On the recordMay 23, 2017
I thank my good friend for yielding me this time, and I am pleased to support this bipartisan bill, the Improving Support for Missing and Exploited Children Act. I support it because it does exactly what its title says. It fills the gaps in our prior legislation on missing and exploited children. We need to look at such legislation very often because of what we are learning about missing and exploited children. There are many parts of this bill I support, but I particularly support a provision that we didn't have nearly as much knowledge of during the passage of the last bill: to improve the protection of children in State care. These are often foster children or children without parents. These are the children who may be most susceptible to trafficking and other exploitation. I certainly would appreciate the efforts of the committee in making sure that provisions of my bill that, I believe, got to you too late, are included in the final House and Senate bill because they are entirely consistent with the bill on the floor today. They come from recent experience of the District of Columbia. The D.C. police began to do something, which I urge all of you to do, and that is to use social media to let people know when there are missing children. It unnerved residents of the District of Columbia until they recognized that the city didn't have any more missing children than any other jurisdiction. Still, I support what the District did in using social media.…
