Rob Portman: “I know the Presiding Officer has other places to be, and I am going to be presiding in the chair in a moment. I will not…”

“I know the Presiding Officer has other places to be, and I am going to be presiding in the chair in a moment. I will not offer amendments because my understanding is that even though we are on the bill, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle don't want me to offer noncontroversial amendments. So I will wait until they are ready for that just to keep the peace on the floor, but I will talk about the amendments because they are incredibly important to the underlying legislation. We are talking about the human trafficking legislation. This is something that as cochair and cofounder of the Human Trafficking Caucus, as a father, and as someone who represents the citizens of Ohio, who are directly affected by this, I have a strong interest. I am delighted the Senate is taking up this legislation. I do hope it will be not just bipartisan but nonpartisan. I do not see any reason for it not to move forward in the Senate, changing some of these laws that are in desperate need of changing to ensure that this horrific practice of human trafficking and sex trafficking can be curbed. It can be minimized by legislation that this Chamber should have taken up, in my view, some time ago. We really haven't been at this subject for a decade. We know a lot more about the problem now. We know, unfortunately, that about 300,000 of our youth are subject to human trafficking--about 1,000 in my home State of Ohio alone.…”