Political Quotes

“Mr. President, all week we have been on an important piece of legislation on the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. Just to remind everybody, this is a bill to treat child prostitutes not as criminals but as the victims they are--obviously, beneath the age of consent--and to recognize that the criminal organizations that traffic in human flesh for sale, economic, sex, and other reasons, are a real problem in our society. So much of what happens in this trade is really nothing more or nothing less than modern-day slavery--something we thought was relegated to the history books and didn't exist in the United States of America, the freest country in the world. We got here through a rather strange set of circumstances, because the legislation that I introduced was broadly bipartisan--which is a novelty these days. We had 10 Democratic cosponsors of the legislation. Then, when we had a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee--Chairman Grassley kindly called up that bill in February--we had a unanimous vote of the Senate Judiciary Committee. All Republicans and all Democrats voted for it. Then we had another unusual development. Majority Leader McConnell was left wondering: Am I going to have to go through procedural steps to get the bill to the floor? The minority, our Democratic friends, said, I think, fairly: This is not a controversial piece of legislation. We are going to agree to get on the legislation. But then something very strange happened.…”