Amy Klobuchar: “I am very happy today that we have reached an agreement. I want to thank Senator Murray for her leadership, and Senator…”

“I am very happy today that we have reached an agreement. I want to thank Senator Murray for her leadership, and Senator Reid, Senator McConnell, and Senator Cornyn. The two of us have worked on this issue for years. Finally, we are going to be able to move these really important bills forward. What this compromise does is really set up two funds. The first uses Senator Cornyn's fund, which is fees on perpetrators, and it uses that for things such as shelters and law enforcement, things that we had envisioned would be used for people to combat sex trafficking. The second fund is a medical fund. It is really based on the same principle that we used with the SGR fund that we just voted on. That bill passed 92 to 8. The fund will receive a minimum of $5 million and would be matched up to $30 million, as funding in the Cornyn fund goes up. It really is a parallel fund but serving the exact same purpose. This is the way we were able to eliminate extraneous provisions but still keep the spirit of this really important bill and allow us to move on to my bill, the Stop Exploitation Through Trafficking Act, which really is about not prosecuting kids under 18. There was huge bipartisan support over in the House. It passed unanimously through the Judiciary Committee and will be one of the amendments to this bill. Again, I want to thank Senator Murray for her leadership. We have been a team on this.…”