Sex-Trafficking Bill, Ensnared by Politics, Is Left in Limbo by a Senate Vote

New York Times

By Jennifer Steinhauer

March 17, 2015

Sex-Trafficking Bill, Ensnared by Politics, Is Left in Limbo by a Senate Vote 

An amazing thing about Congress: Things can always get worse.

The Senate has now even found a way to disagree on a bill that would protect victims of sex trafficking. And in the process, that dispute has ensnared President Obama’s largely uncontroversial nominee for attorney general, Loretta E. Lynch.

On Tuesday, a measure that would create a victims’ fund, using fines collected from perpetrators of sex trafficking, failed to clear a procedural hurdle, leaving a bill that once had majority support in Congress in limbo.

The bill, sponsored by Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, would have prevented the fees from being used to pay for abortions for the victims. Democrats balked, saying that Republicans had sneaked it into the bill. Republicans denied the charge and declined to remove the language.

The procedural bill fell five votes short of the 60 needed to go forward. Four Democrats — Senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, who has long championed measures for victims of sex trafficking, and Senators Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, who are opposed to abortion — voted yes on the measure with their Republican colleagues. Two Republicans did not vote, and Mr. McConnell voted against the measure for procedural reasons.

“I would be lying to you if I said I wasn’t disappointed in the way this bill has become a political football for people who want to cause the United States Senate to cease to function entirely,” Mr. Cornyn said on the Senate floor on Tuesday. He added: “I know there are Senate Democrats who care deeply about the victims of human trafficking. Unfortunately, not everybody does.”

Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, responded with ire, suggesting that Republicans should not be questioning Democrats’ motives, nor holding up a nomination in the process. Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, followed up by simply saying that “enough is enough.”

The latest impasse sweeps up five years of the low lights of congressional dysfunction: abortion and immigration policy disputes, White House exasperation, garden-variety distrust, and mutual loathing between Democrats and Republicans.

Mr. McConnell has repeatedly suggested that the Senate could not approve nominations before the trafficking bill was addressed, but the Senate did take up two lower-profile executive branch appointments on Monday.

At the White House on Monday, Josh Earnest, the press secretary, lamented the latest impasse. “It’s certainly a disappointment that, after 128 days since being nominated to be the next attorney general, that Loretta Lynch, a professional independent career prosecutor, has not yet gotten a vote in the United States Senate,” Mr. Earnest said. “It’s an unconscionable delay.”

A week after 47 Senate Republicans signed a letter to the Iranian government with the intent of scuttling international nuclear talks, Democrats said that Republicans were simply trying to find a way to undermine the president again by avoiding approval of a high-profile appointee.

Some women’s groups began to raise questions about their motives as well. Armed with her Twitter feed, Hillary Rodham Clinton joined the fray on Monday: “Congressional trifecta against women today: 1) Blocking great nominee, 1st African-American woman AG, for longer than any AG in 30 years,” she posted.

Republicans, in turn, accused Democrats of abandoning victims of sexual abuse and of not simply reading the bill. Both sides offered the equivalent of a heavy sigh.

Republicans also note that the House Judiciary Committee had unanimously passed the trafficking legislation that included the abortion language, and that the bill had proceeded to the floor by unanimous consent. Democrats contend that the language was not included at the time of an initial request to see changes to the bill from the last Congress.

Many of the victims of sex trafficking would probably be exempt anyway: The clause is basically a further application of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funds from being used for abortions but which makes exceptions for rape victims, which suggests that many trafficking victims could be exempt from the provision.

Still, Democrats say they do not like what they see as an expansion of the Hyde Amendment to include “fees” because it sets a precedent that could expand abortion restrictions.

Representative Erik Paulsen, a Republican from Minnesota who sponsored his own sex trafficking measure in the House that is focused on getting services for victims of sex trafficking but does not have a fund like Mr. Cornyn’s bill, said in an email: “Republicans and Democrats in the Senate should take up the 12 House bills that were passed with strong bipartisan support and get them to the president’s desk immediately. Every second wasted in delaying a vote on these important bills is time that could be used helping victims of trafficking.”

Democrats are hoping that delaying the nomination of what would be the first African-American woman to head the Justice Department will eventually hurt Republicans.

For those who labor in the world of sex trafficking, the ways of the modern Congress were baffling. “It’s unfortunate because this was supposed to be a bipartisan bill that passed through the Senate easily, and now an entirely partisan issue is threatening to stall the work,” said Brandon Bouchard, a spokesman for Polaris, a group that combats human trafficking.

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