Ben Cardin

I see no room for broader cooperation until and unless Iran commits to a Syria without Assad, and Iraq that is governed in a representative manner.

The TIP Report is a very valuable report. The rankings have incredible significance, not just in shaming nations to do better.

The Trafficking Victims Protection Act is designed so that the ratings are based solely on the circumstances on the ground and meeting the criteria of the statute.

But to upgrade a rating you would expect that there had been progress made.

It is called impunity. You may have laws, you may have prosecution, but if you cannot convict, if you cannot hold people accountable, they walk, and they know that they can commit the crimes.

This year marks the 15th installment of the report, as well as the 15th anniversary of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the TVPA.

I voted against the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq.

I am very disappointed.

I can tell you this, once the spotlight goes down on this issue, and it does; and once this report is issued and they know they have another year the chances of getting the type of action we want is just not there anymore, based upon the…

You can always justify a decision.

Do we need to strengthen the Trafficking Victims Protection Act? Do we need to have congressional direct oversight before you take a country off of Tier 3?

I want to underscore a point that Senator Corker and I, working with our leadership, encouraged our leadership to provide for the debate on the floor of the United States Senate that we think is befitting this critical issue.

How we make the tough calls matters. The integrity of the TIP Report matters for our country's credibility when we speak up for the powerless and the oppressed.

I did not interpret from the President's remarks that he is challenging any of our independent judgments on this.

If it is true that the administration politicized this report, there are questions about why they chose to significantly diminish a tool that has been effective in fighting slavery around the world.

Please provide recommendations to strengthen the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000...

It seems to me that taking them off of Tier 3 takes the pressure off.

There have been reports that have been made that there were high-level discussions that disagreed with the staff-level recommendations.

This committee needs to make sure that the work we have done in this country, setting the global example for commitment against trafficking, remains credible and is always improving.

I hope it did not. But I tell you, we talked about it before the report came out. I just hope that we are using objective standards.

This is a win-win-win situation if you just allow us to go forward.

I agree completely with Senator Markey in regard to the Clean Power Plan as being critically important to the health of our constituents.

There is a scheduled, not yet date-specific, fall meeting, at the ministerial level, with Egypt, and we are weighing in that human rights be part of that strategic dialogue.

This committee, in its work on the State Department Authorization Act, moved in the direction to require the State Department to assess the status of human rights and anticorruption issues in every country in the world.

They enable us to impose costs on individuals responsible for certain human rights abuses.