Political Quotes

“I am prepared to close. Madam Speaker, I thank my good friend from Texas for his very fine statement, and I look forward to a recorded vote. I also want to say very clearly that we have a very, very broad bipartisan group of stakeholders who are for this, including, as I mentioned a moment ago, Frederick Douglass Family Initiatives, the Douglass Leadership Institute, Frederick Douglass Foundation, along with 300 anti-trafficking and human trafficking organizations, over 500 advocates and survivors, and they have worked tirelessly with us over the last 18 months, with both Karen Bass and me in crafting this legislation. We even had more. Some of them did drop out, but we will come back some day in the future to get some of that. But it is a good solid bill. Survivor leaders like Bella Hanoukey and Robert Lung provided valuable insights and expertise for this bill. As I said, Kenneth Morris was outstanding in the work that he provided for us. As a matter of fact, as the special representative for human trafficking for the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, a couple of years ago, I brought him into one of our big parliamentary assembly meetings, and there were at least 100-plus lawmakers from the European space that heard him speak about the importance of prevention. If young people know what is out there and what is waiting--particularly run-aways-- they will be forearmed and forewarned and, hopefully, can mitigate the possibility of being trafficked themselves.…”