Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am going to make this short and hopefully sweet because I can't believe for a minute that we don't want to incentivize States to guarantee, at a minimum, the rights we have already established in the Survivors' Bill of Rights Act, which was passed in Congress unanimously in 2016. This amendment is based on a bipartisan bill offered by myself and Congressman Kelly Armstrong and Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren and introduced by the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley. When we actually enacted the Survivors' Bill of Rights, it guaranteed certain rights for sexual assault survivors. Unfortunately, those rights only applied to Federal cases. This amendment makes further progress by incentivizing States to follow suit. What we are debating here is really quite common sense: The right to have a rape kit if you are raped, the right not to be charged for it, the right to be notified if the government intends to destroy a rape kit, the right to be notified of the rape kit's results, the right to have the rape kit preserved for the statute of limitations or 20 years, whichever is shorter, and the right to be informed of the status and location of a rape kit. Across the country, survivors are shocked to learn that their rape kits have been thrown out or they can't find them. Again, we have done this on a Federal level.…”