Holly's News From Washington

by Holly Burkhalter / Topic: Holly's News, Holly's News; Human Trafficking Prioritization Act; Congress September 22, 2014
Holly Burkhalter

The House and Senate adjourned this weekend for a long Congressional recess.  There will likely be a short lame-duck session after the elections, and then the new Congress will be in the saddle in January. 

They left a heap of unfinished business.  A big disappointment was the Senate’s failure to pass S.1249, a bill that would designate the State Department Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP Office) a Bureau. The measure breezed through the House in July. We’d hoped that the House adoption would be wind under the Senate’s wings. Another help are the Senate’s own 37 cosponsors – a strong, bipartisan group, which includes 5 members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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Holly's News From Washington

by Holly Burkhalter / Topic: Holly's News; Human Trafficking Prioritization Act; Congress April 24, 2014
Holly Burkhalter

There’s something very interesting going on in the House of Representatives right now.

 

We learned last week that House Republican leadership is planning on voting on a half dozen anti-trafficking bills that have been introduced this year. All of them relate to trafficking issues within the U.S., including commercial sexual exploitation of children, identifying trafficking victims within the child welfare system, foreign labor recruitment, and Back Page’s advertisements for sexual services.

 

I’m thrilled that Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor are planning on moving anti-trafficking legislation next month. But I’m astonished the Human Trafficking Prioritization Act (H.R. 2283) isn’t on the list!

 

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