Patrick Leahy: “back in May 2005, with the leadership of Senator Specter, Senator Biden, Senator Kennedy, and others, the Senate…”

“back in May 2005, with the leadership of Senator Specter, Senator Biden, Senator Kennedy, and others, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved an important child safety bill, S. 1086. The committee worked tirelessly to craft a prudent, bipartisan bill that would assist States in their ongoing efforts to protect children through tighter monitoring of known sex offenders. It was a good bill, and it passed the full Senate in May of this year by unanimous consent. Now, extensive bipartisan discussions with the House have produced a revised version of the bill, which the Senate is voting on today. The new bill is better in a few ways than the Senate-passed bill that we produced and also, regrettably, takes some steps backward. While this new bill is not the bill I would have written, I intend to support it and expect that it will pass. As a former prosecutor, and as a father and grandfather, I know that there is no higher duty than to protect our society's children, to take every step possible to prevent them from coming to harm, and to punish those who attempt to or succeed in harming them. We have never debated whether children should be protected. Of course they should. The only debate is about how they should be protected, and how best to deploy and utilize limited resources to deter and punish those who would prey on them.…”