It’s a cause any politician would have a hard time opposing: cracking down on human trafficking.

Instead, in a breakdown sensational even by Senate standards, a bill to address the issue is set to go down in a partisan firefight. The cause of the row? Democrats didn’t read the 68-page bill to discover its provisions dealing with abortion, and Republicans didn’t disclose the abortion language when Democratic staffers asked them for a summary of the legislation.


The spectacle has infuriated groups that advocate for cracking down on sex trafficking and left Democrats and Republicans even more skeptical of whether they can trust each other.

As Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sealed the bill’s fate Thursday by scheduling a vote that’s sure to fail, Democrats acknowledged they had erred in not poring over the trafficking bill to detect language that would prohibit money in a restitution fund from being spent on abortions. They also conceded they were familiar with the arcane legislative language because Republicans had informed Democrats of their desire to include the abortion provision late last year.

“What do you want me to tell you? We missed it!” said Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) when asked why Democrats didn’t recognize the language this time. “It was an obscure reference. Clearly if it had been front and center, we would have caught it.”

The aim of the bill, sponsored by Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), is simple. It would create a “Domestic Trafficking Victims’ Fund” financed by fines from crimes, with the money used to aid victims. The legislation breezed through a Judiciary Committee markup on Feb. 26 with minimal changes, and seemed set for easy passage sometime this month.

But when GOP staffers began promoting the legislation, Democrats say they didn’t mention they had included language that would bar money from the fund from being used for abortions. And Democrats didn’t notice it until this week.

The provision is essentially an expansion of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funds from being used for abortions and is routinely included in spending bills. Provisions similar to the Hyde Amendment are included in other types of programs, such as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Once it was discovered, Democrats were furious — that a highly-charged issue such as abortion was included in the bill and that they weren’t notified of it in advance.

For instance, an e-mail exchange between two Judiciary Committee staffers obtained by POLITICO shows two staffers discussing the legislation. Republicans gave a list of seven changes from a different trafficking bill that stalled last year and the abortion provision wasn’t mentioned. A Cornyn aide said, however, that other Democratic staffers were aware the abortion language was included.

Democrats’ explanation shifted throughout the week. A few days ago, they implied that Republicans snuck the abortion language to the bill. After Democrats discovered the provision on Monday evening, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) sent Cornyn a letter expressing her surprise.

By Wednesday, according to Cornyn, Feinstein had apologized for sending that letter. Feinstein, in a brief interview, declined to offer her side of the story, saying only: “I sent a confidential letter.”

Republicans were aghast that Democrats were sticking to their insistence that their aides had not read the bill.

“Frustrating,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). “I think they read the bill.”

Indeed, Democrats appeared to have ample chances to spot the language. For example, the abortion language is on pages 4 and 5 of the bill. But when it came up in committee, the top Democrat, Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, offered an unrelated amendment on the same page — apparently not noticing the abortion provisions.

The bill was approved unanimously by the judiciary panel. And on Monday, a full two weeks later with still no ire over the abortion language, Democrats agreed to move ahead.

“It’s a little perplexing, right? I assume that all of the Democrat senators have highly capable professional staff and that they actually read the bills. And that they advise their senator before they agree to cosponsor and before they agree to vote for it,” said Cornyn, the majority whip.

But by Monday night, staffers for Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Senate Democratic leadership spotted the provision. And pro-abortion rights groups began putting heat on Democrats to oppose the legislation.

On Tuesday morning, Republicans were getting concerned after hearing from Democratic staffers about the abortion language. Democratic senators huddled at lunch and talked over the provision. They emerged from the lunch with near unanimity: they could not support the bill as written.

Blumenthal called the abortion provision “a very restrictive measure that is antithetical to the goals of the bill.”

Members of each party tried to figure out a way out of the mess, to no avail. Republicans began to push McConnell to pull the plug and force Democrats to reject a human trafficking bill and stand behind their opposition to a small piece of the bill.

“Why wouldn’t you do that?” said one Republican senator of forcing Democrats to reject the measure, which could play poorly politically.

After Republicans and Democrats lunched on Thursday for their last caucus meetings of the week, McConnell strode to the floor and offered Democrats an amendment to strip the abortion language out of the bill. But there are only 46 Democrats and most Republicans support the provision.

This “is not a viable path forward,” Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said.

With a confirmation vote on a new attorney general next week and budget talks set to heat up before a lengthy Easter recess, McConnell seemed to have no option other than to set the bill on a path to defeat. The Senate will vote Tuesday to end debate on the bill, and Democratic aides said it has little chance of passing.

“I don’t know why they decided to take the human trafficking bill hostage. It seems to be a dumb choice,” Cornyn fumed at Democrats. “Now that we have the majority they just want to make it as challenging as possible for us to get anything done.”

The House last year easily passed a trafficking bill this year without the abortion language.

Senate Democrats said it would be hard to trust Republicans again after the episode.

Republicans are “setting a new low standard for how bipartisan business is conducted in the Senate,” Reid said. “By saying Democrats should always assume that Republican partners are not being forthright, I guess it’s our fault.”

Anti-trafficking advocates, meanwhile, were left to try and make sense of how the Senate managed to muck up a popular bipartisan cause. The Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking called on senators to “turn away from this divisive debate and find a bipartisan approach to … serve the needs of survivors.”

Manu Raju contributed to this report.

Correction: A previous version of this article misstated Reid’s party affiliation.