Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, first of all, I thank my colleague from Pennsylvania for his impassioned plea and his work on this legislation. I intend to support this legislation. I know the story he just told and the notion that SIDS is still such a challenge to so many families are a little remarkable.

I am going to be speaking about a piece of legislation now named after another person not quite as young as Scarlett, where there was another tragedy that I hope we can act on as well. I intend to have it acted on before the end of this Congress. We are dealing with different circumstances, but there are times when we can, sometimes with relatively small legislative fixes, make a real difference in people's lives.

So I commend the Senator from Pennsylvania for his legislation.

Ashanti Alert Act of 2018

Mr. President, I rise to support H.R. 5075, the Ashanti Alert Act of 2018. To start, I would like to take this opportunity to thank my friend and colleague, the Congressman from the Second District of Virginia, Scott Taylor, for introducing this important legislation in the House of Representatives and for ushering it through the Chamber so now we can take part and pass this legislation or similar legislation in the Senate.

The Ashanti Alert Act seeks to establish a national communications network within the Department of Justice to help locate missing adults by providing assistance to regional and local search efforts.

The Ashanti Alert Act of 2018 is named after a 19-year-old Virginia resident, Ashanti Billie, who was attending culinary school in hopes of opening her own bakery one day. To preserve her dreams, she split her time between working at a Blimpie's restaurant at Fort Story and taking culinary classes at the Art Institute of Virginia Beach.

On September 18, 2017, in Norfolk, VA, Ashanti's dreams were cut short when she was abducted shortly after arriving at work. Unfortunately, Ashanti was found murdered in North Carolina 11 days after she was first reported missing.

Her parents, who were not living in Hampton Roads at that point, rushed to the region after she disappeared and spent literally 2 weeks--almost 2 weeks--trying to get law enforcement engaged and get the word out. The truth is, after she was missing for those 11 days and discovered in North Carolina, the authorities did later find and arrest her killer, but Ashanti's tragic murder raised an important question about whether more could have been done to save her life.

At the time of her abduction, at just 19 years old, Ashanti Billie was too old for the issuance of an AMBER Alert and too young for the issuance of a Silver Alert.

This tragic murder made me realize something I hadn't thought of before. We have alerts in place named after Amber for young people up to the age of 18. We have an alert system in place for seniors called Silver Alert for folks over 65. What about everybody between 18 and 65? No such alert system exists. So in the case of 19-year-old Ashanti Billie, her family had nowhere to turn to get the word out about her disappearance.

The unfortunate circumstance is--and it is again fairly remarkable that this issue has not been raised at a legislative level before because of this glaring gap of young adults and not-so-young adults, including folks who are younger than 65--Ashanti is not an isolated case. Families across the country are affected by loved ones who have gone missing. Right here in Washington, DC, we are having a conversation about the plight of missing teens, many of them young women of color and many of them who fall into that same age group as Ashanti--19, 20, 21, 22, 23. I think about my three daughters who are 23 to 29. God forbid if they were ever abducted, where would I turn to get an alert out? There is no system in place.

According to the National Crime Information Center database, over 55,000 missing adults are and have been recorded as missing. In my State, according to the Virginia State Police, there are currently 240 people aged 18 and older who have gone missing in our Commonwealth.

Of course, nobody wants to overload this kind of good, functioning alert system with too many reports which could take away the effectiveness of existing systems like the AMBER Alert Program. So this legislation addresses that issue to make sure that in order to issue an alert, the missing adult must either suffer from a proven mental or physical disability or law enforcement must certify the person's physical safety may be in danger or their disappearance was not voluntary. In this way, the Department of Justice can help States and localities create a system that provides alerts only when a missing adult is in real danger.

What I know is, we need lifesaving protections for missing adults between the ages of 18 and 64. While, as Senator Casey mentioned, we can never replace the hurt of that family because of that young child who died from SIDS, we can also never replace the hole that has been left in the Billie family by the loss of Ashanti. By passing this legislation and naming it after Ashanti--by calling it the Ashanti Alert Act--we may be able to prevent some tragedy like this from happening in the future.

It is past time for Congress to enact legislation that can help save the lives of many--many like Ashanti. As I mentioned, while we can't bring Ashanti back, her memory can live on by helping save the lives of others who may find themselves in this same kind of unfortunate situation.

I had planned to come to the floor today and ask for unanimous consent to pass the House bill in its current form. However, out of respect to some of my colleagues who have raised nonsubstantive but certain technical issues that can be corrected, I will hold off for today on asking unanimous consent, but this legislation cannot wait. This legislation cannot be held up by technical concerns.

I am anxious to work through these concerns tonight so we can move forward, perhaps on a hotline version, so it can get back to the House, so this legislation can become law, and so the Billie family knows Ashanti's memory will be honored.

I intend to work with my colleagues tonight on making sure their corrections are included, but the spirit and heart of this legislation--no one opposes the idea that we have a system for young people on alerts under 18 and a system for folks over 65. What about the rest of the adults who also fall into these kinds of circumstances? We have to make sure they are protected as well.

I look forward to making these technical corrections. My hope is, we can get this passed even with the hotline and that we can then send appropriate legislation back to the House and fill in this needed gap.

I thank folks on both sides of the aisle and the law enforcement community for working with us. There is complete agreement that this hole needs to be filled. I think it will be filled with this legislation, and Ashanti Billie's legacy will be honored by the Ashanti Alert Act becoming the law of the land.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source