Filling the Supreme Court Vacancy and Subpoena Enforcement Resolution
Floor Speech
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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, let me state an obvious point. When it comes to filling the current Supreme Court vacancy--which could fundamentally alter the direction of the Court for a generation-- Republicans and Democrats simply disagree. We simply disagree. Republicans think the people deserve a voice in this critical decision; the President does not. So we disagree in this instance, and as a result, we logically act as a check-and-balance.
There is no reason one area of disagreement should stop us from looking for other areas of agreement, though. We will continue our work in the Senate as the American people make their voices heard in this important national conversation. For instance, we will address another very important issue today, which I would like to talk about now.
Senator Portman and Senator McCaskill are the top Republican and top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Over the past year, they have worked together in a bipartisan way to examine human trafficking. Their probe has revealed how trafficking has flourished in the age of the Internet. It has also revealed how many cases of sex trafficking, including cases involving children, have been linked to one Web site in particular: backpage.com.
One national group who tracks the issue has told the subcommittee this: Nearly three-quarters of all suspected child sex trafficking reports it receives from the public through its tip line have a connection to backpage.
Chairman Portman and Ranking Member McCaskill have wanted to do something about this. They know they have to keep investigating. So they issued a subpoena to backpage. They wanted documents about the company's business practices. They wanted to know how it screens advertisements for warning signs of trafficking. As the leaders of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, they had every right to make these requests in the course of their investigation, but backpage has refused to comply. Does that mean Senators Portman and McCaskill give up? Of course not. And we shouldn't, either. They jointly submitted a Senate resolution that would hold the company in civil contempt and force it to turn over this required information. This resolution passed through the committee with unanimous bipartisan support 15 to 0, and today it can be adopted by the full Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support too. We will have that opportunity this afternoon. If we do, it will allow the Senate's legal counsel to bring a civil suit in court and ask the court to order compliance with the subpoena. That is critical for allowing this bipartisan investigation to move forward.
I thank Ranking Member McCaskill for all she has done. I thank Chairman Portman for all he has done.
We saw Senator Portman's great work last week in passing bipartisan legislation to help address America's heroin and opioid crisis, and again today we will see Senator Portman's great work in leading on another important issue and doing so once more in a bipartisan manner.
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