Dems dig in against anti-trafficking bill
…and they’re listening to NARAL!
I think it’s time to finally say it: Senate Democrats don’t care about the victims of human trafficking.
They don’t care about helping the victims of kidnapping and forced prostitution. They don’t care about prosecuting rapists and child molesters. They don’t care about putting an end to modern day slavery.
If they did, they would stop talking and start casting their votes in favor of the Justice for Victims of Trafficking Act (JVTA) currently awaiting approval in the Senate.
I’ve written a lot about this bill; it’s important. Most people don’t realize that human trafficking still exists outside the context of horror stories out of southeast Asia or Central America. It’s not just an illegal immigration problem, and it affects human beings in all 50 states.
Hence the once-bipartisan bill that Democrats now refuse to support because the Hyde Amendment applies to its fee structure. Don’t be fooled, though; this obstructionism has nothing to do with Hyde itself. The Amendment has been included in bipartisan spending bills for decades. JVTA author and Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) recently offered changes to the language in the bill that would have addressed Dems’ purported concerns, and still they refuse to relent.
From the Dallas Morning News:
Cornyn’s proposed change to the way trafficking victims were compensated included language from the Hyde Amendment, which bans taxpayer-funded abortions except in cases of rape, incest and life-threatening danger to the mother.
Congress has included Hyde Amendment language in successful spending bills for decades.
“I don’t know how in the world they could possibly object when we’re answering, responding to their concerns and saying we’re willing to work with you,” said Cornyn on Tuesday afternoon. “My hope is the Senate rises to the challenge.”
I don’t either, but they somehow always manage—even if it means throwing modern day slaves under the bus as a matter of principle:
Cornyn’s change would have redirected money to make the new Hyde language applicable, but Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said Democrats refuse to include it on principle.
“We will not accept language that simply hides the Hyde,” said Murray in a Tuesday press conference. “That is a non-starter for all of us.”
The DMN points out that Dems are taking their cues from the powerful pro-abortion lobby. NARAL tweeted this after the new language surfaced:
#Antichoice Sen Cornyn’s idea of “fix” 4 #HumanTrafficking bill? A ridiculous accounting gimmick that threatens women’s lives. #StrikeTheBan
— NARAL (@NARAL) April 14, 2015
Feinstein and Democrats are framing this as a no-compromise position on maintaining the right to choose, but let’s just call it what it is: a blatant grab at the media spotlight at the expense of exploited men, women, and children.
We’ll keep you updated on the bill’s progress.
For the nerds in the room, here’s footage of a late March colloquy between Senator Cornyn and Senator Feinstein regarding JVTA and the Hyde Amendment:
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Comments
Let’s not let Cornyn off the hook here, he also turned down an amendment that would have solved the “abortion” issue. His refusal makes him just a “guilty” as Democrats, according to your logic…
From the AP:
“Heitkamp and Collins offered a similar proposal, but their amendment dropped the abortion reference, and Cornyn said no. He told reporters that, Democrats “now having made this the focal point,” he was unwilling to give in.”
http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/03/21/divisive-issue-of-abortion-stalls-human-trafficking-bill?page=2
One gets the distinct impression that Deemocrats would have held up the Emancipation Proclamation since it didn’t provide for abortion funding…
Thank God you showed up. I thought our resident special snowflake was going to get away without a challenge.
I notice you did not challenge me on my claim. What do you think?
Do you have an actual response to my post?
Who’s got the duty to “man” the “anoNY” troll post today?
Of course, perhaps it would be more appropriate to ask whether that now well known troll job is truly gender neutral, in which case, perhaps it would be better to ask who’s going to “fulfill” that post.
Ah well, it might not be poitically correct to ask a troll questions for which “it” is not allowed to answer.
Hope you get a “gold” star to your efforts today! Cheers and troll on.
How do you feel about John Cornyn rejecting the deal to get this vital legislation passed?
You mean besides you pointing out that again the Pro-slavery party will chose killing babies over saving people?
No, you made that point quite nicely. The Pro-slavery party would prefer people live in slavery rather than admit they lied about the language.
That they refuse to compromise on their ‘abortion anywhere/anytime’ issue just shows how out of touch the pro-slavery party is.
The Democrats are simply flexing their muscles, showing that despite being in the minority, they are still in charge of the agenda of the Senate.
Yeah, good job McConnell!
Is it possible that the donkey party actually wants Lynch to fail confirmation and not voting on her gives them cover so they don’t have to publicly vote ‘no’?
I think the dems are looking at Holder as a liability who is headed for stormy waters once he’s out of office, and they want to keep him there long enough to get through the storm. It’s all about the party donchaknow.
So there are my two possibilities for consideration.
…..or the Dems want to blame the Repubs for letting the head of another member of the aggrieved minority class bounce off of the glass ceiling.
Rest assured that Holder will be on Obama’s record-breaking pardons list.
They want to keep Eric Holder in place as long as they can. He has been a champion of their commie agenda since the first day of the Obozo administration.
Someone needs to call this what it is – not “human trafficking” but SLAVERY.
These are children – both boys and girls – as well as women and some men, being SOLD into lives of SLAVERY … often as sex slaves, but not always. They have NO WAY OUT. Their lives are in constant threat, in desperate jeopardy.
The euphemisms need to STOP.
Democrats, as ALWAYS, are DEFENDING SLAVERY!! Modern-day SLAVERY.
John Cornyn must also be “defending slavery” then, since he rejected an amendment that would have resolved the “abortion funding” issue.
All that counts is that slavery continue in one form or another. The Dem have not forgiven the Republicans for the abolition of slavery in the United States at the end of the Civil War.
This is ironic, considering the conservatives at the time were the ones defending the institution of slavery, while the liberals were the ones fighting it…
Then you should have little trouble linking to contemporaneous writings supporting that stupid lie.
Right?
1.) non-contemporaneous link from a historian answering the question about who was conservative back then:
http://www.quora.com/Is-it-true-that-Democrats-used-the-be-the-conservative-party-and-the-Republicans-used-to-be-the-progressive-party
2.) Wiki quote!
“The Southern Democrats endorsed slavery, while the Republicans denounced it. ”
3.) My more general answer, though, is that if anyone is interested in maintaining historical “institutions” (as slavery was at the time), it would be a conservative. That is pretty much the definition of “conservative”.
As you continually prove, you’re just a repeater, not a thinker. What you repeat are Collectivist lies, or “talking points”.
Conservatives are the champions of the Enlightenment, the defenders of liberty and classical liberalism. That is what we “conserve”. Many of the Founders were staunch anti-slavers, and even some who owned slaves were ambiguous about the practice. So, they would be “conserving” their traditions in exactly the same context you (stupidly) ascribe to pro-slavery people.
There were ALWAYS Progressives of both parties, you idiot. And Progressives (Collectivists) have always LOVED slavery in its various forms and still are. You are totalitarians and the natural enemies of liberty and individual expression.
“Many of the Founders were staunch anti-slavers, and even some who owned slaves were ambiguous about the practice. ”
Ambiguous, huh? Owning a person is a pretty strange way of expressing your “ambiguous-ness” on the issue of slavery…
“There were ALWAYS Progressives of both parties, you idiot. And Progressives have always LOVED slavery in its various forms and still are.”
Can I count this as your admission that there are pro-slavery members of the Republican party?
What a stupendously ignorant fool you are. Have you ever read the writings of Thomas Jefferson?
“Have you ever read the writings of Thomas Jefferson?”
If TJ truly thought it was immoral to own slaves, he should not have owned any.
“Slavery” is what Obama’s illegal immigration is all about.
Remember last decade when all those D.C. Congress Democrats where caught with illegal alien house maids, gardeners, baby sitters, etc… who were paid nothing or next to nothing?
They don’t care about putting an end to modern day slavery.
Democrats have aways been on the side of slavery, in all its many forms.
Do we not have laws already prohibiting slavery, child labor and everything else this bill addresses? Lets enforce the laws we have and stop the grandstanding.
While you are somewhat correct, this bill isn’t an effort to criminalize something that is already a crime. Rather, this bill would provide more funding for more police and prosecutors to go after traffickers.
This bill isn’t a bad piece of legislation, the controversy is really about the secondary issue of allowing the trafficking victims to get abortions on the state’s dime.
There’s no such thing as “the state’s dime”. All the dimes belonga the tax payer.
Ya moron.
In that case, you should have no problem with taxpayer funding for abortion, since that money belongs to other people (or are you not as old as you let on?).
Wow. We knocked the wheels off your rickety wagon early!
assoNY, why do you insist on coming here to show your nasty ass?
I am still waiting for you to crush me “like a bug”, like you recently threatened to do in all your Christian meekness…
Having identified three separate occasions (one identified by Midwest Rhino) where anoNY alters quotations to suit his ideological needs, I don’t bother responding any more. What’s the point? However, I did want to point out that squashed bugs are always unaware they’ve been squashed.
“I did want to point out that squashed bugs are always unaware they’ve been squashed.”
My point in my original post was the John Cornyn himself has turned down an amendment that would have solved the “abortion” issue and gotten his bill passed. If Democrats are to be criticized for not passing the bill, then so is Sen. Cornyn.
Which is as logical as claiming FDR was complicit in the rape of Nanking because he didn’t provide Japan all its resource demands.
Bug.
I tend to think the Democrats are actually against this bill for some reason or maybe somehow manipulated the Republicans into holding the confirmation of Loretta Lynch hostage.
The alternative to that theory would be that both parties are afraid to back down in any way on abortion. But the Democrats, from their point of view, would be more wrong.
It would be a matter of principle for abortion opponents, while not having a victim’s fund pay for some abortions should be a small matter for the people who the abortions done – so some philanthropy would do it maybe. What’s the big problem?
If you put the best interpretation on this possible, it looks like an attempt to use defamation to force Republicans to go along with something that they have the votes to prevent – and that’s not working.
In this Congress, there are probably more votes not to have abortions included than there are for including abortions not considered rape – if the pregnancy was considered to be the result of rape, it would still be covered.
Maybe it’s just to try to find a way to make a position on abortion relevant to legislation.
Q. What exactly is the compromise that Sen Cornyn rejected? It sounds like it is the original language in the House bill, which had no reference to abortion. That could be because originally, the subject was overlooked.
The interesting thing about all of this is that very few abortions would be affected either way.
“Q. What exactly is the compromise that Sen Cornyn rejected? It sounds like it is the original language in the House bill, which had no reference to abortion. That could be because originally, the subject was overlooked.”
According to the AP, the anti-abortion funding language was always in the bill, but the Dems overlooked it at first:
“Democrats claimed that they had not known about the abortion provision and accused Republicans of sneaking it in, even though the language had been in the bill since it was introduced in January, and one Democratic senator’s office did concede an aide was aware of it.”
http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2015/03/21/divisive-issue-of-abortion-stalls-human-trafficking-bill
The Deemocrats just hadn’t yet heard their marching orders from their abortion interest group masters.
It was in the Senate bill when it came out of committee, and that’s when the Democrats paid no attention to it (or possibly deliberately left it there?) but my understanding is this bill was also passed by the House of Representatives without that additional “Hyde amendment” language.
Most bills passed by both houses are not identical and need to go to conference to get the same language and then get passed again.
This situation here would be similar to, let’s say, a 9/11 or disaster relief health compensation fund that did or did not exclude payments for abortions not necessary to save the life of the mother or caused by rape or incest. This is known as the Hyde Amendment. I suppose in some cases the language is missing, and maybe in other cases somebody puts it in.
The Hyde amendment language is usually attached whenever Congress funds something that could include abortions if not specifically excluded. That’s the compromise Congress has been working with for many many years, since 1976.
There have been some variations with time, mostly about whether to include rape and incest or severe physical health damage. It’s been pretty stable now for over 20 years. From 1981 to 1993, abortions for pregnancy caused by rape or incest were not funded. They were from 1977 through 1980, and from FY 1977 to 1979 “severe and physical health damage”was also funded. I think that one turned out to be a loophole, and no health language is now included but only a physical disorder, injury or illness “caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed”
http://www.nchla.org/datasource/ifactsheets/4FSHydeAm22a.08.pdf
Not sure the procedural status at this time, but Cotton offered an amendment to this bill that would have REMOVED BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP.
THAT would be catastrophic to the democrats electorally:
From Tea Party site in March:
One other item of note – on Wednesday [In March], Sen. David Vitter of LA offered an amendment to the sex trafficking bill. His amendment, number 274, would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to redefine birthright citizenship so that a person born in the United States shall be considered a citizen only if the person is born in the U.S. and at least one of the person’s parents is a citizen or national of the U.S.; an alien lawfully admitted for permanent residence in the U.S. whose residence is in the U.S.; or an alien performing active service in the armed forces.
IF S. 178 survives the cloture vote on the Motion To Proceed, then the Vitter Amendment could see a floor vote this week.
The Hyde amendment language is routinely put into all bills where somebody thinks abortions might be funded. Nobody has tried to overturn this status quo for over 20 years, I think.
In this case, any pregnancies would have resulted from crimes covered by the act, so allowing abortion funding makes sense.
Furthermore, isn’t there usually an exception in the Hyde language for cases of rape, etc? If that is the case, why isn’t Cornyn on board with just totally scrapping the Hyde language in this particular bill?
As there is already an exemption for abortions due to rape in the Hyde amendment, there should be no problem with passing the bill as is. The only reasons therefore to object to the bill as written are either:
1. As Nancy Pelosi said abortion is sacred ground.
2. Domestic Politics “Republicans are anti-woman!”
Without the Hyde amendment, expect to see funds going to family planning abortions, not to the victims of slavery.
I agree about the exemption, which makes me wonder why Senator Cornyn rejected the amendment scrapping the anti-abortion language. If the victims of human trafficking got pregnant due to that crime, then why does Sen. Cornyn want to deny them abortions?
The Party of pro-choice or selective morality and class diversity remain true to their principles. They not only denigrate individual dignity in principle, but also debase intrinsic value as a function of their amoral religion or moral philosophy.
We should use a hashtag for this. Maybe #bringbackourgirls. /sarc
anoNY is a troll. (Funny….I read his/her name as “annoy” – which is what he/she wants to do, no doubt.)
Don’t feed the trolls.
Rags not Robes>> Conservatives are the champions of the Enlightenment, the defenders of liberty and classical liberalism. That is what we “conserve”.
I think it were in aught nine, no couldha been the winter of ’06, that I read (at NRO most likely) that the unique thing about American conservatives is, we try to conserve a set of revolutionary ideas, 1776 and all that.
Whereas elsewhere it’s all about the patriarchy and stuff, booya…