Chris Smith: “I yield myself 1 minute, just to make the point to my good friend and colleague, the distinguished chairman of the…”

“I yield myself 1 minute, just to make the point to my good friend and colleague, the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee, that the victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 is a new law. It was signed in late October by the President. It was the result of almost 2 years of work and working with our Senate colleagues, and it lays out criteria for the establishment of these programs, for example, prevention of trafficking, some of those programs to keep children, especially girls, in elementary and secondary schools, and to educate those persons who have been victims of trafficking. We just got, even though it was due on June 1, as prescribed, the Department was late, but it was late because I think they wanted to do an adequate job because this is a very, very important piece of information about trafficking, so they were about a month late, but it lays out all of the different countries, tier one, tier two and tier three. This is a work in progress in terms of what will the programs look like. We lay out criteria, and we want and we will demand that AID and the State Department faithfully fulfill this. Programs are in the process of being created. This is not like something that came off the shelf. So the money, I believe, will be well spent. We could spend much more in order to try to mitigate this trafficking problem, but this is at least a good start.”