America's Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, today is Equal Pay Day. I am proud of the fact that one of our Members on this side of the aisle, Senator Deb Fischer, is taking the lead and pointing out that this is not a partisan issue. I know people find that hard to believe here in Washington, where everything seems like a partisan issue, but the fact is, both Republicans and Democrats and the unaffiliated believe that people who perform the same work ought to be compensated in the same way. So I am proud of the work Senator Fischer is doing.

I just wanted to make note of the fact that this is Equal Pay Day. I know some of our colleagues across the aisle maybe have a different view and think they have a better way to deal with this, but it is purely a difference in tactics, not in terms of goals, which is equal pay for equal work. National Crime Victims' Rights Week

Mr. President, yesterday I spoke about the fact that this is also Crime Victims' Week, and that is what I want to talk about now a little bit more.

There are a lot of people who come to Washington--big companies, people can hire lobbyists, lawyers, accountants, other experts--to try to make their case to Congress, but we don't have a crime victims' lobby per se. We have organizations--volunteer organizations, by and large--that try and provide a voice to the voiceless and people who need to be represented here, but the fact is, by listening to those victims of crime and to those who volunteer to help them here in the Nation's Capital, we can make a big difference in the lives of crime victims in this country.

I highlighted the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act as an example of what we can accomplish when we get past the partisan talking points and instead focus on a common goal. I pointed out that legislation, which is the most--I think the major--the most significant human trafficking legislation passed in the last 25 years, actually broke important ground. It uses the penalties and the fines paid by people on the purchasing side of the sex slave trade to be able to fund the resources to help heal the victims, typically a girl the age of 12 to 14, somebody who has maybe run away from home, who thinks maybe they have fallen in love with somebody new, only to find themselves trapped in modern-day human slavery. We were able to pass that legislation by a vote of 99 to 0 in the Senate, and now it is the law of the land.

I mentioned yesterday that some of the provisions, including the hero program, which was designed to provide incentives for returning veterans of the gulf war, Iraq, and Afghanistan--some of them bearing the wounds of those wars--to be able to use the skills they have acquired in the military to help go after child predators and other people who would take advantage of the most vulnerable in our society. But I wish to talk about another opportunity where I believe Congress can come together to rally behind victims and move legislation that could help save lives.

On the first day of December 2013, Kari Hunt Dunn brought her three young children to a hotel in Marshall, TX, a city east of Dallas near the border with Louisiana, to visit with her estranged husband. Sadly, this visit turned into tragedy. According to reports, Kari's estranged husband started to attack her and while he did, one of Kari's daughters did what her parents and family taught her to do in an emergency, which is to dial 911. She called for help repeatedly, but she didn't realize that, as in many hotels, first you need to dial 9 before you can dial out. So she kept dialing 911 to no avail, not recognizing that she needed to dial 9 to get an outside line. By the time help finally arrived, Kari was unresponsive and later died, leaving her three young children behind.

Obviously this is a terrible, heart-wrenching story, and I wish I could say it was an isolated event, but it is made that much more tragic because the family will never know what the outcome might have been had that first 911 call actually made its way to the proper authorities.

Following her death, Kari's father Hank decided he had to do something to correct the problem so tragedies like this could hopefully become a thing of the past. This is where we have a role to play. I know some people might say: Well, there are a lot more important things for Congress to be doing than dealing with this issue, but this is something we can do. It is not partisan, and we should do it on an expedited basis.

So earlier this year, I joined with several of my colleagues, including the senior Senators from Nebraska and Minnesota, to introduce legislation called Kari's Law, a bipartisan bill that already has a companion in the House. This legislation builds on a law passed last year by the Texas legislature, and several other States have followed suit as well.

Before us we have a clearer, albeit a discrete, problem, and we have an obvious solution. This bill would ensure that people have the ability to directly call 911, even in hotels and office buildings, without having to dial an extra number. By making this simple change, we can ensure that children, like Kari's daughter, can make the call for help, to call for the assistance of law enforcement and emergency personnel to save valuable time that can make the difference between life and death and the prevention of another tragedy.

We should follow the example of States like Texas that have already done this. We could do this on a national basis. We know there are lives at stake, like Kari's, and I believe we have an obligation to act to keep tragedies like Kari's from happening again.

So as we continue to look for ways to better support victims of crime this week, I hope we will take another small step to help victims by advancing this legislation. In so many instances, they are what seem like small steps that can have tremendous ramifications.

I mentioned yesterday the reforms we have been able to do in terms of testing the rape kit backlog. It had been reported that as many as 400,000 untested rape kits are sitting in evidence lockers in police stations or perhaps in labs untested, and I talked a little bit about the fact that in Houston alone, thanks to the leadership of the then mayor and the city council, working with State and Federal authorities, they were able to eliminate the rape kit backlog testing and come up with 850 hits on the database that showed there were individuals whose DNA was tested and located on this forensic evidence that was already in this FBI background database known as CODIS. There are things we can do that may seem small but can have a dramatic impact on the lives of our constituents.

So I suggest that we don't give up and we continue to do what we can, where we can, when we can, and passing Kari's Law would be another important step in that direction.

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