Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, we have spent a great deal of time this afternoon discussing legislation designed to detect and punish sexual predators. These bills are all strong, well crafted, and laudable. I urge my colleagues to support them. However, there is another facet to this problem, which is prevention. This may be the most important action we as Congress can take in the realm of child exploitation laws. We must do all we can to prevent child exploitation from happening in the first place. Mr. Speaker, that is why I am pleased to bring H.R. 695, the Child Protection Improvements Act, before the House today. This legislation is extremely important in that it makes permanent a successful pilot program that allowed youth-serving organizations access to FBI fingerprint database searches. In 2003, the PROTECT Act created the Child Safety Pilot Program, which ran from 2003 until 2011, and provided access to FBI fingerprint background checks for a variety of child-serving nonprofits. The pilot conducted over 105,000 background checks during its existence. 6.2 percent of potential volunteers were found to have criminal records of concern. While that may seem like a small percentage, Mr. Speaker, it works out to over 6,500 individuals.…”