Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from Connecticut in offering this amendment, which is modeled on the bipartisan legislation we introduced in March along with a number of Senators on both sides of the aisle. We also recently joined to form a Senate caucus to end human trafficking, and I appreciate the chair and ranking member today for allowing this amendment to move forward. The aim of this amendment is pretty simple. This amendment ensures that our contingency contracting dollars are spent in a manner that is consistent, as Senator Blumenthal said, with our deeply held values as a country. This is particularly important in the context of wartime contracting and reconstruction work. This amendment comes from the work that both DOD and State Department IGs have done. The inspectors general have told us we lack sufficient monitoring to have the kind of visiblity we need under the labor practices by our contractors and subcontractors who rely on a lot of third-party nationals to do overseas work. It also comes from the Wartime Contracting Commission, which has reported what is described as evidence of the recurrent problem of trafficking in persons by labor brokers or subcontractors of contingency contractors. The report concluded that existing prohibitions on such trafficking have failed to suppress it.…”