Rob Portman

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. I thank my colleague for his comments and, more importantly, for his leadership all the way through the process of drafting the legislation. I am now going to yield to one of my other colleagues. It looks like Senator Heitkamp will be next to speak. She is from North Dakota, not South Dakota, as we talked about earlier with Senator Thune, and she has a similar passion for this issue and has been involved in this issue for many years and is also on the committee in which we did the PSI work we talked about earlier. I appreciate her being one of our six original cosponsors, helping us to draft this targeted, focused legislation that deals directly with the problem we have seen around the country, which was discussed by Senator Blumenthal. With that, I would like to yield to my colleague Senator Heitkamp.

Mr. PORTMAN. Madam President, I thank Senator McCaskill. She is absolutely right. We are grateful to the entire Senate for jumping in on this because we would not have gotten to the bottom of this without our having gotten the Senate to decide for the first time in 21 years this question: Are we going to enforce the subpoena or not? People stepped up. As a result, through the court system and with the sanction of criminal liability as a possibility, we were able to get these folks to come forward and provide this information. They never really testified. They came forward, and they claimed their Fifth Amendment rights, but at least we were able to get 1 million pages of documents--1 million pages. Then we sifted through 1 million pages of documents to discover, lo and behold, that these people actually knew what they were doing. In fact, they were altering ads. They would get an ad from somebody who was selling an underaged girl. The ad would read something like ``schoolgirl'' or ``cheerleader'' or ``young girl.'' They would then edit that ad to take out those words that would indicate what was going on, and they knew it was going on. Then they would place the ad anyway. In other words, they would make the money, make the profit, knowing that they were selling an underaged girl online. They were also destroying the evidence that, later, law enforcement could use in going after these people. This is evil, and this has been happening. We have heard the stories. We have talked about Yvonne Ambrose. We have talked about Kubiiki Pride. We have talked about Nacole S. We have talked about some of these mothers and their daughters who have gone through this horrific situation. You also heard earlier about Desiree. This was the 16-year- old who was being sold on backpage, and on Christmas Eve, she was murdered. Imagine getting that call as a parent. We have talked before about the testimony we received in the committee with regard to the 14-year-old girl who had gone missing. Kubiiki Pride is her mom. Kubiiki Pride said she had been missing for several weeks when someone finally told her: Why don't you check on backpage.com. So she did. She went on backpage.com and found her daughter, who had been missing for weeks. Imagine the mixed emotions there--the relief of finding her daughter but her horror in seeing the explicit sexual photographs of a 14-year-old who was being sold for sex. She did what you would do as a mom. She called backpage immediately and said: I found my daughter on your website. She is 14 years old. Thank you for taking down that ad and helping me to connect with my daughter. The answer from backpage.com was this: You didn't pay for the ad. We will not take it down. Again, talk about evil. Think of the heartbreak. Then, later, when she was reunited with her daughter, she was one of those brave moms and her daughter was one of those brave victims who said: Do you know what, we are going to file a lawsuit and go public with this and talk about our experience--the trauma that this young, 14-year-old girl had gone through in having been repeatedly raped by older men--and we are going to hold these websites accountable. Do you know what happened? The court system said: I am sorry. Under a Federal law that was passed by the Congress--a 21-year-old law--this website is not culpable. It has a shield. It has an immunity. That is why we are here today. Justice cannot always be seen, but its absence is felt, and the absence of justice is exactly what we are trying to address here today. You have heard from my colleagues, and I appreciate all four of them for speaking up and talking about their experiences and how we got to this point. We may hear from a couple of other colleagues later today who were part of helping us put together a sensible approach that targeted this activity. Sure, we have freedom of the internet on the one hand, but on the other hand, this is criminal activity that cannot continue to go on here in America, in this century, at this time. Again, as we have learned, this is where you see the increase in trafficking. You not only hear this from the experts who give us their data that show huge increases in trafficking reports, but you also hear it and feel it from the victims and the survivors whom I have met with in Cleveland, in Cincinnati, in Columbus, in Dayton, in Akron. They have told me the same story, which is: Yes, I was sold online. It is very efficient. One 9-year-old girl was sold online by her father. I first met her when she was almost 20 years old and had finally escaped from the clutches of her own father. Think about that--backpage's going from sporting event to sporting event around the country and, online, one being sold many times on a single night with the efficiency of the internet. This is legislation that is overdue, in my view, and it is required. The courts have told us that. The district attorneys have told us that. The attorneys general have told us that, and 50 of them sent us a letter, writing to make this change. They have all said: Congress, step forward. They have not just invited us to do it; they have welcomed us to pass this legislation to give these families the justice they deserve and to give our prosecutors the ability to go after them. One thing that I hope has been made clear from the other comments we have heard today is that one of the important parts of this legislation is to simply allow these local prosecutors we talked about earlier to take these cases while using the Federal standard rather than just relying on the Department of Justice. Having said that, sifting through those 1 million pages, our report, with all the documents we received, you can go online to see this at the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, PSI. We did provide this to the Justice Department. We did provide this to the prosecutors around the country who were interested. We did provide it to others who are pursuing lawsuits so they have information now that they never had before, but we also need to change the law, and that is what we are about to do today. You heard from my colleagues about the amendments that are likely to be offered. There are two amendments. The first amendment is one that is going to be called a moderating amendment, meaning that if somebody is on their website moderating the website, cleaning up the website, they should be given a good-faith acceptance. Let me just be clear. This amendment is a poison pill and will make it easier for those sites that are involved in sex trafficking to continue to do so. Right now, under current law, there is a good-faith exception. There is a Good Samaritan exception under current law. We actually restate that in our legislation, to be absolutely clear, that if you are one of the good guys--a website online--who wants to be sure your site is not going to have these girls being sold that we talked about earlier, that you should be protected. However, this legislation, having restated the Good Samaritan provision, also says that if you are one of the bad actors, you don't have that protection. The first amendment that is going to be offered includes protections for some of the bad actors. It purposely strips the good-faith element, and I believe it would assist online sex traffickers rather than hold them to account. For instance, if backpage or another website filters for illegal content and, as a result, learns that their site is being used for trafficking but ignores that activity, I think this amendment would say that evidence could not be considered in a case against backpage. To me, that is wrong, and I hope the first amendment is going to be handled appropriately, which is to say, we don't want to weaken this bill or have a poison pill in here. By the way, the law enforcement community represented nationally by their associations agrees with us, as do the victims groups, as do the groups who are concerned about the effect of trafficking on girls, women, and boys online. So we are together on this with all the outside groups. The second amendment is going to be asking for additional Department of Justice resources specifically to combat online trafficking. I support funding to investigate and prosecute traffickers, of course, but we have to appropriate that funding in the proper manner. This amendment would be subject to a budget point of order because it is not going through the right process. The right process is the bill we are taking up the day after tomorrow, which will be the spending bill. In fact, there are three budget points of order that the Committee on Budget in the U.S. Senate has found against this amendment. This amendment is subject to points of order. Every law enforcement group in the country opposes the amendment because as law enforcement said, it is a poison pill that is dead on arrival if sent back to the House. We have to defeat these amendments in order to have this legislation move forward. I hope my colleagues will all stick with us on that as they stuck with us through this process of getting the information, coming up with the right legislation, being sure we have the opportunity to take it to the floor and get it to a clean vote, get it to the President's desk and get it signed, and starting in a couple of weeks to be able to make a difference in the lives of the people we represent, stopping the online trafficking that is occurring and providing justice to those who are victims and survivors and ensuring that, indeed, justice can be served. One of my colleagues has joined us on the floor. Senator Nelson is the ranking Democrat on the Commerce Committee that took up this legislation and clarified some points in the legislation. By the time he was done with it--and, by the way, he was a cosponsor of the legislation long before that--but by the time the Commerce Committee was done clarifying the legislation, listening to the testimony from both sides, he received a unanimous vote in committee. That doesn't happen very often, and I appreciate Senator Nelson being on the floor today. More importantly, I appreciate his leadership on the issue. Madam President, I ask unanimous consent additional material be printed in the Record.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, this is in relation to an amendment that has been offered by my colleague Mr. Wyden. It has to do with funding for the Department of Justice dealing with trafficking. I appreciate the intent behind it, but I will tell you, as one of the letters from the law enforcement community, who are opposing this amendment, said, this is a poison pill. This will derail this in the House of Representatives. We have law enforcement from the Fraternal Order of Police, the National District Attorneys Association, and from all of the national groups opposing this amendment because they believe it is so important to pass the underlying legislation and to do it now to provide the justice that the victims of human trafficking deserve.

Mr. PORTMAN. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN. I thank my colleague for the expertise and experience she has brought to this effort. As she said, in the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, we spent 18 months digging deep, trying to figure out why this was happening, why we had an increase in trafficking in this country in this century, and increasingly we were told that this was because of the internet, moving from the street corner to the smartphone. Trafficking survivors and victims told us this, but so did the experts. Senator Heitkamp jumped in, and the leadership of that subcommittee included Senator McCaskill. She is no longer the ranking member. She has gone on to bigger things--to be ranking member of the full committee--but during this investigation of 18 months, she was the ranking Democrat on our subcommittee, and I appreciate working with her there. She is a former prosecutor. She knows how to dig deep for this information, and she had a good staff. She also was very helpful to us in helping to enforce the subpoenas. I will let her tell the story, but this is really incredible. We knew this one website, backpage.com, was engaged in this effort because we heard about it all over the country. In my home State of Ohio, women and girls would say they were trafficked on backpage. If I talked to a dozen victims or survivors, 10 would say backpage. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children said that 75 percent were backpage. Another group said: No, it is 80 percent. In other words, we knew this was happening, but we couldn't get the information because although we subpoenaed documents and subpoenaed their testimony, they refused to show up and refused to give us documents. We had to go through an extraordinary process. I will let Senator McCaskill talk about it, but for the first time in 21 years, this Senate did something that was critical to our investigation. I want to thank her for her hard work, and I would like to yield time to her to talk about it.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I strongly urge my colleagues to join us in supporting this legislation. Most of you are cosponsors already. It strikes the right balance. It helps to allow victims to get the justice they deserve and, lastly, to hold these websites accountable through prosecution, while at the same time protecting the free and open internet. I would like to yield my remaining time to my coauthor and colleague Senator Blumenthal.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, last night I came to the floor to talk about legislation we are debating in the Senate this week that has to do with combating human trafficking, an issue that every Senator in the Chamber cares about. Last night, I talked about some of the women and children who have been exploited online, their stories--some of the heartbreaking stories. This opportunity we have before us is to pass legislation that addresses that very directly because we are seeing in this country, in this century, unbelievably, an increase in trafficking right now. The experts all say it is for one primary reason; that is, because the trafficking is moved online. The ruthless efficiency of the internet, the dark side of the internet--Mr. President, you have been involved with this issue in our committee. As you know, we spent a couple of years coming to this point, an 18-month investigation of what is happening online, why it is happening, and then coming up with a legislative solution. The reports of human trafficking to one of the major anti-trafficking groups in the country, called Polaris, through their hotline and through their text line, have increased 842 percent over the past 10 years. This is consistent across the board in talking to other experts. There is this increase. When they look at it, where they see it is happening is online. Victims have told me, have told you and other Members, this has now moved from the street to the smartphone, from the street corner to the internet. According to National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, nearly 75 percent of the child trafficking reports it receives from the public involve one single website; that is, backpage. That is why we spend a lot of time looking into backpage, why this was happening, and how we could address it. According to Shared Hope International--another advocacy group--the number is even higher than 75 percent. We researched this through a process that many in this body were involved with. Claire McCaskill was the ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee On Investigations. We investigated that. I see she is on the floor now. She and I, along with our subcommittee, along with you, Mr. President, and other members of the full committee, looked into this issue. What we found was even more shocking than we expected. We knew people were being trafficked online by this website. We knew they had to be complicit with some of this. What we didn't know was they were actually taking ads and altering the ads, editing the ads to try to hide the fact that people were selling underaged girls online. As they put it, they were cleaning the ads for illegal transactions and then covering up the evidence of these crimes in order to increase their profits. Last night, I talked about three brave mothers who shared the tragic stories of their daughters who were exploited and sold for sex on backpage.com. Their daughters were between the ages of 14 and 16 when they were trafficked. Kubiiki Pride was one of the women we talked about. She is also part of a documentary called ``I am Jane Doe.'' It tells the stories of her family and other families. It is a powerful, powerful presentation, and it is powerful in that you can feel their frustration, feel their pain. It is not easy to see, but it is important to see, and I recommend it. You can go on Netflix and find ``I am Jane Doe.'' Unfortunately, for those mothers and countless others, backpage has gotten away with this. It is not because people haven't tried to sue them, prosecutors haven't tried to go after them; it is because the courts have consistently said they are shielded from prosecution, they are shielded from these lawsuits. They are shielded by a Federal law, one we passed in this Chamber 21 years ago. It is called the Communications Decency Act. It was a well-intended law. In 1996, the focus was, when the internet was in its infancy, trying to ensure there could be freedom of the internet. Ironically, part of the original intention of the Communications Decency Act was to protect children from indecent material on the internet by letting websites remove and block some of that explicit material. Now that same law is being used as a shield by online sex traffickers who promote and engage in this with immunity. This Federal law is being used by websites to get away with something that would be illegal, criminal if they were to do it on the street corner. Congress did not intend this broad immunity, but numerous courts across the country have made it clear their hands are tied because of the illegal precedents that have been set the way the courts have interpreted this law. As the lawmaking branch of the Federal Government, it is up to us to fix this injustice. No one else can do it. One of the Federal courts said this cannot be fixed by litigation; it has to be fixed by legislation. That is why America's district attorneys, 50 of the State attorneys general in this country, judges all over the country, and many others have called on Congress to amend the Communications Decency Act and fix this injustice. In one of the most direct calls for congressional action yet, in August of last year, a Sacramento judge cited the broad Communications Decency Act in dismissing pimping charges against backpage.com. The court opinion stated: ``If and until Congress sees fit to amend the immunity law, the broad reach of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act even applies to those alleged to support the exploitation of others by human trafficking.'' This judge issued an invitation to Congress to act. Others have as well. Websites that knowingly sell vulnerable women and children for sex are profiting and getting away with sex trafficking because of a Federal law. It is up to Congress to do the right thing, to fix this loophole. That is why my coauthor, Richard Blumenthal, who is on the floor this evening, and I introduced the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA, alongside a bipartisan group of four other original cosponsors: Senator John McCain, Senator Claire McCaskill, Senator John Cornyn, and Senator Heidi Heitkamp. Soon, others joined us. In that first day, we had 24 cosponsors, bipartisan. Soon, we had a majority of Republicans and majority of Democrats cosponsoring this legislation. I want to thank those five original cosponsors because they helped us put together legislation that was targeted, focused, and actually fixes the problem. SESTA will provide justice for victims of online sex trafficking and hold accountable the websites that knowingly facilitate these crimes by making two very narrowly focused changes to Federal law. First, it allows victims to get the justice they deserve by removing the Communications Decency Act's broad liability protections for a narrow set of bad actors, specifically for websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking crimes. Second, it will allow State prosecutors and State attorneys general to prosecute these websites that violate Federal trafficking laws. SESTA says if you are violating sex trafficking laws and you are doing it knowingly, you are facilitating it, then you have to be held to account. That is common sense. This bill includes legislation from the House side that creates new criminal penalties. It creates a new Federal crime for websites that have the intent to promote or facilitate illegal prostitution. All of these changes will help to hold bad actors accountable while doing nothing to impair the free internet. In fact, SESTA will protect websites that do not actively and knowingly engage in online sex trafficking. We do that by preserving the Communications Decency Act's Good Samaritan provision, which protects good actors who proactively block, and screen for, offensive material, thus shielding them from frivolous lawsuits. SESTA's fair, commonsense approach is why this bill has an extraordinary coalition of support. National law enforcement organizations, including the Fraternal Order of Police, faith-based groups, the civil rights community, major businesses, even including a number of tech companies, support this legislation. Most importantly, anti-trafficking advocates and trafficking survivors are the ones who support SESTA. They are the ones we listened to when we drafted this legislation. They are the folks back in Ohio, back in Connecticut--back in our States--who came to us and talked to us about this issue. They are the ones we not just listened to but actually worked with to help draft something that would work to close this loophole. This bill makes all the sense in the world, and it will do its part in helping to close this gap, in helping to deal, in this century, in this country with the amazing ability that people have to exploit someone online criminally and not be held liable. I thank Leader Mitch McConnell for his leadership, for his commitment to combat sex trafficking, and for putting this bill on the floor for a vote. I thank Senator John Thune, who chairs the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, and Bill Nelson, who is the ranking member. They held a hearing on this bill and marked it up, and it addressed some of the concerns that had been expressed by the tech community. Here in the Senate, we now have over 60 cosponsors. This has not been an issue of politics or partisanship. It has been an issue of the heart. It is about preventing exploitation. It is about providing justice. There are some in this Chamber who will want to change this legislation over the next couple of days as we debate it. I have a great deal of respect for my colleague from Oregon, Senator Ron Wyden. I talked about him last night on the floor. I talked about the work he has done to combat human trafficking. I talked about the legislation I did with him to provide better data for sex trafficking, which was his legislation. He was also a leader in passing the Communications Decency Act, which we are amending through this legislation. I understand he is passionate about that bill that passed 21 years ago. We took a very targeted approach here, which is why the Internet Association, which represents much of the tech community--not all but much of it--actually endorses our efforts. This is the Senate's immediate opportunity to help stop online sex trafficking while protecting a free and open internet. It is the right balance. It has already passed the House of Representatives. The White House has shown a commitment to it and is willing to sign the legislation. Now it is the Senate's turn to act. So let me tell you where I stand. I stand with law enforcement officials all around the country and with prosecutors all around the country who have asked us to pass this legislation to give them the tools they need to stop this exploitation. I stand with Kubiiki Pride, whom I talked about earlier, Nacole S., Yvonne Ambrose, and the mothers across the country who have had their children exploited at the hands of online sex traffickers. I stand with the young women and children I have met in Dayton and Columbus and Akron and Toledo and Cincinnati and Cleveland--all over Ohio--who are sex trafficking survivors, who are victims who want justice. I know that, together, we will all stand on the right side of history when the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act is voted on, has passed this Chamber, and eventually becomes law so as to immediately help provide justice for these victims. Justice cannot be seen, but its absence is felt. Those who have been trafficked online, who see the websites that have knowingly facilitated in this prosper and escape legal consequences, are the ones who have experienced real injustice. They have felt that injustice. We can right this wrong. Let's pass the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act to provide these victims the justice they deserve. I notice again, as I mentioned earlier, the coauthor of this legislation--my colleague--is on the floor. He is a former Federal prosecutor. He has dealt with these issues both as a prosecutor and as a legislator. We are the cochairs and cofounders of the Caucus to End Human Trafficking, which we started 6 or 7 years ago. I thank him for his work on this important legislation. I yield my time to Senator Blumenthal.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I know there are other Members who are interested in speaking. Let me just say, Senator Blumenthal's role as a prosecutor has informed him; therefore, the legislation is better for it. We just heard what Senator Blumenthal said. He understands this bill inside and out and the fact that there are well-meaning amendments that are being offered that would derail this legislation, which is something we want to avoid. We want to get this to the President's desk for his signature and begin to save people. I notice my other colleague, Senator McCaskill, whom I mentioned earlier a couple of times, is on the floor. She was the ranking Democrat on the subcommittee that investigated this issue of looking at the websites and that came up with not just how it was happening and why it was happening but a legislative response. I yield a few minutes to Senator McCaskill.

Mr. PORTMAN. Yes.

Mr. PORTMAN. I thank Senator McCaskill, Senator Blumenthal, and the other Members who came to speak. We will continue this dialogue tomorrow on the floor before passage. I yield back.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, we just had a vote in this Chamber on a very significant piece of legislation. It was the motion to proceed to it. It was agreed to with good Republican and Democratic majorities, with both sides of the aisle supporting moving to this debate. Because we have cosponsors from both sides of the aisle, I feel confident that we will get to an end point, and we must. This issue of trafficking human beings is something the Senate must stand up against, particularly because there is a Federal law that now permits trafficking online that otherwise would be considered a criminal act. I want to talk a little about that legislation tonight. We probably will not have the final vote until Wednesday, and some of the information I will provide tonight will be setting the reasons, the basis for doing this legislation. Then, between now and Wednesday, we will have to learn more about the specifics of it, what is happening online, and how the U.S. Senate can step in and provide the legislation to remediate what is an obvious problem to anyone who looks at this issue. Human trafficking is such an egregious crime. We all, I hope, agree with that. It is also a very lucrative crime--$150 billion a year is the estimate, and that is probably second only to the drug trade in terms of the amount of money involved. Think about this. This is selling human beings. The Senate has taken steps in this body in a bipartisan way over the past 6 or 7 years to focus on this issue, and I certainly commend my colleagues for that. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, and I, as a Republican, started a bipartisan caucus to stop human trafficking about 6 years ago. We started with the two of us, and now there are a couple of dozen. There are many Members who are engaged and involved in this. Over those past 6 years, the Senate has passed legislation to increase the penalties on those who buy children for sex. For the first time in a decade and a half, we increased the Federal penalties. We have helped to stop international trafficking by U.S. Government contractors overseas with legislation that was signed into law. We have helped with regard to finding missing children by requiring for the first time that those missing children have a photograph attached to them. Unbelievably, until that legislation, most kids in my home State of Ohio and other States who went missing did not have the information provided to law enforcement and others--people who work in shelters, people who are in the juvenile justice system--to be able to find those children. Why is that so important? Because, as you can imagine, kids who go missing are sometimes the most vulnerable to being trafficked. We also passed legislation to improve the data on trafficking. There is legislation called the Sex Trafficking Data and Response Act, which we passed in this body to provide better information about this problem so we could come up with better solutions by understanding what is going on. Trafficking is in the shadows. It is very profitable, but it is an illicit activity. So that legislation was critical. By the way, the primary author of that legislation was Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. Senator Wyden will probably be on this floor over the next couple of days talking about some of the concerns he has about the online legislation we have, but I want you to know that Senator Wyden has been out front on opposing trafficking through this Sex Trafficking Data and Response Act. I was the lead Republican on that legislation, so I worked with him, and I commend him for that. We also passed legislation to change the paradigm in Federal law and treat these children who are trafficked as victims rather than as criminals. The key is to get these young people into treatment, longer term recovery, and deal with what is, as you can imagine, a very traumatic situation--often related to drugs as well, so drug treatment. Something that I think is perhaps the most important thing we can do is to understand that these are victims who, in order to get back on their feet, need to be taken from the criminal justice system and put into the kind of treatment they need. Despite efforts here in the Senate--and by others around the country, by the way--to deal with this trafficking issue and raise an awareness of it, unbelievably today, as we stand here in this country, we are seeing an increase in one type of trafficking, and that is sex trafficking. You might ask, how could that be possible? We passed all this legislation to help. We have gotten increased consciousness about the issue. People are more aware of the problem, and certainly there is a consensus that this is something we ought to crack down on. Yet it is happening. I will tell you what the experts say. They say it is happening for one simple reason, and that is that more and more women and children are being sold online--the ruthless efficiency of the internet. So that is where this legislation focuses, and it focuses there because that is where we see the problem. Traffickers are using the internet to sell women and children, and we have a responsibility to act. If we don't act, we will allow a Federal law that was passed by this body 21 years ago, which I think inadvertently has created part of the problem by shielding these websites, to remain. I will talk more about this later in the week as we get into the specifics of our legislation and why it would address the problem, but the bottom line is that we have a real problem. The anti-trafficking group Polaris--we recently received its 2017 report. The report illustrates the true nature of the crisis. This is the heat chart put up by Polaris. It shows the locations of cases reported to the National Human Trafficking Hotline last year alone, in 2017. As we can see--and this explains why we see such strong, bipartisan support for our legislation--this is happening everywhere, in every State in the Union. Unfortunately, it is increasing, not decreasing, despite all the efforts locally and even here at the Federal level. The national hotline that Polaris runs--and I hope to be at that hotline, by the way, later this week, as they are opening a new facility and expanding what they are doing--experienced a 13-percent increase in reported cases nationwide just last year. So despite all the efforts, they are actually seeing an increase. In my home State of Ohio alone, 371 cases of human trafficking were reported to the hotlines. Across the country, their hotlines handled a record 8,759 cases in 2017, up from 7,737 reported cases in 2016. Again, these are only the cases that are reported. That doesn't mean there aren't many, many more cases out there that are not reported to the hotlines. In the 10 years they have operated these hotlines, by the way, human trafficking reports have increased 842 percent. Again, it is unbelievable that this is happening in this country in this century and increasing. I chair the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. A couple of years ago, being interested in this issue, we started to talk to some of the experts around the country. I met with people back home-- particularly the victims of trafficking and some of the survivors--and I kept hearing the same thing from everybody, whether it was the advocacy groups for those being trafficked, law enforcement, or the social service agencies that are helping to treat these women and girls who are dealing with the trauma we talked about earlier. The one thing I kept hearing was the word ``backpage.'' That is just one website, but it seemed as though there were a lot of people being trafficked on that one website. I certainly heard it back home, where these women and girls said to me: Rob, this has moved from the street corner to the smartphone, and backpage is where I was trafficked. Nearly 75 percent of all child trafficking reports that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children receives from the public involved backpage--75 percent of the reports. Another anti-trafficking organization called Shared Hope International says that service providers working with child sex- trafficking victims have reported that more than 80 percent of their clients were bought and sold on backpage. We talked earlier about how lucrative this business is, but one website seems to have practically monopolized it. With that knowledge, in 2015 the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Ranking Member Claire McCaskill from Missouri and me, conducted an investigation. We spent 18 months researching this. We looked at every angle of this issue, and specifically we looked into how backpage operates. It wasn't easy because backpage was not willing to cooperate, as you can imagine. What we did find was that the company was far more complicit in these crimes than we had previously thought. We subpoenaed backpage for their company documents, and they refused to comply. When you refuse to comply with a subpoena around here, normally we can kind of tell people: Well, if you don't comply, we will bring the full weight of the criminal law on you. They still wouldn't comply. So we had to come to the floor of the U.S. Senate to enforce the subpoenas, which hadn't been done in 21 years around here. Fortunately, when we made our case to our colleagues here in the Senate, everyone in the Senate said: Yes, let's be sure they do comply by taking this to the criminal justice system and allowing our lawyers here to take this case. So we did. We thought, well, we will win a case at the district court level, which we did, and that will be it. No, they appealed that. We won a case at the circuit court level, and we thought that was it. No, they appealed that. Are you getting the drift here that they did not want to supply these documents and did not want to testify? Finally, we took it all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the Supreme Court agreed with us and told them that they had to comply, with the threat of criminal sanctions if they did not. Having won that, we then found ourselves in possession of over 1 million pages of documents. In other words, they flooded us with documents, and our lawyers did a good job going through them. Through this investigation, we found what some of us had kind of thought might be the case, which was that this company was actually complicit. In other words, they knew what they were doing, and they were knowingly facilitating criminal sex trafficking of vulnerable women and children. They actually coached traffickers on how to edit the adult classified ads to post so-called clean ads for these illegal transactions. Then, of course, they would cover up evidence of those crimes in order to increase their own profits. In 2006, as an example, backpage executives instructed staff to edit the text of adult ads--not to take them down, mind you, but to edit them--which is exactly how they facilitated this type of trafficking. By October 2010, backpage executives had a formal process in place, we learned through all these documents, of both manual and automated deletion of incriminating words and phrases in ads. This is an email from one of backpage's executives in 2010. It says: I'm attaching a spreadsheet with the most current list of coded items to be stripped out. Email your lists to me by the end of the day. . . . Thanks. In other words, they were telling these people who were posting ads: Oh, you can't say this word or that word because then law enforcement will know that we are engaged in selling underaged girls online. So they told them to take out those words. It is unbelievable. What kinds of words were stripped out of the ads, allowing sex trafficking posts to stay up without violating the posting words? These are the kinds of words they took out: ``teenage,'' ``little girl,'' ``school girl.'' ``Cheerleader'' was one of them. For those of you who are literary types, one was ``Lolita,'' which is a novel about an underaged girl and an older man, and also ``fresh'' and ``AMBER Alert.'' These are the kinds of people we are dealing with here. Once these incriminating words were removed, the posts could then go on the website. That is how backpage coached the traffickers on how to get away with their crimes. Again, this filter didn't stop the ads, even though they knew it was illegal activity; they only edited them to try to hide that. So it didn't change what was advertised--the fact that these were underaged girls; they only edited the way it was advertised. Of course, this did nothing to stop the criminal activity, but it facilitated it knowingly. The incentive? Why would backpage go through all of this? Quite simply, profits. This is a very profitable enterprise. What is the cost of these crimes? It is very profitable, but the cost is human dignity, trauma. The cost is far more than money; it is suffering and sometimes human life. I have heard stories about this. I know my colleagues in the Senate have heard stories about it, and that is why there is so much support for this legislation across the country. These individual stories are compelling, they are powerful, and they are heartbreaking. Imagine for a moment that your daughter is missing. She has been gone for several weeks. She is 14 years old. Someone says: You ought to look on this website called backpage. So you do. You look on backpage--you are a mom--and you find your daughter. This is the story of Kubiiki Pride and M.A. She told her story bravely before our Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. She told us the details, and we were able to use that as part of our investigation and to come up with a legislative response. She said she actually told backpage--she called them and said: I found my daughter. She has been missing for weeks. She is on your website. Thank you for taking down the ad and helping me to connect with my daughter. As you can imagine, these were sexually explicit photographs of a 14- year-old girl. She didn't know whether she was alive or dead, so she was excited to find her but appalled by what she saw, as any of us would be. What did backpage say? We can't take down the ad because you didn't pay for it, did you? She said: Of course, I didn't pay for it; she is my daughter. That is the level of evil we are talking about. This is another story of another brave individual who has come forward. This is Nacole, the mom, and J.S. Nacole also bravely testified in front of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. J.S. was a 15-year-old when she ran away. She loved her family, and she wrote them a 5-page letter saying how much she loved them, but she chose to leave the safety of her family and home, and she ended up in a homeless shelter for teens. A 22-year-old woman who was posing as a teen there approached her and said, ``I can help you make some money'' and then introduced her to a pimp, who then sold her on backpage. For more than 3 months, she was sold online multiple times a day. Finally, an undercover police officer posing as a customer rescued her. Thankfully, he did, because for some many of the girls, the story goes on and sometimes ends in a very tragic way. This is Yvonne Ambrose. Yvonne actually testified before the Commerce Committee. She and her mom did a beautiful job talking about her heartbreak and her tragic encounter with backpage. Yvonne got a call on Christmas Eve in 2016 that every parent dreads. It was about her daughter Desiree. They said in the call that her 16-year-old daughter had been murdered after being exploited and sold for sex on backpage.com. One of the backpage customers apparently was the one who murdered her beautiful daughter. Yvonne is honoring Desiree's memory by working with us to try to hold these websites accountable, and Kubiiki and Nacole are fighting for justice. These are only three examples tonight, but there are so many others and so many I have experienced back home. Again, these are heartbreaking stories. One girl told me she started to be trafficked at age 9 by her father. Some others have told me of not having parents at home, being in foster homes and leaving the foster homes either when they were emancipated at age 18 or earlier and the horrible situation they found themselves in. I have had the opportunity to meet with survivors in cities around Ohio--in Dayton at Oasis House, in Columbus at Alvis, in Akron, Toledo, Cincinnati, and Cleveland. The majority of these young women tell me the same thing about backpage. Usually there are drugs involved as well that create a dependency. Unbelievably, for years, these websites have gotten away with this because when parents like Yvonne, Kubiiki, or Nacole file a lawsuit for damages to try to stop what is going on, they are told: We are immune. When the prosecutors in these local communities step up and ask: ``How could this illegal activity be going on? This is illegal to do on the street corners, certainly it is illegal to do online,'' the judges say: We are immune. We will get into this later as to why that happens, how it happens, and what we are doing about it in this legislation. I look forward to that discussion. I look forward to the debate on the Senate floor as to how we came up with a very targeted and very specific approach to this that doesn't interfere with the freedom of the internet at all, but it does stop activity that never was imagined. When Congress passed a law 21 years ago, it never imagined it would permit this kind of criminal activity online. Tonight I thank those families who had the courage to step forward, tell their stories publicly, and channel their grief into something constructive, which is to come up with a legislative solution that helps address this problem so the next 14-year-old daughter or 16-year- old daughter does not find herself in these same horrible situations, with all the trauma and all the heartbreak that occurs. Justice cannot be seen, but its absence can be felt, and that is what is happening now, an absence of justice. Those who have been trafficked online only see the websites that knowingly facilitated it to prosper and escape legal consequences. That has to stop. That is an injustice to me. I look forward to further debate again this week. I look forward to the vote on Wednesday. If we can pass the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, we will make a difference. We will save lives. We will save women, girls, and boys from going through this traumatic experience and instead enable them to achieve their God-given potential in life. I yield back.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise today to talk about the issue before the Senate, and I am very pleased the Senate is finally taking up this legislation. It has to do with stopping sex trafficking specifically--a growing scourge in our country and really a stain on our national character--which is girls, women being sold online. The legislation is called the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act. It includes the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA. That has gone through a process here in the Senate. We had hearings on it. We had a markup. This is an issue many of us have been working on for many months--in fact, for the last couple of years--doing the investigations to come up with how to deal with this problem. I am very pleased that we now have the opportunity here in the Senate to take up this legislation and begin the process of turning the tide, changing this horrific situation where, in this country, in this century, we actually have an increase in the trafficking of human beings--specifically women and children being trafficked online. I thought the speech earlier by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell laid this out very well. He talked about the fact that there has been an eightfold increase, in the most recent data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; that is, between 2010 and 2015, there was an eightfold increase in the incidence of trafficking. He also talked about the fact that this is growing because of this growth of the internet, that the internet--specifically this one website--has caused this increase that Congress has the ability to address through a change in a Federal law that can be targeted and focused and can make a huge difference in the lives of those who would be trafficked and undergo the intense trauma that results. I am very pleased we are taking up this legislation. I thank Majority Leader McConnell for putting the bill on the floor. I know we have an important omnibus spending bill coming up, and I know the Senate needs to focus on that, but first let's get this commonsense legislation passed. Let's take this opportunity to do something that is actually going to help immediately on this issue of sex trafficking. I also thank Senator John Thune. He is the chairman of the Commerce Committee, which had the hearings and marked up this legislation. I also thank his colleague, Ranking Member Bill Nelson, for his work on this. We held a powerful hearing. I had a chance to testify there and testify about the work we had done in another committee investigating this issue. We heard from victims, and we heard from experts. At the end of the day, that vote in the Commerce Committee was unanimous-- Republicans and Democrats alike saying: We get it. We need to address this issue. We have had a lot of collaboration on this over the last couple of years. I would say it has been a truly nonpartisan effort, not just a bipartisan effort, which is rare around this place. In particular, I would like to thank the coauthor of the legislation we are dealing with, and that is Richard Blumenthal, who, as a former prosecutor, understands these issues because he prosecuted sex trafficking cases. I also thank Senator Claire McCaskill because it was Senator McCaskill and I who headed up the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which looked into this issue. We spent a year and a half studying it, and we were able to find out shocking information about what is going on online. I also thank Senator John Cornyn, Senator Heidi Heitkamp, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Senator Ted Cruz. They are a group of Senators who were the initial cosponsors of this legislation and have helped us put this legislation together in a way that addresses the issue in a very focused and targeted way, so we are going to actually have the result we are looking for but without affecting what some were concerned about, which was the freedom of the internet. We all believe in the freedom of the internet, but we also know that committing these kinds of horrific crimes on the internet has to be something people are held accountable for. I want to take a moment to recognize a couple of other leaders in this effort, one of whom is a Senator, and the other is his spouse, and that is Cindy and John McCain. I hope they are watching these proceedings over the next week as we take up this legislation, debate it, and I hope pass it on the floor of the Senate, because they have been very involved. John McCain from the start, as one of the leaders on this issue here in the Senate, helped us put together the legislation. He was with me on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations as we looked into this matter. John can't be with us here on the floor, but I know his presence is felt. I will tell my colleagues that it is felt by me, as well as the influence he has had on this legislation and on many of us in bringing up this issue. One reason he brings up this issue a lot is that he has a spouse who is passionate about it and has spent a lot of time working on it. The McCain Institute has specialized on this issue of human trafficking, and Cindy McCain has been a tireless advocate globally on this issue. So I thank both Cindy and John for their inspiration. Again, I am confident that as we get it across the finish line here, they will be celebrating with us. We have 68 cosponsors of this legislation now, and, again, for those who follow scorecards around here, that is unusual. We have a majority of Republicans, and we have a majority of Democrats. We have a situation here where everybody is affected by it in their States. They get it, and they understand that this is a Federal responsibility to change this law because it is a Federal law that creates this opening for websites to engage in this kind of behavior without accountability. They are effectively shielded from prosecutions or from lawsuits. This legislation takes away that shield. We have heard from the FBI, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children; we have heard from Polaris, which runs the national tip line on human trafficking. All kinds of experts have told us that trafficking is not just increasing, but it is increasing because of the ruthless efficiency of the internet. One website--backpage.com--is involved in the majority of online sex trafficking. One anti-trafficking organization has said that backpage is involved in about 75 percent of the online trafficking reports it receives from the public. Another organization, Shared Hope International, says it is even more than that. So think about that. We have this increase in trafficking. It is primarily being caused by this movement from the street corner to the smartphone, as victims have told me back home, and there is one website that has the majority of this activity. That is what we studied. As we looked into it further, Senator McCaskill and I were shocked to find out that not only is this activity going on on this website, but they were complicit in the sense that they knowingly facilitated criminal sex trafficking, including coaching users--people who were placing ads with them--to post clean ads so that they wouldn't indicate--which was very obvious in the initial ads that were presented--that these were underage girls. As an example, taking out words like ``schoolgirl'' or ``cheerleader''--they told them to do that so they could still place the ads; in other words, get the money for the ads. As you can imagine, this is a very lucrative business. So they were saying that they needed to clean it up. That practice covered up evidence of these crimes. It actually also made it harder for law enforcement to follow up on these cases. They did it for a very simple reason. They wanted the ads because they increased their profits, but obviously they had an incredibly detrimental impact, and still do, on women and children around our country. I spoke earlier this week on the floor about Kubiiki Pride because she testified before us and she is also part of a documentary called ``I Am Jane Doe.'' If you are interested in this issue, check it out. It is on Netflix. Kubiiki Pride told us this alarming story of a mom whose daughter goes missing. She can't find her. She was told to look on this site called backpage. She does, and she sees her daughter's photographs there--sexually explicit photographs. She calls backpage and says: That is my daughter; she has been missing. She is 14 years old, and she is on your website. Thank you for taking down the ad. Their response: Did you pay for the ad? She said: No, of course I didn't pay for it. I am the mother. They said: We can't take down the ad because you didn't pay for it. That story tells us how evil these websites are. Let me tell you another story about Yvonne Ambrose. Yvonne testified before the Commerce Committee, and you could have heard a pin drop when she was telling her story. Her daughter was 16 years old and she was trafficked on backpage.com. She was sold for sex on backpage.com at 16 years old. Yvonne got a call on Christmas Eve 2016, the call no parent ever wants to get. The call was from law enforcement saying that her daughter, Desiree, who was being trafficked at the time on backpage.com, had been murdered. Yvonne is honoring Desiree's memory by getting engaged in this issue and helping us to pass this legislation. I appreciate her challenge and her grief. But she is also sure that this legislation is the thing that would have kept girls like her daughter from getting involved in this, because when she went after backpage to try to hold them accountable, she was told: I am sorry; they have immunity under Federal law. That Federal law, by the way, is called the Communications Decency Act. It was put in place with good intentions to help protect the freedom of the internet. It protects websites from liability when users put something on their site, but it was never meant to protect criminal activity. It has been misinterpreted, in my view, by the courts, but it also needs to be clarified, because it is not as clear as it should be, and that is what our legislation does. This legislation, by the way, was enacted back in 1996--22 years ago, when the internet was in its infancy. There needed to be something to help provide protection from liability. But, unfortunately, it has been used as a shield by these criminals to be able to sell women and children online without accountability. The same law that was actually written back then was also focused, in part, on keeping indecent material--pornography--from going to children, ironically, and now it is being used to shield these traffickers. I know Congress did not intend that broad immunity, and I know we need to fix it. By the way, the district attorneys around the country agree with us on this--prosecutors. They have asked us to change this law. Their associations have even been involved in this issue. Fifty State attorneys general have written to us, asking us to do this, including, by the way, some former State attorneys general who are now Members of this body. In the most blatant call on Congress yet, we had a court in Sacramento, CA, say: You have to fix this law because, otherwise, we can't do anything to keep people from exploiting women and children online. A number of courts have said this and basically have called on Congress--welcomed us to enter into it. The one in California said: ``If and until Congress sees fit to amend the immunity law, the broad reach of the Communications Decency Act even applies to those alleged to support the exploitation of others by allowing trafficking.'' In other words, they are asking Congress to step in and do something. That is what this does. It allows online sex trafficking victims to get the justice they deserve and it allows prosecutors to hold these websites accountable. We do it with two very narrow changes. First, allowing these victims to get the justice they deserve by removing the broad liability protections for a narrow set of bad actors. In fact, we actually say that for the good actors, there is a Good Samaritan provision: If you want to clean up your website and get the offensive material off, you are protected. Second, it does allow for the State prosecutors to go after these websites, which they can't do now. So it takes the Federal standard--it is not a new standard; it is Federal law, which is already a criminal act--and says, allow these State prosecutors, these State attorneys general, to prosecute these websites that violate these Federal laws. It is incredibly important to pass this. We did it narrowly. We have a knowing standard here; in other words, to be affected by this, you have to knowingly be facilitating, supporting, or assisting sex trafficking. We did that because we wanted to be sure it was focused on this issue and not affecting the broader freedom of the internet. We have a lot of support now. A couple of weeks ago the White House announced its support for this legislation. I mentioned that 68 Senators are now supporting it. It passed in the House of Representatives about 10 days ago with over 300 votes. It has support from around the country, most importantly. All of the groups are focused on this issue of how to avoid women and children from getting caught in this web of human trafficking and then how to help them when they get out to provide for the important recovery efforts that are needed from the trauma of this. Those groups, of course, are strongly supportive. Law enforcement has been terrific. The Fraternal Order of Police stepped up early on in strong support of this legislation. So have all of the other law enforcement groups represented here in Washington through their national offices. We appreciate their help. We appreciate the fact that parents have been willing to come forward and tell these difficult stories, as was the case of Kubiiki Pride, as was the case of Yvonne Ambrose, whom I talked about earlier, and her daughter, Desiree. They told their stories from their heart in order to get Congress to wake up and do the right thing. We now need to do that. This legislation is now before this body. We expect to have a vote next week on it. We need to do all we can to address this stain on our national character. We need to do all we can to provide these victims the justice they deserve. We need to do all we can to ensure that we stop the selling of women and children online. Thank you. I yield the floor.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, today I want to talk about the tragedy of human trafficking. I want to talk about it today because this is an issue that I hope the entire U.S. Senate will take up within the next week. We have legislation on which we have worked on a bipartisan basis over the last couple of years, and we have an opportunity late this week or early next week to address this growing problem. I have spent a lot of time focused on this issue over the last couple of years because of the growth of trafficking and my sense that we can do something constructive about it. Others have been involved as well. Today, I will be at the White House for a meeting that Ivanka Trump is hosting with congressional colleagues, anti-trafficking advocates, and others who have demonstrated a commitment to addressing this issue. We will talk about the need to pass this legislation, get it to the President's desk for signature, and begin to help women and children across our country who are currently being exploited online. We will probably talk about lots of different kinds of trafficking this afternoon, including work trafficking and other human trafficking, but the one I want to focus on this afternoon is sex trafficking, and the reason is that we think we have a legislative solution for addressing the biggest problem. Unbelievably, right now in this country, sex trafficking is actually increasing. That is based on all the best data we are getting from all the experts around the country. They say that it is increasing primarily for one simple reason, and that is the internet. The great increase is happening online. As some have said, this is because of the ruthless efficiency of selling people online. When I am back home in Ohio, victims tell me: Rob, this has moved from the street corner to the smartphone. There is a ruthless efficiency about it. Anti-trafficking organizations, such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Shared Hope International, and others, have told us that the majority of the online sex trafficking they encounter occurs through one single website, and that is backpage.com. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that backpage is involved in about 75 percent of the online trafficking reports it receives from the public. Shared Hope International says it is more than that. I chair the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Learning about what is going on online, we decided to do an in-depth investigation to find out what is really happening and how we could address it. We spent 18 months studying this, and studying online trafficking quickly led us to backpage.com because, again, that is where the majority of this commercial sex trafficking is occurring. What we found was really shocking. Not only was backpage--as other websites have in the past--selling women and children online, but this organization and others are actually complicit in these crimes; in other words, they knew much more than we had previously thought. We found that backpage was actually knowingly selling people online. We did this through a subpoena process that had to be approved here in the U.S. Senate because the company objected to responding to our subpoenas. For the first time in 21 years, we had to come to the U.S. Senate to get approval to actually enforce the subpoena. We then had to take it all the way to the Supreme Court because they appealed it all the way up, and we won. Through this, we were able to get about 1 million documents. We went through these documents to find out what was happening. What we learned was that this website actually was actively and knowingly involved in selling people online. When a user would post an ad that might have a word indicating that the girl they were selling was underage--for instance, it might say ``cheerleader'' or it might simply reference the age of the girl being 16, 17 years old or younger sometimes--instead of rejecting that ad, knowing that it was of course illegal, they would instead clean up the ad; in other words, they would edit out the words that indicated someone was underage. They didn't just remove the post because they didn't want to lose the revenue--and you can imagine this is a very lucrative business. They just insisted that the ad be edited. By the way, this also covered up the evidence of the crime, so it was then harder for law enforcement to find out who was involved in the selling of girls online--and underage girls. Of course, it also increased the company's profits. That is what we found in our investigation. We also found that for years and years people who had been trying to hold these websites accountable in court had failed, and they had failed and been unsuccessful because of a Federal law that, in essence, said to these websites: You have an immunity to be able to do this. You couldn't do it on the street corner, but online you have an immunity to be able to do it. I recommend a powerful documentary. It is called ``I am Jane Doe.'' You can find it on iamjanedoe.com. It is on Netflix. It tells the story of underage girls who have been exploited on backpage. It talks about the trauma they have experienced, and, finally, it also talks about their frustration with their inability to hold these websites accountable. What might surprise you is the reason these websites are not held accountable--the more we dug into it, the more it became clear--is that Washington basically passed a Federal law, which I believe has been misinterpreted by the courts, but it has been interpreted by the courts to say that these websites have no risk, that they are not liable, and that they have an immunity under Federal law. It is called the Communications Decency Act. The Communications Decency Act was enacted back in 1996, when the internet was in its infancy. It was intended to protect websites from liability based on third-party posts on that website. I understand the intention of Congress, but it now protects websites when they knowingly allow this criminal activity--the crime of sex trafficking--to occur through their site. I believe Congress meant well when enacting this law. In fact, part of its original intent was actually to protect children from indecent material on the internet by holding individuals liable for sending explicit material to those children. Now that same law is being used as a shield by websites that promote and engage in online sex trafficking with immunity. I don't believe Congress ever intended this broad liability protection for websites that actively and knowingly facilitate online sex trafficking, but the legal interpretation of the law has led to this. That is why America's district attorneys, 50 State attorneys general, judges all over the country, and so many others have called on Congress to amend this Communications Decency law and fix this injustice--really, this loophole. Last year, a Sacramento judge threw out pimping charges against backpage and directly called on Congress to act. Here is what this judge said--again, this sort of message has been repeated by other courts: ``If and until Congress sees fit to amend the immunity law, the broad reach of section 230 of the Communications Decency Act even applies to those alleged to support the exploitation of others by human trafficking.'' That is not just a suggestion; it is an invitation--an invitation to this Congress to act, calling on us to do what we were sent here to do, which is to craft laws that promote justice. For too long, victims of online sex trafficking have been denied the justice they deserve, and now we have the opportunity here in the Senate--I hope within the next week--to fix that. Last August, I introduced legislation called the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA, with a bipartisan group of 24 cosponsors, including my coauthor, Senator Richard Blumenthal, and Senators John McCain, Claire McCaskill, John Cornyn, Heidi Heitkamp, and others. SESTA would provide justice for victims of online sex trafficking and hold accountable those websites that intentionally facilitate these crimes. We do this by making two very narrowly crafted changes to Federal law. First, we remove the Communications Decency Act's broad liability protections for a narrow set of bad-actor websites that knowingly facilitate sex trafficking crimes--high standard: knowingly. Second, the legislation allows State attorneys general to prosecute websites that violate existing Federal trafficking laws. SESTA simply says that if you are violating Federal sex trafficking laws and you are knowingly facilitating it, then you have to be held to account. That seems to make all the sense in the world, and it will make a big difference for these girls and women who are being exploited online. Our bill protects websites that are doing the right thing, by the way. In fact, it preserves what is called the Good Samaritan provision of the Communications Decency Act, which protects good actors who proactively block and screen their sites for offensive material, and thus it shields them from frivolous lawsuits. I think that is appropriate. We simply carve out a very limited exception in the Communications Decency Act's liability protections for those who knowingly facilitate sex trafficking. By the way, there are already exceptions for things in this law-- exceptions for things like copyright infringement. This isn't a new idea. So unless you think protecting copyrights is more important than protecting women and children from the trauma of trafficking, you should be for this. Even those who support section 230 otherwise should strongly support this. If a prosecutor can prove in court that a website has committed these acts, SESTA allows that website to be held liable and the victims to get the justice they deserve. By the way, 68 Senators now--more than two-thirds of this body--have signed on as cosponsors of this legislation, a majority of Republicans and a majority of Democrats. That doesn't happen very often around here. The House of Representatives passed SESTA as an amendment to a broader anti-sex trafficking bill just a couple of weeks ago by an overwhelming margin--more than 300 folks. The Trump administration has endorsed this solution and again shown a commitment to the issue. So SESTA has overwhelming support from the White House, from more than 300 House Members, and from the 68 Senators who signed on to be a part of this solution. I think one reason it has gotten so much support is because of the logic of the legislation, the fact that we narrowly drew up the legislation not to affect internet freedom, to be sure we were listening to people who had concerns, but also, and more importantly, because we are all hearing about this issue back home. We are all hearing the stories, and they are powerful, they are compelling, and they are heartbreaking. Kubiiki Pride came to Congress, to our subcommittee, as we were looking into this issue and told us her story. In testimony, she said: My daughter ran away from home. She had gone missing. She had been missing for several weeks. Obviously, I was very concerned. I couldn't find her. Someone suggested that I look at this website called backpage, so I did. I found my daughter. She found her daughter--14 years old--but found her daughter in very sexually difficult photographs, horrible photographs of her beautiful daughter. So she called backpage.com and said: I am Kubiiki Pride, and that is my daughter on your website. She is 14 years old. I am so glad I found her. Thank you for taking down that ad. She is 14 years old. Do you know what the person on the other end of the phone said? They said: Did you post the ad? This is how evil these people are. She said: No, I didn't post the ad. That is my daughter. I have been trying to find her. She has been missing for several weeks. They said: If you didn't post the ad, if you didn't pay for it, you can't take it down and we won't take it down. That is what we are dealing with here. Eventually, she found her daughter, got her daughter back. She went through the proper process to be able to hold backpage accountable, and guess what. The court said: Sorry. Under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act--Congress wrote this bill--this website has immunity, even though she is 14 years old and she was being sold online. So I think that is why 68 Senators have said: Let's step up and do this. This is something we can do around here that is not partisan, that isn't about politics. It is about people. It is about human dignity. It is about ensuring that more girls like Kubiiki Pride's daughter don't have to go through this trauma, that more women and children can live out their life's purpose without having to go through this trauma. I think that is why we have been able to find so many Members who want to step up and do something here and do something that will really make a difference. So let's vote on this legislation in the next week. Let's get it signed into law so that more children and more women are not exploited through this brutally efficient online process of selling people. If we do this, we are going to be able to provide justice to those victims who deserve it, and we are going to make this world a little better place. I urge the Senate to vote this next week. For those Members who are not yet a part of this legislation, we urge you to join us. Wouldn't it be great to have everybody on board to correct this injustice, to close this loophole, and to ensure that everybody has the ability to meet their God-given purpose in life? I yield the floor. Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I want to recognize and celebrate the life of a friend, a colleague, and a trusted adviser whom we tragically lost last week. That is what Matt Niemeyer was to me, but Matt would say that he was a husband and a father first. Everything else was secondary. Matt leaves behind his beloved wife, Amy, and their two beautiful children, Anna and Peter. I first met Matt in 2005 when he was an Assistant U.S. Trade Representative. He was well known in the trade community, and he stood out as a substantive expert in his field. Matt would say that his time at USTR was the most fun he had ever had in government. That says a lot as Matt also worked on Capitol Hill for the National Republican Congressional Committee and as a congressional liaison for a number of private companies and organizations throughout his life. Matt played a key role in our successful efforts to pass the Central American Free Trade Agreement. He was a happy warrior in that he loved trade, USTR, and getting things done. I think his thick skin and constant hopefulness was a credit to his upbringing as a long-suffering and then long-celebrating Boston Red Sox fan. He always found a way to get his mission accomplished and always had a quick wit. I was lucky to remain close with Matt after our time together at USTR had ended. He would go to any length for his friends, and he was always thoughtful, kind, and jovial. He never passed at the opportunity to joke about one of his earliest experiences in politics, when he worked for the first primary opponent I ever faced. He would generously tell me how happy he was that, for one of the only times in his career, he wasn't successful in that job. While Matt is no longer with us in person, his memory lives on through his family who love him dearly and friends and colleagues like myself who will forever cherish his impact on our lives.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, finally, I want to talk about something else we were working on in Congress to create a brighter future for many Americans. I am talking about our efforts to provide justice for victims of sex trafficking and to hold accountable those online entities, those websites that knowingly facilitate these evil crimes. I am talking about this because, although this week we are focused on these reforms to Dodd-Frank to help our smaller banks make the economy stronger and help individuals and small companies, next week we hope to take up this issue of sex trafficking. We are closer than ever to getting this legislation passed, and just recently we had some good news in our bipartisan effort. The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, or SESTA, a bill I introduced with 24 Senators back in August, is gaining momentum in Congress. Last week, the House of Representatives actually offered the SESTA legislation as an amendment on the floor to a broader bill, and it passed by an overwhelming vote--over 300 votes. Just a couple of days later, the White House expressed their support for this legislation. It is now the Senate's turn to act on this critically important issue, and Leader McConnell--the leadership in the Senate--again has made a commitment to me and my colleagues that we will hold a vote on this sex trafficking legislation, the SESTA legislation, in the next couple of weeks. We now have 67 Senate cosponsors for SESTA. That is not typical around here. It is a majority of Democrats; it is a majority of Republicans--two- thirds of the Senators in this body. By the way, this is a diverse group with wide-ranging political and ideological backgrounds. They have all signed on to this legislation because they want to be part of the solution. It is a commonsense solution to what is unfortunately a growing problem here in our country and in every State represented here in this body. Unbelievably, sex trafficking is actually increasing in this country right now. In this century, in this country, sex trafficking is actually increasing. How can that be? What the experts tell us is that it is because of the online presence of these evil websites that are selling women and children online. The ruthless efficiency of social media--of the online presence of these websites--is what is causing this increase. Victims of sex trafficking in Ohio have told me, as I have met with them: Rob, this has moved from the street corner to the smartphone. One website called backpage.com is the industry leader in online sex trafficking. They are involved in nearly 75 percent of all child trafficking reports that the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children receives from the public. Seventy-five percent of the reports that this great organization receives to try to stop sex trafficking relate to this one site. The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations here in the Senate, which I chair, conducted an 18-month investigation into this issue. We looked at what the online presence was and why it was happening. We learned, of course, that backpage.com was by far the biggest problem. We found that backpage not only had the vast majority of the commercial sex traffic on their site, but they had knowingly facilitated and assisted criminal sex trafficking and covered up evidence of those crimes in order to increase their own profits. For years, unbelievably, we have allowed them to get away with it. I think that is a stain on our national character. I think we need to address it, particularly because we have the opportunity here in the Senate to change a Federal law to help stop this. Courts have consistently ruled that backpage.com and these other websites are protected by a Federal law--a law that we passed over two decades ago--called the Communications Decency Act that protects these websites from liability for crimes users commit through their site, no matter how complicit they are in those crimes. It was certainly not the intent of Congress to permit this, but that is how the courts have interpreted it. Prosecutors and courts from across the country, including 50 State attorneys general, have called on Congress to fix this injustice. In one of the most direct calls that I have seen, a Sacramento judge last year dropped pimping charges against backpage.com, stating: ``If and until Congress sees fit to amend the immunity law, the broad reach of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act even applies to those alleged to support the exploitation of others by human trafficking.'' In other words, this judge is saying that there is now an immunity--a protection under Federal law--that allows these people, even when they are knowingly involved with sex trafficking, to continue to do what they are doing. Our legislation makes two very simple changes to the Federal law that currently protects websites like backpage in an effort to restore justice. First, SESTA says that if you are violating a Federal law, the Federal law on trafficking--and that is a law that was in existence long before we started this investigation. It is a law that is well established. If you are violating the Federal law on trafficking, assisting, supporting, or facilitating sex trafficking, and if you are doing it knowingly, which is a very high standard to prove, then you can be held liable and held to account. Again, this is very narrowly targeted legislation to deal with this specific problem. Second, the legislation will allow State attorneys general--who cannot now but would be able under this legislation--to prosecute websites that violate Federal sex trafficking laws. It is very important because that is where you are going to see most of the action--at the State level, the State prosecutors. We have tailored this legislation narrowly to ensure no threat to the freedom of the internet but ensure we are getting at this problem and actually dealing with immunity in Federal law. Sex trafficking survivors, their families, and anti-trafficking advocates have shown great courage by sharing their tragic stories and personal accounts of injustice at the hands of online sex traffickers as we worked with them to develop this narrowly crafted legislation. In testimony before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and in testimony before the Commerce Committee--which unanimously endorsed this legislation--we heard from victims and their families. We heard from moms who told us about their teenage daughters having been trafficked online. One mom talked about her daughter who, at 14, was trafficked. She had been missing for 10 weeks. She finally found a photograph of her daughter on backpage. She called and said: I found my daughter. She is on your website. Thank you for taking her off your website. She is 14 years old. The person at the other end of the line from backpage said: Did you pay for the ad? The mom said: No, I didn't pay for the ad. That is my daughter. They said: Then we can't take down the ad. That is who these people are. They have shown great courage by coming forward with their stories. Now it is our turn to show courage by coming together and voting on this bill, sending it to the President's desk, and fixing this problem, fixing the Federal law to allow justice for the trafficking victims and to finally hold accountable those who knowingly facilitate these crimes. We have an opportunity to do something important here to create a better, safer, and more just society. I am hopeful that next week we will have that legislation before this body. We will have the debate. We will pass the legislation and begin to provide these victims of trafficking the justice they deserve and, most importantly, stop women and children from being exploited online. Thank you, Mr. President. I yield back my time.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, on another economic issue, I want to talk for a minute about the good news coming out of my State of Ohio with regard to the tax reform legislation. In just the past few weeks, I have visited eight separate businesses across the State talking about this issue, asking them what has been the impact of the tax reform bill, what are they doing with their savings. There are three of these I want to talk about tonight, briefly. One is a small auto parts manufacturing business in Zanesville, OH. They have three auto parts stores. One is a multinational credit card processing company headquartered in Cincinnati, OH, and one is a premier medical center in Cleveland, OH. They are very different businesses in different sectors of our economy, but all are benefiting from the tax legislation. GKM is the small auto parts store in Zanesville. They are reinstating healthcare benefits to their employees directly as a result of this tax reform bill. Under the Affordable Care Act, the company's healthcare costs increased dramatically--like so many other businesses--by double digits every year. They had a 22-percent increase in their costs in 2016, and the company went to its employees and said: We simply cannot afford to pay for this 22-percent increase on top of other double-digit increases. We don't know what to do. We are going to have to have you go out on your own and find healthcare, including in the exchanges. Now, with the money GKM Auto Parts is saving as the result of this tax reform, all of their full-time employees are once again able to get healthcare through the company, and they are very grateful, having talked to some of the employees who had to go out to the exchanges, while others chose to pay the penalty. They are really happy to have their healthcare back. These kinds of real, tangible benefits are exactly what we intended to accomplish in developing tax reform, but businesses small and large are benefiting from these pro-growth changes to the Tax Code. The second company I want to talk about is a big C corporation-- Worldpay, Inc. It is the largest credit card processing company in the world now by volume. It has about 2,000 employees in Ohio at their headquarters. I recently went to their headquarters to talk about what they were doing, and when I was there, they announced cash bonuses of $1,000 and up to $2,000 for all of their hourly employees, higher wages for their frontline positions, an increased 401(k) match, greater company investment in employee wellness and recognition programs, and significantly more charitable giving. As Worldpay's executive chair said, tax reform is ``ensuring Ohio companies like Worldpay can remain competitive and recruit the region's top talent.'' They merged recently with a foreign company. Thank goodness they stayed in Ohio, but now they are rewarded for that because, although they were punished for being a U.S. company before, now with our Tax Code changes in place, they are actually benefiting from being an American company, where it is more beneficial to make the investment here rather than, in their case, in the United Kingdom. A more competitive business tax code, an international tax code that encourages investments in this country rather than overseas, and incentives like immediate expensing that is in the Tax Code now are helping to create jobs in my home State of Ohio. It is helping Worldpay continue to be an American company and to be strong. It also is helping foreign direct investment in my home State because companies that are not American companies but foreign companies invested in Ohio are more likely to increase that investment rather than an investment somewhere else in the world because of the tax reform legislation. Immediate expensing and lower tax rates, this all helps to create good American jobs. The most recent Federal jobs report shows strong job gains and the fastest wage growth since 2009. According to a recent National Federation of Independent Business survey, the NFIB, which represents a lot of small businesses in Ohio, 32 percent of their companies now say they are going to expand. By the way, that is the highest level in the survey's history, and it is the highest level of optimism also in their survey about the future among these small businesses. A lot of that is from the increased opportunity and the optimism that comes from this tax reform legislation. One website I saw here in Washington tells us that across the country more than 400 businesses have now announced bonuses, higher wages, increased benefits, or a combination of these things as the result of the tax reform law. Four hundred is impressive, but I have to tell you it is a lot more businesses than that. I have been to small business roundtable discussions and individual businesses over the past several weeks in Ohio and talked to over two dozen individual companies--none of whom are on the list of 400 because they are not big companies that made a big public announcement--but every single one of them are taking this tax reform and the benefits they are getting from that, and they are reinvesting it into their people, their workers, their company's plant, equipment, technology, making their workers more productive. So 400 is impressive, but I know it is much larger than that. Thousands of businesses are taking advantage of this and therefore their employers are and therefore you are seeing this increased optimism. The final example I want to talk about is one that has to do with our communities. I recently visited the University Hospital Rainbow Center for Women and Children in Cleveland, OH--a really impressive new facility they are building. This is a new $26 million medical facility, and I learned during this visit that it was the new markets tax credit that was key to making this project possible. New markets is a tax incentive to spur economic growth and community redevelopment projects, and it helps to spur private investment, as it did in this case. In this Cleveland case, it spawned significant private investment from foundations and from individuals. This is something that has worked in the cities I represent in Ohio. We fought to preserve the new markets tax credit in the Senate version of the tax legislation, and the final agreement that became law has the new markets tax credit made permanent. That is critical for economic development opportunities like this new university hospital medical center I talked about. So these benefits from tax reform are not abstract. They are very real. They are extra money in your paycheck, they are more affordable healthcare coverage, they are increased investments in emerging communities, and much more. As the good news continues to roll in from tax reform, I will keep traveling Ohio, meeting with businesses, families, and workers to discuss ways tax reform can help them achieve a better economic future. A brighter future is really what our tax reform and tax cut legislation was all about.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I rise tonight to talk about the bipartisan legislation that is before the body. It is an opportunity that provides significant needed regulatory relief, primarily to smaller financial institutions like community banks and credit unions. The Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act will modernize the Federal Dodd-Frank regulations to ensure that small- and medium-sized banks, as well as credit unions, can lower their compliance costs, which will mean more loans to small businesses and better deals for their customers. For years, Dodd-Frank has hurt these smaller community banks and credit unions that have been caught up in this broader effort to rein in a select few larger financial institutions--primarily financial institutions on Wall Street. In effect, these smaller banks were caught in the web. Last week, I met with some of Ohio's community banks. I meet with them regularly, and they tell me these stories. Their view, of course, is these Dodd-Frank rules targeted at the big banks are actually hurting the little guys. Over the past several years, they have told me story after story about how their compliance costs have increased. A small bank will say they used to have one person doing compliance, but now they have three people doing compliance, and those costs get passed along to their consumers. They also say, with the redtape and regulations and rules they live under, it makes it harder for them to lend to small businesses, which is one of the problems we have today in our economy. As the economy is beginning to grow, we need to ensure that startups and people who are interested in taking a risk and may not have a lot of business experience are able to get that loan to get started. What has happened is, there has been a consolidation of these community banks because of these costs. In fact, they say one community bank is becoming insolvent every day in this country because of these big compliance costs, but others are consolidating into larger banks. That may be fine in some cases, but I like these community banks. I like the fact that these community banks are close to the people in the neighborhood, and they know the businesses that are coming to them for loans. Again, it is easier for small businesses to get loans when you actually have a banking relationship. They also are very involved in our communities. So these community banks, which are really the backbone of America's financial sector, are what this bill is primarily about. The bill on the floor this week makes it easier for them to extend credit, loans, mortgages, and provide other products and services to working families in Ohio and around the country. The legislation does more than that though. It also focuses on the regional banks in Ohio. These are banks that were not part of the financial crisis. They had nothing to do with it, but despite that, they have been required to live under the onerous systemically important financial institution rules and regulations or the SIFI designation. It has caused higher compliance costs for them. Again, it has hurt lending to Ohio businesses. In Ohio, we happened to have three very big employers in the State that are regional banks--Fifth Third Bank, Huntington Bank, and KeyBank. They are all examples of well-capitalized Ohio regional banks that will benefit from this legislation, and the benefit will go to their thousands of employees, but it will also go to their many thousands of customers. This legislation also increases important consumer protections for veterans, senior citizens, victims of fraud, and those who have fallen on tough financial times Another thing I like about the legislation that is particularly important to me is it includes a specific piece of legislation I authored to make it easier for a group called Habitat for Humanity to carry out their mission of providing safe and affordable housing to those in need. Habitat is a great organization. I volunteer at Habitat regularly. I see firsthand the great work they are doing back in my home State of Ohio. My legislation is called the Housing Opportunity Made Easier Act or HOME Act, and it simply ensures that Habitat affiliates and other organizations--nonprofits--can receive donated appraisals of the homes they build. This is a really important issue for Habitat because Dodd- Frank disallows this donated appraisal, and the affiliates have traditionally accepted the donations. That has allowed them to have lower costs. When they have to pay the appraisal fees, it increases the cost of the homes to the families that are so badly in need of affordable housing. So getting rid of this redtape is something that should be bipartisan and even nonpartisan. It has been tough for us to get this legislation moving because people have wanted to block anything that has to with Dodd-Frank, but this obviously, I hope, was inadvertent. So in this legislation we have the ability for Habitat and other nonprofits to take advantage of these donated appraisals. Getting rid of that redtape is going to help create more affordable housing for families in need. I want to thank Chairman Crapo for including that legislation. I also want to congratulate him and his colleagues on the Banking Committee for their bipartisan work on this legislation, dealing with the very real problem we have, which is the burdens, the redtape, the compliance costs, and coming up with a balanced product that can be supported on both sides of the aisle, get through the House, get through the Senate, get to the President for signature, and begin to improve this economy even more.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I would like to talk today about two brave Ohioans who were tragically killed while serving their community and all of us. On Saturday, February 10, Ohio lost two of its finest when Westerville Police Officers Anthony Morelli and Eric Joering were fatally shot responding to a 9-1-1 call. They rushed to the scene. When they arrived, they were under fire. Officer Joering was killed at the scene. Officer Morelli died in surgery later that day. Officer Morelli was a 29-year veteran of the Westerville Police Department. He leaves behind his wife Linda, their daughter Beth, and son Chris. Officer Joering was a 16-year veteran of the Westerville Police Department, where he was a K-9 officer partnered with his dog Sam. Eric loved working with Sam, but what he really loved were his kids and his wife. His most important job, he said, was being a husband and a father. He is survived by his wife Jami and his beautiful daughters Eva, Elena, and Ella. Both men were loved and respected members of the Westerville community, and both will be sorely missed. I had a chance to talk to a number of their fellow officers, their colleagues, over the weekend and heard many stories about them, their bravery, and their commitment to service. I also had the great honor to meet with the families of both of these fallen officers over this past weekend in Columbus, OH. Linda Morelli and Jami Joering are incredibly strong women and incredibly strong mothers. I expressed my thanks from all Ohioans for their husbands' service. I also had a chance to talk to four of the five children about their fathers' exemplary service; that they had fallen in service to all of us and how much we appreciated them. The U.S. Capitol has flags that are flown for special occasions, and two flags were flown in honor of the sacrifices these two good men made protecting the people of Ohio. Throughout this tragic situation, I will say the people of Central Ohio and, frankly, across the Nation have stepped up in big ways to support and assist these two families. I am encouraged by the kindness and generosity we have seen. I want to take a moment to just say that these two brave officers, Tony Morelli and Eric Joering, were the best. They made the ultimate sacrifice for all of us. Today, we hold their families up in prayer. (The remarks of Mr. Portman pertaining to the introduction of S. 2456 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')

Mr. PORTMAN. I yield back.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I want to address a critical issue today in Westerville, OH, and, frankly, every community I represent in my State and communities all over the country. Today, I want to talk about the opioid epidemic that is gripping our country. Every State represented in this Chamber has had too many communities devastated, families broken apart, and lives taken by the opioid overdoses. The Centers for Disease Control now tells us more than 63,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2016, the last year for which they have records. It also looks like it was worse in 2017. More Americans are dying from drug overdoses than the total number of casualties during the Vietnam war. Every year, more Americans are dying from drug overdoses than the total number of casualties from the Vietnam war. Think about that. It is a staggering statistic. On average, more than 174 Americans died every single day from a drug overdose in 2016. That is up from 143 Americans in 2015 and 105 Americans in 2010. In other words, it is getting worse, and 2016 was the deadliest year on record. Initial estimates for 2017 suggest it is going to be even deadlier, including in my home State of Ohio. Opioids--prescription drugs, heroin, and synthetic forms of heroin-- are increasingly the reason why. Opioids were involved in about two- thirds of all overdose deaths in 2016. Opioid overdose deaths were five times higher in 2016 than they were just back in 1999. In the past 17 years, we have seen a fivefold increase in these overdose deaths. It is a national epidemic. It has unfolded in three different waves. It started with prescription drugs, overprescribing of prescription drugs--pain pills. The pill mills we saw in Southern Ohio and around our State exploded about 15 to 20 years ago. Next, there were the heroin deaths. Heroin moved in and spiked as people moved to less expensive and more accessible alternatives than prescription drugs. Now, I hate to tell you, there is a new danger and a threat, and it is deadlier than ever. It is these synthetic opioids--fentanyl, carfentanil--that have moved into our States, overcoming our law enforcement, and the results have been deadly. By the way, it is a crisis that does not discriminate. Opioid addiction affects everybody, regardless of age, area code, class, or color. In Ohio, drug addiction and acts committed to support it have now become the No. 1 cause of crime in our communities--probably the same in your community. Employers, of course, are increasingly pointing to the inability to find workers who can pass a drug test. They can't fill vacant positions. There is new data out with regard to people who are not showing up on the unemployment rolls but have given up looking for work altogether. There are probably 9 million men between 25 and 55 who are considered to be able-bodied who aren't even looking for work. Some really troubling statistics out there indicate that maybe as many as half--one study says 48 percent--of those individuals are taking opioids on a daily basis. This is affecting all of us. Every aspect of our communities is affected. Everybody has a role to play overcoming this epidemic. There is an urgency coming up with better strategies to turn the tide on addiction. Although I believe progress has been made recently--and it is starting to be made in my State and other States--much more needs to be done and done urgently. Part of that starts with understanding that addiction is a disease, and it is treatable. Too often it is not treated like that. The appropriate response should include much more aggressive prevention and education, absolutely, and more aggressive law enforcement keeping deadly fentanyl out of our communities through the STOP Act and other means, of course, but we also have to get more effective treatment strategies. We have a couple hundred thousand people in Ohio who are addicted. We need to get them into treatment, including more effective detox, medication-assisted treatment, and longer term recovery. We know, coupled with the right kind of therapy, the right kind of support and help, people can get into recovery and get back to their families, get back to work, and get back to being productive citizens. We also know recovery results are a lot better with that kind of continuous support. Closing the gaps that occur is key to overcoming addiction. There is a gap between the crisis response, which is often a first responder--like the two brave officers I talked about earlier-- finding someone who has overdosed. Often it is firefighters as well providing Narcan, this miracle drug that reverses the effect of the overdose. That is incredibly important to saving lives. Narcan alone is not sufficient. The key is to get those people into detox and into treatment and longer term recovery. The gaps we have out there between the crisis response and Narcan, then going to detox, then going to treatment, and then going to recovery are creating a lot of the inability to solve this problem. I have probably met a couple of thousand addicts or recovering addicts in the last few years. What they tell me is: I tried treatment, but it was for 6, 7, 8 weeks, and then there was nothing for me. It didn't work for me. Then there are people who overdosed, not once or twice but several times, and they had never been in detox and treatment. One young man I spoke to last weekend has been an addict for 7 years. Finally, his brother convinced him to seek help. The last time he overdosed, he did go into detox. He did go into treatment, to a facility where those gaps were closed, where there was no waiting time, where he was able to get the help, rather than going back to his old community and his old friends and a situation that was going to lead him back into more use and more addiction. The key, again, is to get those who have overdosed into the treatment they need. Overdose reversal provides a second chance at life. Let's face it. Some of these people who are overdosing come out of this after Narcan is administered. They have seen their life flash before their eyes, and they are ready for something. We have to be ready for them. Just as the overdose reversal provides a second chance at life, it is treatment and longer term recovery that provides that second chance to live addiction-free--again, to get back with your family, get back to work, and get back to a productive life. It takes a comprehensive solution because it is a comprehensive problem. That is what led some of us in this body, including my colleague Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and me, to introduce the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, or CARA, back in 2015. We developed that bill over time by relying on experts in the field and those most affected by addiction. Beginning in 2014, when we were in the process of putting together the legislation, we hosted five national forums here in Washington, DC. We brought experts and practitioners in from around the country-- prevention, treatment, law enforcement, and recovery communities. We wanted to get the best practices to find out what was working, what wasn't working, and how we could improve the response. What role could the Federal Government play in all of this? We had forums focused on the science of addiction to understand it better, evidence-based prevention strategies that actually work; treating pregnant women who are addicted and babies at risk of being born drug-dependent. There is nothing more heartbreaking than going into the neonatal units in the hospitals in my home State and seeing these babies who were born dependent and watching them go through the painful withdrawal process as infants Every neonatal unit in our country has seen this. If you go to your own hospital, they will tell you this is an increasing problem. We had veterans come in, and we had experts come in to help veterans make that transition because, sadly, the use of opioids among veterans is also increasing. They sometimes use opioids for injuries, for accidents, for PTSD, and they become addicted. How do you build support around those veterans? We also had people come in and talk about longer term recovery and housing and how, over time, you can get better results if you provide those kinds of services. Our goal was to leverage the expertise and perspectives of everyone involved in this epidemic, to find best practices, and to create an evidence-based education, treatment, and recovery bill that works. With strong bipartisan support, we moved from hearings, to a unanimous committee markup, to Senate passage of this legislation. By the way, it passed with a vote of 92 to 2. That is not typical around here, certainly not for something so comprehensive. Yet everybody has experienced this back home and is desperate to figure out strategies to help. In July of 2016, President Obama signed CARA into law. It was the first comprehensive addiction reform in more than 20 years. It was the first time Congress had ever provided any support or help for this longer term recovery piece. The CARA law targets prevention and education resources to prevent abuse before it even starts--the most effective way. It helps first responders reverse overdoses to save lives. It devotes resources to evidence-based treatment and recovery programs. It expands prescription drug take-back programs to get addictive pain pills off the bathroom shelves. More than $180 million was authorized to assist communities in these efforts to combat this epidemic. Frankly, because of this crisis, the appropriators decided: You know, we need this so badly, we are actually going to appropriate more than the $180 million. Last year, as an example, they appropriated $267 million--almost $100 million beyond our authorization. Again, I think it is beginning to make a difference. I see it back home in Ohio. I see some of these strategies beginning to work. It is going to take some time, and we need to do more. In Ohio, we received about $4 million. When I say ``we,'' I mean groups, people who are in the trenches doing the hard work. We have also made progress in this fight with separate opioid legislation that was part of the 21st Century Cures legislation. That legislation was for substance abuse and mental health. Many of us successfully fought to help secure a 2-year commitment there of $500 million a year, totaling $1 billion. It goes directly to the States. This money goes to States that are hardest hit, and States are allowed to decide how to spend that money. The first installment of funding from that legislation awarded my State of Ohio with $26 million, and we are using every penny of it. I was at a facility over the weekend that gave me hope. It is called the Maryhaven Addiction Stabilization Center, and it is in Columbus, OH. They talked about the gaps, where people who overdose are provided Narcan, and then they go back to their community, and what first responders will tell you is that sometimes in the same week or even on the same day on some occasions, there is another overdose. The revolving door continues without any treatment and without any solution. Maryhaven Stabilization Center is a response to that. They used the Cures money we talked about, they used some CARA funding from the county--the county is a part of the broader strategy of where the CARA money went--and they said: Let's put together an institution where there is an emergency room that focuses on overdoses. I have been to other emergency rooms in Columbus, OH, and I have seen what they do with the people who overdose. They save lives, and that is fantastic, but frankly these emergency rooms are equipped for everything, and they have to be--for gunshot wounds, car accidents, trauma. This emergency room would be focused specifically on overdoses, which makes it more cost-effective but also more effective for those recovering addicts, those addicts who are coming in. But most importantly, in that same facility, there is a detox center. In that same facility, there are 50 treatment beds. Whereas in the typical case when somebody overdoses, they go to the emergency room and end up going back to their community, back home, back to the gang, back to the family, in this case, 103 people who have gone through in the last month--it has only been open a month--80 percent of them have gone into treatment. I had the opportunity to meet someone who had been through that process, and we talked about the difference this makes. You literally walk through the door into treatment, there is strong encouragement to do it, and it is working. These are the kinds of things that are going to make a difference in our communities. It seems to be common sense, but frankly it is not happening in other places. Programs like these are what are going to help us overcome addiction and are examples of how Federal funds can be used more effectively to leverage, in this case, a lot of private dollars, some State dollars. Both of these landmark laws--the CARA Act that we talked about and the Cures Act--are providing increased resources to local communities, but this problem is not getting better, it is getting worse. One of the problems is the availability and the low cost of these highly addictive, even more dangerous drugs coming in. There are synthetic opioids. Fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin on average. It is coming in through the mail. We need to do more to stop it through law enforcement, but we also need to acknowledge that it has been sprinkled in other drugs and is creating a lot of these addiction overdoses and higher rates of death. The degree of damage this is causing to our communities, our families, our local budgets, and our criminal justice system requires us to take a more aggressive stance, to do more to figure this out. We need to strengthen our resolve. We made progress recently with the bipartisan budget agreement President Trump signed into law just a few weeks ago. We included in there an additional amount of funding--$6 billion over 2 years--to help combat the opioid epidemic. So instead of the $500 million a year and the $260 million a year that I talked about, it would be $3 billion a year and then $3 billion the year after. I believe that the evidence-based programs we set out in the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act provide a good framework as to how to spend that money effectively. That is why I am pleased to stand here today as we introduce the next stage of this--CARA 2.0--to help provide a framework for how these funds to combat opioid addiction can be spent wisely. It is a roadmap for Congress to build on CARA's successes since becoming law. The bipartisan CARA 2.0 act is being introduced by Sheldon Whitehouse and me and also by six other colleagues--Senators Shelley Moore Capito, Amy Klobuchar, Dan Sullivan, Maggie Hassan, Bill Cassidy, and Maria Cantwell--a bipartisan group of four Republicans and four Democrats who are passionate about this issue. It authorizes $1 billion a year for specific evidence-based drug prevention, education, treatment, and recovery programs. It is very important to have this $6 billion of funding over the next couple of years. We need it. But we have to be sure it is spent wisely. It is not a matter of just throwing money at a problem; it is a matter of being sure we are effectively addressing the real issues. As I mentioned earlier, the longer term recovery programs are what really help those gripped by addiction to overcome this disease. That is evidence that we have. I have certainly seen a lot of evidence of that firsthand and countless examples of this, where this longer term recovery and the support networks are what get people back on track, back with their families, back to work. We need to expand access to them to those communities that are in need and give everyone a second chance of living up to their own God-given potential. That is why, in this new CARA 2.0, we increase funding for recovery. In addition to expanding the reach of CARA's evidence-based programs, this bill puts in place new policy reforms to strengthen the government's response in so many ways. We take what some would consider a pretty dramatic step by limiting opioid prescriptions to 3 days for acute pain. Some will push back against that, but this is based on good evidence and good research. When someone goes in for a simple procedure--say, a wisdom tooth extraction--and that young person is given a bottle of opioids when he or she leaves, too often, that leads to addiction. I don't want more parents coming up to me and saying: My kid, when he or she was a teenager, was given these opioids by a doctor or a dentist, so we thought they were safe. Our child then turned to heroin because the pills became too expensive and less accessible and then turned to fentanyl and overdosed and died. I have had two such parents from Ohio come to me and tell me their story. You probably know others. We need to ensure that these prescriptions are limited. For those who have chronic pain and those who have cancer, it wouldn't apply. And after those 3 days, you can go back to that doctor and tell them why you need it and explain it. Experts say that about 80 percent of those who overdose from heroin started on prescription drugs. I am sure the same is true with regard to fentanyl. Four out of five heroin addicts in my State of Ohio who overdosed started on prescription drugs. We do need to deal with this overprescription problem. By the way, the evidence is that after that fourth day, fifth day, sixth day--that is when you get into the bigger risk of becoming addicted to prescription drugs. As I mentioned, this epidemic started with an explosion of pain pill use 15 to 20 years ago. We need to stop the addiction at the source, and for most people that begins with prescription drugs. By ensuring that clinicians prescribe the appropriate strength and supply of pain pills for non-life-threatening injuries, we can keep so many more people from becoming addicted. The bill also includes legislation very similar to that which passed the Senate in 2015 but was dropped out in the House-Senate conference. It is very simple. It requires doctors and pharmacists to use the prescription drug monitoring programs to ensure that we are not overprescribing opioids for certain individuals. That helps us identify where the problems are and to get people into treatment. It also requires States to share data with other States to prevent people from crossing State lines to get prescriptions. One of our big problems in Ohio is people can cross the State lines in West Virginia, Kentucky, or other States and get their prescription filled even though it has already been filled once in Ohio. Across State lines, we need to have prescription drug monitoring programs that work. CARA 2.0 is going to help turn the tide of this epidemic. The bill increases Federal funds for specific evidence-based programs to better protect vulnerable groups--including infants, young adults, pregnant and postpartum women, and veterans--as well as resources for community programs, medication-assisted treatment, and first responders. As the title indicates, it is a comprehensive solution. Every aspect of our communities is affected, so every aspect of our communities needs assistance. The opioid epidemic is one of the most urgent challenges we face as a country. By the way, ultimately, this crisis is not going to be solved here in Washington, DC. It is not going to be solved by legislation we pass here. We get that. It is going to be solved in our communities. It is going to be solved in our families. It is going to be solved in our hearts. But this is a national crisis, and the national government needs to be a much better partner with State government, local government, communities, and nonprofits--those who are out there doing the hard work. The $6 billion commitment over the next 2 years is a real opportunity to help turn the tide--not by just throwing more money at the problem but by being sure that money is well spent on an epidemic that is taking too many lives and devastating too many communities. CARA 2.0 will build on our accomplishments and continue to give communities the resources they need to address this issue. Yes, we have made some progress around here, and that is good, but we need to do much more. CARA 2.0 gives us that opportunity. It represents the next step toward helping our communities address this epidemic and helping our communities heal. Thank you.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the provisions of rule XXII, all postcloture time on the Branch nomination expire at 4 p.m. today and the Senate vote on the nomination with no intervening action or debate. Finally, if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Mr. PORTMAN

Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. President, I have 5 requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority leaders. Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate: Committee on Armed Services The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February, 27, 2018, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing. Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions The Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February, 27, 2018, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing entitled ``The Opioid Crisis: The Role of Technology and Data in Preventing and Treating Addiction.'' Committee on Foreign Relations The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February, 27, 2018, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing on the following nominations: Kevin Edward Moley, of Arizona, to be an Assistant Secretary of State (International Organization Affairs), Josephine Olsen, of Maryland, to be Director of the Peace Corps, Erik Bethel, of Florida, to be United States Alternate Executive Director of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Sean Cairncross, of Minnesota, to be Chief Executive Officer, Millennium Challenge Corporation. Committee on Veterans' Affairs The Committee on Veterans' Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February, 27, 2018, at 2 p.m., to conduct a joint hearing with the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Select Committee on Intelligence The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, February, 27, at 2:30 p.m. to conduct a closed hearing.