Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am here today for two reasons. One is
to manage the bill at hand for the next few hours, and the other is to
talk a little bit about Loretta Lynch, and how I hope we can resolve
both these issues.

I believe when it comes to the human trafficking bill on the floor,
as well as my bill, the safe harbor bill--which is not the one on the
floor, but it is also a strong bipartisan bill that passed out of the
Judiciary Committee with every single person voting for it, 20 to 0. I
want to talk a little bit about the bill so people don't forget it. It
is expected to be an amendment to the bill on the floor when we get
these issues resolved.

I am hopeful that at some point here--and I hope it is today--we are
going to turn the corner on some of the language we have been hearing
on the floor. I think it is becoming a sad situation, especially sad
for the victims of trafficking, and I think we have a moment in time
today and tomorrow where we can actually work on this and try to
resolve it. I believe this great august body, which has dealt with many
large issues in the past--100 people who I think have come to this
place with good will--should be able to resolve it in some way, get
through this, and get this bill done.

As we continue to work on the issues with the bill at hand, Senator
Cornyn's bill, I also want to talk about the bill I have and why both
these bills are important and actually work together.

On trafficking. First, we know the numbers. More than 27 million
people around the world are victims of some kind of trafficking each
year. It is not always sex trafficking. Sometimes it is labor
trafficking and other things. When it comes to sex trafficking, the
average age of a victim when she is trafficked is 13 years old. She is
not even old enough to go to a high school prom, not even old enough to
get a driver's license.

When you look at the statistics around the world, it is the third
biggest international criminal enterprise in the world. The first is
the illegal trafficking of drugs. I don't think that is a surprise. The
second is the illegal trafficking of guns, and the third is the illegal
trafficking of children, mostly little girls. But what people don't
always realize when they think about trafficking--I think they often
think about kids who are found in the bottom of a boat. That does
happen, horrible stories like that. But when it comes to the United
States of America, 83 percent of the victims--83 percent of the
victims--are from our own country. They are from our own country. They
are girls such as Tamara Vandermoon of Minnesota. She was 12 when she
was first sold for sex. She was not even a teenager. She was just mad
at her mom, and she ran away. A pimp found her and made her all kinds
of promises--promises that sounded pretty good when you are a scared
kid away from home. It happened when she was the most vulnerable. He
took advantage of her before she even had a chance to grow up and be an
adult. She has worked to change her life around through services and
help in our State.

Our State has been the leader in this area. That is one of the things
why I introduced the safe harbor bill, which I hope will be the first
amendment to this bill after we resolve these issues. My bill also is
sponsored with Senator Cornyn. He and I have worked together on this
bill.

Another example--because people always use numbers. I used a bunch of
numbers at the beginning of this speech, but I think sometimes people
know behind those numbers, every single one of those numbers, is a
child.

Two weeks ago, out of the U.S. Attorney's office in Minnesota, our
case was charged, and it happened a few months ago. It was a 12-year-
old in Rochester, MN, which is an idyllic community, a beautiful place.
This little 12-year-old got a text. She was with a girl who was a
little older than herself. The text invited them to a party. She
thought that was pretty cool. She goes to the McDonald's parking lot.
She is at the McDonald's parking lot, and this pimp puts her in the
car. She thinks she is going to a party. She gets carted up to the Twin
Cities. She gets raped. He takes sexually explicit pictures of her. He
puts them on Craigslist. She gets sold the next day to two other guys,
raped by two other guys.

Finally they were able to track down this perpetrator. He has been
charged with a very serious crime by the U.S. Attorney's office. This
happened in Minnesota. We can ask Senator Heitkamp, who has been
involved in this issue. It happens in the oil patches in North Dakota.
It happens on the streets of Washington, DC. It happens all over this
country.

We may say, why is everyone talking about this now in this day and
age? I look at this, as a former prosecutor, as back when people viewed
domestic violence as a crime that was behind doors, that no one wanted
to talk about it, and no one realized it was a crime. They thought of
it as a family issue.

When we start seeing kids who are in situations of domestic violence
are multiple times more likely to commit crimes themselves because they
grow up seeing it, we realize it is not just an issue between two
people. As horrible as the injuries are to the immediate victim, it is
also an issue for their entire family and for the entire community. We
learned that about domestic violence. We learned that about child
abuse. Now we are starting to see this about trafficking.

We can't have a 12-year-old who is a criminal, right? The 12-year-old
is a victim of this. The 12-year-old doesn't know what they are doing.
They are only 12 years old, but they are a victim, they are not a
criminal. That is the focus of the Safe Harbor Act.

I want to thank my colleague, Republican Erik Paulsen in the House,
who has taken this bill on. We have worked together on it. A version of
it has passed the House. We like ours a little bit better because it
has the national sex trafficking strategy in it, and that is the bill
we are going to be putting on as an amendment. Erik has been a true
leader on this issue, and we just talked yesterday about it. This bill
actually now has--a version of it, my safe harbor bill--has passed the
House twice. It doesn't have the issues with the Hyde amendment.
Hopefully it will be the first bill, the first amendment, when we
resolve these other issues.

What does the bill do? What it does is looks at what has been working
in States across the country. According to a report by Polaris--a group
that is among many groups as a leader on sex trafficking--it shows that
15 States across the country have taken these safe harbor laws. The
laws basically say we are not going to treat these kids as criminals.
We are going to make sure they are treated as victims, that they get
the services they need. And mostly then from a law enforcement
perspective--from someone who was a prosecutor for 8 years, ran an
office of 400 people and saw these cases coming in and out of our doors
all the time--what it means is these victims will then better testify
against the people whom we want to get. Those are the perps. Those are
the people running the rings. Those are the johns who are buying the
sex. By having this approach, we have a much better chance of going
after the people who are doing this.

The Ramsey County attorney's office out of St. Paul, MN, with their
leader John Choi, was able to get a 40-year sentence last year of
someone who was running one of these rings. We have had numerous
prosecutions in Minnesota.

This idea of having a shelter, a place for the victims to go--because
otherwise what is going to happen if they don't think they are going to
get help or maybe get some job training, have a place to stay, they are
going to go right back to the pimp, and then they are not going to be
willing to testify and tell their story. That is what has happened
through history, and that has enabled the rings to get worse and worse.

The other thing we know that has enabled them to get worse is the
Internet. We love the Internet, but it has allowed people to market
things on all kinds of Web sites and in all kinds of devious ways. They
are able to sell young girls and young boys on these Web sites. They
get a text and they show up and think they are going to a party. That
is what is happening. It is behind closed doors and it is hidden. That
is one of the reasons we are seeing this increase and these problems
coming up, in addition to the realization we are not going to tolerate
this anymore.

We have 15 States across the country that already have the safe
harbor laws. Another 12 States are making good progress in this
direction. It is not starting from scratch. As I said, my home State is
one of the first ones, but we are seeing them. What our bill does is
create incentives for States to adopt these kinds of laws. It is not
involving a lot of money. It is taking existing programs and trying to
create incentives so that States will adopt these laws.

The other piece of the bill is that it allows victims of these crimes
to qualify for certain Federal job programs that they may not qualify
for now. It also creates a national strategy, as I mentioned, to combat
human trafficking.

I always found when I was a prosecutor that people didn't care who
took on the case, whether it was a local prosecutor or the State AG or
the U.S. Attorney's office. They just wanted people to get the job
done. They didn't actually understand the jurisdictional divisions. By
making this national sex trafficking strategy the idea--and I have seen
this with the Violence Against Women Act--it may not be that we are
mandating people do a certain thing, but we put out there some best
practices that local offices can cover. We look at what is working in
certain States. Then we put those out there because we have a national
sex trafficking strategy, and we give people ideas of what they can do
best.

Those are parts of the bill. It is pretty straightforward. Again, it
is not the bill on the floor right now which, of course, has an
important purpose, to help fund some of the shelters and pay for it by
an increase on the fees on perpetrators, but it is a part of the
solution.

Another part of the solution we haven't talked too much about over
the last few days, because there have been a lot of other things going
on, I think we have to also remember the role of the private sector. We
certainly have seen this in our State, where Marilyn Carlson Nelson,
who is a wonderful business leader, headed up Carlson Companies for
many years. Carlson Companies owns the Radisson Hotels. She has made
training of her workforce a major part of this because it is the people
on the frontline--and you can see Delta and all the others, American,
United, a lot of the airlines are making this a priority as well. They
are training their workers because they are on the frontline, and they
are going to see this happen. They are going to see the victims. They
are going to figure out something is going on that is wrong, so they
can at least report it to their hotel's security or whatever
authorities they think they need to; they can stop it right there on
the ground floor and report it to the authorities.

We shouldn't forget that. Because unless these private sector
entities who see it happening come forward--this isn't in any of our
bills. This is something they are doing on their own. Unless they do
that, we can have all the laws we want on the books, but it is really
hard to catch these things from happening. I am proud of the work they
have done.

My good friend Cindy McCain, Heidi Heitkamp, and I went to Mexico
last spring with the major focus on sex trafficking. We met with the
attorney general of Mexico and met with the head of their law
enforcement in Mexico City about this very topic. Because Mexico, along
with many other countries, has girls who do come in and are brought in
for purposes of sex trafficking. I do want to emphasize, however, this
is not just an international problem, but over 83 percent of the
victims are from our country. But they have been coordinating with us
on a number of successful prosecutions by giving us information so when
the cases come to the United States, we view this. They have their own
internal problems with this and other things as well, obviously, in
Mexico. We went there not to say you are doing something wrong. We went
there to say we have our own problems, and so do you. Let's figure out
how we can work together on this issue.

Again, Cindy McCain is an example of someone who on the private side
has been very involved with her foundation in working on this issue and
helping with shelters and other things. The private sector piece of
this, they can be called trafficking facilitators, unknowingly, because
they are allowing this to happen. But in a way, they are a major part
of the solution. I do not want us to forget that as we go forward and
as they work with us to address the needs of the victims, and mostly to
be able to catch these cases and bring them to law enforcement.

That is kind of a tour through what the safe harbor bill does. Again,
Senator Cornyn and I have talked about it being the first amendment to
the bill. I am very aware that we need to work out the issues on the
underlying bill, and I am hopeful after days of acrimony that at some
point we are going to be able to work together. I am hoping there will
be a different flavor to people's discussions about this issue today.

Lynch Nomination

The Loretta Lynch nomination now has been tied into this. I have a
little bit of a different approach because I do not think we should be
slowing it down anymore. I understand that we have to work out the
issues on the sex trafficking, and there is plenty of blame that can go
around. But I think the major focus should be on working it out instead
of playing this blame game.

Loretta Lynch, on the other hand--I do not understand why our friends
on the other side of the aisle have been delaying this for so long. I
understand this is a major job, but this is a woman who has had 900
written questions and an 8-hour job interview, to my mind, where
members of the Judiciary Committee could ask her whatever they wanted,
in several rounds of questions, if they wanted. She also met with
members of that committee. I am sure that anyone who wanted to met with
her--I know she has met with at least 59 Senators to date. That is a
pretty major job interview. Twenty-five U.S. Attorneys from Republican
and Democratic administrations have approved and suggested that she is
more than fit for this job.

How do I come down on this? I come down on this as a perspective of
knowing that Attorney General Holder wants to leave. I think he has
done some really good things. I know some of my colleagues have not been a big fan of his. This is an opportunity for them to put someone new in. We will start with that.

The second thing is this is someone who is highly qualified. Coming
from a State where we have indicted 20 people for criminal activity
related to al-Shabaab with their terrorist activities in Somalia, we
have recently indicted a number of people who decided they were going
to go fight with ISIS, coming out of our State. And I am proud of our
communities, our Muslim and Somali communities, that have been working
with law enforcement on this. This has been an effort, because no kid
should be going over there and no parent wants their kid to go join a
terrorist organization.

That being said, to keep our communities safe, we have to be very
aggressive about these cases. So given that these cases are going on
right in my hometown, I would really like to have the support of an
Attorney General in place, and one who is nominated before this
body. And as the nominee, she is someone who is uniquely qualified to
handle these kinds of cases that the citizens in my State want to have
handled, these terrorism cases. In fact, her office is No. 1 in the
country when it comes to how many terrorism cases they have
successfully handled in New York. So she is a seasoned U.S. attorney.
She is not someone who comes from a political background; she is
someone who comes from a prosecutor background and is a former
prosecutor and someone who wants to see that kind of commonsense, no-
nonsense mentality in the Attorney General's office.

I highly recommend that my colleagues not only vote for her
confirmation but just let this come to the floor as soon as possible.

Some of the critiques I have heard against her from some of my
colleagues--some have said she has been lawless, and that doesn't quite
make sense to me, especially when we look at who has been backing her
from the law enforcement community, such as the 25 U.S. attorneys I
mentioned. The New York police commissioner has endorsed her, as has
the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Association and the
president of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. These
people are not exactly known for supporting lawlessness.

The other thing that has been mentioned by many of my colleagues that
concerns me as to the reason they gave for blocking her nomination is
that she said when she was at a hearing that she would be supportive,
as the chief law enforcement person for our country, of the President's
policies when it comes to immigration.

Let's start with the law. We know this is now tied up in the courts,
and there are different court decisions. One court is upholding the
Executive order of the President, and another court has said it is not
legal. We have had disputes on it in the courts. All right. But when we
look through time, we realize every President since Dwight Eisenhower
has done some kind of Executive order of varying degrees. George H.W.
Bush did a major Executive order involving many immigrants. When we
look at those through history, we realize those Presidents to some
degree or other--I know the Liberian community in Minnesota. They have
been for decades on an emergency order, and that is why they are in our
State. Every year, they have to come back, and sometimes Congress does
something and sometimes the President does something. But year after
year, they need this Executive order because of the status under which
they came to this country. They are law-abiding citizens. They are
working throughout our State and have been here for 15 or 20 years. And
that is just one example.

These Executive orders on immigration have been going on since Dwight
Eisenhower. I don't really have the time to look back and see what
every Attorney General did at the time, but my guess is that the
Attorneys General under Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon and both
Bushes and Bill Clinton all said: OK, this is legal. You can go ahead
and do this Executive order.

I am not saying this one is not of more magnitude. It is. But there
was a major Executive order when George Bush was President. We know
that. So why we would then somehow take that history and extrapolate it
into, OK, well, Loretta Lynch is somehow lawless just because she said
the President could issue an Executive order--it just doesn't make any
sense to me at all.

We have a woman who has been prosecuting these cases of terrorism for
years. We have someone who has significant support from Democratic and
Republican U.S. attorneys from many administrations. We have someone
who really did pass her senatorial job review. I understand that my
colleagues feel strongly about immigration and that they didn't like
what the President did, and the President himself said he would like to
tear up that piece of paper that contained the Executive action if only
this body and the House would pass comprehensive immigration reform.

When I look back through this whole story, one of my proudest moments
was when the Senate came together on comprehensive immigration reform.
I am on the Judiciary Committee, and I believe that was the best moment
for the Judiciary Committee in the last few years. Under Chairman
Leahy's leadership, our committee was able to work together across
party lines, starting with the Gang of 8 who came up with the base
concept, which was half Democrats and half Republicans, including
Senator Durbin, Senator McCain, Senator Schumer, Senator Bennet,
Senator Menendez, Senator Flake, and the work of many other Members,
which made it possible to get that bill done.

So the Gang of 8 got that done, and from there we went to the
committee with a bill, and we spent days voting on amendments. We voted
on amendments that stretched over every part of the bill, whether it
was the fence at the border or what would happen with undocumented
workers or the work Senator Hatch and I did on making sure we had the
green card and visa system up to date. We have a situation in our
country right now where we have literally unlimited visas for wild
hockey players. We love our hockey team in Minnesota, and they are able
to recruit a bunch of Canadians. That is good for us, but doctors from
the Mayo Clinic are not able to bring in a spouse if they want to come
from another country.

We have to look at this as to the undocumented workers who are here,
we have the border issues, and we also have these issues related to
agriculture and the innovation economy that make this comprehensive
reform so important. Let's remember that when it comes to business
issues, we have a case where 200 of our Fortune 500 companies were
started by immigrants or kids of immigrants. Ninety of our Fortune 500
companies were started by immigrants. Thirty percent of our U.S. Nobel
laureates were born in other countries.

I neglected to add Marco Rubio to the Gang of 8 as I recall in my
mind everyone who was in it.

That is why I was such a fan of the comprehensive immigration
reform--because it was so important to look at all parts of the issue.

So now I get to Loretta Lynch. We passed a bill with pretty strong
support here--I think it was like 68 votes or something in that
neighborhood--and then it went over to the House and it sat there in a
deep freeze. That bill sat there for over a year somewhere between the
chocolate ice cream and the frozen peas. We were never able to get it
out of the House, and that is what led to the President's Executive
order, and now somehow--OK, that is fine, it was bad enough that that
all happened, and I am still hopeful we will be able to get this done,
but how that story leads to Loretta Lynch's confirmation being held up
is beyond belief to me. I think it is time to get her nomination voted
on. I don't think it should be related to the present difficulties we
are having with this bill that I care so much about and mostly also
with my safe harbor legislation, which has been slotted to be the first
amendment.

I am hopeful we will be able to work everything out with the bill
that is on the floor right now--I truly am--because I don't think it is
fitting of the Senate to keep up this fight when there are victims of
sex trafficking every single day, such as that 12-year-old girl out of
Rochester, MN. How are we going to explain this to that little girl,
that we are fighting it out every single day instead of trying to come
to a resolution?

I remember when we were down in Mexico--Heidi Heitkamp and Cindy
McCain and I--and visited one of the shelters there. We met all the
girls who were there. There was one girl there named Paloma. All the
other girls had an interpreter and they talked to us through the
interpreter, but she spoke a little English. She introduced herself,
and then she just started to cry and could not stop crying. As she
cried, you just knew that whatever happened to her was so bad, she
could not even talk about it.

It reminded me of when Senator Gillibrand, Senator Graham, Senator
Hoeven, and I were on a trip and went to a refugee camp in Jordan and
met with a group of refugees. One of the women there said that what she
had seen happen to her family in Syria was so sad that it would make
stones cry. That is what I thought of when I saw Paloma, that what had
happened to her--this little, young, beautiful, 12-, 13-year-old girl--
what had happened to her was so sad that it would make stones cry.

I hope my colleagues keep this in mind as we work on these two bills.

I am tired of talking about how this happened or how we got where we
are. There is a way to resolve this problem, and certainly the
nomination of the Attorney General of the United States should not be
held up because of it.

I yield the floor.

I see my good friend Senator Isakson from Georgia is here.

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I wanted to clarify something I said
when I spoke about the work the Senate did on comprehensive immigration
reform in relation to the Loretta Lynch nomination. I mentioned the
Gang of 8, and I think I got seven of them right. I wish to clarify
exactly who was a Member of the Gang of 8: Senator Schumer, Senator
Durbin, Senator Menendez, Senator Bennet, Senator McCain, Senator
Flake, Senator Graham, and Senator Rubio. That was the starting-off
point for the comprehensive immigration reform that passed through the
Senate.

I wish to get back to the matter at hand. As I stand in the Chamber
today, I am going to keep reminding people of why we are really here,
why the bill is on the floor--which is about sex trafficking--and the
reason we want to try to resolve these issues and actually focus on the
matter at hand and not on extraneous issues and other issues and other
fights. My own Republican Congressman who carries my bill, the safe
harbor bill--which of course is not the bill at issue but we hope will
be the first amendment--has noted that we just need to move on and get
these bills done and not play politics as usual. That is going to be my
focus today as I manage this bill.

So I thought I would read on the floor a book that has been a
national bestseller by Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times and his
wife Sheryl WuDunn. It is a book about sex trafficking. It is an
incredible book. It focuses more on international sex trafficking. As
we know, our bills here--the one that is on the floor and the one I
have authored--are about how our own country gets a handle on this, by
getting better laws in place and creating incentives and working with
the private sector and doings things so our country, I think from my
perspective, internationally can be a true leader. We can't be a true
leader and tell these states and democracies and countries that aren't
even democracies across the world that they need to do a better job if
we don't do a better job.

To me, this should be a major tenet of our foreign policy. Once we
get women so that they are not treated as slaves and they are not
treated as chattel--once we get them to that circumstance--countries
always do better. When we have women who can work and own businesses,
women who can serve in government, it changes a whole society.

So that is why the sex trafficking bill is on the floor and the one
that I have that will be considered as an amendment. The reason we need
to get through where we are right now and focus on the real issue at
hand is that our country can not only help the victims in our own
country, but by shining a light on this, by being a leader on this
internationally, it will help us internationally. We want to be able to
work with other countries--not saying they are doing something bad when
we have our own problem, but saying, Here is what we did and here is
how we are handling this and we want to work with you as partners and
we want to have women be treated with respect throughout the world.

So this book, as I said, focuses on international sex trafficking. It
is called ``Half the Sky.'' I love this name. It is a Chinese proverb.
It talks about how women basically are holding up half the sky. That is
what it is about. Women are holding up half the sky. We can't forget
about half the sky and just let half the sky go and let them be sold
into slavery and not be treated equally and expect a society to
function.

So this is how the book starts out. It has a great quote from Mark
Twain. I like jokes. Listen to this one: ``What would men be without
women? Scarce, sir, mighty scarce.''

It is making the point again that women hold up half the sky.
So this is the book and how it starts:

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So I say to my colleagues, this is what we are talking about. This
story is in another country, but this same story is repeated in our
country day in and day out. If we are going to try to lead in Cambodia
and try to change the world for these girls, we have to lead in our own
country. Certainly we have to lead by focusing on the issue at hand,
which is sex trafficking, and what we can do in our country. What can
we do? Well, we can have better services for the victims. We can set up
our law enforcement system in a way that works by not treating--for so
long, these young 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds were thought of as
criminals when, in fact, they are victims. How can we say someone is
not raped, how can we say the story of this girl, who thought she was
going to work to have a better life for herself as a dishwasher, then
gets raped--how can we say that is not rape, that it is prostitution or
a crime? No. She is a victim.

That is what the safe harbor bill--which I have introduced and which
I am hopeful will be the first amendment once we work out these other
issues--would do. It would treat these girls and boys as victims.

So I wish to remind my colleagues what we are truly dealing with.
This is not supposed to be a fight over abortion. This is a fight about
how to help these young girls throughout our country and by virtue of
us being a leader throughout the world.

So I am going to continue reading from the book, just so we are all
reminded what we are talking about.

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This is a book by Nicholas Kristof and his wife Sheryl, whose book,
``Half the Sky,'' is a national best seller. The subhead is ``Turning
Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.''

Again, why am I reading this? Because this is what we are supposed to
be talking about here. This is a bill we are supposed to be getting
done and not talking about extraneous issues that I think we should be
able to resolve because they have been resolved in the past. To do
that, we have to decide that these girls are important enough to do
that.

Continuing on, they talked about how these issues have barely
registered on the global agenda:

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And I hope that is not how we are treating this in the Senate. I hope
that is not how we are treating it, and I hope we are not treating it
as a political football.

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Again, how does this apply to the matter at hand? We know there are
girls who are victims of trafficking who are put into slavery--sex
slavery--every single day in this country. So if we think we can be a
leader when it comes to what is going on around the world and we want
to hold our Nation up, then we have to be a leader in this Chamber this
week and get this bill done and get these extraneous issues behind us
that people feel strongly about. But, as I said, somehow we have been
able to handle these issues in the past on other bills, and I hope the
girls we are talking about here are just as important as those other
issues.

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They then go on to quote a Nobel Prize-winning economist who has
developed a way to look at gender inequality that is a striking
reminder of the stakes involved.

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I remember at the McCain Institute, where Cindy McCain and Heidi
Heitkamp and I spoke on a panel, that Senator McCain had just returned
from a trip abroad and had been in a country that was experiencing
enormous upheaval. He had asked: ``Where are the girls?'' And someone
said to him: ``Most of them have been sold.'' They had been sold. So
this is really happening, and the people in this Chamber know it is
happening. That is why, again, I get back to the fact that if we want
to do something about it here, we need to resolve these issues, we need
to do it without going into a blame game, and we need to get this done
so we can pass this bill--and not have a dispute over abortion--that, in fact, helps the very girls we are supposed to help. Only then can we be a leader in the world.

I will go back to the book:

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Again, why is this relevant to the matter at hand? I think these
young girls and women in our own country and across the world deserve
to be treated seriously. They deserve not to be treated as a political
football on extraneous issues this Chamber likes to debate.

This bill needs to be treated just as seriously--and my safe harbor
bill--as any other bill. Somehow, the people in charge of these
institutions have been able to work out the differences.

Modernization and technology can aggravate the
discrimination. Since the 1990s, the spread of ultrasound
machines has allowed pregnant women to find out the sex of
their fetuses--and then get abortions if they are female.

Again, we are talking about China.

``We don't have to have daughters anymore!'' someone said in China.

To prevent sex-selective abortion, China and India now bar
doctors and ultrasound technicians from telling a pregnant
woman the sex of her fetus. Yet that is a flawed solution.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

That will be the struggle to help these girls.

Maybe this is the battle we are having right now. Maybe this
institution has to come up to speed. We have 20 Senators who are women.
Twenty percent of the Senate are women. That is pretty good. It is the
best we have ever gotten. But when you look at the numbers, the numbers
aren't frequent when you look back through history. Maybe that is what
we are going to have to do to have people take these bills seriously
and not play king of the hill with a bill as serious as this one.

I will continue to read ``Half the Sky'' by Nicholas Kristof and
Sheryl WuDunn.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

If you remember from the first part of the book that I read, she was
sold into slavery when she simply thought she was going to work as a
dishwasher; she was sold into sex and repeatedly raped--

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I would note here--just a little sidenote, as I am reading through
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's book, to make everyone in this
Chamber remember why we are here. We are here to help girls, not just
in the United States, but in the world. We are here to hold up ``Half
the Sky.'' We are here to show that this Chamber, at its best, can
actually help the people we are supposed to help, the most vulnerable
in our society, instead of debating extraneous issues that we are
unable to resolve on this bill but that we seem able to resolve on
other bills that just must be more important than the girls and the
women of this world. That is all I can figure out.

But I would like to note, as I read about one of their suggestions
for things that help girls and women around the world, this idea of
microcredit. My dad, who is kind of an adventurer and goes around the
world, actually wrote a book on microcredit called ``The Miracles of
Barefoot Capitalism''--in case he is watching on C-Span, I thought he
would like that note--with his wife Susan Wilkes. They are big
believers in helping women around the world with microcredit.

So then they go on in the book to talk about helping people through
microcredit.

In the early 1990s, the United Nations and the World Bank
began to appreciate the potential resource that women and
girls represent. Investment in girls' education may well be
the highest return investment available in the developing
world.

I think it is something that we need to remember in the United States
as we look at the low numbers of girls that go into science and
technology and head up companies, because for some reason they do not
have the confidence to go into those fields or they are not encouraged
to go into those fields. If we in the Senate cannot even say they
should not be trafficked and we cannot do anything to help them, I do
not think we are helping that cause very much.

Larry Summers wrote, when he was the chief economist of the World
Bank: ``The question is not whether countries can afford this
investment, but whether countries can afford not to educate more
girls.''

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I think this is actually a really good book. I just plan to keep
reading it whenever I can over the next few days until we get a
resolution to this problem.

I am going to take a look at how many pages it is. Well, if you
include the notes, it is 296 pages. I will obviously take breaks when
our colleagues come down here. But I do think it is really important
that we keep the pressure on, that the women and girls of this country
demand that this get resolved, because as I said, we have somehow been
able to resolve it on other bills. I think this bill and the bill that
I have, the safe harbor bill, are just as important. I think our
colleagues, in my discussions with them, know several ways we could
resolve this problem, including just eliminating this extraneous
provision. But there might be other ways as well. We know what they
are. I hope they keep working on them.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

This is now Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn speaking in their
book, which has been a national best seller, ``Half the Sky.'' It is
about sex trafficking and how important it is to take this issue on--
not just in our own country but the world.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

This sounds kind of like us, right? There are a lot of different
topics and things that we have to take on, and there are many worthy
causes that are calling for our attention and support. We all have
divided allegiances. I think that is kind of what is going on in this
Chamber. But why do we need to focus on this? Well, I will go back to
the book.

We focus on this topic because, to us, this kind of
oppression feels transcendent--and so does the opportunity.
We have seen that outsiders can truly make a significant
difference.
Consider Rath once more.

Now, remember, this was the girl that was sold into sex trafficking
in Malaysia.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

By the way, later in the book--since I have read it already, but now
I will be able to read it again--they talk about how, in fact, it was
the evidence of that brutality of the slavery, of the stench of the
people who were slaves who were in the bottom of that ship that really
drove action. Yes, the activists and William Wilberforce understandably
get a lot of the attention and well-deserved credit for what happened,
but it was the evidence that led to Britain, the people and their
society, long before many other countries had even thought about
abolishing slavery--it was the evidence of the brutality that led them
to make a change.

That is one of the things that we need to talk about and why I am
talking about this here today. We have to get back on what really
matters here, such as the story of the 12-year-old girl in Rochester,
MN--a 12-year-old girl who just got a text message and went to a
McDonald's parking lot and was shoved into a car and then brought to
the Twin Cities and then raped. Then her pictures were taken--sexually
explicit pictures--and put on Craigslist. Then she was sold the next
day and raped by two men.

That is what this is really about. It is not about these extraneous
fights and what has been going on, dragging this Chamber down, and even
stopping us from confirming a well-qualified person for the Attorney
General of the United States. That is what they are talking about here.
It is the evidence that the American people see. They start demanding
change. I hope that is happening today.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I think we need some opening of hearts here in the Chamber. I am
going to take one break to talk to our staff, and then I will be back.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I am reading the book ``Half the Sky,''
by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. I think it is a beautiful
book. It is on sex trafficking around the world and what has been
happening around the world. A part of this is that I think we need to
make the point that we can lead in our country when it comes to sex
trafficking.

We have Senator Cornyn's bill, and we know there is an issue with one
of the provisions that needs to be resolved--and I don't think it is a
provision that is related to this topic--but we are hopeful people of
good will can come together and resolve this issue. The easiest way
would be to take it out. We can have other discussions. Somehow,
through history, the Senate has been able to come together and take
care of this issue with the Hyde amendment and other bills.

I think the point I am trying to make today is this bill is just as
important as those bills and that these girls who are victims of sex
trafficking are just as important as anyone else in this country.

I am going to continue reading this book. I am hopeful--as I
mentioned, it is very long, and I will obviously pause for my
colleagues who come to the floor, but I am going to continue reading it
until we get this resolved.

We are now on chapter 1, ``Emancipating Twenty-First-Century
Slaves.'' The quote on this is actually from Christopher Buckley, one
of my favorite authors, from ``Florence of Arabia,'' from the beginning
of the chapter: ``Women might just have something to contribute to
civilization other than their vaginas.''

That might not have been said on this floor that many times, but he
is a humorous writer. Now, let's go on with the book:

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

That is a good place to stop and talk a little about what we are
doing on the floor. No one wants to go into this. That is what these
bills are about. These bills are about having a victims fund. These
bills are about creating a safe harbor so we don't treat these young
victims as criminals, like we have in Minnesota with the safe harbor
law. And it is about trying to get something done.

We know an extraneous provision is on this bill and that we need to
resolve this one way or another. As I have noted, we have been able to
resolve this in the past, and I welcome my colleagues to come and speak
about this issue. I hope this blame game is behind us, and that we
won't be making accusations but instead we will actually work on
getting this bill done. Because lost in all of this is the fact this
isn't just some game people can play. These are actual young girls.

As I said, why is this international prostitution relevant to what we
are talking about? It is relevant because our country can actually
become a leader in this area. We can be a leader. We can actually do
something in America to show we are taking this on. Our bill, the safe
harbor bill I am leading, which we hope will be the first amendment to
this bill, sets up a national sex trafficking strategy. We don't have
one right now.

As a former prosecutor, I know when we work between Federal and State
and local authorities, and we take on these cases and do it in a smart
way, we actually are able to get things done. We did it with the
Violence Against Women Act, when everyone thought that was just a
situation where you can beat your wife and no one is going to notice.
It happened behind closed doors. But we took it on as a country and we
changed things and changed things for women in this country. Now we can
do this with prostitution.

We can no longer see this as a victimless crime. There is a victim.
The victim is 12 years old. She is someone in your State right now. So
that is why these bills are so serious and why we need to continue to
get them done. I am going to keep talking about this issue because I
think at some point we have to realize why we are here and what we are
talking about, instead of using it as a political football.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

To have anyone speak up for her. That is what I hope we are going to
be doing in this Chamber in the next few days, that we are going to
speak up for these victims and show that we want to actually get
something done and that they have value outside of being a political
football.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

So these stories are pretty raw, and they are stories we usually
don't tell on the floor of the United States Senate. But I think we
need to, because maybe it is the only way people will remember why we
are here and what we are supposed to be doing right now, which is to
get these bills done and then hopefully confirm an Attorney General of
the United States, which is something else we need to do that seems
completely unrelated to these sex trafficking stories of these girls,
except for one reason, and that is that we would want to have an
attorney general in place so they can enforce the law.

Some of these cases are actually Federal, such as the one we had in
Minnesota involving the little girl from Rochester, or the case in
Senator Heitkamp's State of North Dakota involving the incident of a
sex trafficking ring in the oil patch. This is going on right now in
this country. So what could an Attorney General do? I would ask: What
can we do? What we can do is to get this bill done.

Again, I welcome my colleagues to come and talk about this issue, but
I hope when they talk about it we will actually focus on the matter at
hand--not blame anyone anymore, not talk about the things we disagree
on but what we agree on. And then, hopefully, that will lead to the
discussions I know are going on to resolve this bill because we can get
this resolved.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

The story I told, by the way, of the girl in Rochester, she just went
about an hour-and-a-half drive. So this idea the trafficking is just
about going from one nation to another or being in the hold of a boat
or something like that is not necessarily always the case. So we use
the words sex trafficking because people have to understand this is
more than just one pimp and one prostitute, that these are usually
rings and these girls are usually brought someplace where they do not
want to be. But it doesn't necessarily mean they are brought long
distances.

So when we talk about the bills on the floor, let's remember that,
and I think this is a good reminder from this book.

And, by the way, if I ever mispronounce names or words, my apology to
the authors Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. I have to say it is
kind of small print, and I am trying my best. I know the Presiding
Officer has a good command of English and will help me out or correct
me if I make a mistake.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I will note this number--I have always tried to get the right number
of how many victims we are talking about--but as I noted at the
beginning of my remarks this morning, the 27 million modern slaves
includes victims of not just sex trafficking but also labor
trafficking.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

The bills that we have--the one before us and my bill, the safe
harbor bill, which we would like to see as the first amendment, which
passed the Judiciary Committee with 20 votes on a bipartisan basis--
these bills are focused on sex trafficking within our own borders,
although some of the victims will be brought in from other countries.
This book, ``Half the Sky,'' is so good because it really is about what
is going on all around the world and all these victims around the
world. Every country has their own problems. Despite all of the
political machinations and extraneous provisions and other things, what
we are trying to get done today is to do something real to help the
victims of sex trafficking through the fund Senator Cornyn has in his
bill and then in my safe harbor bill, which is also a strong bipartisan
bill, to make it clear there is a good model we can use across the
country that has been used in 15 States and others, and one dozen more
are working on them, where Minnesota has been one of the States leading
the way to view these girls as victims and not as criminals, when the
average age is 12 years old, not even old enough to go to a high school
prom, not even old enough to drive the car.

Again, I welcome my colleagues to come down and talk about this
issue. I am just going to keep filling in reading this book when no one
is on the floor. I only hope that when we talk about this bill and this
issue, we do it with some respect for the victims of these crimes and
the respect they deserve.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Again, as I have noted, 83 percent of the victims in the United
States are from the United States, and I don't think that is what we
think of when we first think about sex trafficking, but those are
facts

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I believe this is one of the countries that Senator McCain visited,
when I talked to him after he came back last Easter, where he simply
didn't see the girls. He asked: Where are the girls? And they said:
Well, the girls--many of them have been sold into sex. So these are
things that are happening right now in this world and in our own
country.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

So I think that is a pretty good place to break for a minute as we
talk about ``the only audible voice of conscience belonged to an
eleven-year-old boy.'' I think we have an opportunity in the Senate to
be an audible voice of conscience and to move on this bill.

When I came to the floor today, my job was to just manage the bill
for 4 hours; then I just decided, after being somewhat disgusted by all
of the anger that I have heard in this Chamber, that maybe I would just
start reading from this book. I had no plan to do it. I happened to
have it with me because I have used it when I have given speeches. This
isn't an official filibuster, as I guess we have been asked. I am just
going to keep reading from the book. When my colleagues want to come
down, I welcome them. But I only ask them one thing--if maybe they
could just focus on the issue at hand and stop all of this vengeance
and anger, and then maybe we will have an opportunity, if we stop
throwing darts, to get this done--and then also to confirm the next
Attorney General of the United States, which is completely unrelated to
this.

So let me continue on with this story, as we have an 11-year-old boy
in the story whose voice was the only voice of conscience.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

The next part of the chapter: ``Fighting Slavery from Seattle.'' This
is a book, ``Half the Sky,'' by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. It
is about sex trafficking, and I am reading it, one, because it is a
really good book and so people understand the issue, two, so people
will refocus on why we have these bills on the floor and work together.
We all know some potential ways to resolve this on both sides of the
aisle so we can pass this bill and resolve this Hyde amendment
provision which should not be on this bill. But there are ways to
resolve this, and we know what they are, and then, also, hopefully,
pass my safe harbor bill which was the bill that in addition to Senator
Cornyn's bill passed through our Committee on the Judiciary
unanimously. Every single person voted for it. It is slated to be the
first amendment vote on this bill, and it establishes safe harbor
incentives so that other States will do what Minnesota and about 15
States have done, which is not to consider these victims as criminals
but to consider them as victims. Then not only do we help these girls
so they have a chance of turning their lives around but also so that we
actually make better criminal cases.

I know as a former prosecutor, running an office of 400 people for 8
years--seeing some of these major cases come in our doors--the best way
to make these cases, if you have victims who feel that they are
protected, who feel they have another life they can lead, who feel they
can do something with their lives between going back to their pimp and
going back to the person who has beaten them up and gotten them hooked
on drugs, is by doing something like that. So those are two worthy
bills that are on the floor.

Again, my colleagues are welcome to come down here and join me. I
think it would be nice for a change if people focused on the issue at
hand instead of a partisan fight that has been going on, because I
think this institution is better than what we have seen in the last
week.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

That is a good question. I finally decided to start reading this book
because I was sick of what was going on here. I think ordinary people
around the country can do something about sex slavery by supporting
strong laws and making sure Congress gets its job done but also doing
work on their local and State level.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

The reality is that past efforts to assist girls have sometimes
backfired. In 1993, Senator Tom Harkin wanted to help Bangladeshi girls
laboring in sweatshops, so he introduced legislation that would ban
imports made by workers under the age of fourteen. Bangladeshi
factories promptly fired tens of thousands of young girls, and many of
them ended up in brothels and are presumably now dead of AIDS.

Again, I am reading from the book ``Half the Sky,'' by Nicholas
Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, which is a great book about sex trafficking
in order to refocus this Chamber on what we should be doing, which is
getting these bills done and coming up with a way to resolve timeworn
disputes which we somehow have been able do with other bills.

I am trying to make the case here that these girls, as reflected in
some of these stories, are just as important as some of the other work
that we do in the Senate and deserve our greatest efforts.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

``This project is simply the most meaningful and worthwhile
initiative that I have undertaken in my thirty-six years in
education,'' Frank Grijalva said. The Overlake School in Cambodia is
indeed an extraordinary place. A bridge has washed out, so you have to
walk across a stream to reach it, but it looks nothing like the
dilapidated buildings that you see in much of the developing world.
There are 270 students, ranging in age from six to fifteen. The English
teacher is university educated and speaks good English. Most stunning
of all, when we dropped by, the sixth graders were busy sending e-mails
from their Yahoo accounts--to the kids at Overlake School in America.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Kun Sokkea showed us her home, a rickety shack built on stilts--to
guard against flooding and vermin--in a field near the school. The
house has no electricity, and her possessions were in one small bag.
She never has to worry about choosing what to wear: She has just one
shirt, and no shoes other than a pair of flip-flops. Kun Sokkea has
never been to a dentist and to a doctor only once, and she gets the
family's drinking water from the nearby creek. That's the same creek in
which Kun Sokkea washes the family clothes (she borrows someone else's
shirt to wear when she has to wash her own). She shares a mattress on
the floor with her brother, as three other family members sleep a few
feet way. Kun Sokkea has never touched a phone, ridden in a car, or had
a soft drink; when she was asked if she ever drank milk, she looked
confused and said as a baby she had drunk her mother's milk.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

For one thing, we know that is not quite true in our country. As we
know, we have these same crimes occurring in our country every single
day. Every single day, we have thousands of girls who are victims of
sex trafficking. We had it happen in Minnesota. We have had it happen
across the country. We have it happen when some girls are brought in
from other countries. We know it is going on every day in our own
Nation. We have an opportunity to do something about it, to tell the
rest of the world that this place is a place where good things get
done. But somehow we have gotten bogged down in a political game again
with blame going back and forth and back and forth, and I just don't
think that is dignified for the Senate.

While we can battle it out--and we should--on issues such as the
budget and on issues where we don't have an agreement when it comes to
our country's international affairs, this is an issue on which we
actually agree, but somehow we found a way to not agree, and I think we
need to find our way back. That is why I am going to continue to read
from this book.

Someone asked me if this is a filibuster. It is not a filibuster
because obviously I don't mind if my colleagues come down. I would like
them to come down and talk about this important topic. But I will point
out that at least when it comes to this issue of sex trafficking, we
can stop going back and forth on who is to blame and who knew what when
and what people did wrong and instead just focus on resolving this
issue and getting a bill passed and certainly not attaching it to the
Attorney General of the United States.

I will say that it is attached to the Attorney General in one way,
and that is when it comes to Federal sex trafficking cases. Most of
these cases are on the local level, county level, State level, the DA's
office, but there are cases that are handled federally. I know from
talking to the nominated Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, that she
cares very much about these cases. It would be good to have her in
place so we can start working on this national sex trafficking
strategy. So in that way they are connected, but they certainly are not
connected, in my mind, procedurally.

I know some of my colleagues have addressed this. I have spoken out
for her several times. Not everyone knows about Loretta Lynch's
background. Loretta Lynch is someone who grew up in a neighborhood--her
family didn't have a lot of money. Her dad was a pastor at the church.

When she was in elementary school, she took a test and did really
well on that test. The teacher came to her and said: You know what, we
don't really know if that was really you who took that test or if that
was really your score. So she took the test again, and she scored even
higher the second time.

When Loretta Lynch graduated from high school, she was actually the
valedictorian. The principal of that school came up to Loretta Lynch
and said: You know what, it is a bit controversial to have you as our
valedictorian, so you will have to share it with a White student. That
happened to Loretta Lynn, and she just waited it out, and that is what
she is going to do with this Chamber. She is going wait it out, and in
the end she will be confirmed as the next Attorney General.

Why is this relevant? Because some of our friends on the other side
of the aisle are attaching it to the sex trafficking issue, and I don't
think it should be attached to the sex trafficking issue. I think we
should get her confirmed.

But most importantly and the reason I am here on the floor reading
from this book is just to say, can we just stop going back and forth
and the vengeance and get this bill done?

From the very beginning, Senator Cornyn and I have worked on my bill,
the safe harbor bill--which is not the bill on the floor--together.
While I was not involved in the beginning of the drafting of his bill,
I believe that idea of helping victims in some way with some kind of
funding with shelters is a really good idea as well.

I hope we can resolve the issue on his bill, the Hyde amendment
provision, and that we can then go on to pass my bill as the amendment. As we
know, there is significant support in the House for these bills, and
they are very important bills.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

This is now chapter 2 of Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's book
``Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women
Worldwide.'' And I noted that really most of the book is about sex
trafficking and prostitution and why this is such a major problem
worldwide.

Look at what happened that night when those girls were doing nothing
but learning at a school and Boko Haram came in and broke into that
school and took those girls away. Their parents had nothing but
motorcycles and bicycles and bows and arrows to try to chase them. They
were never able to get their daughters back, and now Boko Haram said
they sold many of those children into sex slavery.

This should not be happening, but it is going on right now--and not
just internationally. It is going on everywhere in this country, and
that is why it is important. It is important not just for the victims
in America, it is also important because of the victims
internationally. We have an opportunity in this country to actually
stand up and say: We want to be a leader on this internationally. We
are going to cast this dysfunction aside and actually get this done and
show the world we can be a leader when it comes to elevating girls and
young women, when it comes to holding up half the sky.

Chapter 2, ``Prohibition and Prostitution.'' It starts with a quote
by Abraham Lincoln:

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

It is unfortunate. I hope that is not what we are going to be saying
in this body--from the Senate to the rest of the world and to
trafficked girls and to those groups who are advocating so hard,
especially over the last 2 years, in trying to get this done. I hope we
will not say: It is unfortunate. We were not able to resolve this.
These are major fights, and this person did this, and this person knew
about this, and this person didn't know about that.

That is what has been going on over this past week, and we are better
than that. People keep backstabbing and going after each other, but
personally I have had it. So if anyone wants to join me here--I know
the women in the Senate have always worked together--and at least talk
about this issue instead of simply fighting with each other, I think we
would really improve our chances of getting it done.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I do want to pause from this book for a second to note that when I
was at the McCain Institute out in Arizona, Cindy McCain and Heidi Heitkamp and I spoke about this issue to all of those gathered. At the end, a guy came up to me and said that he was with the State Department under a Republican administration, and he talked to me about how when Paul Wellstone died, they put forward some kind of a scholarship in his honor for students who wanted to work in the area of
combating sex trafficking and trying to eliminate sex trafficking.

It was at that moment last spring that I actually found out that Paul
Wellstone, the Senator from Minnesota, whom we miss so dearly, who died
in that tragic plane crash, had taken on this issue. He had taken on so
many other issues, speaking for the voiceless, from mental health to
domestic violence, that I did not know--and I think this shows how
sometimes this issue gets second shrift--that he was such a hero when
it came to sex trafficking.

I think part of that was Paul always believed that there were a lot
of causes around this building that had people advocating for them,
that keep people busy at meetings all day or that they get called up
for that are so important, but, in fact, those who can't afford that
kind of help--the victims of domestic violence or those with mental
illness or victims of sex trafficking--they don't have a lot of
lobbyists coming over here to meet with people and they need someone to
stand up for them, and they should not be forgotten or dismissed or
marginalized in becoming a political football, that maybe they need
someone advocating on their behalf.

The other thing about Paul is he always embraced that immigrant
experience. He believed that no matter where one comes from in this
country, or no matter what one's roots were, they should be able to
rise up. He also believed that everyone should be treated with dignity.

I will never forget when I first came to the Senate, Darrell, the
train driver who recently retired, came up to me and I told him I am a
Senator from Minnesota, and all he said was, ``Paul Wellstone,''
because he remembered him. Whether it was the cops at the front desk or
the secretaries, they remember Paul. So it is no surprise that Paul
Wellstone, along with conservative Republican Sam Brownback, actually
took this issue on.

In this book, ``Half the Sky,'' Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn
continue talking about who worked on this when people were actually
working together. They say:

Hillary Rodham Clinton was also a leader on this issue, and
no one has been a greater champion than Carolyn Maloney, a
Democratic Congresswoman from New York.

In fact, Congresswoman Maloney, in conjunction with Congressman Poe,
a Republican Congressman, are sponsoring a bill that is not exactly the
same as Senator Cornyn's bill, but similar. They are also cosponsors of
the bill I am carrying, the safe harbor bill that Erik Paulsen is
carrying in the House. So we can see this work has continued. Some of
the people are the same, but somehow back then, we were able to reach
some kind of an agreement, and this was treated as a serious issue and
a serious bill which we need to do.

They go on to talk about who else worked on this.

They say:

. . . Paul Wellstone, Sam Brownback, Hillary Rodham Clinton,
Carolyn Maloney, a Democratic Congresswoman from New York.
Likewise, one of George W. Bush's few positive international
legacies was a big push against trafficking. Vital Voices and
other liberal groups were stalwart on sex trafficking, as
were International Justice Mission, and other conservative
evangelical groups. Yet, while the left and the right each do
important work fighting trafficking, they mostly do it
separately. The abolitionist movement would be far more
effective if it forged unity in its own rank.

Now we get back to something I always remember Mike Enzi talking
about, about how we can have disagreement on something like 20 percent
of the things, but we have agreement on 80 percent. Maybe that is what
we have to remember with this bill. We know how Senator Enzi always
worked well with Ted Kennedy, as did Senator Hatch, even with how
different they were politically. But they were able to find some common
ground.

Certainly this bill should not be devolving into a fight over
abortion. There is so much we agree on in this bill. There is also so
much we agree on in the safe harbor bill which doesn't contain the Hyde
provision.

So this idea that we are going back and forth and dwelling on whose
fault this was and how it happened--frankly, I think: Enough. I think
we need to resolve this. I know there are ways to resolve this. I hope
that is continuing to go on today. We have a lot of things, in addition
to passing this bill, we need to get done. We need to get the vote on
the next Attorney General of the United States. We have a major budget
that we need to get done. The budget needs to be approved. I am looking
at our staff and I know they are looking forward to one of those nights
where we are going until 3 or 4 in the morning. Maybe we wouldn't have
to do that if we could stop these kinds of fights.

This is kind of a practical argument for getting this done, I know
that, but one has to be slightly practical as we look at the fights
before us on important matters that we need to resolve. One of the
fights shouldn't be this. This is a fight against evil. This is a fight
against those who are trafficking in little girls. It shouldn't be a
fight across the aisle.

The authors talk about the groups that have worked on it and how we
would be more effective if we forged unity.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Do my colleagues know what is so interesting about this--let me see
when this book was written: 2009. So even since that time, what is sort
of a cool thing is that we have gotten some agreement now on the fact
that when we see a Republican House of Representatives being able to
pass the safe harbor bill--the bill I wrote in the Senate, the bill
that is not yet on the floor, to make clear, but the bill that would be
considered as the first amendment--we have gotten some agreement here
in these two Houses that these younger victims are, in fact, victims. I
think that is really important for our country to hear that. Because
when we do things such as that--such as when we pass the Violence
Against Women Act, it changes the whole way people think about these
crimes. Who is committing the crime? It is the people running the ring.
It is the johns. It is not the victims.

So I think that is why as we move forward, trying to get these bills
passed, it is so important beyond the immediate bills.

OK. So they are talking about this debate. I don't think we should
dwell on debate. We have had enough of them in this Chamber, but that
is what this part of the book is about.

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This is a change. I think we remember back decades ago where people
were talking about legalizing prostitution. I think what we have
realized, those of us who have worked as prosecutors, is that so often
prostitution is not consensual. So often there are reasons--either the
pimp is keeping someone hooked on drugs to keep someone being a
prostitute or they are threatening their lives or threatening their
family lives--and this is something that we don't want to have be
legal.

I am going to finish this paragraph, and then I see we have been
joined by the great Senator from New Jersey who I am really happy has
come so I can sit down and drink some water.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

With that, I will take a pause from this book. I will say that
Senator Booker has done not only an amazing job as a Senator, but he
also knows a little bit about being a mayor. He knows the struggle of
poverty and also understands that to govern, we have to have a change
of tone. I have always appreciated the work he has done across the
aisle and the tone he brings to the Senate. We are really trying to
push today as we try to come together to work on this bill.

I yield the floor.

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Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I was here for nearly 3 hours this
morning when there was some spare time on the floor to get us refocused
on the issue at hand, which is the issue of the victims of sex
trafficking.

As I noted this morning, this is now the third biggest criminal
enterprise in the world. The first is illegal drugs, the second illegal
guns, and the third is the illegal sale of children. The average age of
a victim of sex trafficking is 12 years old--not even old enough to go
to their first prom or not even old enough to get a driver's license.
That is what we are talking about here.

As I said, we have seen it in every part of the country. Just last
week, there was a case out of Rochester, MN, of a 12-year-old girl who
was charged by the U.S. Attorney's office. She got a text and went to a
McDonald's parking lot. She thought she was going to go to a party. She
got shoved in a car and got brought up to the Twin Cities, got raped.
Sexually explicit pictures were taken and posted on Craigslist by the
pimp. She was sold for sex to two men, raped by two men. Finally, the
guys got caught and they have charged the case. So that is what we are
talking about here.

I know there are disagreements on the issues of our time, whether
they are the issues of our economy and the budget fight that is going
to be coming up next week, or whether it is the issues of foreign
relations, but there shouldn't be a disagreement about this. This is a
bipartisan bill. There is a provision in this bill that I don't believe
needs to be in this bill. There are some potential solutions here and I
hope my colleagues are talking about them.

We have to refocus our efforts on what matters. That is what we have
to remember. I am tired of looking back at who is blaming who and whose
fault it is and now, somehow, it has gotten tied to the confirmation of
the next Attorney General of the United States. This makes no sense at
all. If these issues are connected at all, it is simply because the
Attorney General of the United States helps to enforce the sex
trafficking laws. Their office sometimes takes on Federal cases such as
we saw in the oil patch of North Dakota. They enforce our other laws,
such as what we care about right now in Minnesota where we have had a
number of people indicted for going to help ISIS, or we have had 20
people indicted and 9 convictions for helping al-Shabaab, and here we
have an Attorney General who is immensely qualified and who literally
has the highest number out of her office of terrorism prosecutions in
the Nation. So let's just get Loretta Lynch confirmed. That is for
starters.

As to this bill, I would like to see a different tone as we discuss
it. I would like to see people on both sides of the aisle talk about
solutions and remember what we are dealing with here. We have been able
to deal with this issue on other bills. I don't understand why we can't
deal with it on this bill. Are these girls less important? Is this
something that can just be a political football back and forth? I don't
think so.

I want to remind people that in addition to the bill that is on the
floor, Senator Cornyn's bill, which sets up a victims fund, there is
another bill, and that is the Stop Exploitation Through Trafficking
Act. That is my bill. Senator Cornyn is the cosponsor. There are 19
bipartisan cosponsors. It is a bill that went through the Judiciary
Committee a few weeks ago--unanimously on the vote. Every single
Senator voted for it. A similar version led by Representative Erik
Paulsen of Minnesota has gone through the House. I like ours a little
better because it includes a national sex trafficking strategy. Those
two bills will be easily resolved to get this done.

My hope is--my bill is supposed to be the first amendment once we can
go on to this bill, once we get the fix of the bill--the provision of
the bill that is in controversy. I want to remind people that this bill
is equally important. It sets a standard--the safe harbor bill--so
other States will start looking at Minnesota and what about 15 other
States have done. It says these 12-year-olds are not criminals; they
are victims.

How can you say a 12-year-old is a criminal? They are victims. Once
you start thinking like that, it changes the way you handle the cases.
As a former prosecutor, what matters to me is that when you change the
way you look at the case, you have a better case because then you have
a victim who feels they have some place to go--a shelter. They can get
a job. They can get an education. They are much more likely to turn on
the pimp and to turn on the perpetrator that is running the sex ring.

In Minnesota, last year we got a 40-year sentence against a guy. John
Choi, the chief attorney for Ramsey County, got a guy that was running
one of these rings. That is what is going on here when we talk about
this bill and the importance of passing this bill.

We have the 20 women Senators who came together and asked for a
hearing on sex trafficking. We got that done. Now is the time where I
hope we can come together and resolve this.

So one of the things I have taken to doing is reading Nicholas
Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn's great book ``Half the Sky.''

``Half the Sky'' refers to women holding up half the sky. It refers
to the fact that we have countries and systems that marginalize women
and don't treat them as equal. This is not good for our world.

We have seen countries that do it the worst, that treat them as sex
slaves, that allow that to happen. Those countries tend to have very
poor human rights records. They tend not to be good partners for our
country. If we want to lead the way for the world, we have to start on our own turf,
where 86 percent of the victims in sex trafficking in the United States
are from the United States.

If we are going to reach out to other countries, such as Heidi
Heitkamp, Cindy McCain, and I did last spring--we went down to Mexico
to work with them on some of the issues of cases on which they have
actually helped in the United States with the U.S. attorney's office.
We need to be able to show that our country is doing the right thing,
and this is an opportunity to do that.

So I have been reading from this book in part in the hope that we can
change the tone and remember who we are here to protect. It is also a
great book. They have actually written another book as well that is
focused on domestic sex trafficking that I will be reading from
tomorrow as well.

I note this is not an official filibuster, but whenever I have time
and there is time on the floor, I am simply going to come down here to
remind people of the importance of getting this bill done.

So we are talking in the book--I was in the chapter on ``Prohibition
and Prostitution.'' I talked about the fact that ``the tools to crush
modern slavery''--I am reading from the book--``but the political will
is lacking.''

That seems to be what is going on in this Chamber when extraneous
bills are in the way of getting this done. When my Republican coauthor
over in the House has said that these kinds of politics don't belong on
these bills, I agree.

The tools to crush modern slavery exist, but the political
will is lacking. That must be the starting point of any
abolitionist movement. We're not arguing that Westerners
should take up this cause because it's the fault of the West;
Western men do not play a central role in prostitution in
most poor countries. True, American and European sex tourists
are part of the problem in Thailand, the Philippines, Sri
Lanka, and Belize, but they are still only a small percentage
of the johns. The vast majority are local men. Moreover,
Western men usually go with girls who are more or less
voluntary prostitutes, because they want to take the girls
back to their hotel rooms, while forced prostitutes are not
normally allowed out of the brothels. So this is not a case
where we in the West have a responsibility to lead because
we're the source of the problem. Rather, we single out the
West because, even though we're peripheral to the slavery,
our action is necessary to overcome a horrific evil.

So that is my argument here, that by doing something here in this
Chamber and by showing that we care about these girls in the United
States, then we show we care internationally and it should be a major
tenet of our foreign policy.

One reason the modern abolitionist movement hasn't been
more effective is the divisive politics of prostitution.

I talked about this earlier today. The issue that we have is that a
number of people way back--including the late great Senator Paul
Wellstone of Minnesota, Senator Brownback of Kansas, Hillary Rodham
Clinton, Carolyn Maloney, whom I just left on the Joint Economic
Committee, and George W. Bush--showed great leadership in this area. So
we have seen time and again people being able to come together across
party lines to get this done.

So they talk about how things have changed, and they say that ``over
time, we've changed our minds'' about how we look at this. They talk
about the fact that it used to be: Well, let's legalize prostitution
and regulate. That will really work. I think we have learned that it
will never really work. It doesn't work in those countries that have
tried it, and it certainly doesn't work for these young girls who are
victims of the sex trade. So they talk about how we, in fact, through
law enforcement, need to go after the profits and we have to take this
on. That is what the bills we are considering help to do. They give
State and local prosecutors and shelters the tools that they need.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

They go on to explain it.

But then they say--and this is key to our approach to trying not to
allow prostitution to continue:

As we probed the numbers, however, we saw that they were
flimsier than they at first appeared. HIV prevalence was
inexplicably high among new arrivals . . . 27.7 percent among
sex workers aged twenty or younger. Research had also shown
that, initially, all sex workers interviewed . . . claimed to
use condoms nearly all the time. But when pressed, they
admitted lower rates. . . .

This goes on and they talk about the problem with this. What we are
talking about here is underage girls and what is really going on.

I am going to quote from one story they told when they went to this
brothel.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

These are stories about how it doesn't really work to have this model
of allowing the prostitution to continue and regulate.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I will remind again that this was done on a bipartisan basis. We
didn't see the kind of fights we are having now because people decided
that here is one thing that we could agree on--from Paul Wellstone to
Sam Brownback--and that perhaps without having outside political
debates, we can agree that we do not want young girls aged 12 to be sex
trafficked.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

I think we see this has happened since this book was written--since
2009 under Secretary Clinton and Secretary Kerry.

. . . that would elevate the issue's profile. The President
could visit a shelter . . .

And, by the way, that is something that Heidi Heitkamp, Cindy McCain,
and I did when we went to Mexico.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

This is from ``Half the Sky,'' written by New York Times reporter
Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. They have a more recent book that
they have written called ``A Path Appears,'' and this is about domestic
prostitution, which I will also be reading from. But I thought I would
start that tomorrow, as we continue to focus on this, so people
understand what we are really talking about.

As we all know, the bills before the Senate today are about domestic
trafficking. They are about what is happening in the United States
right now in every town in this country.

We talked earlier this morning about why this is happening, why we
are seeing this kind of increase, and we are talking about it more. The
reason is that more and more because of the Internet people can
anonymously advertise. They can send instant messages and texts. It is
just more hidden, and it is harder to track down for law enforcement.
That is part of why we are seeing this going on right now and why this
is such a major issue in our country.

I would tie it into our international theme, because, again, first of
all, we have a percentage of these victims--mostly girls--who come from
foreign countries. So it matters to us what goes on in foreign
countries with their law, which is the focus of ``Half the Sky.''

But it also matters to us because we want a better world, and we want
these countries to do better. We don't want to put all our money in
military spending. We want these countries to become democracies, to
become trading partners, to become places that we can work with.
Instead, if we allow these girls to be subjugated and we allow them to
be chattel and we allow them to be treated like slaves, they are never
going to get the kind of democracy that we want them to get to and that
will allow for a better country. You are not going to have a woman
elected to the Senate in one of these countries if they believe that
women can be treated as chattel, as we are seeing in so many of these
places.

So I am going to go to the next part of the chapter, which is called
``Rescuing Girls Is the Easy Part.''

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

That is what I talked about earlier. That is why, when we look at it
from a U.S. perspective, what these bills focus on is trying to turn
these girls' lives around and trying to set that standard. We are not
mandating it in other States; we are simply creating some incentives
and giving them some funding so that States can start doing these cases
in a different way and start seeing them as victims and making it
easier to go after the people who are running the ring.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Now we have been joined--I am going to stop reading from the book for
a while. Senator Feinstein has come to the floor. Senator Feinstein has
been a true leader on this issue of sex trafficking. She is a senior
member of the Judiciary Committee--the only other woman on the
Judiciary Committee besides me, with, I think, 20-some guys. She knows
how important this issue is. I know she is going to talk a little bit
about that as well as some other things. I welcome her to the floor.

I yield the floor.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

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