[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 5231-5232]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     HUMAN TRAFFICKING LEGISLATION

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, from the very beginning of this 
discussion on the trafficking bill and the underlying issue, Members on 
both sides of the aisle agreed that we need to get this bill back on 
track as the bipartisan effort it should be, because, without question, 
survivors of trafficking deserve our support.
  Senator Klobuchar has done an amazing job in getting us to this point 
to get this bill done. I am pleased that we were able to reach a deal 
that now gets this done in a way that does not expand restrictions on 
women's health to nontaxpayer dollars or to new programs and provides 
survivors with real, dedicated funds for the support and services they 
need.
  No compromise is perfect. I am sure that Senator Cornyn would say the 
same thing. I believe there is more we can and must do when it comes to 
strengthening women's access to quality health care. But I am very 
pleased that Senator Cornyn and I, along with a number of other 
Senators on our side, including Senator Klobuchar, were able to work 
together in a bipartisan way to get this done.
  I want to thank him and all his colleagues for their work to get us 
to this point. I hope we can now get this legislation passed very 
quickly for survivors and move on to continue working together on the 
many challenges our country faces.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from Minnesota.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am very happy today that we have 
reached an agreement. I want to thank Senator Murray for her 
leadership, and Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, and Senator Cornyn. 
The two of us have worked on this issue for years. Finally, we are 
going to be able to move these really important bills forward.
  What this compromise does is really set up two funds. The first uses 
Senator Cornyn's fund, which is fees on perpetrators, and it uses that 
for things such as shelters and law enforcement, things that we had 
envisioned would be used for people to combat sex trafficking. The 
second fund is a medical fund. It is really based on the same principle 
that we used with the SGR fund that we just voted on.
  That bill passed 92 to 8. The fund will receive a minimum of $5 
million and would be matched up to $30 million, as funding in the 
Cornyn fund goes up. It really is a parallel fund but serving the exact 
same purpose.
  This is the way we were able to eliminate extraneous provisions but 
still keep the spirit of this really important bill and allow us to 
move on to my bill, the Stop Exploitation Through Trafficking Act, 
which really is about not prosecuting kids under 18. There was huge 
bipartisan support over in the House. It passed unanimously through the 
Judiciary Committee and will be one of the amendments to this bill.
  Again, I want to thank Senator Murray for her leadership. We have 
been a

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team on this. We have been able to work with Senator Cornyn and our 
friends across the aisle to get this done. It is also time--I will end 
by saying--to confirm the next Attorney General of the United States, 
Loretta Lynch.
  I yield the floor.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator from South Dakota.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I am pleased as well to hear that we have 
an agreement on the human trafficking legislation. It is something that 
should be above politics. Unfortunately, anything around here, it 
seems, gets sucked into politics from time to time, but it is important 
that we get an agreement that will allow us to advance this 
legislation.

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