Hatch Presses Democrats on Trafficking Filibuster
Washington, D.C.—Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, senior Republican in the United States Senate, spoke on the Senate Floor for a third time on Thursday and urged Democrats to abandon their filibuster of the Justice for Victims of Human Trafficking Act.
A few excerpts:
The full speech, as prepared for delivery, is below:
Mr. President, today we are continuing our consideration of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act.
I should note from the outset that this is a bill that essentially every Senator—every single one of us—supports. How could we not? Right now, in this country there are thousands of human beings living as slaves—stolen from their homes, stripped of their God-given rights, and robbed of their human dignity. A disproportionate number of these victims are women and children, often forced into sex slavery.
These are crimes that shock the conscience, and every single one of us should feel obligated to do everything within our power to fight this scourge and help make its victims whole again.
The legislation that we are currently considering makes important steps toward achieving these goals. It treats children trapped in these horrible circumstances for what they are—victims, not criminals. It imposes stiff penalties on traffickers—exactly the sort that their despicable crimes merit. And it establishes an effective means of restitution for victims, helping them begin to rebuild their lives in the wake of enormous suffering.
Mr. President, I want to applaud the Majority Leader for his commitment to getting this bill passed. It is exactly the sort of legislation that the Senate should be considering. While this may seem like an obvious point, it is worth spelling out exactly why this is true.
The Majority Leader’s traditional right to be recognized first gives him control over what sort of legislation we consider. And there is always a temptation to bring up partisan bills—so-called messaging bills. These bills are not designed to actually pass; after all, we all know that we need 60 votes for cloture, and 67 to override a presidential veto. Instead, the goal of these messaging bills is to make a political point for the next election—or even for just the next news cycle.
In the last Congress, the Democrat leadership called up these sort of messaging votes week after week. They repeatedly moved to bring up highly partisan bills that they refused to let us even attempt to amend, with the full knowledge that many us would therefore have to vote against them. In last fall’s election, the American people showed just how fed up they were with partisanship and gridlock by voting in a new Republican majority that promised a return to productive legislating through regular order.
Mr. President, the Majority Leader’s commitment to passing this human trafficking bill demonstrates how those of us in the new majority are trying our hardest to keep our promise to get the Senate back to work for the American people. This is not about taking partisan messaging votes doomed to failure. This is about getting a bill with broad bipartisan support passed into law that makes meaningful progress in our fight against the evils of human trafficking. Scoring political points for our party is rightfully taking a back seat to producing important results for our country.
Nevertheless, our majority can only do so much on its own. Simply put, it is hard to get much done in the Senate without bipartisan cooperation. So for all the restraint that the majority has shown by bringing up bills such as this one that enjoy broad bipartisan support, we need at least some measure of restraint from the minority. By restraint, I do not mean to call for my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to give up all of their principles and simply give into everything the majority wants. Instead, I mean that the minority cannot demand getting their way on every single issue—that they should be willing to work through the open amendment process to reach an accommodation.
Unfortunately, we find ourselves at an impasse, with the minority claiming that we somehow ambushed them with supposedly controversial language that they now are demanding that we remove. My colleagues and I have come to the floor repeatedly over the past few days to illustrate just how ridiculous that claim is—how the language in question has been in the bill every step of the way since its introduction, and how Democrats have voted for similar language over and over again during the nearly forty years that it has been settled law.
Beyond all of the rhetoric, the pivotal moment in this debate came when the Majority Leader came to the floor and offered an up-or-down vote to strip out the language in question. This offer should have settled this controversy once and for all. It represented the Majority Leader extending his hand across the aisle in hopes of cooperation.
But the Minority Leader objected, demanding a guarantee that the provision be removed. That moment revealed what this logjam is really about.
This is about the minority leadership resorting to the same old my-way-or-the-highway tactics that they abused when they were in the majority—tactics that have no place in a body built on compromise.
This is about trying to stir up a fake controversy to fit a discredited war-on-women narrative.
And above all else, this is about scoring political points—trying to embarrass the majority by undermining our efforts to govern responsibly.
This behavior is itself embarrassing and unworthy of this great institution in which we all serve. But it comes at a price.
It comes at a price for the victims of human trafficking, whose suffering we are all committed to alleviating.
It comes at a price for those men, women, and children living in a world of silence, fear, hopelessness, and unspeakable anguish.
Mr. President, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle are not bad people. Far from it. They are men and women of great character who want to do the right thing for their constituents and for the nation. I have enormous respect for each and every one of them. But in this latest maneuver, I fear that many of them have gotten so caught up in partisan rhetoric—something that is so easy to do in Washington—that they have staked out an unjustifiable position that is prolonging the suffering of trafficking victims.
So I ask my colleagues to take a step back from the heat of the debate here—to think about this language that has been in the bill from the very beginning, that they have voted for in so many other contexts, that has been the settled law of the land for nearly forty years, that they have rejected an up-or-down vote to remove, and that they have demanded be removed as a condition for passing this important legislation.
Is picking this fight really worth it?
Is scoring points against Republicans really worth the costs to the victims of human trafficking?
Is trying to undermine our efforts to govern really worth sacrificing the opportunity to help these men, women, and children in need?
Mr. President, the choice is clear. I applaud my colleagues on both sides of the aisle who are pushing to end this stalemate, especially my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who are willing to sacrifice temporary political gain to do the right thing for these victims that we all want to help. And I plead with those who have yet to join our efforts to move this bill forward to realize the suffering that they are prolonging and to change their approach at the earliest possible opportunity.
Mr. President, in addition to urging the passage of the bipartisan bill under consideration to fight human trafficking, I want to highlight another important bipartisan bill that represents exactly the sort of productive legislating in which I believe that the Senate should be engaged. I also ask unanimous consent that my remarks be placed in the appropriate place in the record.
