“I am blocking this bill. I do not object to what the bill does. But the House refuses to vote on bills the Senate has passed, including my bill to protect victims of child sexual assault. I am blocking all House bills until the House agrees to vote on our bills.”

“Mr. President, reserving the right to object, on the merits, there are no substantive objections to this legislation. However, we do have a challenge between the two Chambers of Congress. The Senate is doing its work. The Senate is taking up important pieces of legislation, reaching bipartisan agreement, and passing them; and they are going to the House of Representatives where right now they are simply sitting and languishing. House leadership has decided to adopt a strategy that is, frankly, indefensible. It is a strategy where they pass bills that originate in the House; they ignore bills that originate in the Senate, and they let them die. More than two-thirds of the bills to date that are passed into law have been bills that originated in the House of Representatives. There are numerous bills that this body has passed, often unanimously, 100 to nothing, that arrive in the House that no House Member has any substantive objections to them at all, and they simply put them in the freezer and do nothing. My colleague knows sometimes if you want to change the behavior of another Chamber, the only way to do so is to exercise leverage. And so, I have placed holds on all House bills coming over here unless and until they start taking up and passing Senate bills. Both Chambers need to do their work. Our Congress does not work if one of the two Chambers refuses to even consider legislation that has passed the other Chamber. I am in active negotiation with House leadership for them to start picking up and passing legislation here. One of those bills is a bill I authored called TREY’S Law. TREY’S Law was named for a young man in Texas just outside the Dallas area who was a little boy that was sexually assaulted at a summer camp repeatedly. He brought litigation. That litigation was settled, but as part of the settlement, he signed an NDA. He signed a contractual commitment to never tell anybody about the horrible sexual assault that he suffered. He lived with that grief, with that sorrow for the rest of what turned out to be his very short life. At age 28, Trey took his own life. TREY’S Law, which is named for him, is passed in the State of Texas; it has passed in numerous other States like Missouri and Alabama. It very simply says that NDAs are not enforceable to silence a victim of child sexual assault, that you cannot enforce contractual right to tell a child who has experienced that assault: You may not speak; you have no voice. This legislation in the Senate was bipartisan. I authored it with Senator Gillibrand. It passed the Senate 100 to nothing. It is sitting in the House, and they have declined to move. I say to my friend from New Hampshire, I am confident your legislation will pass and will pass the Senate as soon as the House ends its unreasonable blockade against Senate bills. I am in active negotiation with their leadership to get that result. We will get that result before the end of the year. I hope we get that result soon. I would very much like to lift all these holds and pass important legislation the Senate has already passed. However, because the House has not yet made that agreement, I have no choice but to object.”