Political Quotes

“I stand on the Senate floor today in firm agreement with my colleagues that the Congress must do more to combat the scourge of sex trafficking. It is a profound and tragic failure of American institutions that trafficking continues to plague our country and, in fact, has actually increased. Federal law enforcement has failed to root out and prosecute the traffickers, even when they have been operating in plain sight. So, too, have the big internet companies failed when it comes to sex traffickers who operate on their platforms. I fear that the legislation before the Senate now is going to be another failure. I fear that it is going to do more to take down ads than to take down traffickers. I that fear it will send these monsters, these evil people who traffic beyond the grasp of law enforcement to the shadowy corners of the dark web, a place where every day search engines don't go, and it is going to be even easier for criminals-- these vicious traffickers--to find a safe haven for their extraordinarily evil acts. In many respects, this debate mirrors one the Congress went through a little bit more than 20 years ago. Back then, I think it would be fair to say that not many Senators knew much about the internet. In 1995, this body had a laudable goal. The Senate said it wanted to protect kids from accessing pornography online, but the result of those good intentions was, unfortunately, a bad policy--a policy called the Communications Decency Act of 1996.…”