Human Trafficking Legislation

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, human trafficking affects every State in this Nation--every single one of them. In Kentucky we have heard reports of victims as young as 2 months old--2-month-old victims of human trafficking. We heard about a Kentuckian who said she was sold for sex from the age of 5 until she was able to physically break free as an adult. Stories such as these may shock the conscience, but they are hardly unique in our country.

The Judiciary Committee recently heard the story of Aviva, who was barely a teenager when she was kidnapped and forced into modern slavery. Listen to this. Aviva was sold to as many as 10 different men a night. Freedom was stolen from her, innocence ripped away. Aviva's trafficker tried to stamp out everything that made Aviva Aviva. Aviva even forgot what it felt like to be human anymore.

Democrats have said they were in favor of helping victims such as Aviva. Democrats demanded that I bring the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act to the floor. But now that the very legislation is here on the floor, our Democratic friends seem to have changed their tune completely--a totally different tune. Now that they have a chance to actually help the victims, they decided they are more concerned about a few sentences in the bill--a provision they seemed perfectly fine with until just recently. They are more concerned about those few sentences than actually solving the problem the bill would address.

Now, this provision has been included in countless bills they have voted for and cosponsored. It is language they were perfectly happy to endorse again in another bill this very week--2 days ago. But that bill was designed to help doctors, not children enslaved by sex traffickers. So it is OK to vote for that kind of language if you are trying to help doctors, but not OK to vote for that kind of language if you are trying to help these poor young children. Obviously our Democratic friends think that doctors are worthy of their help. What about the victims of modern slavery?

Now, the rationale for this filibuster seems to shift by the day, and it is almost incomprehensible. Their foremost concern seems to be about treating this specific kind of money this way, versus treating that specific kind of money that way. It is hard to follow; isn't it? Focusing all their attention not on the victims of these crimes but on financial assessments levied on the people who perpetrate them--the traffickers.

Honestly, I am not sure why anyone would think money collected from criminals ought to get more consideration than money collected from law-abiding taxpayers. What a strange argument. But this is where they have planted their flag. That ridiculous argument is where they have planted their flag.

Their contention is essentially that the victims of trafficking should get no help at all because Democrats say the money they would receive might be considered ``private'' and that this bill should not pass, therefore, because the bipartisan Hyde principles it contains might apply to those private funds. If that argument sounds contrived and illogical to you, you are not alone.

Now we find out it is not even true. Let me repeat that. The very heart of the Democrats' argument isn't even true. That is what the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service told us just yesterday.

So I would ask my Democratic friends to listen to this closely. CRS, the Congressional Research Service, answered some very straightforward questions posed by the senior Senator from Texas, my friend and colleague Senator Cornyn. Here is what they said to Senator Cornyn: Money deposited in the General Treasury from traffickers, as the Federal law requires, is Federal money, according to CRS.

So let me repeat. The Democrats have been blocking an antislavery bill over money they call private, and they are not even correct about this. Our Democratic colleagues have also blocked this bill because they say Hyde has only applied to annual spending or appropriations--not mandatory spending. It is another argument that the Congressional Research Service tells us is simply not true--not true.

The experts at CRS say Hyde has applied to mandatory spending of Federal funds out of the General Treasury, as the Cornyn amendment provides. And CRS concludes that Hyde just applied to mandatory spending in the very doc fix bill that 100 percent of our Democratic friends voted for 2 days ago.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the CRS memorandum be printed in the Record at the conclusion of my remarks.

I ask my Democratic friends to stop this. Stop this. Take a breath and think about what is being done. Children are being sold into sexual slavery, having their freedom and self-respect ripped away. Will they finally allow the Senate to help them or will they continue some debunked crusade?

We have offered several compromises to address the concerns they have raised. We will soon vote on another one that Senator Cornyn has been offering. He has been reaching out to our Democrat friends for weeks now to try to find a solution to this nonproblem. The findings of CRS make it clear that we are doing nothing extraordinary or unusual here. We are simply applying long-accepted principles that Americans overwhelmingly support. Most people would think that sounds pretty reasonable. It is time to get serious and pass this important legislation.

A large, bipartisan majority of the Senate has already voted repeatedly to approve this bill. With the support of a couple more courageous Democrats, we can bring an end to this debunked filibuster today.

The victims who survive brutal abuse don't need more of our friends' illogical contortions and justifications. They just need help, and they need it now. They need the help the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act would provide.

Why don't we finally get around to fixing this problem? The time to do that is now.

I yield the floor.

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