Date: 2007-11-13
Speaker: WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (democrat)
Chamber: H

and her staff. Having said that. there have been bipartisan discussions. negotiations. There have been changes made in the bill as originally introduced. It is a good bill. And I am proud to be the senior Republican sponsor. This bill needs to be passed. I will agree with Mr. GOODLATTE that its not a perfect bill. and Ill agree that had there been a committee markup or a subcommittee markup and a bipartisan markup amendment process. some of the issues would have been addressed a little bit differently. Ill agree with that. But having said that. lets look at whats positive in the bill. And lets compare the bill to current law. There are over 3 million images of child pornography on the Internet right now. Three million. -And in the last Congress. as chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. under my direct request as chairman. the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee held nine hearings on the problem of Internet child pornography. And its more than a problem. It is a vicious. malicious. virus. viral disease that has the potential to destroy our children. And at some point in time we have to do something. And this bill. the PROTECT bill thats before us this afternoon. is a good first start. We found out in our hearings last year that the various State and Federal agencies didnt have enough resources. We found out that they didnt coordinate. And so. this bill before us. as my good friend. Mr. GOODLATTE. has pointed out. it does set up a new special counsel office in the Justice Department. And normally that would probably pot be a good thing to do. But in this case. given the lack of coordination under current law. at a minimum. I think its acceptable. And I personally think that its commendable. We give additional resources. Not one witness in our hearings last year said that there were sufficient financial resources. The bill before us authorizes. over the course of the next 8 years. over 1 billion additional dollars to fight this infestation of child pornography. It sets up an additional $400 million to increase funding over the next 8 years for the Federal law enforcement agencies: the FBIs Innocent Images Unit. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. and the United States Postal Service. These are the Federal agencies that are at the forefront in investigating Internet child pornography. The bill also authorizes increased funding for new forensic computer laboratories. One of the things that we found out is that there just wasnt enough law enforcement laboratory capability in terms of forensics to track down the information that was being provided by the agents in the field. This bill recommends and authorizes an additional $7 million each year for 2008 through 2015 for new national forensic computer laboratories. We also found out. as I.pointed out. that some of these task forces that have been set up and are well intentioned simply didnt have the resources that they needed. So the bill before us authorizes over $600 million over the next 8 years on a staggered basis for these Internet Crimes Against Children. or ICAC. task forces. That is a huge improvement over the current situation. and I dont think any Member of Congress is going to oppose that. This bill provides additional funding for Federal and State law enforcement. greater coordination of the overall United States law enforcement effort at both the State. Federal. and local level. It establishes a Special Counsel office that I have already talked about. And I want to comment on that. I agree with what Mr. GOODLATTE said that the current task force in the current system in terms of allocating resources is doing an acceptable job. So the Special Counsel will coordinate with them. The Special Counsel will have the ability to sign off. but it doesnt have the ability to unilaterally decide where these additional funds are going to go for the very reasons that