Nick Lampson: “in 1997 I established the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus to provide a unified and loud voice for…”

“in 1997 I established the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus to provide a unified and loud voice for missing children advocates within Congress. The gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley) and 157 other Members work with me in this caucus today. While the caucus works to advance child safety legislation, we are also initiating community, State and national efforts to fight against the exploitation and abduction of our children. One of those community initiatives is a successful and effective way to combat child abduction and it is called Amber Alert. The Amber Alert is named after Amber Hagerman, a 9-year-old girl who was tragically abducted and murdered in Arlington, Texas in 1996. The tragedy was felt throughout North Texas, and it led to a search for new and innovative community responses to help law enforcement officials find missing children. That response is the Amber Alert, and it has frequently been successful in recovering missing children. We have been reading about it in our news media in just recent weeks. Mr. Speaker, I urge all of our Members to take the opportunity to join with us to make this a successful nationwide program, to join me in supporting the Frost-Dunn National Amber Alert Network Act. The National Amber Alert Network Act is a common sense approach to the problem of child abduction. Child abduction is finally receiving the attention it deserves.”