said the Internet is the primary means to connect sellers with 
buyers. So this is where we next must take decisive steps to stop sex 
trafficking. Purveyors of these online ads must be held accountable. 
Senator Kirk and I have an amendment that will do that.
  There are at least 19 distinct Web sites that accept ads relating to 
trafficking underage boys and girls. Here they are: Backpage.com; 
EscortAds
.xxx; ErosAds.com; EscortsInCollege.com; AsianEscortSF.com; 
EscortsInThe.us; LiveEscortReviews.com; MyProvider
Guide.com; EroticMugShots.com; NaughtyReviews.com; EscortPhone
List.com; RubAds.com; Eros.com; TheEroticReview.com; RubMaps.com; 
APerfectSin.com; EscortDater.com; MyRedBook.com; and NightShift.com. 
Nineteen Web sites act as purveyors of child sex trafficking in this 
country. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.
  This site I am going to show you, Backpage.com, allows a purveyor to 
post an advertisement for an escort or a body rub. In fact, nearly all 
of these ads are for commercial sex acts; many of them depict minors. 
When you view an ad for an escort or a body rub, you will see pictures 
of young girls, often with few or no clothes on.
  Now I am going to show you two girls. The first is a missing 17-year-
old girl. She is here as a runaway. This is a listing of the National 
Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a very legitimate 
organization which I am fully in support of. It is entitled 
``Endangered Runaway,'' and it is information about her, her date of 
birth, her age, her sex, her race, and all of it, and where you can get 
in touch if you have any information.
  I wish to show how this is also used. This is the same girl on 
Backpage, and this essentially says:

       Hello Texas,
       Are you looking for an unforgettable experience? Look no 
     further!
       I am 100% Great service provider!
       I am very down to earth, warm, sensitive, passionate,
       and genuinely interested in giving you a great experience.

  And it goes on and on.
  This is the same picture of this same girl.
  We blocked out the image, and it is shocking. It is simply shocking 
that this is going on to the extent it is in our country, right in a 
ribald way on the Internet.
  Law enforcement officials and anti-trafficking organizations say 
there are a number of key indicators that allow them to identify ads 
that are likely for trafficking victims.
  In this advertisement we see three of those key indicators. First, 
the title states the victim is ``New to your City.'' Anti-trafficking 
organizations say this is code for being underage. You may also see 
girls in ads described as ``new,'' ``fresh,'' or ``new in town'' to 
indicate they are underage. Second, we see a victim is listed from 
outside the area. Here she is listed as from Miami for a posting that 
is in the Houston area.
  Third, the victim also has an out-of-area phone number.
  Those are three indicators of what this ad is for--to sell sex with 
children. Law enforcement and experts confirm this point.
  The Cook County Sheriff's Office in Illinois found that 100 percent 
of women claiming to be massage therapists or platonic escorts on one 
Web site, Backpage, were being sold for sex. This isn't mine, this is 
the Cook County Sheriff's Office.
  The sheriff's office set up so-called dates with 618 girls via 
Backpage. All 618 agreed to provide sex for money.
  The sheriff's office concluded: ``This presents irrefutable evidence 
that Backpage is indeed a haven for pimps and sex solicitors who are 
victimizing women and girls for their own gain. Any notion that 
Backpage employs a legitimate business model simply does not stand up 
to the facts.''
  This is a direct letter from Sheriff Tom Dart, Cook County, IL.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
a memorandum to Sheriff Tom Dart.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                Cook County Sheriff's Office Memorandum

     Date: 6/9/2014.
     To: Sheriff Thomas J. Dart.
     From: Deputy Chief Michael Anton, Cook County Sheriff's 
         Police.
     Subject: Backpage.com Arrests.
       Per Sheriff Dart's direction, the Cook County Sheriff's 
     Police Vice Unit has utilized Backpage.com as its primary 
     forum for recovering victims of human trafficking in Cook 
     County. Please find our year-to-year Backpage arrest 
     statistics

       Cook County Sheriff's Police Arrests Off of Backpage:
       2009: 142
       2010: 108
       2011: 63
       2012: 121
       2013: 135
       2014 (through the end of May): 49
       Total: 618

       Additionally, the Cook County Sheriff's Police Vice Unit 
     has made 42 arrests for Involuntary Servitude, Human 
     Trafficking or Prostitution since 2007, with many of those 
     investigations originating from responses to Backpage ads.
       It is important to note that 100% of the women claiming to 
     be massage therapists or platonic escorts on Backpage have 
     accepted the offer of money for sex from our undercover male 
     officers. Our team has set up ``dates'' with 618 via this 
     website--all 618 have turned out to be prostitutes. This 
     presents irrefutable evidence that Backpage is indeed a haven 
     for pimps and sex solicitors who are victimizing women and 
     girls for their own gain. Any notion that Backpage employs a 
     legitimate business model simply does not stand up to the 
     facts.

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. A study of ads placed in this year's Super Bowl in 
Phoenix concludes that 65 percent of the ads placed on Backpage's 
Phoenix Web site around the weekend of the game had indicators that the 
ad was for a victim of sex trafficking.
  Simply put, there are Internet companies that are profiting off the 
rape and abuse of children. This must stop.

[[Page 3763]]

  One way we can combat sex trafficking over the Internet is to make it 
a crime for a person such as the owner of a Web site to knowingly 
advertise a commercial sex act with a minor. As I said, Senator Kirk 
and I have introduced such an amendment. It would create a new offense 
of knowingly advertising a commercial sex act with a minor on the 
Internet.
  The amendment is identical to a House bill that has 52 cosponsors and 
passed that Chamber by voice vote.
  If we come to a point where we are voting on amendments to Senator 
Cornyn's bill, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I 
know Senator Kirk and I would bring it to the floor.
  Last October, 53 attorneys general offered a letter to the Senate 
Judiciary Committee in support of the bill that Senator Kirk and I 
introduced last June that is similar to the amendment. This is the list 
of the attorneys general.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the letter of 53 attorneys general.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                           National Association of


                                            Attorneys General,

                                 Washington, DC, October 20, 2014.
     Hon. Patrick Leahy,
     Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee, Washington, DC.
     Hon. Chuck Grassley,
     Ranking Member, Senate Judiciary Committee, Washington, DC.
       Dear Chairman Leahy and Ranking Member Grassley: We, the 
     undersigned state and territorial attorneys general, urge you 
     to join us in the fight against human trafficking in the 
     United States. We commend your recent action to pass 
     legislation to increase federal penalties and victim 
     restitution and encourage you to act to protect children from 
     being trafficked on the Internet by passing S. 2536, the Stop 
     Advertising Victims of Exploitation Act (SAVE Act).
       Human trafficking is tied as the second largest and is the 
     fastest growing criminal industry in the world, generating 
     roughly $150 billion each year. According to a study of 
     Department of Justice human trafficking task force cases, 83 
     percent of sex trafficking victims identified in the United 
     States were U.S. citizens. Shockingly, there are numerous 
     cases nationally of children being used in prostitution as 
     young as 12.
       Every day, children in the United States are sold for sex. 
     The use of the ``adult services sections'' on websites such 
     as Backpage.com has created virtual brothels where children 
     are bought and sold using euphemistic labels such as 
     ``escorts.'' The involvement of these advertising companies 
     is not accidental--these companies have constructed their 
     business models around income gained from those participating 
     in commercial sex. In just one week this June, law 
     enforcement arrested 281 alleged sex traffickers and took 168 
     children out of prostitution in a nationwide FBI crackdown 
     where many child victims were offered for sale on ``escort'' 
     and other ``adult services'' websites. Organized crime groups 
     as well as street gangs are involved with human trafficking, 
     and many of these perpetrators use the Internet to sell their 
     victims.
       The undersigned attorneys general respectfully request that 
     the Senate Judiciary Committee pass the SAVE Act so that 
     these websites that are facilitating trafficking through 
     their very business model will have to take steps to verify 
     the identity of individuals posting advertisements and the 
     age of those who appear in these advertisements.
       We thank you in advance for your continued dedication to 
     the eradication of human trafficking.
         Greg Zoeller, Indiana Attorney General; Luther Strange, 
           Alabama Attorney General; Tom Horne, Arizona Attorney 
           General; Kamala Harris, California Attorney General; 
           George Jepsen, Connecticut Attorney General; Irvin 
           Nathan, District of Columbia Attorney General; Robert 
           W. Ferguson, Washington Attorney General; Michael 
           Geraghty, Alaska Attorney General; Dustin McDaniel, 
           Arkansas Attorney General; John W. Suthers, Colorado 
           Attorney General; Joseph R. ``Beau'' Biden III , 
           Delaware Attorney General; Pamela Jo Bondi, Florida 
           Attorney General; Samuel S. Olens, Georgia Attorney 
           General; David Louie, Hawaii Attorney General; Lisa 
           Madigan, Illinois Attorney General; Derek Schmidt, 
           Kansas Attorney General; James ``Buddy'' Caldwell, 
           Louisiana Attorney General; Douglas F. Gansler, 
           Maryland Attorney General.
         Bill Schuette, Michigan Attorney General; Lenny Rapadas, 
           Guam Attorney General; Lawrence Wasden, Idaho Attorney 
           General; Tom Miller, Iowa Attorney General; Jack 
           Conway, Kentucky Attorney General; Janet Mills, Maine 
           Attorney General; Martha Coakley, Massachusetts 
           Attorney General; Lori Swanson, Minnesota Attorney 
           General; Jim Hood, Mississippi Attorney General; Tim 
           Fox, Montana Attorney General; Catherine Cortez Masto, 
           Nevada Attorney General; John Jay Hoffman, New Jersey 
           Attorney General (Acting); Eric T. Schneiderman, New 
           York Attorney General; Wayne Stenehjem, North Dakota 
           Attorney General; Michael DeWine, Ohio Attorney 
           General; Chris Koster, Missouri Attorney General; Jon 
           Bruning, Nebraska Attorney General; Joseph Foster, New 
           Hampshire Attorney General.
         Gary King, New Mexico Attorney General; Roy Cooper, North 
           Carolina Attorney General; Gilbert Birnbrich, Northern 
           Mariana Islands Attorney General (Acting); Scott 
           Pruitt, Oklahoma Attorney General; Ellen F. Rosenblum, 
           Oregon Attorney General; Cesar R. Miranda Rodriguez, 
           Puerto Rico Attorney General; Alan Wilson, South 
           Carolina Attorney General; Herbert H. Slatery, III, 
           Tennessee Attorney General; Sean Reyes, Utah Attorney 
           General; Mark R. Herring, Virginia Attorney General; 
           Peter K. Michael, Wyoming Attorney General; Kathleen 
           Kane, Pennsylvania Attorney General; Peter Kilmartin, 
           Rhode Island Attorney General; Marty J. Jackley, South 
           Dakota Attorney General; Greg Abbott, Texas Attorney 
           General; William H. Sorrell, Vermont Attorney General; 
           Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia Attorney General.

  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. The attorneys general wrote:

       The use of the ``adult services sections'' on websites such 
     as Backpage.com has created virtual brothels where children 
     are bought and sold using euphemistic labels such as 
     ``escorts.''

  This is a quote from a letter to this effect--I don't want anybody to 
think this is what I am saying, it is what they are saying.

       The use of the term ``adult services sections'' on websites 
     such as Backpage.com has created virtual brothels where 
     children are bought and sold using euphemistic labels such as 
     ``escorts.''

  Put simply, if you have knowledge that an advertisement placed on 
your Web site is for commercial sex with a minor, then you should be 
prosecuted. That is what our amendment would do.
  I have no doubt that prohibiting misconduct by a Web site owner is 
constitutional. As the Supreme Court has held on several occasions: 
``Offers to engage in illegal transactions are categorically excluded 
from First Amendment protection.''
  In fact, the Supreme Court in 1973 wrote: ``We have no doubt that a 
newspaper constitutionally could be forbidden to publish a want ad 
proposing a sale of narcotics or soliciting prostitutes.''
  This amendment targets illegal conduct--commercial sex with minors--
that would not be protected by the First Amendment.
  It imposes liability on Web sites that know that their sites are 
being used to advertise minors for sex.
  In conclusion, the Internet has made this industry what it is, the 
second largest criminal industry in the world, second only to drugs, 
and it is up to us to do something about it.
  One of our duties in this body is to protect the most vulnerable of 
individuals. That includes children, and this is what this amendment 
does.
  Some say other parts of the bill will help stop sex trafficking, and 
we don't need to touch the Internet. That makes no sense to me. 
Seventy-six percent of sales of sex trafficking victims begin on the 
Internet. So you can just touch a small part of it--this touches 76 
percent of victims.
  We cannot allow these Web sites to continue to operate with impunity. 
It is time to take a stand, stop the ads, and stop the exploitation of 
children.
  I look forward to Senator Kirk coming to the floor, presenting our 
amendment, assuming we can get past this block. This is so much more 
important than putting the Hyde amendment, cloaked in difficult 
language, in this bill, when the House bill doesn't contain it. The 
House understands that it is going to have difficulty passing it with 
this in the bill. Why isn't that recognized in this House? If they take 
that out, this bill swims through.
  Mr. CORNYN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I yield to the Senator.

[[Page 3764]]


  Mr. CORNYN. I was in my office and watching the Senator on TV, so I 
thought I would come to the floor and maybe we could get to the bottom 
of this. There seems to be a ship passing in the night, it seems to me.
  I know the Senator from California cares passionately about this 
issue, and I don't question that for a moment. It is very clear to me. 
But I ask the Senator from California, she graciously agreed to 
cosponsor this legislation?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I did.
  Mr. CORNYN. She voted for it in the Senate Judiciary Committee that 
passed unanimously. It does contain, on page 50 and 51 of this bill, 
the language that the Senator referred to. I saw it on my TV screen in 
my office, which incorporates the limitation that was contained in the 
Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014. It incorporates that into the 
bill by reference.
  Not only--I believe the Senator voted for the bill in committee and 
cosponsored it. The Senator also voted for that limitation in the 
Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2014. This is the same or similar 
language of what was contained in the Affordable Care Act, contained in 
the Defense authorization bill, and contained in literally every 
appropriations bill since 1976.
  This is what I would love to have my friend, the Senator from 
California, explain to me: Why is it that it all of a sudden becomes 
objectionable on this legislation--when you care and I care so 
passionately about getting help for these victims--that this is the 
reason to derail the legislation?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Because of what this legislation is. This legislation 
is the raping and the misconduct, sexually, with young girls, girls 14, 
15, and 16. What if they are impregnated? Should they be entitled to be 
able to go and get an abortion? Does this body really want them to be 
forced to bear somebody else's child?
  So this offers the opportunity for some funding. These aren't wealthy 
girls. They don't live in Beverly Hills, Hyde Park, or any of these 
places that are prominent. They are on the streets. They are lost, 
maybe lost mentally, lost physically. They may have been abused, and 
now they are caught up in an industry where they are held hostage in 
the night.
  I have read of some in a neighborhood in my city being handcuffed at 
night, stripped, so they don't have clothes and can't run away. They 
are put out on the streets, they are watched. They are moved around. If 
it becomes too hot in one area, they are moved to another. They are 
moved to another State, and they come from other countries.
  It just seems to me to have this in this bill--and, Senator, I have 
great respect for you. I have wanted to work with you on this. I know 
you are sincere.
  It is not in the House bill. So maybe the House understands this. I 
can't speak for the House.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to engage in a 
colloquy.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I am pleased to do so.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. CORNYN. Otherwise, we are going to have to keep addressing 
questions through the Chair and keep asking for permission. I think it 
is great to have an honest conversation with my friend.
  So it is clear that the Senator from California has voted for this 
restriction on use of taxpayer funding for abortions previously, 
correct?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Not to my knowledge. Let me put it that way. Now you 
can blame me and say I should have known--I am not the only one on our 
committee, Senator, who is in this position, either, who communicated 
with your staff and was under the impression that the bill was 
identical to last year, with the exception of seven pieces, which are 
not this. The seven were detailed to us.
  Mr. CORNYN. I am not going to engage in a debate about whether the 
Senator should have known or how she voted in the past. I believe the 
record would demonstrate that she and others voted for the Affordable 
Care Act, which actually National Abortion Rights Action League says is 
an expansion of the Hyde amendment.
  I ask the Senator, you rightly point out that these child victims of 
sexual assault will have been raped, either statutory rape--they are 
below the age of consent--or they are adults and they have been 
assaulted, criminally assaulted.
  Isn't it your understanding of the Hyde amendment that the exclusion 
to the Hyde amendment would still allow them to gain access to the 
services that you believe they need or deserve?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Yes. I think that is correct. I suppose we could 
change this to have a rape implication, but the gauntlet has been 
thrown down. And it is not up to me alone to remove it. There was no 
open discussion in our committee when we discussed this that there was 
a highly sensitive issue in it, Senator.
  Now, I will plead mea culpa. And guess what. I will wave a whip and 
get my staff and say: Look henceforth at every code change. But my 
colleague and I both know that occasionally things slip through. I will 
plead mea culpa on that. But once I found out, I had an obligation to 
do something about it.
  So I am pleading with my colleague, let's just take it out. Let's 
just pass this bill. Let's put the Kirk-Feinstein amendment in. Let's 
go after the Internet purveyors. Let's go after 19 sites that put 
pictures of girls 12, 13, and 14 to be sold all around the United 
States, to be sold after big football games in various areas of the 
country. Let's go after them. Isn't that more important?
  I would like to ask my colleague a question.
  Mr. CORNYN. That is the reason I am so confused by the filibuster of 
this legislation by people, including my friend, who are cosponsors of 
the legislation and who already voted for it.
  I am not about pointing fingers in terms of what staff or Members 
should have read or understood about the legislation, but I believe the 
reason it was not debated at the Judiciary Committee level is because 
it had become a routine matter since 1976, when the Hyde amendment was 
passed. Every appropriation of Labor-HHS or other funding that could 
arguably use tax dollars for abortions has been limited by the Hyde 
amendment language.
  I had a couple of Senators in my office yesterday afternoon who are 
proudly pro-choice. I am proudly pro-life. But even my pro-choice 
friends said we still believe taxpayer funds should not be used for 
abortions except in the case of rape or to protect the health of the 
victim.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Well, why then, if I may ask a question, 
respectfully.
  Mr. CORNYN. Sure.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Why isn't it in the House language?
  Mr. CORNYN. I would say to my friend that I can't vouch for the 
House's product. I can just say what the Congress as a whole has done 
since 1976, and it has limited the expenditure of funds for this 
purpose under the terms of the Hyde amendment.
  That was the reason we referred in the legislation, on page 50, which 
my colleague has blown up here, referring to the language in the 
Committee on Appropriations, which I am confident my friend, the 
Senator from California, voted for, just as she did in the limitation 
that was contained in the Affordable Care Act and all the other times 
that Hyde has been part of our process. This has become so unremarkable 
and so routine that it hardly seems like something someone would point 
out because this language doesn't change the status quo at all.
  So we have talked about ways to get past this impasse, and I would 
just have to say I think abandoning the Hyde amendment would be a 
dramatic mistake and something I am not willing to be a part of. It has 
become this one area, in a divisive area of abortion, where there has 
been bipartisan consensus for 39 years, at least to the point it has 
remained the law of the land effectively. To take it out and say 
somehow we are going to depart from that today or this week would, to 
me, be a dramatic expansion of taxpayer

[[Page 3765]]

funding for this purpose that I can't support.
  So I would say, if there are ways we can deal with this fund, as a 
fund that can be appropriated on an annual basis subject to the normal 
restrictions--that is something I talked about with the ranking member, 
our friend from Vermont, that possibility--I think there are ways we 
might be able to get to a solution. But stripping out this limitation, 
which has been the law of the land for 39 years, is not acceptable 
because it would represent a huge expansion on the use of taxpayer 
funding for abortions in ways many of my pro-choice friends don't 
support.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Well, I guess I disagree with that. Those of us who 
believe a woman should control her own reproductive system, in concert 
with her family and her doctor, have objection to the government 
getting involved and telling us what to do. It is actually not your 
reproductive system--and I say ``you'' generically, as a man--it is our 
reproductive system. In a sense this has been a battle for our 
identity.
  I sat on a term-setting and paroling authority in California in the 
1960s, when abortion was illegal. I sentenced women to State prison for 
abortion. It had then an indeterminate sentence of between 6 months and 
10 years. I saw abortionists come back to prison. I asked one, when I 
was setting the sentence: Why do you keep doing this? Her first name 
was Anita. And she said: Because I feel so sorry for the women.
  That was the way it was. I remember passing the plate at Stanford for 
a young woman to go to Tijuana for an abortion. The morbidity that was 
done to women through back-alley abortions, this has opened a Pandora's 
box of big emotional issues for women.
  As to the Hyde amendment, if there is rape and you can prove it, that 
is right; and then there is a 12-year-old, a 13-year-old who is out on 
the streets as a prostitute, which is a different thing--sort of the 
same but sort of different. The overwhelming evil of this trade 
overcomes any of this, because you take a young woman, and you probably 
change their life for the worse for the rest of her life.
  Imagine your daughter being out on the street; my daughter, my 
granddaughters being out on the street like this and what it would do 
to them being handcuffed and moved and traded around the country and 
girls brought from Nepal through India, all over Europe. This is what 
is going on in the world today, and we are sitting here arguing 
essentially about the availability of an abortion in this area. To me, 
that is so secondary to the enormous harm that is being done.
  I have great respect for my colleague. He has been a very 
distinguished jurist in his State. He makes sense when he speaks on the 
Judiciary Committee. We have listened to each other for more than a 
decade now. Let this drop. Let us get on with the work of this bill--
and the work of this bill isn't completed until we get some of the 
amendments that relate to the bill--and then I think we can debate this 
another day.
  I would say I plead a mea culpa. I wish I had known. All I can say is 
I did not know. Is that my fault? Probably. But I didn't know. So if 
you don't know, and you make a mistake, isn't the right thing to try to 
set that right? That is what we have tried to do, and women on our 
side, and some on my colleague's side, feel very strongly about this.
  My colleague knows over the years we have lost virtually every battle 
that has been on this floor and we are tired of it. So we are taking a 
stand and we are going to hold that stand.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I obviously don't agree with my friend 
from California, but I respect her for answering the questions I have 
posed here today. I just find it a terrible shame we are going to 
relitigate what has been the law of the land for 39 years on this bill 
in a way that would block help to the very people I know the Senator 
from California cares so passionately about.
  If we are going to undo the Hyde amendment, which the Senator has 
voted for in some form or another repeatedly over the years, then we 
are not going to make any progress. If we can find some other way to 
structure the funds so the appropriators will have a more direct role 
in appropriating the fines and penalties paid into this fund on an 
annual basis, I think maybe there is some room to talk. But I thank the 
Senator for her courtesy in answering my questions. I am sorry we find 
ourselves at this loggerhead, but I hope at some point that can be 
resolved.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. May I say one more thing? It is my understanding--
breaking news coming here--that there is no language in Federal statute 
on sex trafficking that defines a trafficking survivor as a victim of 
rape. So the victim would have to prove she is a victim of rape.
  Now, look at what happens. I don't know if in my colleague's legal 
career it took him close to very young victims of this who cover up and 
who don't want to let people know. I am sure my colleague knows all of 
the vicissitudes, the hard life. We are asking someone to prove it.
  Mr. CORNYN. I would say to my friend that when I was attorney general 
of Texas for 4 years, I had responsibility for administering the Crime 
Victims' Compensation Fund as part of my duties of office, and we 
worked very directly with victims groups, including those who took care 
of very young children who had been sexually assaulted, sometimes by 
members of their own family--just the worst, the most reprehensible 
sorts of crimes.
  But if I can ask the Senator just one last question. Of course, we 
have had the procedural vote on the floor, twice now, where Democrats 
have blocked our ability to both vote on amendments, including 
amendments the Senator may have with the Senator from Illinois, Mr. 
Kirk. Why is there an objection to processing those amendments and 
allowing the Senate to work its will? Why can't we vote on them? Why 
can't the Democratic minority take up the majority leader's offer for a 
vote to strip the language out that your side objects to?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Can I answer that as honestly as I feel?
  Mr. CORNYN. I wish the Senator would.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Because there are many of us who believe this is one 
small step for womankind. It is one battle we can win, and we have had 
loss after loss after loss.
  You know, many of us ran on the right to choose. I was one of them. I 
am old enough to have seen the way it was before, to have sentenced 
women who committed illegal abortions with coat hangers. That is sort 
of the systemic root of all of this. It is our history, Senator. We are 
trying to change that history, and we keep losing. So there is one 
small thing in this.
  My colleague is right, we didn't see it, and we have to live with 
that. I understand that. But now we see it and we are trying to do 
something about it and, thankfully, our party is standing up with us. 
So we say make that small change and we pass this bill, and maybe we 
can even strengthen it with amendments.
  My colleague has done a superior job in putting the bill together. 
Let it go.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would just say, in conclusion, that I 
think it is a terrible shame that my colleague's side of the aisle has 
decided to take this bill hostage to try to litigate something that has 
been the law of the land for 39 years. I understand she feels 
passionately about it. I don't question that for a minute--the 
sincerity of my colleague's deeply held personal views.
  But why in the world would my colleagues take as a hostage a piece of 
legislation that is going to help those 100,000 children who are sex-
trafficked each year? Why should they suffer so my colleagues can make 
a point on this particular piece of legislation?
  I don't understand that and I think it is a terrible shame.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. Well, let me answer a question with a question. Why 
doesn't my colleague just take it out? It is not in the House bill. 
Then we don't have to conference it, we don't have to have another 
fight, we can get the amendments in the bill to strengthen the bill, 
and we can move

[[Page 3766]]

on, with the two parties together doing something that is right for the 
Nation. Why don't we do it?
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would say to my friend, I don't blame 
her for asking, but why in the world would we change settled law for 39 
years in order to accommodate the minority's view on this bill, and to 
change, as I said, what has been the law of the land?
  Since the Senator voted for this very language previously this year 
in the Judiciary Committee--since she cosponsored it, I don't really 
understand it since she voted for the legislation that is referred to 
here that has that amendment. Does the Senator see this as breaking new 
ground? Is she trying to expand or eliminate the Hyde amendment?
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I see it for standing up for a principle. I know 
something about these girls. I know something about the history of 
abortion in this country. I am old enough to have gone through it and 
know that I don't want to go back to those days. I don't want young 
women who take the law now so much for granted to have to return back.
  This is just one small step. There is nothing wrong with 
accommodating the minority on what is a relatively small point. In the 
House, 435 people over there didn't want it in. So why not accommodate 
the minority? The Senator just comes out a bigger person.
  Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I would say to my friend I appreciate her 
courtesy and her indulgence in having this conversation. I also feel on 
principle this limitation on tax dollars is an appropriate one. I 
understand the Senator disagrees and she would like to eliminate this 
from this point forward. But I am simply unable on principle to 
accommodate the Senator in that request.
  As I said, I do appreciate her courtesy.
  Mrs. FEINSTEIN. I appreciate it, too. And I appreciate the 
discussion. Principle doesn't know minority and majority. Principle is 
deeply held.
  I thank the Senator very much.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Lee). The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative 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.

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