[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 36, Number 44 (Monday, November 6, 2000)]
[Pages 2661-2662]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

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The President's Radio Address

October 28, 2000

    Good morning. Here in Washington, after months of partisan delay by 
the congressional majority, Congress still hasn't completed its work on 
the budget--even though the budget year ended a month ago.
    Yet, when Congress has acted in a spirit of bipartisanship, we've 
made remarkable progress. Today I want to talk to you about the most 
significant step we've ever taken to secure the health and safety of 
women at home and around the world. It's a new law I'm signing called 
the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act.
    In America today, domestic violence is the number one health risk 
for women between the ages of 15 and 44. Close to a third of all women 
murdered in this country were killed by their husbands, former husbands, 
or boyfriends. Every 12 seconds, another woman is beaten. That's nearly 
900,000 victims every year.
    And statistics tell us that in half the families where a spouse is 
beaten, the children are beaten, too. Domestic violence is a criminal 
activity. It devastates its victims and affects us all. It increases 
health costs, keeps people from showing up to work, prevents them from 
performing at their best. It destroys families, relationships, and 
lives, and it tears at the fabric of who we are as a people.
    That's why, as part of our 1994 crime bill, Al Gore and I fought 
hard to pass the landmark Violence Against Women Act--the foundation of 
the bill I will be signing. That law imposed tough new penalties for 
actions of violence against women. It helped to train police, 
prosecutors, and judges to better understand domestic violence, to 
recognize its symptoms when they see them, and to take steps to prevent 
them.
    It gave grants to shelters that are havens for victims of domestic 
violence, and it set up a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week toll-free national 
hotline to help women get the emergency assistance and counseling they 
need, to find a shelter, and to report abuse to the authorities.
    Most of all, the Violence Against Women Act worked. The hotline has 
been a tremendous help. More than half a million victims have found 
assistance by calling it. Police officers who once shied away from so-
called family squabbles are now getting involved in saving lives. Best 
of all, violence against women by an intimate partner has fallen 21 
percent since 1993.
    The bill I'm signing will keep that progress going by keeping the 
Violence Against Women Act the law of the land. It provides new 
resources for Native American communities, restores protections for 
battered immigrant women, and, for the first time, extends a law to 
cover women abused by their boyfriends.
    The new law contains another provision, too, one that will 
strengthen our fight against the insidious global practice of 
trafficking in human beings. Every year, a million or more women, 
children, and men are forced or tricked into lives of utter misery--into 
prostitution, sweatshop work, domestic or farm labor, or debt bondage. 
This is slavery, plain and simple. And it's not just something that 
happens far from our shores.
    In fact, each year as many as 50,000 people are brought to the 
United States for this cruel purpose. We must do our part to stop those 
responsible for these crimes and to help their victims. The bill I'm 
signing will help to do that.
    It establishes the first Federal law that specifically targets this 
problem, setting out harsh penalties for those who trade in human 
beings, requiring convicted traffickers to forfeit their assets and make 
restitution to those they have exploited. The law gives victims better 
access to services like shelters, counseling, and medical care. It 
enables victims to stay in the United States so they can receive those 
services and helps law enforcement agencies to prosecute the 
traffickers. It increases our assistance to other countries as well to 
help them detect and punish this pernicious practice, and it provides 
for sanctions for any countries that refuse to take steps to end 
trafficking in women and children. I worked hard for these provisions. 
They build on what we've been doing at home and abroad to address the 
problem.
    We see in the success of this landmark legislation once again that 
there is no real secret to getting things done in Washington. When

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we put progress over partisanship, we get results. When we work 
together, we get results.
    Now, we've shown once again we can work together by passing this 
landmark legislation to fight violence against women. Let's follow the 
rule and finish all the work the American people expect of us. It's time 
for Congress to set partisanship aside on the last two unfinished bills 
and complete a budget with smaller class sizes, modern classrooms, 
family tax cuts, and a higher minimum wage--one that honors our values 
and secures a better future for our children and our great Nation.
    Thanks for listening.

 Note:  The address was recorded at 6:57 p.m. on October 27 in the Oval 
Office at the White House for broadcast at 10:06 a.m. on October 28. The 
transcript was made available by the Office of the Press Secretary on 
October 27 but was embargoed for release until the broadcast. H.R. 3244, 
approved October 28, was assigned Public Law No. 106-386.