Bobby Scott

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore), one of the chief sponsors of the legislation.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentlelady an additional 1 minute.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Bass).

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney), one of the leaders on this issue.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of the time and urge my colleagues to support H.R. 3610. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, while I support the bipartisan efforts we are taking today with several bills to enhance our effort to prevent, investigate, and prosecute acts of sex trafficking, I must raise serious concerns about H.R. 4225, the Stop Advertising Victims of Exploitation Act of 2014, which I cannot support in its present form. To be sure, the bill has the laudable goal of prosecuting those who knowingly facilitate sex trafficking by advertising certain prohibited sex acts. However, I must object to the mandatory minimum sentencing provisions which this new offense would trigger under existing statutes. Under the sex trafficking statute, as amended by this bill, a conviction for advertising of sex trafficking would result in a mandatory penalty of 10 or 15 years of imprisonment, depending on the age of the victim and other circumstances of the crime. While the acts prohibited by the legislation will usually warrant such long sentences, mandatory minimum sentences are the wrong way to determine punishment under this or any other criminal statute. Regardless of the nature or the circumstances surrounding the offense, the role of the offender in the particular crime or the history or characteristics of the offender, H.R. 4225 will require a judge to impose a 10- or 15-year sentence. Even if everyone in the case, from the arresting officer, the prosecutor, the judge, even the victim believes that the mandatory minimum would be an unjust sentence for a particular defendant in a case, this bill still requires the sentence to be imposed. The imposition of a mandatory minimum sentence is particularly troublesome when one considers the possible scope of defendants who could be prosecuted under this bill. Notably, the prohibition on advertising does not only apply to the sex trafficker who places the ad, but also applies to individuals and entities who facilitate or have a minor role in publishing the ad, such as someone who works for an Internet Web site which is involved. Those who are employed by a venture that benefits financially from the ad, but whose role in the organization does not place them in the chain of command with respect to acceptance or publishing the illegal ads could therefore be prosecuted under the bill. Specifically, there may be circumstances in which all of the employees of a communications company, including receptionists or computer maintenance workers, know that the venture publishes such advertising, but chose to look the other way. They should be held liable under the provisions of this bill, but many of them would certainly not warrant a mandatory sentence, in certain circumstances, of 15 years, not all of them. During the Judiciary Committee's markup of the bill, I offered an amendment to remove the application of the mandatory minimum provisions of this new bill and, instead, allow a judge to apply an appropriate sentence under the circumstances of the case, up to a statutory maximum of life imprisonment. Given the complicated nature of the Internet communications networks and other forms of advertising which would be affected by this bill, the role of the judge in evaluating each case is particularly important. While long sentences may be appropriate under the facts of a particular case, Congress cannot know the facts of every case in advance. Removing mandatory minimums, while still permitting the lengthy statutory maximum penalty of life imprisonment, as my amendment would have done, will provide the appropriate spectrum of sentences for culpability and proportionate punishment. Mandatory minimum penalties are already a major issue of concern for our criminal justice system, and we should not make matters worse by passing a new one with this bill. Studies of mandatory minimums have concluded that they fail to reduce crime, they waste the taxpayers' money, and they often require judges to impose sentences that simply violate common sense. Therefore, I am pleased that the Judiciary Committee's bipartisan Over-Criminalization Task Force is working diligently to assess our Federal criminal code and make recommendations for improvements. The penalties, including mandatory minimums, in the Federal code are among the issues the task force will consider. And while these issues are under review, we should not be passing new mandatory minimum sentences. In fact, if we ever expect to eliminate mandatory minimums from the code, we must first stop passing new ones. Now, mandatory minimums did not get into the code all at once but one at a time, each in a bill that otherwise made good sense. So if we are going to stop increasing the number of mandatory minimums, we must oppose bills that contain them. So while I strongly support the efforts to do more to combat the serious problem of sex trafficking by taking steps such as strengthening our laws and providing additional resources for law enforcement and victims, I must, unfortunately, oppose this bill in its current form because it creates new mandatory minimums which can be expected to require a judge in the future to impose a sentence that violates common sense. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from New Hampshire (Ms. Kuster).

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney).

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I yield the gentlelady an additional 1 minute.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlelady from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I yield the gentlelady an additional 1 minute.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. Madam Speaker, mandatory minimums have resulted in bizarre sentences being imposed today. Girlfriends of drug dealers are serving decades behind bars because their sentences were based on the weight of the drugs involved in their boyfriend's drug dealings. Many other people are serving times clearly longer than required because of mandatory minimums. Under this bill, if a Web site is raided, this bill could require the judge to impose 15-year sentences on each and every employee, from the receptionist to computer maintenance personnel, no discretion, no consideration of an individual's role in the enterprise, everybody gets 15 years. So if a sentence violates common sense, mandatory minimums require the judge to impose it any way, so if we are ever going to try to address the problems created by mandatory minimums, we have to stop passing bills like this one that can require sentences of at least 10- 15 years, regardless of the facts in an individual case, even when the bill is otherwise worthy. This is how so many mandatory minimums got into the code to begin with, one by one, each one in an otherwise worthy bill. The only way to begin to put an end to mandatory minimums is to stop passing new ones. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nevada for calling this special occasion to give us the opportunity to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Supreme Court case of Brown v. The Board of Education. As a representative from Virginia, I take personal pride in celebrating this anniversary because Virginia played such a prominent role in that case. In fact, one of the four cases that were combined into the Brown decision was Davis v. School Board of Prince Edward County, in Virginia. Two of the Nation's premier constitutional lawyers were involved in the case: Oliver Hill and Spottswood Robinson, both from Virginia. In the Brown decision, the United States Supreme Court unanimously struck down the legal footing for racial segregation in public schools in this country. The decision overturned Plessy v. Ferguson, a 1996 case that held that a State could maintain separate but equal public accommodations. In Brown, the court highlighted the importance of education and language that still rings true today. The court said: Today, education is perhaps the most important function of State and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the Armed Forces. It is a very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument and a awakening your child to cultural values in preparing him for later professional training and helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the State has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms. We come then to the question presented: Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other ``tangible'' factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does. The court then concluded that: In the field of public education, the doctrine of ``separate but equal'' has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Unfortunately, although the decision was a victory for minority students, not everyone was eager to comply. Virginia led the resistance to the Brown decision. Ironically, Virginia used the language in the Brown decision as its legal grounds for what they called Massive Resistance, where it said such an opportunity, where a State has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made to all on equal terms. Virginia reasoned that it could avoid integrating the schools by having no schools at all. So, in Prince Edward County, they closed the schools for several years. Schools were also closed in Norfolk and Front Royal and Charlottesville. We overcame Massive Resistance after several years and those schools eventually reopened. But now here we are six decades after Brown. Thankfully, we have made progress, but we still have work to do. The promise of equal educational opportunities envisioned by Brown remains unfulfilled. For example, equal educational opportunity does not occur when one jurisdiction spends substantially more per student than an adjacent jurisdiction because of the relative differences in wealth between the two jurisdictions. Unequal funding results in unequal educational opportunities when you consider that studies have shown that one-half of low-income students who are qualified to attend college do not attend because they can't afford to. In fact, today, a high-income, low-achieving student is more likely to attend college than a high-achieving, low-income student. Another example of educational inequality is the current debate over publicly financed school vouchers, which can be used at private schools, which might provide educational opportunities to a privileged few, but which would definitely deprive the public schools of desperately needed resources. The supporters of vouchers frequently claim that this is a choice, when, actually, all it is is a chance. If you win the lottery, you have a chance to go to the private schools, but if you lose the lottery, then you are stuck in the public schools, with fewer resources, because all of the money is spent on vouchers. Obviously, we have a lot of work to do to complete the promise of the Brown decision. The 60th anniversary of the decision offers us an opportunity to rededicate ourselves to achieving these lofty ideals. Again, I want to thank the gentleman from Nevada for the opportunity to speak.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlelady for yielding. I rise in support of the Congressional Black Caucus budget, which is a more credible and responsible alternative than the underlying Republican budget. Mr. Chairman, the Republican Committee budget starts off by cutting taxes by $4 trillion and claims this can be revenue neutral. Simple arithmetic, therefore, requires a $4 trillion tax increase, and the budget doesn't mention a word about where that money is going to come from, not a loophole closing or any other tax increase. And therefore, the budget starts off with a $4 trillion hole in it. Their budget then expects people to believe that they will make $4 trillion in cuts by repealing the Affordable Care Act provisions for tax credits and Medicaid changes that have resulted in millions of people getting insurance for the first time. They are going to lose that coverage. Do they think that is going to happen? Do they think they are going to be able to increase the age for Medicare recipients and reopen the doughnut hole? Do they think they are going to be able to make the cuts in the budget to Medicaid, denying access to health care to millions of low- income Americans, requiring millions to lose their nursing home coverage? We know that that is not credible. Neither is it credible that over $100 billion in cuts to supplemental food assistance--we know that is not credible. They tried to cut $40 billion last year, then $20 billion, couldn't do that. They ended up with 8. Now they are going to say, well, all of a sudden we can do 100. The budget fails to say where the other cuts are going to come from, whether it is going to come from education or job training or research or transportation, or other. You have unspecified cuts. And to the extent that they are unspecified, that $4 trillion isn't going to happen. So they have a $4 trillion hole in revenues. They have a $4 trillion hole in spending cuts, $8 trillion hole in their budget. You can talk about it being balanced, but until you come up with the specifics of where that $8 trillion is going to come from, it is just not a serious budget. In stark contrast, the Congressional Black Caucus budget puts numbers on the page. We show our math. We show not only that we can raise $2 trillion in revenues, we show where it can come from by laying out over $4 trillion in options, specifics, not $4 trillion unspecified, but $4 trillion specified, $2 trillion needed to make the budget. We eliminate sequestration. We have proposed a $500 billion jobs package that will end the recession by putting millions back to work, and approximately $400 billion for an antipoverty initiative that will restore cuts to the social safety net and enable people to get job training and education to make them able to work their way out of poverty. Mr. Chairman, this is simple, straightforward arithmetic.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Our budget calls for policy changes and comprehensive immigration reform, a public option for health care, and others, and it will be scored at $1.8 trillion, real live reduction in the deficit, compared to the CBO baseline. Our budget is a credible, job-creating alternative to the unrealistic, draconian plan offered by our Republican colleagues, which has an $8 trillion hole in it. I ask you to support the Congressional Black Caucus budget.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in support of H.R. 4323, the Debbie Smith Act, which was originally enacted in 2004. During Sexual Assault Awareness Month, we have the opportunity to take an important step in continuing a program that helps address the problem of sexual assault. The Debbie Smith Act has helped State and local law enforcement reduce the Nation's large backlog of untested DNA samples. Grants are used to hire personnel and to purchase supplies for processing samples and for including them in the Combined DNA Index System. Grants have also been directed to DNA training and technical assistance for law enforcement and courts and to sexual assault nurse examiner programs. Crime laboratories have almost unanimously reported that the DNA Backlog Grant Program is essential to their capacity to process samples, but the backlog still remains. Hundreds of thousands of DNA samples, each representing an unsolved crime, remains untested. Regrettably, over 200 untested samples remain in Los Angeles alone that have outlasted the statute of limitations for prosecuting cases, so we have to do everything we can to process these samples. We must also do everything we can to strengthen the nationwide database and reduce the DNA backlog, so that cases of sexual assault can be solved and prosecuted without delay. Reauthorizing the Debbie Smith Act will bring perpetrators of sexual assault to justice before they can attack more victims. I am proud to acknowledge that Debbie Smith is a constituent of mine. She lives in Charles City County, Virginia. She waited more than 6 years for the DNA from her rape kit to be processed and checked against the national database in order to identify her attacker. Her attacker was identified, but unfortunately, during those 6 years, he attacked at least two other women--crimes that would not have happened if his DNA had been tested in a more timely manner. Debbie has spent her time and effort over the last few years with her organization, HEART, which stands for Hope Exists After Rape Trauma. She has been advocating for a reduction in the DNA backlog and has been offering assistance to victims of sexual assault. I commend my colleague from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and the ranking member, Mr. Conyers, for working together to expedite the consideration of this bill. I also want to acknowledge the original author of the Debbie Smith Act, the gentlelady from New York (Mrs. Carolyn B. Maloney), for her hard work and continued advocacy on behalf of sexual assault victims. I urge my colleagues to join me in further honoring the work of Debbie Smith's by voting for this bill--to reauthorize the bill that bears her name. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), the ranking member of the full committee.