Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, we just heard Members of the minority
party complaining there are things in this bill nobody knew anything
about. On our side, I think we have done a good job of refuting it.

I am going to suggest again they ought to read the legislation. They
had plenty of time to read the legislation. But it is kind of remindful
of the story about Speaker Pelosi saying after the 2,700-page ObamaCare
bill was written that you have to pass it to find out what is in it.

Obviously this legislation before us isn't law. It is a proposal. But
it is just like people evidently don't read this legislation before it
gets out of committee with a strong bipartisan vote of 20-0. The fact
is this legislation was on the Web site several weeks before it was
voted out of committee, and this language was in it. So you have to
wait until a bill gets out of committee before you read the language?
No. There are 20 people on the Committee on the Judiciary who had an
opportunity to read this legislation before it ever got out of
committee. There were no concerns about this language that we hear from
the minority of the Senate that they have all of a sudden found
obnoxious and somehow it was sneaked into a piece of legislation, which
is not true. That is what I am going to speak about.

As one example of what I referred to, yesterday we heard from the
Senator from Vermont--my friend, the distinguished ranking member of
the committee and former chairman of the committee--that an
organization called ATEST is urging that we strike the Hyde amendment
language in this bill. ATEST is one of many organizations that had the
opportunity to review and comment on this legislation prior to the
committee markup of this bill. They met with my staff in February to
discuss this bill and never raised any concern with the Hyde amendment
at that time. So now I can legitimately question why they are coming
forward with this concern only now, weeks after the Senate Committee on
the Judiciary reported this legislation.

Then we also heard the Senator from California comment on emails. I
want her to know there are emails that clearly show the other side was
aware of the Hyde provision, and it is not our majority saying the
Democrats are raising a phantom problem. The Senator from California is
criticizing a human trafficking advocate who is saying that very point.

It is pretty bad around here when you have Senators attacking anti-
trafficking advocates. We learned last week that law enforcement
officials in Texas arrested 29 people in an online trafficking
sting. As reported in Texas in the Waco Tribune-Herald on March 10:

The sting was designed to catch suspects seeking underage
escorts for sexual acts or trying to become ``pimps'' by
trafficking underage prostitutes.

This is only the latest in a string of news stories showing that the
commercial exploitation of children is a problem in the United States.
The reality that adolescents are victims in many of these cases makes
the situation all the more wrenching.

It is vital that we act now to pass legislation to further protect
these and other domestic victims of human trafficking. These reports
are reasons why this bill should not be stalled by the minority Members
of the Senate, particularly when we in the majority pledged, as a
result of the last election, that we were going to have an open
amendment process.

This bill is under the open amendment process so anybody who doesn't
like this language ought to offer an amendment, and let us see where
the votes are--whether their side prevails or whether the people who
want to pass an antitrafficking bill prevail.

I take this opportunity to again urge my colleagues to support this
Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act, which would establish strong
antitrafficking measures that target predators who exploit innocent,
young people. The measure focuses both on sex and labor trafficking. It
would benefit both children and adult victims of these despicable
crimes.

The legislation would equip law enforcement with new tools to fight
trafficking, enhance services for victims, and increase penalties for
perpetrators. The bill would help fight demand for domestic sex
trafficking by ensuring that any person who is trafficking an adult or
purchasing a child for sex will be punished under the full force of
law. In other words, it goes after the demand side as well as the
supply side of these terrible crimes. So it is a meaningful solution
that is supported by a large bipartisan group of Senators and more than
200 outside organizations.

The other day, one human trafficking advocate characterized the
concern raised by the minority with the Hyde amendment provision in
this bill as a phantom problem, and I agree.

The minority leader is focusing on a provision that passed the Senate
Judiciary Committee in February unanimously, after committee members
debated the bill and had the opportunity to even strike this provision
that they find so obnoxious at this particular time. Not only has this
language, called the Hyde amendment language, been in a part of this
bipartisan bill for months, it is the law of the land today--a
consensus measure adopted in 1976. It has been included in
appropriations bills every year for decades.

As I mentioned yesterday, it has been included in authorizing
legislation on occasions as well.

Why, when we have agreed on the inclusion of Hyde amendment language
in bills on so many prior occasions over a 39-year period of time,
would we at this time be unable to agree to its inclusion in a bill to
help human trafficking victims?

It is fitting that this bill includes such Hyde amendment language.
The bill creates a Federal victims fund, and money in the fund will
derive from fines imposed on human traffickers. The fund will be a
federally administered program.

If the fund is used to support abortion services, then it constitutes
Federal funding of abortion. Including the Hyde language is consistent,
then, with what we have always done in such cases. This is not the
appropriate time or place for the minority party Members of the Senate
to seek a rollback of consensus legislation that was adopted as far
back as 1976 and has been extended every year since that time.

I urge my colleagues to find another place and another time for
congressional debate on taxpayer funding of abortions--not to do it on
a bill that has broad, bipartisan support and definitely not on a bill
that was reported out of committee 20 to 0, which means 11 Republicans
and 9 Democrats supported it.

The argument that this Hyde amendment language was included by--you
have heard these words--``sleight of hand'' is simply disingenuous.
This bill, after its introduction, was put into the public domain--not
after it was voted out of committee, not just 1 day before it was in
committee, but weeks before the committee considered it. So it was in
the public domain. Nobody could say it wasn't there. So you could read
it and know this Hyde language was in it.

It was distributed by email to numerous organizations and
congressional offices for their input. It has been posted for 2 months
on the U.S. Government Web site, accessible to any congressional
staffer or member of the public. So we have people who come to the
Senate saying they didn't know this was in there. Well, then, did they
not read the bill? Did they not have their staff read the bill? For a
long period of time it has been right out there where 300 million
people could access it on the Web site.

If lawmakers then are asserting that they did not know the Hyde
amendment was included in the bill, then it means they simply didn't
read this legislation.

I again call on my colleagues to support the Justice for Victims of
Trafficking Act, focusing on helping survivors of trafficking heal and
protect others from becoming victims of such a terrible crime.

It is a meaningful solution that is supported by large bipartisan
groups of Senators. We have a real opportunity to provide survivors of
trafficking with the kind of support that is essential to their
recovery and future success.

Working together, in a bipartisan way, we can restore dignity to
survivors. That is why we need to pass this act right now.

It also gives this Senate an opportunity to do what I hear from the
people of grassroots Iowa so often in my town meetings, such as
Saturday when I was in Truro, IA, and 33 people showed up. I was in
Norwalk, IA, and 66 people showed up. At those meetings they keep
asking: Why can't you Republicans and Democrats get together?

This is one of those bills where Republicans and Democrats are
getting together. Now we find some people--who evidently don't read
legislation until the midnight hour--coming to the floor of the Senate
saying something along the lines of: We snuck something into the bill.

Snuck something into the bill when the bill has been out there on the
Web site for a couple of months already? No, that is disingenuous. So
the bill is not moving along. But when this bill is brought up for a
final vote, the people will see that Republicans and Democrats can work
together if we can get over this hurdle of the stonewalling by the
minority party of the Senate, holding up this bill for a disingenuous
reason.

I yield the floor.

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