pornography. importantly, the bill also protects victims in court by treating traffickers as violent criminals. labeling traffickers in this way means that convicts can now be detained while awaiting judicial proceedings. the justice for victims trafficking act represents a strong effort by congress to stand against human trafficking. mr. president, i am proud that at home, nebraskans also are rallying together and taking action to stop human trafficking. this past january, nebraska attorney general doug peterson launched demand and end, a public awareness campaign to stop child sex trafficking. this campaign aims to build on the momentum from legislative bill 289 passed by the nebraska unicameral with significantly heightened penalties for those perpetuating and profiting from

human labor and sex trafficking. while i was a member of nebraska's unicameral from 2005 to 2013, our state made several important legislative strides to address key policies related to human trafficking.in 23005, thed a law establishing a missing persons clearinghouse in nebraska. the law created a centralized database with information on individuals who went missing within our state. known as jason's law for a young omaha man who went missing in 2001, lb-111 was an important advancement to ensure vital information-sharing and to prevent the missing from becoming anonymous. additionally, in 2012, the unilateral cameral passed lb-1145 to increase penalties for human trafficking and establish a task force to

examine issues in nebraska pertaining to human trafficking, including it's scope, possible solutions, and how to assist trafficking survivors. most recently, i am proud to have joined the demand an end campaign and offer my support of a.g. peterson's work on this front. now is the time to be responsive at the federal level to stop this evil. mr. president, that brings me to the legislation before us today. the stop enabling sex traffickers act or sesta. i am grateful for the hard work of the senator from ohio and the senate commerce committee in making it possible for us to be having this conversation today. not only did this legislation pass the committee, but it received a unanimous vote. last fall during a hearing of the senate commerce committee,

ms. yvonne ambrose shared a heartbreaking story with our members. she told us about her daughter desiree. desiree was a wonderful young woman with much potential. she was a high schooler and a member of the junior rotc. she dreamed of one day becoming a doctor in the united states air force. like so many teenagers, desiree was on social media because she wanted to connect with friends and make new friends. suddenly on accident, desiree found herself in the shadows of the internet on a web page called backpage.com, a platform where meng were able to find her, intimidate her, pressure her, and use her to make a profit. on christmas eve 2016, desiree was murdered gruesomely by a 32-year-old man who bought her

services online. sadly, desiree's story is not unique. the murky edges of the internet are still enabling predators all over the world to engage in sex trafficking. meanwhile, websites like backpage.com continue to sell and exploit people for profit. between january 2013 and march 2015, backpage.com earned near nearly100% of its profits from adopt advertisements. the internet is giving criminals an avenue to commit these crimes and certain websites are knowi knowingly facilitating their activities as part of an organized network. compounding the issue, phones make it easier for traffickers to complete transactions. according to the national center for missing and exploited

children reports of online child sex trafficking skyrocketed by more than 800% between 2010 and 2015. analysis of this major increase showed that it is directly correlated to the increased use of the internet to sell children for sex. in the months following desiree's murder, a chicago newspaper headline read, "teen's tragic death shows it's business as usual as backpage.com." the internet can no longer be a place where the perpetrators of these atrocious crimes can hide. it can no longer be business as usual. and that's where sesta's provisions come in. sesta would ensure that section 230 of the communications decency act cannot be used as an excuse anymore for websites that

knowingly facilitate sex trafficking. it also would give state law enforcement clear authority to enforce criminal statutes against websites. i've been dismayed to hear about the obstacles that state law enforcement have faced when attempting to prosecute entities knowing they participate in trafficking activities online. in its current form, section 230 protects websites and the internet service providers from liability for content their users create. this has allowed websites that depend on user content like twitter and youtube to flourish. but it has been misused to effectively provide impunity for bad actors maintaining websites that facilitate sex trafficking. sesta is critical to empowering survivors, providing the legal tools needed to seek and receive justice from all those involved

in these monstrous crimes. as a cosponsor of sesta, i hope that my colleagues will pass this monumental, bipartisan, and bicameral bill to combat human trafficking today. and i urge my colleagues to vote against amendments that would derail this important and vital legislation. thank you, mr. president. i yield the floor. mr. jones: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from alabama. mr. jones: mr. president, first let me begin by expressing how honored and humbled i am to be a member of this body and to represent the great state of alabama. i began my career right here fresh out of law school in 1979, working as staff counsel to senator howell heflin on the judiciary committee. there are only three members of the senate where i served as a staffer that continue to serve

today -- senator leahy, senator hatch, and senator cochran. two of those three, senators hatch and cochran, will be retiring this year. senator cochran in just over a week. and a grateful nation things them for their service. -- thanks them for their service. for me personally i am honored to have come full circle with them and i wish them well in their life after the senate. i want to thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle for welcoming me to this body. many of whom are here with me today braving the wintery weather outside. thank you for your friendship, your advice, your willingness to include me and my staff in the great work you are doing. i particularly want to thank my senior colleague from alabama, senator shelby, and his staff. i aappreciate their -- i appreciate their gratefulness in

helping me as a freshman senator. and my family -- my amazing wife louise, incredible kids, carson, christopher, who so fully supported me in my quest to reach the senate, but more importantly in my life. i have grown with them and certainly because of them. of course my sister teri, wonderful parents who i am blessed to have around today, and my grandparents who are not. they instilled in me the values of family, faith, patriotism, respect for others, and a work ethic that has guided me throughout my life. finally, i would be remiss if i did not take this opportunity to pay special tribute to my mentor

and former senator whose seat i now hold, the late-howell heflin of alabama. he was a remarkable man whose large, lumbering frame and southern drawl would often mask his amazing intellect. his compassion and sense of justice for his fellow man forge add path -- forge the a path. he came to the senate in 1979 at a time when bipartisanship was more than just a campaign slogan or a sound bite. in those days when senators spoke of bipartisanship, they truly meant it. they would never compromise principles but would compromise with their colleagues on the serious issues of the day in order to move this country forward. by the time he left the senate in 1997, senator heflin sensed a change in the political climate, and he was concerned about it. he wrote in a parting essay,

"our constitution itself came about through a great series of compromises. it was not written by ideologues who clung to their way or no. compromise and negotiation, the hallmarks of negotiation, aimed at achieving moderate centrist policies for our country should not be viewed as negatives." which leads me to the reasoning i rise today. i want to speak about an issue that has evaded the broad, bipartisan discussions and moderation that senator heflin spoke of. instead, it seems to have been an issue where folks quickly take sides and often criticize those who they disagree with. it's time, mr. president, that we have a serious, pragmatic, and practical discussion -- not a debate or negotiation -- but a dialogue on the steps that we can take to reduce the harm caused by gun violence in this country. i know, mr. president, with just those words people across this

country may have already started reaching for their phones to start tweeting or posting without another word, without knowing where i might stand on this issue. that just seems to be the way it is in america these days. which is so unfortunate because once you take a side, it is hard to come off. in the wake of yet another mass shooting and the rising voices of young people across the country, it is our responsibility, our duty to have a serious discussion about guns and gun safety. but that conversation has to be twofold. we must acknowledge the deadly consequences that can follow when a gun is in the wrong hands but also recognize and respect the freedom to own and enjoy guns by law-abiding citizens, as guaranteed by the second amendment to the constitution. those two concepts,

mr. president, are not mutually exclusive. but before i jump into the actions i believe we can take today, i want to go back and explain just a little bit about where i come from. growing up in alabama, i learned to shoot from my father and grandfather. i was not much of a hunter in my youth, but whether it was cans or bottles on a tree log or the occasional skeet, we also enjoyed shooting and always had a few guns in the house. a distinction between a hunter and someone who enjoys shooting is significant. to this day i still have my father's old .22 rival, my grandfather's pistol that he gave me and a couple of shot guns i got as a kid. but my interest in hunting began when nigh youngest son christopher who was born 20 years ago this past monday, at an early age he was fascinating with hunting, so with my wife's

blessing, i took up the sport so that he could learn gun safety and conservation from me. today i think i'm more passionate about it than he is. i consider myself an avid hunter -- deer, turkey, quayle, whatever the season might be in alabama. with the campaign last year thatten to transition into this office, this past deer season was somewhat of a bust for me but with the start of turkey season, i am anxious to get back into the woods. frankly, i also enjoy guns. i enjoy shooting them. i like how they're made. the power and their history. i own many of them, only story stored in a locked -- all stored in a locked gun safe than what is larger than what my wife originally approved of years ago. shooting them on the range and

hunting is a bond i share with my son and friends. so while i know that guns and gun control are difficult issues this this country, i can tell you they are complicated for me, too. but as a united states senator today and member of the legislative branch of government, i have many obligations. and i believe that the first obligation of government is to protect its citizens. we spend unimaginable amounts of money fighting our enemies abroad and terrorists who would attack us at home. yet on many levels we fail our children and grandchildren every morning when we pack their backpacks and send them into harm's way, or when they pick up what they think is a toy or a really cool weapon that they've seen on television or in the movies and it turns out to be a killing machine that they should have never had access to and don't know how to handle. we fail the abused women, men, and children of our society when

we let our family and relationship problems lead to a murder. we fail parishioners in church, employees at work, concert and theater goers when they are caught off guard by a hail of bullets from a disturbed individual. we fail those who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when street violence breaks out and a stray bullet takes an innocent life. we fail veterans and others in society suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress and other mental disorders who decide that life is simply not worth living. we fail people of every walk of life, of every age in every corner of this country every day. gun deaths continue to rise. in 2016 over 38,000 people died in this country because of gunfire. 15,000 of those deaths were

homicides. almost 23,000 were suicides. epidemic-type numbers. and nearly 500 were accidental. we failed in alabama, too. in the last few weeks we've lost a police officer in mobile who was shot and killed when responding to a domestic dispute. we lost a 1-year-old boy who was accidentally shot in the back by his 2-year-old brother with their parents' gun. we lost a beautiful, young 17-year-old girl who was about to head off to college because one of her classmates brought a gun to school and he was showing it off when it accidentally fired. last week we lost a dedicated nurse at birmingham hospital when a disgruntled former employee showed up at the hospital and opened fire. just yesterday, as i was finalizing these remarks, i learned that a former client of mine was shot and killed by his girlfriend's mother as he was picking up his 3-month-old baby

from a visit. the list could go on. similar tragedies take place every week in every one of our states. these stories don't grab national headlines but they are examples of the gun violence that has become commonplace in our communities. in 2016 alabama had the second highest rate of gun deaths in the nation. that means 1,046 alabamaians were killed by guns that year. worse yet, our gun deaths increased by a staggering 34% between 2005 and 2016. as a former prosecutor, i worked closely with law enforcement. i've seen firsthand what weapons in the wrong hands can do to families, communities, and societies. when i was u.s. attorney, we had a program called isolating the criminal element where we tried to crack down on illegal weapons in our communities. as most of you know, my career was defined by prosecuting the

killers of children. it was september 15, 1963, when a bomb placed outside the ladies lounge of the 16th street baptist church in birmingham exploded killing four beautiful young girls. i wish i could turn back time and do something that would have prevented it altogether. had i or anyone else had that moment, it might very well be one of those young girls giving this speech today and not me. i stand in that moment now and so do you. so does our country. i believe we finally reached a tipping point regarding gun violence now, not because of the shooting in parkland, florida, but thanks to the millions of young voices across this country led by students at marjory stoneman douglas high school. much like the students who took to the streets of birmingham in

1963, were attacked by fire hoses and police dogs, who woke the conscience of america's civil rights, these young men and women are waking the conscience of americans regarding gun violence. one of those young men was here with me as my guest in the gallery today. you know, we can spend days in this chamber debating the meaning of the second amendment. we can let our nation further divide itself while more lives are lost. we can fret about what people are saying about us on social media or whether we might lose campaign contributions. we can again choose the path of inaction in the face of yet another mass shooting and expect different results. or we can take another path. let us find what we can agree on. act on it and begin to make our country a safer place. we can be reasonable here

because we all want the same thing. a safer country, a safer world. at its core the second amendment was an effort to protect americans. let us do the same. but in order to do that, we need to build more trust in this body and encourage camaraderie. more importantly, we need to fundamentally change the way we talk about difficult issues in our country and set an example for our fellow americans to follow, to dial down the rhetoric. remember that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction is not just one of newton's laws of motion but also one of political rhetoric. extreme views promote equal but opposite extreme views. for those who want more gun restrictions instead of focusing your energy on banning certain weapons, which frankly and as a practical matter just simply cannot pass this congress, focus

instead on efforts to keep those weapons and others out of the hands of those who would do us harm. you can't simply demonize the n.r.a. and pro-gun groups. i know these groups sometimes take what many including me consider extreme positions. they also represent millions of law-abiding gun owners who are concerned that their right to bear arms are at risk. for millions of americans, gun ownership and enjoyment is a cultural issue with deeply held beliefs. addressing the issue is simply not like regulating stock transactions or cutting taxes. and to those who would seek to maintain the status quo like the n.r.a. or anyone else, please stop using scare tactics to try and convince law-abiding gun owners that the federal government is hell-bent on taking their guns away. that is simply not going to happen and everyone knows it.

we also need to get past the idea that more guns in society will make us all safer. the statistics and the data simply do not support that. we don't need guns in the hands of school teachers. simply having more good guys with guns is not the solution. americans just simply do not want to return to the days of the wild west. this topic like so many others has become a space that is less about having a thoughtful conversation and instead evolved into a class of cultures. as leaders we must reject the us against them mentality because ultimately we are all americans who are united by a common bond of shared values and love of country. there will always be the forces that seek to so division and discord. the challenge and our mission is to prevent them from succeeding. we can seize this moment by changing conversation and our country. let's start a productive

dialogue and work toward a comprehensive bill that includes ideas we should be able to agree on. there are already a half a dozen proposals in this body that have bipartisan support. my friend from connecticut, senator murphy, outlined them just the other day. but they bear repeating here. bump stocks make it a crime. ban bump stocks and make it a crime to possess or manufacture them, as senator feinstein has proposed. the president and the department of justice should be commended for taking the first steps of regulation but the senate of the united states of america should go on record about this deadly accessory. we should pass the fix nics legislation proposed by senators cornyn and murphy. the nics system is only as good as the data that goes into it and their bill would block bonus pay for political appointees that failed to upload records to

the system and award states that follow the uploading plan, would create domestic abuse and violence prevention program to give states the ability to share incentives, to share information to prevent common convicted of a domestic violence crime from purchasing a gun. fix nics is a good start to overhauling our background check system. as senator murphy said the other day, it is a good-based bill on which to build. but frankly we have to do more on background checks. we have to require background checks on all gun sales, whether it is at a gun show or over the internet or between individuals. it can be as simply as going to a licensed dealer or a local police station to have a background check run on a prospective purchaser or transferee. it may be inconvenient, but it will save lives. when universal background checks, however, i would also suggest a couple of companion

measures. for instance, in my view it is entirely appropriate for a family member to sell or give a gun to another close family member as they should be presumed to know whether their relative is prohibited from having a gun. we can consider other exceptions for those who carry a valid conceal carry permit or between law enforcement officers. but in carving out those exceptions, we should also increase both civil and criminal penalties for anyone who knowingly transfers a gun to a prohibited person and provide the necessary funds to the department of justice to prosecute those individuals when appropriate. we can take steps to deter prohibited individuals from even trying to purchase a gun. senator toomey's nics denial notification bill would allow reporting to state and local authorities when someone has tried to purchase a gun and has been denied and it would regard d.o.j. to report to congress on such prosecutions. to his credit, attorney general sessions has announced that d.o.j. will vigorously prosecute

those who make false statements in connection with their background checks. we should ensure that he has the resources to do so. we should close the so-called charleston loophole as proposed by senator blumenthal. this loophole allows a purchaser to receive a firearm after three days regardless of whether their background check had been completed or not. we can create certain exceptions for concealed carry permits and holders and others but no one should be allowed to take possession of a firearm until they have cleared a background check. current law prohibits a firearms dealer from selling a pistol to anyone under the age of 21. that has been the law for many years without any real challenge. the same logic behind this prohibition should apply to the sales of pistols and semiautomatic weapons to those under the age of 21. senator klobuchar has filed a

badly needed piece of legislation to expand the definition of domestic violence to include dating partners and eliminate the boyfriend loophole that allows certain dangerous individuals to access guns and evade laws meant to protect domestic violence victims. we can implement at least a three-day waiting period for the purchase of any pistol or semiautomatic weapon, and we can increase penalties for those who steal firearms. states that have implemented waiting periods have seen significant decreases in suicides. we can also repeal the dicky amendment and open the door for new research on gun for violence prevention. no one, no one is happy when innocent people die because of a gunshot. and law-abiding gun owners should not be afraid of studies on how to reduce the number of

gun deaths in this country. we can do more to stop mental health issues from turning dangerous by allowing enforcement or family members to seek a court order when an individual poses an extreme danger to themselves or others. or prevent them from getting access to firearms. senators feinstein, blumenthal, and graham have all proposed versions of the extreme risk laws. for too long gridlock and partisanship have stood in the way of compromise. but i didn't come here to do nothing and i don't think any of you did either. today we face a difficult problem but not an insurmountable one. to find solutions we must demand courage of ourselves and one another. as history has shown, we face greater consequences when inaction, certainly greater consequences within action on gun violence. so i've asked all of us to

consider this question. what is our collective legacy as representatives of the american people and the members of this hallowed institution? i believe it's to leave this body and our country better than we found it. and we can only do that if we rise together to confront the unknown. i've given talks all over the country about the prosecutions of the 16th street baptist church bombing. and i am always reminded of a passage from the poem "the cure of troy" which was written by the irish poet shamish haney as a tribute to nelson mandela. vice president biden often quotes this package where haney wrote history says don't hope on this side of the grave but then once in a lifetime the long tidal wave of justice can rise up and hope and history rhyme.

with the convictions of two former klansmen for the murder of those four young girls, the long foretidal wave for justice rose up and hope and history rhyme in birmingham, alabama. and for me and i hope for you, when i walk the halls of the senate office buildings and i come through those double doors on to the senate floor, i realize that every day we as a collective body have that same opportunity, whether it is for dreamers or voting rights or victims of sex trafficking or in this case our children who are demanding action on gun violence, we have the opportunity to build that tidal wave of justice and have hope and history, but we have to have the courage to seize the moment. i don't have all the answers on how to do it, but i'm willing to work with each and every one of you to find it because that's

why we were sent here, to find those answers so that the tidal wave of justice will rise up. please let us work together to make it happen sooner rather than later. mr. president, thank you, and i yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from alaska. mr.sullivan: are we in a quorum call? the presiding officer: we are not. mr.sullivan: mr. president, i would like to join the bipartisan group of colleagues who have been coming down to the

floor to talk about the very important bill we have been debating and will be voting on in about an hour, and that is to help protect our children all across this country from the horrible scourge of human trafficking, sex trafficking. it is the stop enabling sex traffickers act and it is important for the whole country and important for my state of alaska. we have a big problem in alaska with the challenges of domestic violence, sexual assault, some of the highest rates in the country. we also have a big problem with the challenges of human trafficking, sex trafficking. a lot of people think, that doesn't happen in america. it happens in america. horrible -- it's a horrible issue to talk about, but it

happens in our country. as a matter of fact, there was a study last year on young men and women in alaska receiving services from a homeless shelter for teenagers -- actually my wife julie works at this homeless shelter -- and one in four girls and one in five boys were reported being victims of sex trafficking who use the services of this teen homeless shelter. that's a horrible, horrible number, a very vulnerable society that we need do more to address this issue. and what we do in this legislation, mr. president, is we're taking the fight to one of the places in this country where human trafficking, sex trafficking has really exploded,

and that's the internet. so the bipartisan legislation we are debating right now will ensure that websites and other institutions on the internet and the companies related that knowingly, and that's an important word, knowingly facilitate sex trafficking will be held for their actions. it will over the internet and give more resources to state prosecute toaster go after these heinous crimes. i think you're seeing in the remarks from a whole host of senators this morning that we're going to make real progress in the fight in online sex trafficking without threatening the years of progress we made in creating a free and open

internet. as senator portman, one of the leaders of this effort, along with many other senators, blumenthal, senator mccain, his wife cindy has been a real champion and advocate for human trafficking issues throughout america. so many senators have been saying this is a commonsense targeted approach to addressing this very big and growing problem. so we're going to vote in about an hour -- and i hope all of my colleagues will do the right thing and vote and reject these amendments that are put out there as helpful, but to be honest, they are meant to bring down the bill. we cannot allow our children, whether in alaska or across the country, to be liewrd into this kind -- lured into this kind of hell. the more we hear in testimony

the more we recognize what is going on the internet is hell, mostly for the youth of america. our children should not be sold online or anywhere else, and, unfortunately, mr. president, it is happening and it is happening a lot. largely because of the internet, the national center for missing and exploited children reported from 2010 to 2015 an 846% increase of children being trafficked. over 800% increase in america. now, i know a lot of americans think, wait, really? that's a problem in asia, other countries, southeast asia. it's a growing problem in the united states of america. we need to address it.

as others have said on this floor, sex trafficking has moved from the street corner to the smart phone where it has been much more difficult to detect, much more difficult to stop, and it's one of the reasons we see this dramatic increase of race of human trafficking in this country. now, mr. president, we had in the commerce committee a hearing that covered this bill. some of the members of the tech industry were opposed, but i think the overwhelming support that came out of that hearing was driven by the real-world tragedies that we started to hear from. hundreds, thousands of them across the country that have occurred because of really lacks laws and immunity on the internet that was not intended

for companies or individuals who deal in sex trafficking and human trafficking. but what we saw from the reports and the investigations that senator portman and others did was that that's actually what was happening. so, for example, senator blumenthal earlier today was talking about the very moving, really tragically sad, moving testimony that we heard last september in the commerce committee from yvonne ambrose whose daughter, 16-year-old desiree robinson was trafficked online by a pimp on the website backpage.com. she was later raped and murdered by a 32-year-old man who found her on that website. this is an american citizen,

16-year-old girl. and if you watched the testimony of her mom in front of the commerce committee, you'd be voting for this bill today. her mom ended her rivetting and very sad testimony by saying, if there were stricter rules in place for posting on these websites, my child would still be here with us today. it was a wrenching story and one, unfortunately, that too many american mothers and fathers are telling us. so we're going to vote on this today, and i hope all my colleagues vote for more progress, but, mr. president, as you know, there's actually -- there's actually prostive -- positive progress that's been

going on this issue. a lot of times when you read the news, you always hear about conflict and how there is no progress in the senate. we have had a lot of issues, but there has been a lot of bipartisanship. in this area, there has been significant bipartisan process to start finally addressing this growing problem in america which, again, is remarkable when you think about that, young men and women trafficked for sex in this country. so in 2017 we passed bipartisan passage of the abolish human trafficking act. in 2015, we passed the justice

for victims of trafficking act. both were introduced by my friend and colleague from texas, senator cornyn. senator thune has been a leader on these issues in the last couple of years passing the no human trafficking on our roads act and combating human trafficking in commercial vehicles act which focused on the big problem that we've seen in terms of the transportation system in america being used for human trafficking. senator grassley, the chairman of the judiciary committee, we passed his bill, the trafficking victims protection and reauthorization act which brought more services to victims of these heinous crimes. so, mr. president, we're making progress, no doubt about it. but this is a very important point. despite the strong record of

addressing human trafficking, when it comes to these crimes, one of the biggest things we need more of in america to address them, because they are growing, is resources -- resources. to put it bluntly, there's too many cases, too many of this happening -- too much of this happening, and not enough resources, money, or prosecutors to put the bad individuals who are doing this behind bars. now, many of these cases, and you see many cases involving human trafficking are federal crimes, and that usually requires federal prosecutors to go after these federal offenses. and as we all know, there are limited amounts of assistant u.s. attorneys, federal investigators to do this. so what have we done? what have we done in the last

few years? what are we doing today in this vote to help address this? well, we've begun to change this issue of resources to go after the perpetrator of these heinous crimes in a much better way by allowing state attorneys general, state district attorneys to actually prosecute these crimes, even though they are federal crimes. we are doing something in the law that says we need more prosecutors, we need more investigators, we need more resources, let's unleash those in the state to help us address this growing problem throughout our country. so we're doing that. and we did it, mr. president, for the first time in the justice for victims of trafficking act in 2015. now, this bill, which is, like i

said, senator cornyn was the lead on this. this bill actually incorporated a bill that i had authored and had a lot of cosponsors on called the man act cooperation act. we put that in as part of the broader bill in 2015. so, mr. president, the man act is federal law that makes it a criminal offense to transport someone across state lines for the purposes of prostitution and human trafficking. in my experience back home in alaska as attorney general, we had challenges in this regard. as a matter of fact, there was a very notorious case of a bad man, a very corrupt man. a lot of people knew him in alas came. he was engaged in this kind of activity with young girls from the native villages in my state. we investigated this and

realized that he violated not a state law but a federal law. very clear. human trafficking violation of the man act. so my office when i was attorney general, we went to the feds and we said here you go. here's the evidence. this guy violated the man act. he's a bad man. he should go to jail. and we need to send a signal. well, it's a rather long story. it's a sad story, mr. president. but for whatever reason and i've wondered for years and i've looked into this for years, the federal government wouldn't take the case. wouldn't take the case. so i said to the fed, well then let my prosecutors take the case. we'll take the case.

you just need to cross designate us. let the state a.g.'s office take these federal laws. prosecute them against this guy. we'll do it. they still didn't allow us to do it. there were rumors in alaska, what was going on, was there some kind of deal cut between the feds and this guy who was a real bad guy, who was in jail for something else? but when i got here to the senate, i said we are not going to let that kind of injustice happen again. we are not going to happen that kind of injustice happen again. because that was an injustice. a man who violated the mann act, clearly committed the crime of human trafficking, is a free man right now. shouldn't be the case. so as part of the justice for victims -- of human trafficking act in 2015, we had a provision, my bill that essentially said

this, if a state attorney general brings a mann act, a human trafficking violation case, federal case to the attorney general of the united states saying we need to be cross designated to go do this, to prosecute, maybe the feds don't have the resources, maybe they don't have the time, then the attorney general of the united states shall allow the cross-designation for more state a.g.'s to prosecute these cases. unless it would undermine the administration of justice. so that's in the law. state a.g.'s right now can go prosecute mann act cases. that's more resources, more investigators, more prosecutors. and, mr. president, that's going to be in the law we're voting on today. because one of the elements, an important element of the stop

enabling sex traffickers act that we're voting on and debating right now is to allow state attorneys general the power and the authority to bring actions against those who violate federal law for intern internet-based sex trafficking. so we're bringing the resources in these kind of cases. that's an important innovation and a development in the bill that we're voting on today. so just like in the previous legislation, state a.g.'s can now bring these cases, if we pass this law today, that will mean more resources, more investigators, more prosecutors for the perpetrators of these heinous crimes. so all the bad guys out there who are undertaking these crim

crimes, when we vote to pass this legislation today, that's going to be a bad day for you. because we're going to have more resources and the ability to put you in jail with this vote today. so, mr. president, as i mentioned, we have a big, big problem in this country. we have a long way to go in terms of human trafficking, sex trafficking. it's really hitting all parts of america. but congress is focused on it and i'm hopeful that we'll pass this legislation this this afternoon for one more step in the right direction on addressing this. i yield the floor.

a senator: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: mr. president, before i begin my remarks on the legislation before us, i just would like to complement -- compliment our new colleague senator jones on a superb maiden speech. i thought he was so gracious when he remembered senator heflin. i served with senator heflin. and i think senator jones is going to be very much in that tradition. and i just want to take a quick minute and commend our new colleague for launching his time in the senate in an extraordinary way. mr. president, i call up amendments number 2212 and 2213 as provided for under the previous order and i ask that they be reported by number. the presiding officer: without objection. the clerk will report the amendments by number. the clerk: the senator from oregon, mr. wyden, proposes

amendments number 2212 and 2213 to h.r. 1865. mr. wyden: mr. president? the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: mr. president, i would ask unanimous consent that my hour begin now for speaking on this subject. we're a bit behind but not much. i would ask unanimous consent that the hour that has been assigned to me begin at this time. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. wyden: mr. president, i stand on the senate floor today in firm agreement with my colleagues that the congress must do more to combat the scourge of sex trafficking. it is a profound and tragic failure of american institutions that trafficking continues to plague our country and in fact

has actually increased. federal law enforcement has failed to root out and prosecute the traffickers, even when they have been operating in plain sight. so, too, have the big internet companies failed when it comes to sex traffickers who operate on their platforms. mr. president and colleagues, i fear that the legislation before the senate now is going to be another failure. i fear that it's going to do more to take down ads than to take down traffickers. i fear it will send these monsters, these evil people who

traffic beyond the grasp of law enforcement to the shadowy corners of the dark web, a place where everyday search engines don't go, and it's going to be even easier for criminals, these vicious traffickers, to find a safe haven for their extraordinarily evil acts. mr. president, in many respects, this debate mirrors one the congress went through a little bit more than 20 years ago. back then i think it would be fair to say not a whole lot of senators knew much about the internet. in 1995, had a laudable goal the

senate said it wanted to protect kids for accessing pornography online. but the results of those good intentions one unfortunately a bad policy. a policy called the communications decency act of 1996. behind that policy was a fundamental misunderstanding of both the architecture of the internet and the modern application of the first amendment. the law didn't just go after those targeting pornography to minors. it took speech that was legal in the real word and made it illegal online -- world and made it illegal online. and it produced a paradise for the legal trickster creating new ways to sue over speech and adversely affecting scores of

americans, medical providers, artists, writers of literature, and more. as should happen with poorly written policy, all but one part -- all but one part of the communications decency act was struck down by the supreme court. the one piece of the law left standing was section 230, which i was the coauthor of with former congressman chris cox. and what section 230 was all about was laying out the legal rules of the road for the web. they were innovative new businesses and they were sprouting all over, novel forms of communication and media, and they were all connecting and informing people in new ways. but it seemed clear that a quick

way to strangle this promising set of developments in their infancy was for these companies, these new companies, to be held legally liable for every piece of content that users posted on their platforms. now, when section 230 was written, nobody could have foreseen all of the effects. but here's what we did know back then. first, we wanted small businesses to start out focusing on hiring engineers, developers, and designers rather than worrying about how they had to hire a team of lawyers. second, we wanted to make sure that internet companies could moderate their websites without getting clobbered by lawsuits.

i think democrats and republicans here would agree that that's a better scenario than the alternative, which means websites hiding their heads in the sand out of fear that they'd be weighed down with liability. third, we wanted to guarantee that bad actors would still be subject to all the federal laws, whether the criminals were operating on a street corner or online wasn't going to make a difference. and we were determined to state that explicitly. fourth, we wanted to protect the internet from the whims of state and local legislators. this body has the authority to regulate interstate commerce. and i would ask any of my colleagues to offer up an

example of how something could be more interstate than the internet. now, it may not satisfy some publicity-seeking local official when we talk about the federal government's role here, but there is no question that the role of the congress leading on something that is clearly interstate in nature, it is in the best interest of the american people. for the most part, the framework worked better than i ever imagined it would. as a result, section 230, the small, gutsy entrepreneur -- say

an entrepreneur in north carolina -- with a big dream working out of their garage has a real shot at succeeding. marginalized groups of vulnerable americans have a better opportunity than ever to make their voices heard because of section 230. small nonprofits have the ability to take their causes nationwide. one scholar, david post, even wrote that the 230 law created $1 trillion worth of economic value in the private economy. he said, and i quote, it is impossibly -- i impossible to imagine what the internets ecosystem would look like without it, he said.

my wife saw that article, looked at me and said, well, dear, even a blind squirrel occasionally finds an acorn. but setting aside spousal kidding, to illustrate why the protection that comes from section 230 is so important, i'm going to turn next to what things would be like without it. imagine if you're starting a forum site dedicated to discussing knitting. now if ever there was a topic that sounded drama-free, that would be it. but suppose somebody goes on the site and shares a pattern they didn't have the right to share. suddenly your website is facing a copy right infringement lawsuit. maybe the controversy, knitting

versus crocheting, gets overheated, and the users start trading barbs. suddenly you have people slinging defamation suits at your itty bitty forum hosts. then somebody is injured by an automatic needle threader they read about in a comment thread. suddenly you're a codefendant in a liability suit all because you didn't have the protection of section 230. now imagine how hard it would be to launch a platform that's open to discussion of any topic when even the simplest, most narrowly focused website on the net can become a magnet for lawsuits. there are not enough lawyers in the world to handle all that

litigation. my sense is we've got a lot of constituents who say thank god. so in the absence of section 230, the internet as we know it would shrivel. only the platforms run by those with deep pockets and an even deeper bench of lawyers would be able to make it. moreover, section 230 isn't just about hobbies in commerce. it protects the coordination of free speech, particularly among vulnerable groups of americans. that's the reason why organizations like the libertarian cato institute, the progressive human rights campaign, and the aclu have voiced serious concerns about the legislation before the

senate. you sure don't see those three groups lined up side by side very often, but they're here now. and it is because without the protections of section 230, civic organizations exercising their right to free speech could be cowed by their more powerful political opponents. for this example, imagine a nonprofit organizing a campaign in support of a local ballot mission. they use social media to build awareness and promote upcoming rallies and events with online discussion boards. but without section 230, powerful interests opposed to their work could just swoop in and effectively silence that nonprofit with an onslaught of

litigation. hostile individuals could pose a as supporters and make comments on the nonprofit's website that would expose the group to liability suits. i think it's pretty obvious there would be an enormous chilling effect on speech in america. mr. president, now i ask unanimous consent to enter into the record the statements from the cato institute and the aclu opposing the legislation before the senate. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. wyden: mr. president, the fact is that section 230 was never about protecting the incumbents. i spent my time in public

service taking on a wide array of powerful, established interests. and when i wrote this policy, i never envisioned a facebook, but i did hope it would give the little guy and their start-up a chance to grow in to something big. and the bottom line, the central point here is it worked. but now despite the fact that section 230 undergirds the framework of the internet as we know it today, there's a significant effort underway to try to take it down, to collapse it. that is largely because the big internet companies, the big

guest ones have utterly failed to live up to the responsibility they were handed two decades ago. and i'm going to explain exactly what i mean. for these companies, these big companies, section 230 is both a sword and a shield. it offers protection from liability, but it also gives companies the authority and, more importantly, the responsibility to foster the sort of internet americans want to be proud of. in years of hiding behind their shields, these big technology companies have let their swords go to rust.

the companies, too many have become bloated and uninterested in the larger good. and when they've taken positive steps, as wikimedia has, for example, their practices haven't been adopted by their peers. i'm going to describe one case study reported last week by the tech news website, mother board. in 2012 the website readit in which individuals held communities where they shared content. crack down on users posting nonconsensual photos of women. these have come to be known as the creep shots. but the website tumblr did not sufficiently police the same inappropriate content.

so these reprehensible communities simply relocated from readit to tumblr, and so this creep shot problem lived on. that's how easy it was for the creators of vile content to move from one platform to another. supreme court justice potter stewart famously observed that he couldn't define hard-core pornography but he knew it when he saw it. congressman cox and i may not have known exactly what content intended for sites to take down when we wrote section 230, but i sure know it when i see it. far too often the big internet companies refuse to know it, even when they see it.

huge amounts of what populates social media networks each day is every bit as destructive and socially corrosive, if not more so, than the pornography at issue in that famed supreme court case. it's the creep shots, the sex trafficking ads, the conspiracy videos about school shootings and antivets nonsense, nonsense that endangers the public health and more. now the tech giants state that no one could track the millions of posts or videos or tweets that cross their services every hour. mr. president, nobody is asking them to do that. nobody. section 230 means they're not required to fact check or scrub

every single post or tweet or video, but there have been far too many a -- alarming examples, algorithms millions of people click on every day. companies seeming to aid in the spread of this content as a direct function of their business models. it's perfectly reasonable to expect some greater responsibility from these giant multibillion-dollar corporations that were able to thrive as a result of protection that they were guaranteed by law. that was the idea behind section 230. that doesn't carry any obligation to suppress free speech. but it is definitely about being a responsible citizen, a

responsible member of the community. sites like facebook, youtube and tumblr constitute the internet for users who click to use the same sites every single day. they have an undeniable role to play in fostering a civil environment. their failure to do so could very well mean that the internet looks very different ten years from now. not just for those who spread hateful and conspiracy-driven filth, but for the millions of decent people who use the internet to learn, to find entertainment, keep in touch with loved ones. there was a time when the

biggest internet companies had mottos like don't be evil. perhaps it's time for them to aspire to a more modest motto: don't spread evil. with all that said and done, it's not just the internet companies who failed to properly respond to the challenges of our times. when it comes to sex trafficking, which is the underlying issue the senate works on today, our country has failed the victims at almost every level. for example, the justice department could have and absolutely should have investigated the website backpage years ago for its role in promoting sex trafficking.

but the fact is the federal government fell down on the job. backpage's activities were no secret. so in the absence of action by the department of justice, a senate subcommittee led by our colleagues senators portman and mccaskill conducted their own investigation and subpoenaed key documents. among those documents were e-mails that appeared to show that backpage was actively working with sex traffickers to create advertisements. that meant that backpage was not due protection under section 230. in fact, a lawsuit in boston was given the go-ahead based on that precise finding. and it has been widely reported that the justice department now

has its own investigation under way, although it's coming years and years too late. this should have happened eons ago, and it is only one example of where the government's efforts have fallen short. now, following what i have described, the twin failures of the big technology companies and federal law enforcement, this body is responding to a very serious, serious moral challenge with flawed policy changes. in my view, the legislation before the senate will prove to be ineffective. it will have harmful, unintended consequences. and it could -- it could -- be ruled unconstitutional. now, mr. president, i take a

back seat to no one when it comes to policies that fight the sex traffickers, bring them to justice, and help the victims of their hideous crimes. i have used my position on the senate finance committee to be one of the authors of laws to support victims and provide ongoing funding paid for by those convicted of crimes against children. i've worked with our colleagues, senator cornyn, senator portman, senator klobuchar, to write laws to improve the child welfare system, to help prevent kids from becoming victims in the first place. i put my record up against any member of this congress when it comes to passing laws that while definitely not going far enough began the effort to provide the tools to fight this scourge.

but the bill before us today is not going to stop sex trafficking. it's not going to prevent young people from becoming victims. and i'm going to describe why that's the case. first, as i mentioned earlier, the department of justice takes the view that an important provision of the bill is unconstitutional. in my judgment, that's another issue the congress ought to address before sending a bill to the president's desk. but, instead, it just looks like everybody says, we'll drive it through as is. second -- and this is an astounding development -- the legislation before the senate is going to make it harder, not easier, to root out and prosecute sex traffickers. and let me just read what the

department of justice has said recently that proves that this bill is going to make it harder to root out and prosecute sex traffickers. the department of justice recently said that this legislation would -- and i quote -- effectively create additional elements that prosecutors must prove at trial. colleagues, i would just say that you're heading in the wrong direction if you have legislation that would raise the burden of proof in cases against sex traffickers. imagine that. with nationwide concern about the evil of sex trafficking, the department of justice has said that this bill would actually

raise the burden of proof in cases against sex traffickers. the department of justice wrote a letter to chairman goodlatte of the house judiciary committee that lays out the concerns i've just described. i ask unanimous consent, mr. president, to enter the justice department letter into the record. the presiding officer: without objection. mr. wyden: mr. president, that is not the only problem when it comes to enforcing this law. the bill before the senate is focused on taking down online advertisements, not on catching criminals or protecting victims. taking down the ads doesn't mean that the pimps and predators say, oh, good ... we've seen what the senate is doing. we're now going to start following the rules. when the ads come down, colleagues, the criminals will go as fast as they can to the

darkest corners of our society. instead of stopping trafficking, the bill is going to push it to the dark web, the dark alleys, overseas, the dark web which you can't get to with traditional search engines. career federal law enforcement officers, the expert investigators, are the people who know how to root out the traffickers under these circumstances. they've got expertise that state and local enforcers don't have. so my view is, by handing new authorities to local officials, the bill moves in the wrong direction. in my view, the right approach is to make sure that career expert federal law enforcement officers and investigators have the resources they need to get the job done. one of the amendments i will be offering today provides $20

million a year for five years to the attorney general to spend in coordination with the f.b.i. and homeland security to investigate and prosecute -- prosecute -- those that criminally facilitate sex trafficking. the bottom line is if senators want law enforcement to do a better job of stopping those like backpage, my amendment gives the right people the resources they need to bring these monsters to justice. i heard our colleague from alaska, senator sullivan, a good friend, talk at some length about how important it was to have resources to fight the scourge of these traffickers who get more and more sophisticated.

they're gangs, they're people who are very clever at staying out in front of the law. when they're in the dark web, it's going to take resources to fight them and put them behind bars. so our colleague from alaska, senator sullivan, sure ought to be for this amendment because this amendment offers real money right now to prosecute these monsters and get them behind bars. finally, the bill before the senate punches a hole in the legal framework of the open internet. i don't every single day quote the editors of the "wall street journal," but i've always had a motto that i'll shout out anybody when they're right. the "journal" recently summed up the impact of the bill. they said this is definitely going to be an online lawsuit

bonanza. they predict any website that should have known -- quote, should have known criminal activity, took place on its platform will be a target for lawsuits. any message board or chatroom where users interact with each other can become a new target for litigation. without specific protections for companies that make good-faith efforts to find and stop criminal behavior on their platforms, this legislation could actually punish companies that try to moderate their users' posts but let something slip through. just by looking for illegal material, a website could be setting the table to be sued over anything that they didn't find. the second amendment i'll be offering would clarify this issue. it's what's known as the good

samaritan clause, and we felt strongly about it several decades ago. if companies decide as a result of a poorly written bill that their only safe option is to put their blinders on and ignore vial, illicit content, that's bad for everybody except for the criminals. so i want to eliminate that uncertainty, and i want particularly these small start-up companies -- they're so important for our future -- know what's a doubt that -- to know without a doubt that they have the right to moderate the content users post. so in technical language, what this amendment says is neither the presence nor the absence of an attempt to moderate content online by itself will trigger liability. but the "journal" raised more

than the good samaritan issue. just as bad, by passing this section, section 230, courts might make it harder to prosecute websites for other crimes. here's what "the wall street journal" editors said. if congress provides a carve-out for sex trafficking, courts might conclude that section 230 is intended to be applied narrowly for other crimes and make it harder to prosecute websites that are complicit. so i do fear that this bill is going to set off a chain reaction that leads the congress to cut away more categories of behavior from section 230, dismantle the legal framework that's given the united states the position -- mr. president, our position as a tech economy

superpower did not happen by osmosis. it happened because 20 years ago there was an effort to try to lay out a sensible, legal foundation, a sensible, legal basis for the internet, and that is what is under arizona tack today. -- under attack today. so if this legislation that chips away at section 230 is a bad idea for the internet, if you're following this debate, you probably want to know why the biggest internet companies are big cheerleaders for it, the big companies like facebook. it's because it'll pull up the ladder in the tech world, leaving the established giants

alone at the top. as i've said, section 230 from the beginning was all about giving the little guy the best possible chance to succeed. that's what this has always been about, mr. president. the big guys can take care of themselves, but we want to have a policy that encourages innovation, and that's the start-ups. that's been a bedrock of my time in public service. chipping away at the law that's going to curtail the culture of innovation, the bare-knuckled competition that's been the defining characteristic of the internet for more than two decades, doesn't make any sense to me. now, the companies that have reached the top of the internet economy, they're kind of worried about whether they're going to be able to keep their place at

that altitude. regulators once feared that microsoft would dominate the way americans interacted with the internet, but then a little company called google appeared on the scene. facebook, a half-trillion-dollar company, got out of its infancy by displacing a competitor called myspace. i just think colleagues ought to know, these established companies would do just about anything to avoid being displaced themselves. facebook is trying to make clear that they will do just about anything not to become another myspace. today facebook is under attack for allowing the russians to interfere with our elections. they're under attack for giving hate groups a platform to spread their vile. they're under attack for giving

conspiracy theorists through their algorithms a platform to lure in the unsuspecting. and they are a under attack for storing far more personal information than their users ever suspected. it's a great tool for connecting with family and friends, but it's also something a small team of well-cafinated coders could duplicate and improve on in terms of fawngs quality without -- function quality without a lot of difficulty and some of the baggage facebook has picked up over the last six months. so how do they stay on top? one way is to acquire the competition. young people always tell me nobody under 30 uses facebook. the new generation certainly

uses instagram. they might know it's part of the same mega company bought out by facebook. but you can't buy everybody. so you go to the oldest trick in the book. make it harder for new companies to get in the game. you don't have to compete if there's no competition. and that's where this legislation comes in. if internet start-ups are no longer protected by section 230 and they're exposed to the threat of near constant litigation, it's going to be a lot tougher for them to secure injections of funding and grow. fewer venture capital firms will be willing to risk their deep pockets if their early-round investments are swallowed up by legal fees instead of paying for

coders. but in the eye of the giant established corporations, a world without section 230 isn't seen as much of a threat. $50 million a year in liability statements for these big companies, a drop in the bucket for them, the cost of doing business. and it's an added benefit if the cost is too high for new companies to be able to get in the game. the big -- the biggest of these internet companies are trying to hold on to their position at the top with all their might, and they are certainly very interested in using the government to do it. that's been true of a lot of industries before them and it should come as no surprise that it happens again in the technology area. the facebooks of the world will tell you how important section 230 was to the innovation of the

last 20 years. yet their technology companies like i.b.m. who haven't done a lot of innovating for the last 20 years that want to see section 230 done away with entirely, entirely for trumped up reasons. so for business let's not mistake what this debate is all about for a lot of these big multinational companies. it's not about right or wrong. it's about dollars and cents. so what does the future hold? as "the wall street journal" observed, the lawsuit bonanza is in the works. pretty ironic that a republican congress and a republican president are going to create the biggest new source of opportunities for trial lawyers in decades. for the technology business, this bill means bigger is

better, not better for innovation, not better for consumers, but better for the profits of those lucky enough to have reached the top of the mountain first. it is safe to expect a slew of proposed new exceptions to section 230. when somebody is injured, they and their families want recourse but our legal system is woefully bad at delivering justice. it's unfortunately far better at facilitating deals, often unjust deals because numbers are far easier than doing right. this failure means that a line of injured parties will be petitioning to feed the sort of recreconpense only their memberf congress can provide. section 230 is very likely the reason we have a multitude of

billion dollar internet employers and the europeans have exactly zero. where companies aren't hiding behind the trade barrier of the great fire wall or other artificial market forces. american innovation has won out over the rest of the world. i think it is pretty hard to see our country thrive and prosper without the kind of legal foundation i've described today without these 230 protections and a whole host of scholars have pointed out this is a unique law in the world. it's the case where the united states got the temperature right from the beginning, and it has led to our dominance in tech. but if the united states goes out and puts all those cracks,

those potential cracks, the real cracks into the foundation of section 230, i'd wager there are plenty other countries that are going to change their laws to siphon away our companies and take the jobs they create. the fact is, and i'm not sure we in the senate think about it every day, we're in a fight for the internet literally every day. our internet companies aren't engaged in the fight. their interest is currying favor with nations where they wish to do business, the chinese, the iranians, the russian, even our european allies are maneuvering to impose a more oppressive view of speech and expression on individuals around the world. and unfortunately, they've got a lot of allies here at home. free speech has never been free, and it is often not popular.

it was rested from the grip of a dominating state and it ought to be -- it must be defended by every generation lest the state reclaim control. today in my view, the senate is looking at taking a real step backward and down a path that this body will regret. mr. president, i yield the floor.

mr. mcconnell: mr. president. the presiding officer: the majority leader. mr. mcconnell: budget point of order and the motion to waive, there be two minutes equally divided prior to the vote. the presiding officer: is there objection? without objection. mr. mcconnell: mr. president, the pending amendment number 2213, offered by senator wyden, would violate the senate paygo rule, therefore i raise a point of order against this measure pursuant to section 4601a against the concurrent resolution on the budget fiscal year 2018. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: mr. president,

pursuant to section 904 of the congressional budget act of 1974 and the waiver provisions of the budget resolutions, i move to waive all applicable sections of that act and applicable budget resolutions of the pending amendment and i ask for the yeas and nays. the presiding officer: is there a sufficient second? there appears to be. the yeas and nays are ordered. and there will now be two minutes of debate equally divided. a senator: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from ohio. mr. portman: mr. president, this is in relationship to an amendment that has been offered by my colleague mr. wyden. it has to do with funding for the department of defense for dealing with trafficking. i appreciate the intent behind it, but i will tell you as one of the letters said from the law enforcement community that are opposing this amendment, this is a poison pill.

this would -- we have law enforcement from the fraternal order of police, the national direct attorneys, all the national groups opposing this amendment because they believe it is so important to pass the underlying legislation and do it now to provide the justice that the victims of human trafficking deserve. mr. wyden: mr. president. the presiding officer: the senator from oregon. mr. wyden: mr. president, i believe strongly that congress must do more to combat the scourge of sex trafficking and bring these monsters to justice and actually put them behind bars. i have heard my colleagues on the other side talk again and again about how more resources are needed to fight this evil. this is the only proposal on offer to actually put more dollars into the hands of prosecutors to get the criminals behind bars and it's going to be

harder to prosecute them now that they have moved to the dark webb. my colleague said that there are prosecutors against it because my colleague worked as hard as he could to tell prosecutors to say if any of this is added, it will die in the house. let me tell my colleagues when we put more money to prosecute these monsters and it passes, the other body will pass it in about 15 minutes. i urge my colleagues to vote for the only amendment that will actually put these criminals behind bars because we're putting real money into that effort. and i yield. the presiding officer: the question is on the motion to waive. the yeas and nays have been ordered. the clerk will call the roll. vote:

vote: