Political Quotes

“Mr. President, like every Member of this body, I am frustrated we haven't been able to reach an agreement to pass the bipartisan Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act. So today--just now--we have offered a compromise amendment that provides a path forward on this important legislation. I want to express my gratitude to the majority leader for teeing up this amendment and this vote and helping us move forward to resolve this problem. Briefly, this proposal would completely strike a provision in the underlying bill that Members on the other side have objected to regarding the application of the Hyde amendment. The proposal would replace this language with a provision negotiated by Leader Pelosi from H.R. 2, the so-called doc fix bill that we just passed overwhelmingly and that passed the House a few weeks ago 392 to 37--180 House Democrats supported this language in the House bill. The Pelosi language from this bill is similar to my proposal, in that it simply says that any funds used to provide services to human trafficking victims would be subject to the same requirements as funds under the Public Health Services Act. This would clarify that all money in the Domestic Trafficking Victims' Fund must be derived from the General Treasury, the routine and ordinary source of all Federal funding.…”