Political Quotes

“I rise today to speak about an issue that Members on both sides of this aisle have a deep concern about, and that is human sex trafficking and, specifically, the work we have done to try to stop one website called backpage.com from selling people online. This morning, I--along with my colleagues Tom Carper and Claire McCaskill--announced that we have asked the Department of Justice to investigate backpage.com for criminal violations of the law. This is a criminal referral, and it is a new development in this case. We believe there is sufficient evidence to warrant this criminal review by the Justice Department, based on the work that we have done in the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. With estimated revenues of more than $150 million a year, backpage.com is a market leader in commercial sex trafficking and has been linked to hundreds of reported cases of sex trafficking, including trafficking vulnerable women and children. Backpage has claimed that it ``leads the industry'' in its screening of advertisements for illegal activity, including sex ads for children. That is simply not true. In fact, we now know that this website has long facilitated sex trafficking on its site so that it can increase its profits--profits that come at the expense of those being trafficked, including children.…”