Big Cat Public Safety Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 263. There are a lot of things the gentleman from Hawaii said that I think me, and a lot of other Republicans would agree on about what needs to happen as far as the outcomes of regulating big cats. But the devil is in the details, and that is what I hope to show today, that the details and the process and the procedures that the policy will create with this Democrat bill are not what is best for this policy.

Today's consideration of H.R. 263, the Big Cat Public Safety Act, follows action last month by the Committee on Natural Resources, where this bill passed on a party-line vote after 2 days of lengthy markup.

At a time when gas prices were setting record highs on a near daily basis, the Committee on Natural Resources considered big cat legislation, once again, failing to address the economic and energy crisis facing Americans. At that time, committee Republicans offered several amendments aimed at reminding our majority that we should be focused on reducing energy and food prices, not on exotic pet ownership.

Rather than address the real crisis of the day, Democrats shut down debate on our amendments and forced a vote on final passage of this bill.

So here we are, once again, considering this big cats bill in what looks to be a very crowded legislative week, a week that does not focus on energy prices and inflation, even when gas is still averaging an unbearable and unacceptable $4.50 per gallon.

Versions of this bill have been around since the 112th Congress, begging the question of why, if it is such a good idea, has it not been enacted over the last decade. Two clear reasons are that it would create a new regulatory framework and strip away States' rights.

The bill before us today is aimed at regulating the private ownership of so-called big cats by creating a new and duplicative regulatory authority at the Department of the Interior.

The legislation is a considerable expansion of Federal regulation under the Lacey Act. In 2003, Congress amended the Lacey Act to make it illegal to import, export, buy, sell, transport, receive, or acquire certain live big cats across State lines or the U.S. border. Interstate trade. The bill proposed by my friends across the aisle regulates big cats from the Federal level or an intrastate level, an area where State laws are already in place to handle this.

The Lacey Act historically deals with interstate and international commerce on endangered or injurious wildlife, and the 2003 provisions specifically state that nothing in the act will supersede State laws, but here we are today taking another step to supersede State laws.

This bill would expand the Lacey Act by blatantly overriding State law and enforcing intrastate regulation of big cats.

It would require big cats exhibited at USDA-licensed or USDA- registered facilities be at least 15 feet from the public or behind a permanent barrier, irrespective of State laws. It would end new private ownership of big cats, and it would mandate all big cats be registered with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service within 180 days or risk having the Federal Government confiscate their animal and impose criminal fines and penalties.

It would require big cat owners to certify that they will not breed, acquire, or sell any big cats, and would prohibit direct public contact.

All these mandates would supersede State authority and duplicate existing Federal Government regulation.

Not only would this bill expand the Fish and Wildlife Service authorities, but it would overlay the U.S. Department of Agriculture's responsibilities, which already regulates the treatment of big cats in research and exhibition pursuant to the Animal Welfare Act of 1966.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, at the USDA already has inspectors and law enforcement officers in place that are experts in animal welfare issues. But this bill ignores that existing regulatory framework and would create a new regulatory system that the Congressional Budget Office estimates would lead to $80 million in foregone revenue from current USDA licensed facilities.

The result of this bill would be that USDA-licensed facilities will be regulated by both APHIS under USDA and the Fish and Wildlife Service under the Department of the Interior.

My staff and I have spent considerable time on this issue. One of our first questions was: Why not just work with the House and Senate Agriculture Committees under the jurisdiction of the Animal Welfare Act?

The response we received was an admission that the bill's outside proponents would rather work through the Committee on Natural Resources than the Committee on Agriculture. This is a classic case of venue shopping.

Creating two regulatory frameworks and dual Federal agency management superseding existing State regulation will create confusion, waste taxpayer dollars, and risk failing to adequately regulate these facilities at all.

There is a simple fix to the issues that exist. For that reason, I offered an amendment at our markup that will move the authorities proposed by H.R. 263 into the current USDA framework without superseding State authorities. That commonsense alternative was, unfortunately, rejected on a party-line vote, and unfortunately, it was not allowed to be considered today during the debate in the full House of Representatives. I would dare say that had we adopted that amendment, this bill would be on the suspension calendar.

While I agree that we want to reduce dangerous encounters between the public and big cats, I cannot support this bill because it is an overreaching, duplicative, and precedent-setting proposal that has already served as a blueprint for pending legislation on other species.

We need to work within existing authorities, not create new and duplicative ones. More importantly, we need to focus on the crises facing Americans, including staggering inflation and the high price of energy, not big cats.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject H.R. 263, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, we were just wanting a hearing on addressing the energy crisis that is facing our country, and we have yet to have that. We have continued to see development of energy on Federal lands put to a halt by this administration, and we are still waiting for when we are going to have that first hearing to address that issue.

While it is unfortunate that 18 big cats and 49 animals escaped and had to be put down by police officers in Zanesville, Ohio, that was in 2011. It is unclear how this bill would have prevented the situation, for the owner committed suicide after letting all of his animals out of their pens.

Actually, if this bill was based on putting the authority under APHIS, where they already have law enforcement and the infrastructure and the structure in place to enforce the regulations, it probably would have had a better chance of stopping this than the language in the current bill does.

No one wants to have people put in danger through escaped big cats, but enacting duplicative Federal authorities under the Lacey Act and a new agency is totally unnecessary. Any new authorities at the Federal level should rest with APHIS.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend, the chairman of the Natural Resources Committee, for making a point that we have made, and that is that there are bigger issues to talk about.

Unfortunately, the issues that my friend mentioned are not under the jurisdiction of the House Natural Resources Committee. But energy production on Federal lands and Federal waters are big issues that are in the jurisdiction of our committee. So is mining all the critical resources, the elements and minerals, that are going to be needed to electrify the economy.

Regarding the big CHIPS bill that was just passed on the floor here, a lot of the ingredients that go into those chips actually come from China. One hundred percent of them come from China. So there are bigger issues that we need to talk about.

Really, this bill shouldn't be taking all of this time, and it wouldn't have taken all of this time if the majority had just worked with us a little bit.

If they had done the commonsense thing and had put the jurisdiction of regulating these cats under APHIS where it belongs, as I said before, we would probably have this bill on the suspension calendar and we would all be talking about what a good piece of legislation it is and how it will benefit the country.

But when we take a simple issue and create a new Federal bureaucracy and give authorities to an agency, that I don't even think wants these authorities much less needs these authorities, is something we have to make an issue of.

Mr. Speaker, I find this a bit amusing that the proponents of this bill are rolling out all the law enforcement agencies that are supportive of the bill.

And why wouldn't they be?

Why would they care which Federal agency deals with it?

They just don't want to have to deal with the problem themselves. So, sure, they support this bill because it addresses a problem that they are having to deal with now. But I doubt they have looked past the point that it is creating a new Federal agency that doesn't affect their budgets, it is creating a new Federal agency that makes things duplicative, it doesn't affect their operations, and I am quite certain, had we put the amendment in to put this under APHIS, we would still have all those law enforcement agencies supporting this bill. So, Mr. Speaker, you have to take that for what it is worth.

H.R. 263 is a template that is already being used to regulate other animals. This is the weaponization of the Lacey Act. USDA does have jurisdiction over privately owned cats. The USDA-licensed facilities are not government-owned. So every time the logic trail that you go down about why should this regulation be under U.S. Fish and Wildlife or under the Department of the Interior, it comes back to there is no logic. It is just that somebody had an agenda to put it under an agency that is not equipped right now and doesn't have the personnel right now to enforce it.

So it is creating a new authorization that, I believe, is going to have happen to it what happens to many well-intended laws. They get weaponized to go after something that they originally weren't set up to go after.

I just want to point out that it has been argued that we have got a hodgepodge of laws across the State, or across the country, and that is what makes America great is that we can have different laws that are tailored to different regions of the country.

But there are two Federal laws regulating exotic animals, and they are already on the books. The Captive Wildlife Society Act governs interstate commerce of big cats, and the Animal Welfare Act governs big cat enterprises.

H.R. 263 would overlay existing exotic animal laws, further complicating Federal law and explicitly superseding State laws. If a new Federal law is necessary--I will say it again--the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or APHIS, within USDA, has the expertise and knowledge to carry out these responsibilities.

Again, this is a simple issue. It is an issue that we shouldn't even be having to debate like this. It should be on suspension; but it just shows you how there has been an unwillingness to work on commonsense solutions to a simple problem.

It took up 2 days of committee debate when we could have been talking about energy; when we could have been talking about high inflation prices; when we could have been talking about a water crisis in the West, the drought.

Mr. Speaker, there are 600,000 acres of land laying fallow in California this summer because they don't have water. That has not even come up for one debate in our Natural Resources Committee.

The gentleman talked about the crisis at the southern border. Forty percent of the southern border is public lands, which falls under the jurisdiction of our committee. We have not had a single discussion about it.

We spent 2 days talking about big cats. We are spending valuable floor time before we split for the August break debating big cats. And we are debating an issue that could have been resolved simply.

I hope that going forward, I hope we can work on these issues in a way that is better for the country; that is not trying to create some new bureaucracy that can be used to achieve other goals. And I hope that my colleagues will vote against H.R. 263.

If it somehow gets out of the House, I hope the Senate will not pass it and maybe, in the next Congress, we can come back with commonsense legislation that addresses this issue; puts the jurisdictions under the right authorities; and we can, once and for all, move on from big cats, and we can start talking about real issues that matter to our constituents and to the hardworking taxpayers across the country.

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Mr. WESTERMAN. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

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