Justice For Victims Of Trafficking Act Of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, we find ourselves in the unusual posture of being stuck on a piece of legislation that had 12 Democratic cosponsors and was supported unanimously by all Republicans and all Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and which uncharacteristically was brought to the floor without having to jump through the regular procedural hoops that legislation usually has to jump through that requires consent by all 100 Senators.

So when you think about combating human trafficking and particularly the targeting of 12- and 14-year-old girls who are of the typical ages and gender of the people who are victims of human trafficking, you would think that if there is anything that ought to be able to avoid the partisan wars here in Washington, DC, and the divisions that seem to separate us, it ought to be the subject of human trafficking. Well, I guess to say I was disappointed is an understatement. But I am determined to keep our focus on the victims of human trafficking, the people this would help rescue and help heal and get on with their lives. Yes, I am also determined to make sure we can demonstrate that we can function, something I thought Senators wanted to do.

After this last election there were a number of people who said: Gee, we would really like to change the Senate to restore its reputation as the world's greatest deliberative body, where we actually treasured and valued solutions more than we did scoring partisan political points.

I come here today in the spirit of trying to offer a solution that will help us get unstuck from where we have found ourselves. I see my friend, the Senator from Maine, who has been working tirelessly to try to help us get unstuck, and perhaps this will help.

Just to recap: The way this bill was structured is it would deal with the demand side of human trafficking; in other words, it would take the fines and penalties from the people who purchased these services and it would create a crime victims compensation fund, which in essence would be used to help provide the money to faith-based and other organizations that help rescue and help heal these victims of human trafficking. Then we heard from some of our colleagues on the other side that they wanted to change the way this was structured so that it was subject to the routine appropriations process and didn't enlarge the way the traditional limitations on appropriations were treated under the so-called Hyde amendment.

Just to refresh everybody's memory: Since 1976, all funding, all appropriations bills, and many authorization bills, including the Affordable Care Act and the Defense authorization bills, have been subjected to a limitation on the use of tax dollars for abortions except in the case of rape and in the cases where a physician certifies the health of the mother is at stake. The bill we introduced that was passed out of the Judiciary Committee unanimously and has 12 Democratic cosponsors has a reference to an appropriations bill that had that same limitation. The idea was that we wouldn't try to change the status quo; we would try to maintain the status quo which has existed for 39 years. But then some of our colleagues on the other side said, when offered an opportunity to vote on an amendment stripping that language out, they would not even vote. They wanted to obstruct and filibuster this legislation instead.

I, for one, am more interested in getting to a solution than I am engaging in this partisan point scoring. I believe there is a sufficient number of Members of the Senate who are sick and tired of the dysfunction and who don't want to be distracted by the politics but want to focus on how to help those 100,000 victims of human sex trafficking who are estimated to exist on an annual basis.

What I have come to the floor to do is to say let's make this fund subject to the annual appropriations process that will preserve the money for the victims and it cannot be used for any other purpose, but it will be subject to the Appropriations Committee and the usual riders that have existed for 39 years. It won't represent an expansion of the Hyde amendment, as some of our colleagues have expressed concerns about. It would, basically, again, maintain the status quo.

I came to the floor yesterday and my friend, the Senator from California, was here. I pointed out that not only did she cosponsor this legislation, she voted for it in the Judiciary Committee. But she now feels so strongly--and I know it is a matter of good faith and true conviction for her, but she feels like this is the place where we ought to fight this fight--we ought to relitigate the scope of the Hyde amendment. I don't think we have to do that. I am proudly pro-life and I believe the Hyde amendment represents one little island of consensus in the wars over abortion that we have. That is why for 39 years we have had a limitation on tax dollars. Indeed, fines paid into this fund would be public dollars. It wouldn't be generated from revenue, but it is not private money; once they are paid into this fund they are public dollars under my proposal, subject to appropriation on an annual basis by the Appropriations Committee. So now the money will flow from the victims fund through the relevant appropriations bills. It will be preserved for the victims and cannot be used for any other purpose, and all spending limitations that have routinely applied to those bills would apply to these funds as well.

So the question is, Can our friends who have been obstructing and filibustering this legislation take yes for an answer? Can they take yes for an answer? I think this will also be very revealing, because we will find out whether people are actually interested in a solution or are they trying to shut down the Senate and prevent us from functioning on anything. As I said before, if we can't get the yes on an antitrafficking bill, Heaven help us on issues where there is not consensus, where there are genuine policy differences.

I believe we can do exactly, for example, what Senator Leahy, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, asked for on the floor on March 10. He said ``but let's have it on things it should be on--appropriations bills.'' So I would say yes, my proposal would give what Senator Leahy asked for.

Then the minority whip, Senator Durbin, the Senator from Illinois, said on March 16:

Henry Hyde authored the Hyde amendment that said no Federal funds should be used to pay for abortion procedures except in very limited circumstances: rape, incest, and life of the mother. That has been put in appropriations bills every year since--without question, without challenge.

That was stated by the minority whip, Senator Durbin from Illinois. My proposal would facilitate exactly what he is arguing for. Can he say yes, take yes for an answer?

The minority leader, Senator Reid, said on the 11th: I served in the House of Representatives with Henry Hyde; a very fine man. He has had his name affixed to an anti-abortion bill, anti-abortion legislation for almost three decades. And it's been continued year after year in appropriations bills.

That was spoken by Senator Reid, the Democratic leader.

As I pointed out, what has perplexed me so much about all of this is that our Democratic friends have routinely voted for appropriations bills that contain the same restriction. When it was said, well, now you are extending it to an authorization bill, I pointed out that they voted for this very similar restriction in the Affordable Care Act and the Defense authorization bill, so that argument doesn't hold water; but I am giving them a chance to say yes, and, in essence, trying to find a way to break this impasse that has existed now for the last couple of weeks.

So that is the question. Now that we have made a proposal to them to give them what they have asked for and still preserve the 39-year limitation on the use of public dollars for abortion, can they take yes for an answer? I can't wait to hear what their response is to that proposal.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I saw on television my friend from Vermont, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, talking about the virtues of the House human trafficking bill, and I thought it would be worthwhile for Members and whoever else is listening to understand the difference between the two bills.

First of all, our bill, the one that is being filibustered by our Democratic colleagues--I should say, all but four of them--contains a $30 million fund that is financed through criminal funds. This is analogous to a crime victims compensation fund. For example, when I was attorney general of Texas, we administered one, and we were able to make grants to various organizations. That is what this $30 million fund would be. The bill on the House side actually has no fund. It is an authorization. It is a $5 million authorization. It has no money. It has no mechanism to generate funds like ours does.

Our bill contains language increasing restitution for trafficking victims by using criminal assets to satisfy these needs and allowing law enforcement to pay witness-assistance award money to victims.

The bill in the House does nothing. In other words, we have an asset-forfeiture provision in our bill to take the people who profit from human trafficking and to forfeit those funds and use that to add to the fines and use that money to help rescue and heal the victims. The House bill has nothing in it in that regard.

Our bill requires law enforcement agencies to file regular reports of human trafficking case totals as part of the Uniform Crime Reporting Program. That is important because so much of the human trafficking damage is never reported to law enforcement.

First of all, many victims of human trafficking are children who may or may not actually consider themselves victims. They may be runaways. They may find some adult who has taken them under their wing, only to turn them out on the streets as prostitutes and the like. They may not actually consider themselves victims, at least initially, which they are.

Our bill would make sure the statistics and reports of human trafficking totals are reported in the Uniform Crime Reporting Program so we would actually have a better objective record about the number of cases and so people could appreciate the severity of this problem. The bill in the House has nothing in that regard.

Next, our bill clarifies that child pornography producers are engaged in commercial sex acts. The bill on the House side does nothing in that regard.

Our bill requires persons indicted for human trafficking to be treated as violent criminals for purposes of pretrial, in terms of the availability of bail. The bill on the other side of the Capitol, in the House, does nothing in that regard. Our bill requires prosecutors and judges to undergo training to improve restitution in traffic cases. Again, our friends on the other side of the Capitol--their bill does nothing in that regard.

Finally, our bill requires human traffickers to remain under supervision for at least 5 years after they are released from prison. On the House side, it doesn't touch on that.

I don't say that to criticize the House bill, because I think they have done some good work. But it is important to recognize that the bill over here, which is being filibustered by our Democratic minority, does a lot more and a lot of different things, and things that I think are going to be a lot more helpful to the victims of human trafficking, which I can only imagine should be our collective goal.

I came to the floor this morning, and I said that we would be willing to work with our Democratic colleagues to try to address some of their stated concerns with the original bill. I said that notwithstanding the fact that 12 Democrats cosponsored the bill, the original bill that is now being filibustered. Nine Democrats, along with all of the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, voted to pass the bill out of the Judiciary Committee. Literally all 100 Senators had to consent for the bill to come to the floor without going through the typical procedural hurdles with which we are all very familiar.

Imagine my surprise, when in the middle of last week, these objections came up. What was the nature of the objection? The objection was that this bill contained a reference to an appropriations bill that was passed in 2014 and for which all of our Democratic colleagues voted. But that reference was to a restriction on the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions, known as the Hyde amendment. Then after they saw that or after they claimed that this was something new and unbeknownst to them, they objected.

I just simply cannot accept this argument that a provision that colleagues on that side of the aisle have routinely voted for on appropriations bills, that they routinely voted for on Defense authorization bills, and one they voted for on the Affordable Care Act, restricting the use of taxpayer funds under these circumstances--why they would pick this vehicle to object to that very same provision.

I accept at face value that some of our colleagues said that this is something they perhaps should have read more closely but they failed to do. I personally find it a little hard to believe, given the nature of the professional staff we have here in the Senate, that Members did not know that this restriction, known as the Hyde amendment, was part of the underlying bill. But assuming that is the case, what we are now offering them is a middle ground--to say that instead of this fund being a separate pool of money outside of the appropriations process, we would agree that the Appropriations Committee would appropriate money out of this fund in the same manner as they do all appropriations, with the exception that the money would be specifically designated to help the victims of human trafficking and not be able to be used for any other purpose.

So the reports are--after we made this proposal trying to address some of the concerns on this side of the aisle--that they would not be happy unless we stripped out all reference to the Hyde amendment in the bill. That is unacceptable. That is unacceptable for the same reason that they would object to a change in the status quo by an expansion of the Hyde amendment. We have now brought the Hyde amendment back within the appropriations process where it has been for 39 years. But to say we are going to eliminate any reference to those restrictions, which have been the law of the land for 39 years, would be viewed as an erosion of the Hyde amendment--hardly a status quo.

I don't know how long this is going to take. I appreciate the perseverance and commitment of the majority leader who, as you know, determines what bills come to the floor and when and who says we are going to stay on this bill until it passes. We have had a number of votes, and four of our Democratic colleagues have joined us to get to a place where we could actually pass this legislation. We just need a handful more--two or three more--to help us.

I know that a number of Senators are going to be hearing from their constituents back in their States because 200 different organizations--law enforcement organizations and victims' rights organizations that are very concerned about this human trafficking plague--are going to be lighting up the phone lines, sending emails, and communicating with their elected officials--as they should.

There is no reason we cannot get to ``yes'' on this bill unless this whole debate is a phony debate, and what the leadership on the Democratic side is more concerned about is trying to make the Senate as dysfunctional in the 114th Congress as they did in the 113th Congress.

I suspect, unfortunately, because of the phony issues saying take out language we voted for time and again--yes, it was contained in a bill we cosponsored. Yes, it was contained in a bill we voted for already. Now we are going to come to the floor, and we are going to block it.

We know who pays for this political gamesmanship. Sadly, it is the very same victims whom our colleagues

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here on the floor say they want to help--the children--the 100,000 children who are subjected to human trafficking each year. Other people who need our help and deserve our help are among the most vulnerable people we can possibly imagine.
All of us are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers. We all understand this could happen to anybody's family. Why in the world would we want to indulge in this sort of gamesmanship and phony objections to provisions that have been voted for time and again by the same Members who now object to them on this legislation and say to these victims of human trafficking that we don't care and we are not going to help?

I don't believe for a minute that is why Members of the Senate come here. I know virtually all 100 Senators, and I believe that most Senators--if not all Senators--come here because they actually want to do something. They actually want to solve problems. They actually want to help people who need the help. I cannot think of anybody more deserving than the victims of human trafficking.

I see the distinguished Senator from Colorado here. I will yield for him momentarily.

I wanted to come to the floor and respond to the comments made by the distinguished Senator from Vermont, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, that all we need to do is take up and pass the House bill. The House bill doesn't appropriate any money. It is an authorization bill. It authorizes $5 million in appropriations.

The great thing about our bill is it doesn't take any tax dollars. These are all fines and penalties and asset forfeitures from people engaged in the criminal enterprise, and this takes some of the profit out of this terrible crime.

It also does a number of other things, which I mentioned earlier. But the idea that we can somehow just take up and pass the House bill and avoid this bogus objection and somehow solve the problem, I think, just misses the point.

I yield the floor.

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