quoted something i said a few days ago. every word that he quotes is perfect. that's what i said. but here's the context in which i s mr. president this is the second day that my friends the republican leader has come to the floor and quoted something i said a few days ago. everywhere that he quotes is perfect. that is what i said but here's the context in which i said it. i'm an expert on motions to proceed. during the last six years i have had to file cloture as the leader here hundreds and hundreds of times. in the last congress more than 200 times. virtually all of the closures were filed because republicans wouldn't let us get on a bill or they simply wouldn't let us get on a bill come even builds they favored. we have to spend a couple of days getting it right for a vote on cloture and once i was done and we had to wait 30 hours on

what i said the other day is true, human trafficking is something that needs to get done done. we democrats are not going to ask you republican leadership to file a motion. get on the bill and we are on the bill and we can finish this bill in 20 minutes. the only thing that needs to be done is the language relating to abortion should come out of this bill. abortion and human trafficking have nothing to do with each other. so my friend the republican leader if you want to quote me anytime he wants and i know he will quote me correctly but it should be in the proper context in that context mr. president is this. we have proven during the first few months of this congress and on issues that we believe should be debated, we will allow the senate to get on the bill. we are not going to be stalling as has been done for the last six years just to kill time.

we were on human trafficking because it's something that needs to be completed, finished and one away this is going to happen is the abortion language should go out of the bill. >> mr. president and i ask unanimous consent to engage in a colloquy with my colleagues the senator from illinois, the senator from ohio and i think we are going to be joined by the senator from south dakota and perhaps others. >> without objection. >> mr. president before he turned to senator portman i just want to put up a quote from one of the leaders of the anti-trafficking movement, the coalition against trafficking in women who expresses my sentiments exactly. my frustration over a partisan filibuster of a piece of legislation which has enjoyed broad bipartisan support and how somehow partisanship has

affected what should be a bipartisan commitment to helping the victims of human trafficking trafficking. she said senate democrats are choosing a phantom problem over real victims and i think that expresses the fact and certainly my sentiments. but i want to turn to the senator from ohio first two has been one of the leaders in this effort. he has offered important piece of legislation that has already been incorporated in the bill that perhaps he will talk about but also has some additional amendments that i know he would like to get a chance to get a vote on to further improve the bill but in particular his provision bringing missing children home at senator schumer at the senator from new york which as i said is already in the base bill and the senator feinstein the senator from california they have offered to combat human trafficking act which is already included in the base bill. so with that mr. president i would yield to the senator from

ohio for any remarks he would care to make them perhaps we can engage in a colloquy with our colleagues. >> i thank my colleague from texas and i thank him for his leadership on this legislation along with senator klobuchar and others to bring it to the floor. senator grassley is with us as chairs the committee. i appreciate the fact that these two bills that we have worked on in the last two years are included in your legislation that you mentioned. sadly some of the most vulnerable youth are those who are missing or in foster care, kids who end up being unfortunately exposed to human trafficking, sometimes sexual trafficking so the idea of a missing children legislation is very simple. says let's help to find these children as quickly as possible by having better information on them. i will give you one example of that. in ohio we have had 71 kids who have gone missing since january

january 1. these are 71 children who were out there somewhere miners and for those 71 children we only have 22 photographs. so this is since january 1. one thing the legislation does is says let's get the data including a photograph so all of us can have the opportunity to help find these young people before they might become subject to human trafficking. in ohio we unfortunately have this issue in all of our regions including in some of our smaller communities as well as our bigger urban wear that we have sex trafficking in children they get involved in is the average age of getting involved in this is between 11 and 13 years old. so we have talked a lot on the floor over the last several days. these are the most vulnerable

among us. these are crimes against children so this is in the bill and if we can pass this legislation this additional information and again better awareness and training of child welfare agencies and officials trained for law enforcement and so on is all part of this. the legislation mentioned is about increasing the penalties on those involved in human trafficking and that is important because we haven't had a major bill on the floor in the senate 15 years. what we have learned has indicated to us in better ways to give prosecutors other law enforcement tools they need to be able to take these cases prosecute them and stop this heinous crime. so there are some really good provisions in this legislation that i worked on and the bipartisan basis. one is with senator feinstein with regard to increasing the penalties and the other piece of legislation is with senator schumer on bringing children home. but there are also a couple of minutes would love to offer.

we offered them and we didn't get votes on them because this week we haven't met forward on the legislation so i would urge my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to allow us to move forward with the process. let's go in and start having votes. there might be disagreements in some parts of this bill. i thought because it got out of the committee with the unanimous vote there wouldn't be disagreements but if there are let's have that discussion and debate. let's not let these again most vulnerable among us wait for us to work this out. let's go ahead and move forward with this legislation in a way that allows everybody to have their views be heard. you now some of the legislation that i talked about comes out of meeting with folks back home on this issue and talking to victims who have been through this horrible processing gone through the very difficult process of recovery from it. some of our amendments that we are wanting to offer with help

help -- would help to respond to these young people often children who are involved in this. but it also comes out of the work that has been done in the senate hero cop is that they formed two and half years ago. the senator from connecticut senator blumenthal and i cochair it. we meet every month and we bring people in from around the country who are experts on this issue. some are experts on child welfare, law enforcement and people who are involved in trying to stop the issue. others are the experts because unfortunately they found themselves in difficult situations. among other some have come forward and talk about how as a young girl they were taken in by a trafficker and increasingly this is true in ohio unfortunately. drug abuse is part of this so they become dependent really on the trafficker.

it is to me a form of bondage because these are our young people who become addicted. in ohio it's typically heroin now and so it's keeping these young people really trapped in this dependency so the judge treatment and the drug recovery it's always a recovery from having been trafficked. this is an opportunity for us to take the information we have received to this caucus we have formed. i think the members who are involved in that caucus including the members on the floor today would agree it's been a good experience for a staff into a raised the consciousness on this issue. now we have taken this information and put it in legislation. we will have plenty of time for politics around here, trust me. we will have lots of that next week and the week after and over the next couple of years. that's part of the process and we understand that but there are certain issues where we should be able to move forward are not

the bipartisan process, i would say a nonpartisan basis and this is one. i think my colleague from texas for allowing me to speak briefly in my colleagues from south dakota and illinois who are here to talk about this issue in my hope is even today we can begin the process of having votes moving forward with amendments in getting this good work done. to help the most vulnerable among us. >> mr. president i thank the senator from ohio for his leadership on these issues. he has worked hard and long to address them in bring us to the point where and today i want to emphasize one point he made at the beginning and that is the average age of the people who are targeted for human trafficking are girls between the age of 12 to 14. so this is a very vulnerable part of our country and i know we get wrapped up we get wrapped around the axle about procedure about politics, about

a lot of different issues that we have to be keeping our focus on them on the victims these children, these girls who are the hapless victims of these and johnson are the people that make money selling their bodies. we have to be trying to figure out what we can do to help them. they are the ones who are going to be the real loser if we get so balled up around here because of all the political maneuvers that we take our eye off the ball. that is why our friends at the coalition against trafficking women talked about a phantom problem over real victims. the focus up to be in the real victims. a phantom problem the shiny object they are trying to hold up is basically they are trying to relitigate something that is than the lava land since 1976 that has been included in a lot of pieces of legislation that they voted for. this is a phony issue, and funny diversion from what should be our real focus which is on the

victims. i want to turn to the senator from illinois who has also been a leader on this issue. i know he has been a warrior dealing with the people who run some of these web sites that page in particular but also trying to figure a way to integrate some of our veterans who are leading the investigation of his crimes were they like to turn to the senator of illinois for any comments you would care to make. >> the gentleman from texas for moving this legislation including 575 which was bipartisan with senator blumenthal. that would also have us find wounded warriors beyond these internet to find them and let me say the amendment that i was trying to offer earlier this week intended to go after back page.com which would be the

largest provider of slavery related services in the country. making about $30 million a year off of slavery. we really ought to be able to charge them for the cost of cleaning up the mess that they have created. >> i think the senator from illinois but his focus is exactly where we had to be having this focus which is how d. take some of the profits out of this modern-day slavery and redirect it to help the victims? that is what this bill does and it ends some of the impunity that some of these purveyors of human flesh are reaping, the rewards they are raping and plaza back and help the victims. but i know the save act has been a particular focus and talking to senator feinstein the senator from california i know she is concerned about how the internet has become integrated as part of the business model of some of these perpetrators of this crime crime. i'm also told the senator from

illinois may be aware of is that some of the veterans that they would participate. >> under the hero act is to get on the internet and find some of the slave dealers on line. i would say right now that we have with that page.com we should thread the needle very carefully. under the communications decency act freedom and america does not mean you have the freedom to explain -- exploit others. with the victory in the civil war which i apologize to the member from texas for mentioning. we have established the real principle of that. it does not include human slavery empowered by the internet. >> i thank the senator from illinois. i take no offense for talking about the fact that the south lost the civil war. i hold the senate seat.

>> i think in your state it's called recent unpleasantness. >> first held by sam houston who resigned his seat as governor of texas rather than participate in secession. he was a union man. he believed in the union so but i know you have worked very hard on a bipartisan basis with senator blumenthal the senator from connecticut and others on this legislation. that's really what i find so baffling is what has been a uniquely bipartisan effort has now turned into a partisan filibuster. i frankly am perplexed by that. maybe we will have some of our friends on the other side come out and explain why they are filibustering this bill that they voted for in the judiciary committee. we got a unanimous vote in the judiciary committee. we had 10 democratic co-sponsors and at the democratic leader senator reid now says they're

not going to allow a vote on any amendments and they're going to kill this bill because they don't want to vote for a bill that includes a provision they have voted for time and time again which has been the lava land for 39 years. so i think the senator from illinois and i know we are joined by the senator from south dakota who is the head of our conference and the republican conference and to white now has been very concerned about the dysfunction in this place. actually we saw this as an opportunity to start demonstrating we can actually do the people's business once again after coming off of a very tough election, tougher for our democratic friends found was for our side of the aisle where voter after voter said they were sick and tired of the dysfunction here. we want to build a show that we can be responsive to the needs of the most vulnerable people in our country. so i would yield to the senator from south dakota for any comments you would care to make.

>> i think the senator from texas for his leadership on this issue as well as the senator from iowa senator grassley for moving this legislation forward. the senator from taxes -- texas who has been involved with this legislation knows if there was ever an issue ever an issue that we deal with here in united states senate that goes beyond the line of partisan politics at this. we are talking about untold stories thousands of american children and adults who are sold into modern-day slavery. those stories are bone chilling and are undeniably some of the most deplorable acts of humankind. what the senator from texas bill was designed to do was to start attacking this issue in a way we haven't for a very long time and it gives law enforcement the tools in order to target these traffickers, to bring them to justice and it provides the

tools necessary to help restore the lives of the victims of these heinous crimes. so i would ask the senator from texas because it's interesting to me that wherever we are. this is clearly a bipartisan issue, so much so that i understand when this was marked up debated and voted on in the judiciary committee that it came out unanimously. in other words all the democrats on the committee voted for it. is that correct? is that the way preceded in the judiciary committee? >> i would respond to my friend from south dakota and say he's absolutely correct which is one reason i'm so perplexed by how we find ourselves where we are today. 10 co-sponsors on the democratic side for this underlying bill that was filed on january 13 was marked up in the judiciary committee a month later and got a unanimous vote. i would just add to that in response to my friend's question that we also solve something we

haven't seen in a long time on the senate floor and that's an agreement by all 100 senators that we would proceed to consider this bill and begin the amendment debate process without having to jump through all the procedural hoops that we traditionally have to do on cloture motions and the like. so what happened a couple of days ago when apparently some of our friends woke up and found what has been called the phantom problem is really just very disturbing. >> could i just ask as well because the senator from texas who in drafting this bill my understanding is that the bill itself is 68 pages or thereabouts long. is that correct? >> i would say to my friend that includes the strike of provisions of the substitutes of attacks is roughly half a cup of the provisions our friends across the aisle suddenly woke up and discovered apparently a couple of days ago was written in plain sight and it

incorporates by reference a bill they voted for which is the last appropriation bill that we voted for in the lame-duck session. >> and this bill was filed in what day to? >> on january the 13th i would say to my friend. >> when in the committee level was a marked up? >> i would say it passed out of judiciary committee roughly a month later. >> so this has been around, this legislation has been here in the senate at least for weeks, months and at 68 pages long. it's been introduced back in january. it was reported out unanimously. all the democrats on the committee voting for it when i left the judiciary committee. when was brought up on the florida senate all 100 senators including every single democrat voted to get on this bill. so all of a sudden here at the 11th hour on a piece of legislation that clearly has unanimous support i would think

or did have unanimous support, they are now objecting because there is language in this legislation which evidently 68 pages long is a lottery. obamacare was a story where was argued that after was past we had to figure out what was in it but that was several thousand pages. this is a 68 page bill so you have an opportunity when the bill was filed to look at this in the bill goes to mark up. countless staffers and members of congress have read this thing. all of a sudden now at the 11th hour there's an objection because there is language included in this bill which was voted on by 55 democrats as recently as december. is that correct? was there spending bill that came out of the congress last year in december of 2014? >> i would say to my friend that was the cromnibus so called the continuous with resolution up in this bill that passed in november during the lame-duck

lame-duck session including the same were similar language and was incorporated by reference into the justice for victims of trafficking bill. the same language language that our friends our democratic friends voted for them and now they complain on this bill for no apparent reason. >> and is the correct that particular provision referred to as the hyde amendment has been a part is spending bills dating back to 1976 so literally 40 years now the hyde amendment language has been included in bills that we have passed here particularly bills that are appropriation bills and expanding funding bills. >> i would say to my friend from soap to corba is exactly correct. this has been the lava land for 39 years in an area that has been controversial that is abortion general. this has been one of a rare area of bipartisan consensus.

if no tax dollars be used to fund abortion but this is really again a red herring and a phantom problem that is referred to here. i just can't believe, i can't believe our friends on the other side that they would throw their staff under the bus who were responsible for bringing to their attention what is in legislation and i can't believe they would throw the victims who would benefit from this bill under the bus and say that they should have to pay the price for this phantom problem they discover. to me it's just not plausible. it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. >> i would say to my colleague from texas again who has been so instrumental in getting this to the floor that is 68 page bill is certainly readable. several months now to look at it and read it including when a bill is reported out of

committee that means it's been analyzed and it's been looked at and open to debate and amendment and it came out unanimously. every democrat voting for and voting for provision that literally has been a matter of policy and law in this country dating back to 1976 and was voted on as recently as december of last year. 55 democrats in this chamber voted for this language, very similar language in december of last year. now they are objecting to a piece of legislation that they reported out unanimously on the judiciary committee which does something to stop the brutal violation of the innocent in this country and they are objecting to it over this language. >> mr. president if i could just interject the senator from south dakota is exactly right but i would add to that not only does this enjoy broad bipartisan support within the senate and

the congress we have more than 200 law enforcement and victim rights organizations that have endorsed this bill that are begging us to pass it groups like the coalition against trafficking in women because they know that we need to focus on taking the profit out of this crime but just as importantly we need to get the services to the victims to begin to let them heal and get on with their lives. as we said earlier these are typically young girls 12 to 14 years of age. can you imagine the scars both physical and psychological that they bear having experienced this terrible crime? every day we delay in getting this bill passed because of the political shenanigans here is another day that these victims of this terrible crime are denied access to the services they need. >> well and if they survive if

they survive, imagine how messed up some of these young victims are going to be for the rest of their lives. we have an opportunity to do something about it. they on the other side the democrat leader has described this as a sleight-of-hand. that's not what this is. this is a clear choice. this is a clear choice by democrats to choose partisan politics over the victims of human trafficking. it's as simple as that. i would urge my democratic colleagues to stop stop the partisan politics stop derailing this important opportunity to come together in the spirit of bipartisanship to end human trafficking. putting partisan politics over the lives of thousands of american children who fall victim to human trafficking every year is absolutely wrong.

and to quote our distinguished colleague from the state of maryland senator mikulski said let's get it done, let's get it done now. i would say mr. president and to my colleague from texas life is too precious for these crimes are too serious for this issue to be caught up in the crosshairs of washington politics. this has got to stop. this has got to end. this is a piece of bipartisan legislation that will help literally millions i would say of americans across this country. it is time time we begin to right the wrongs of injustice by turning the tide in law enforcement favor and helping those who are trying to combat these terrible heinous crimes to succeed and to help the victims of these crimes restore their lives. i appreciate the good work the senator from texas and others involved with this and would just urge my my colleagues to end the charade is going on in the

united states senate. let's get this bill passed in on the president's desk. >> mr. president basco much time remains in our log time? >> there are no time limits. >> i thank you mr. president. i want to express my gratitude to the senator from south dakota but we have neglected perhaps most important person in this process amasses senator from iowa the chairman of the judiciary committee who responded to a letter written by all 20 senators in the united states senate asking him to have a hearing on this important topic and to move this bill forward. i know we had the senator from south dakota mentioned senator mikulski. she came to testify along with senator ayotte from new hampshire and senator klobuchar at that hearing and talked about how really important as was to all 20 of our women senators and

how proud they were of the fact that a move forward and it wouldn't have happened without the senator from iowa the chairman of the judiciary committee willing to take that challenge up and to move the bill to the floor in a unanimous fashion. but i would just close mr. president by saying that all members of the united states senate presumably came here to try to do something important. not just to march in place for a fill up space that could presumably they have spent time away from their families. they go through the rigors of political campaigns. they suffer the slings and arrows of partisan politics in order to turn -- try to do something good, to try to help people who cannot help themselves. and so here is a perfect

opportunity to do exactly that. we are not asking people to do anything extraordinary -- extraordinarily, certainly not something they haven't done before which is to vote on a language that's included and it's been the lava land for 39 years that they have voted on before. we are not asking them to change the status quo. we are just asking them to focus on the victim. so as ms. gaitan with the coalition against trafficking women said some of -- senate democrats are choosing a phantom problem over real victims. shame on us if we allow that to happen. shame on us. we can do better. these victims deserve better. the people we work for in the 50 states around this country, they deserve better. shame on us if we don't get