Washington- Arizona Senator John McCain says fighting Internet child pornography should be one of the highest priorities of the U.S. He is party to a new bipartisan bill in Congress would impose stiffer fines on Internet service providers that fail to report images of child pornography on their websites.

Senator McCain has teamed up with New York Senator Chuck Schumer, Representative Steve Chabot of Ohio, and Representative Nick Lampson of Texas to introduce the Securing Adolescents from Exploitation Online Act. The SAFE Act requires Internet service providers (ISPs) that discover images of child pornography on their websites to report it to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which would then forward the reports to law enforcement.

Under the bill, penalties for ISPs that knowingly and willfully fail to report online child porn would be increased from $50,000 to $300,000. The SAFE Act would also require chat room and social networking sites like MySpace to report child porn.

At a recent press conference on Capitol Hill, McCain explained that the proliferation of child porn in America has reached staggering levels. “There are over 14 million pornography sites on the Internet that house an estimated one million pornographic images of children, with 200 new images being posted daily,” he stated.

“The production and distribution of abuse images of children is estimated in the U.S. to be at least a $3 billion business annually,” he continued. “Of all the child pornography images on the Internet, 55 percent are generated from the United States.”

According to the Arizona lawmaker, the bill is supported by literally every law enforcement agency in the country. “Simply put, this bill is designed to reduce the sexual exploitation of our children and punish those who cause them physical and emotional harm through sex crimes,” he said.

The bill also provides more than $20 million in federal grants to law enforcement agencies to track down online child pornographers.