Ted Poe: “I thank the gentleman for yielding time. This bill, Strengthening Child Welfare Response to Trafficking Act, H.R. 469…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding time. This bill, Strengthening Child Welfare Response to Trafficking Act, H.R. 469, is an excellent piece of legislation. As mentioned, it is a bipartisan piece of legislation. I want to thank Karen Bass from California and Chairman Kline from Minnesota for bringing this to the floor. This is one of many, many pieces of legislation dealing with trafficking that have come and will come to the House floor the rest of today and tomorrow, bipartisan pieces of legislation. In my short tenure of 10 years here in Congress, I have never seen a subject that had so many people interested on both sides of the aisle and so many pieces of legislation coming to the House floor, all with the purpose of trying to rein in this scourge of human trafficking in the United States. The public seems to be a little more concerned about other matters than the issue of trafficking, at least the media does. They spend a lot of time talking about how much air is in footballs when we probably should be dealing with how much criminal activity is taking place in America where America's children are being kidnapped and put into slavery. One example of this is the bill that Ms. Bass has brought to us, and that is the one regarding child welfare agencies in States. I understand, Mr. Speaker, that 60 percent of American children involved in human trafficking, somewhere in their background they were in foster care. I am not saying foster care caused that.…”