Logan's Law

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 653, I call up the bill (H.R. 1018) to amend the Wild Free-

Roaming Horses and Burros Act to improve the management and long-term health of wild free-roaming horses and burros, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on H.R. 1018.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to bring before the House today H.R. 1018, the Restore Our American Mustangs Act, legislation that will save the taxpayers money while saving tens of thousands of wild horses and burros from slaughter.

Earlier this year, the Bureau of Land Management made a truly shocking announcement. This Federal agency tasked with managing our magnificent public lands and resources announced future plans to destroy, i.e., slaughter, 30,000 healthy wild horses and burros entrusted to their care by the American people.

The announcement was even more stunning given that Congress enacted the Wild, Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971 declaring that these iconic animals were ``living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West'' and ``are to be considered an integral part of the natural system of the public lands.''

How in the world can a Federal agency be considering massive slaughter of animals the law says they are supposed to be protecting?

At my request, the Government Accountability Office conducted a complete review of the program, and they documented its numerous shortcomings.

The bill before us amends the 1971 act to implement the suggestions made by GAO and give the agency as many options as possible to avoid destroying these animals. Most significantly, this legislation will move the agency toward increasing the acreage available to wild horses and burros.

When the original act passed in 1971, 20 percent of BLM land was open to the horses. Today, they are only allowed on 13 percent of BLM land. The agency has never justified the removal of horses and burros from these missing acres.

This bill will also require consistency in management planning, with publication of standard operating procedures for managing these animals across all of our public lands. It will require better accounting methods so the agency can be certain how many animals are truly out on the range. It will strengthen the adoption program so that many more eligible horses and burros can go to adoptive homes. And it will authorize cooperative agreements with individuals and nonprofits so that large numbers of animals might be moved onto non-Federal land. Each of these provisions will make this program more cost-effective and will make it more efficient.

Despite these improvements, opponents of this bill are going to claim today that it will be expensive to implement. Their solution is to simply pass the same narrow bill prohibiting slaughter approved in the last Congress. You're going to hear that this bill goes so far that it should be called welfare for horses. That's what they will claim.

This is a funny line, but it uses high cost estimates to gloss over the fact that since the last Congress we have the benefit now of a comprehensive GAO report identifying many more strategies that we must pursue. Commissioning a good report and then ignoring its recommendations I hardly think is a way to save money. Stopping slaughter is an important step, and I'm pleased to see my friends on the other side of the aisle are now supporting that, but we do need to do more.

To be very clear, the pending bill, H.R. 1018, contains no direct spending. We are not creating an entitlement for horses. So the welfare joke falls completely flat.

Any increase in funding for the wild horse and bureau program would be the result of appropriations, not this authorization bill. Increasing the number of Federal acres available to horses and burros from the current 13 percent of BLM land back to the 20 percent available to them in 1971 should not cost the taxpayers anything. It is merely a 7 percent management adjustment, nothing more.

Our friends across the aisle always claim that BLM owns too much land. Now, we don't think so, but they certainly own enough to accommodate horses and burros. Furthermore, the management efficiencies in other parts of this bill will actually save money, and here is what we are doing: increasing adoptions, contraception and reducing overcrowding that will relieve the agency from having to round these animals up and care for them in long-term holding facilities, an expensive proposition.

The status quo is the worst of both worlds. It requires the BLM to hold these animals in expensive, long-term storage right up to the point when the money runs out, and then the agency has to kill thousands of them.

And witness these photos. These are American wild mustangs. And this is their fate. This is their fate held in captivity, abused. This is not what America is all about. This is not what America approves.

H.R. 1018 will give the agency new and better tools to avoid this outcome and will save money in the process.

At the appropriate time, I will be offering a manager's amendment further clarifying that the restoration of the missing acreage is a goal rather than a legal requirement, and so I would urge my colleagues concerned about the cost involved to support that amendment at the time and then support this legislation on final passage.

I reserve the balance of my time, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, before recognizing the distinguished subcommittee chair, I do want to say I'm joined in cosponsoring this legislation by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva) and by my colleague from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield).

At this point, I will yield 3 minutes to the distinguished chairman of our National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands Subcommittee, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

I yield the gentleman 2 additional minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to a dear friend, the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield), one of the cosponsors of the legislation.

I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

May I have a time check, Mr. Speaker.

I reserve the balance of my time to close.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I might consume.

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier today in debate on the rule on this legislation, this Congress can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can address unemployment, we can address health care reform, we can address the war, deficits, and at the same time, we do not need to allow the status quo to continue as it affects our wild horses and burros. These are icons of America, the American mustang. The status quo is a national disgrace. It is a disgrace to our heritage. It is a disgrace to all for which we stand.

Those on the other side of the aisle who want to make light of this situation, I'm sure if they were to go home to their Main Streets and pose a question to their constituents, do you support your Federal Government slaughtering 30,000 American wild horses, do you support them being held in holding pens, I suggest I know what the answer would be. The bottom line, this is the wild horse version of Gitmo, the wild horse version of Gitmo.

The pending legislation seeks to remedy the critical lapse that is taking place under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971 by invoking a number of commonsense measures. The measure would promote the use of better science to determine whether the amount of range that is available to wild horses is capable of sustaining them.

This would be accomplished through maintaining a valid inventory of the

wild horse population on the range and establishment of appropriate, scientifically based methodologies to determine management levels.

Second, the pending bill would increase the amount of range available to wild horses, including through private lands controlled by entities seeking to establish sanctuaries. Many of us have heard about the Pickens Plan. And I'm not talking about the T. Boone Pickens plan, the one dealing with wind and solar energy. I'm talking about the one advanced by his wife, Madeline Pickens, to utilize private resources for the establishment of wild horse sanctuaries.

The pending legislation makes it a goal, not a requirement, but a goal to increase the acreage on which wild horses can roam. By doing so, we reduce the number of animals that are culled from the herd and placed in holding facilities.

These holding facilities which have come up during this debate, I think it is important to recognize that keeping wild horses and burros in these holding facilities costs $21 million annually, or two-thirds of the entire cost of the wild horse and burro management program. The cost of these holding facilities has been rising dramatically from $7 million in 2000 to $21 million in 2008.

So we are attempting to reduce costs here, reduce the holding cost by lessening the number of roundups through a combination of what we are doing in this bill, making more public land available for wild horses and burros, strengthening and reforming the adoption program, enhancing measures for fertility control and contraception.

Third, even with the actions that I have already outlined, there will not be enough open range land to sustain all of our wild horses. In an effort to contain the costs associated with these holding facilities, we seek to bolster the adoption program and implement sterilization and other fertility controls. We seek to give the Bureau of Land Management the tools with which to do a better job.

And, finally, what the bill does not allow is the destruction of healthy horses; fatally injured or terminally ill animals, yes, but not healthy wild mustangs.

Let us stop the slaughter. Stop the abuse. Save taxpayer money and vote for the pending legislation. Let's save mustangs and save tax dollars at the same time and support the pending legislation.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment made in order under the rule.

Mr. Speaker, this amendment makes four changes to H.R. 1018 as reported by our Natural Resources Committee. First, after further consultation with experts in the field, the amendment will broaden the types of fertility control that would be available to the Bureau of Land Management in order to better manage the wild horse and burro population.

Next, the amendment narrows the definition of ``commercial uses'' prohibited under the act. The purpose of this change is to clearly prohibit the sale of horses and burros for slaughter while clarifying that use of these animals on farms or in other commercial operations is allowed.

The amendment also makes a technical change to clarify the membership requirements for the Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Council.

And, finally, the amendment relaxes the requirement that the BLM return wild horses and burros to the acres of public land from which they have been removed since 1971.

The CBO cost estimate for this bill was based on the assumption that significant land acquisition would be required. That will not be the case, however; these horses and burros can be accommodated on existing Federal lands. Restoration of those acres remains an important goal but would not be a legal requirement.

This is a good package of small changes which will improve H.R. 1018. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Washington's comments on my efforts, and appreciate his full disclosure. I'll probably repeat it a few times here in the next couple of minutes, but I do appreciate him being up front about it.

This substitute, which is my anti-slaughter bill from last Congress, addresses one piece of a much larger puzzle. While the slaughter issue is a disturbing one, the ROAM Act will actually address the underlying problems facing the BLM horse and burro program, which has made slaughter a possibility. The substitute would address the symptom, while the underlying legislation will provide a cure.

I'm pleased that the gentleman from Washington State now opposes the slaughter of horses. When this substitute came before the Congress as a free-standing bill last Congress, and which he has already fully disclosed, he voted against it. But now he is in support thereof and is even offering it on the floor of the House. That is a step forward. Unfortunately, this conversion is a day late and several dollars short.

This substitute was the right approach last Congress, but that was before the BLM announced that the program was bankrupt and they were going to have to kill 30,000 horses and burros.

The GAO documented that the BLM program is out of control. First the agency was holding 5,000 horses, then 10,000, now it's 30,000. The agency now claims killing these animals is the only solution.

Adopting the Hastings substitute would stop private slaughter, but without the other reforms in the underlying legislation, 1018, the BLM will have to destroy these animals. The Hastings substitute just changes the identity of those who are killing the horses. Only the underlying bill actually stops the slaughter.

This substitute was the right approach last Congress, but that was also before the release of the GAO report. Now we have a thorough analysis of the obstacles facing the BLM, and a list of recommendations to address the root causes.

The GAO documented the enormous cost of the current BLM approach and proposed solutions. The Congress is now in a position to do more, and we must do more. H.R. 1018 does more.

Adopting this substitute would cost money, cost money, not save it, because it would allow the BLM to continue pouring good money after bad, without fixing the inefficiencies which plague the program in the first place.

Since I authored the legislation Mr. Hastings is now offering as his substitute, my colleagues and I have worked with the BLM, the Humane Society, the Animal Welfare Institute, the GAO and others to find new and more comprehensive solutions. We have apparently succeeded in bringing Mr. Hastings up to where we were last Congress, and I hope that eventually all of our colleagues will understand that now is the time to do more.

The substitute is too little, too late, should be rejected.

And I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I am prepared to close.

Yes.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, the CBO estimate, the $700 million that has been thrown out by the other side as a potential cost to this legislation, was done in the last Congress. It was done before the adoption of the manager's amendment that we just adopted today in an earlier voice vote. It was done without considering the ramifications of the other aspects of H.R. 1018 that this House will adopt today. It was done taking into account in a very narrow, single shot-type fashion, if you will, the potential costs of purchasing 19 million acres of additional Federal land for the use of these wild horses and burros.

Therefore, when taking into account that cost, as CBO has done, they did not consider the fact that there are already Federal lands owned by the American people that are available and out there. The CBO did not take into account the management tools contained in the pending legislation with which we intend to help the BLM do a better job and improve the status quo. The CBO did not estimate any cost savings from an enhanced adoption program or from sterilization programs. The CBO did not take into account the reduction in costs of these holding pens, which I referenced earlier, the $21 million annually that it costs today--and that number keeps going up--of the current holding pens for these wild horses and burros. The CBO did not consider any of the ``today'' costs or how the improved management tools offered in H.R. 1018 will save dollars in the years ahead.

I urge a ``no'' vote, not only on the Hastings substitute amendment but also a ``yes'' vote on the pending H.R. 1018. H.R. 1018 is the humane and right vote to cast today. It will save our mustangs. It will save tax dollars. It will save millions of tax dollars annually. When you look through all of the smoke and mirrors of the numbers that have been thrown out today, you will find that, by implementing herd reduction with birth control, we can save more than $6 million alone each year. Again, when we look at the cost reductions of these holding pens, this legislation is the tax-wise way to go.

So I conclude by urging a ``no'' vote on the Hastings substitute and a ``yes'' vote on the underlying bill, H.R. 1018.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I object to the unanimous consent, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

(Mr. HASTINGS of Washington asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, across our Nation, Americans are struggling to pay their bills; 9.5 percent of Americans are out of work. This is the highest unemployment rate that America has experienced in over a quarter of a century. President Obama and his economic advisers expect the number of jobless to climb higher, into the double digits.

After bailouts for Wall Street and a stimulus bill that has cost hundreds of billions of dollars and still isn't creating the jobs that the Democrats promised, the national deficit has now hit $1 trillion, and that is an historic and worrying amount that President Obama says keeps him awake at night.

Mr. Speaker, Americans are hurting. Our economy is in a recession. Two million jobs have been lost since the stimulus bill passed this Congress in February. Government spending is going through the roof. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that since January, the Obama and Pelosi budgets will lead to increased spending of $2.6 trillion over the next 10 years.

So, Mr. Speaker, with this backdrop, what is the response of this Democrat Congress to month after month of lost jobs, record unemployment, out-of-control spending, and skyrocketing deficits? Their response is to vote on a bill to create a $700 million welfare program for wild horses and burros.

Mr. Speaker, if the American people want an illustration of just how out of touch this Congress has become on spending, they need to look no further than what's happening here on the floor of the House with this issue of wild horses and burros.

In the last Congress, the House passed legislation to ban the commercial slaughter of wild horses and burros. It was a one-page bill, and CBO estimated that it would cost taxpayers less than $500,000 a year. Now we're just 2 years from that time period and we're looking at a bill that, again, bans slaughter of these animals but then proceeds to spend a CBO estimate of $700 million to create a new welfare program for wild horses.

Mr. Speaker, that's right. Under the fiscal plan of this Democrat Congress the amount they want to spend on wild horses from the last Congress, which was $500,000, to this Congress, is $700 million.

So let's take a look at what the taxpayers' dollars would be spent on in

this vast increase of public spending. It would mandate a wild horse census be conducted every 2 years. It provides enhanced contraception and birth control for these horses. It would spend and somehow acquire or move 19 million acres of public and private land for the specific purpose of giving these horses more places to roam around.

Mr. Speaker, 19 million acres is roughly the size of the distinguished chairman's State in West Virginia. That's the size of what we're talking about. And after we do that, Mr. Speaker, $5 million will then be spent to repair the damage that these horses will do on these lands. And then, of course, there are new mandates that government bureaucrats perform home inspections before Americans can adopt a wild horse. That's the spending that would be encompassed in this $700 million.

So again, just to repeat, just to be sure that everybody understands, the taxpayers are being asked to buy up millions of acres of land for the enjoyment of wild horses, and then taxpayers will have to pay $5 million a year to repair the damage that these horses will do to those lands.

Mr. Speaker, I must say only in Washington, D.C., does this make sense. Our country is in the middle of the worst recession in a half century. Over 14.5 million Americans are unemployed and can't find jobs. How in the world can the Democrats in this Congress hold a vote on this bill?

Americans are hurting. Republicans are focused on creating the jobs in this country, but this Democrat Congress seems to be more worried about hundreds of millions of dollars for wild burros and wild horses.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to yield 7 minutes to the gentlewoman from Wyoming (Mrs. Lummis) who has an absolute hands-on experience with the issue that we're dealing with here today. She's also a member of the Natural Resources Committee.

Mr. Speaker, before I yield time to my friend from Utah, I just would point out to my friend from Virginia that the amendment that I am going to offer later on is precisely word for word a bill that he voted on 2 years ago.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to my friend from Utah (Mr. Bishop).

I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. King).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, again, let me repeat that when America is hurting, we should be addressing those issues in which to try to resolve those problems and those issues that are making America hurt. Unemployment is at 9.5 percent, and President Obama says it could go into double digits in the near future.

And so what is our response to that? Our response is to, unlike 2 years ago, address this issue in a different manner, to address it at least partially the same way, but add another $700 million for, as I mentioned, and the distinguished chairman acknowledged that we would mention, welfare for horses.

I don't think that that is the proper way we should be debating, given the economic environment we have in this country. Yet that is precisely where this bill goes.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I will yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I want to give credit to my friend and chairman of the Natural Resources Committee for the creativity that is exhibited in the manager's amendment.

On the one hand, this manager's amendment is an outright admission that we can't afford this costly new welfare program for wild horses. And then on the other hand, this amendment doesn't delete, erase, strike out or eliminate even a single page, section or word from this bill.

Somehow, we are to believe that adding four little words to this 20- page bill, without deleting anything from it, somehow makes the CBO- estimated price tag of $700 million magically go away. Even with this manager's amendment, Mr. Speaker, the pricing remains.

This manager's amendment doesn't eliminate the sections from the bill to restore wild horses and burros to 19 million acres of land. By the way, it is an area, as we have said before, larger than the State of West Virginia. But just to put this in perspective, it is also larger than the combined area of New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut and New Jersey. So we are not talking about a small piece of land. We are talking about a huge area.

The CBO estimates that complying with the new policies in this bill and restoring horses to this 19 million additional acres will cost over $700 million. Now, the chairman tries to explain that all we are doing is changing this requirement to a goal.

The American people, I think, are not going to breathe any easier when they hear that Congress has a goal of spending $700 million to create welfare programs for wild horses and burros.

So, Mr. Speaker, the manager's amendment doesn't change the real plan in the bill at all. The plan is to spend $700 million for welfare for wild horses and burros.

Mr. Speaker, with that I will yield back my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment made in order under the rule.

Mr. Speaker, I hesitate to call this my amendment because actually it was written by Chairman Rahall. This is the exact text of H.R. 249 that passed the House in the last Congress. It passed the House in April of 2007. It bans the commercial slaughter of wild horses and burros. It is less than one page in length, and CBO estimated in the last Congress that it would cost under $500,000 a year.

Members of this House voted for this bill just 2 years ago, and at that time, Mr. Speaker, the unemployment rate nationwide was 4.3 percent.

Fast forward to today, when the unemployment rate today has more than doubled to 9.5 percent and is estimated by officials in the Obama administration to go into double digits in the near future.

With this background, Mr. Speaker, we are now considering a bill that bans the slaughter of wild horses and creates a new $700 million welfare program for wild horses and burros. This House, Mr. Speaker, can choose between banning slaughter of wild horses for less than $500,000, which is what my substitute would do, or banning the slaughter of wild horses with a $700 million price tag, which is the subject of the underlying bill. I think, Mr. Speaker, that this is a very easy choice.

Let me repeat again. The vote for the Hastings substitute would ban horse slaughter at a cost of $500,000 a year. H.R. 1018 bans horse slaughter, just like my substitute, but creates a new welfare program for $700 million. I think, in this economic atmosphere that we are in, the best option is to adopt my substitute.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, Mr. Speaker, I voted against that bill 2 years ago because I think there has to be an option for slaughter. But given the option today of spending an extra $700 million or spending less than $500,000 and still banning slaughter, I think that is the proper way to go and that is precisely what my substitute does. And so I would urge my colleagues to vote for the substitute.

I reserve my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield one minute to the distinguished Republican leader, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner).

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert), a member of the Natural Resources Committee.

Mr. Speaker, could I inquire of my friend, the distinguished chairman of the committee, if he is prepared to close after I close?

I yield myself the balance of the time.

Mr. Speaker, let me just repeat again: My substitute is a substitute that is identical to the bill that passed this House in April of 2007, and the cost at that time was $500,000. The underlying bill that we are debating today has essentially those same provisions plus a price tag of $700 million, a huge difference between the two. I think, due to the economic times that we are in right now, the most prudent way for this Congress to act is to go with the lesser amount of money, and that's precisely what my substitute does.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to make one other point.

The distinguished chairman in his manager's amendment made some different calculations as to the $700 million and as to the 19 million acres that were to be part of this bill. I just want to make a point. The CBO has not scored that one way or the other, but if an absolute figure of acquiring or of moving around 19 million acres costs $700 million, then only logic would suggest that it's going to be precisely the same amount of money. So I just want to make a point that the CBO has not estimated the score of the manager's amendment.

The difference here in the debate still is the difference, during these economic times we're in, between spending 700 million taxpayer dollars on welfare for horses or spending $500,000 to ban the slaughter of wild horses and burros. I think the latter that I spoke about is a better way to go, and I would urge my colleagues to vote for the substitute.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I thank the gentleman.

I guess one of the problems I have is that I have actually read this bill and some of the amendments that are going to be proposed here. It seems that we are in a situation where we are more concerned--or at least the leaders of this Congress are more concerned--about homes for horses than we are homes for Americans or jobs for Americans. And from the very few people that still have jobs, we are now going to take $700 million, at the minimum, from their pockets to try to create a solution to a problem this Congress has solved.

In years past, the land managers in this country have pled with this Congress not to take away the management tool; yet year after year in proposal after proposal, we in Congress have, indeed, micromanaged those individuals. We have stopped the ability of a sale from these horses even though the contract for the sale prohibited resale for slaughtering purposes. That no longer is a tool that they have. We have tried to reduce the ability that they have of running an adoption program until today. It is no longer effective because of our efforts on this floor to micromanage. There is an effort--even the administration complained about a provision that will be in the bill and that will remain in this bill about the process of taking a horse that has died of natural causes to a rendering factory that could be construed as a felony. The administration complained about that, and we have done nothing to take out that micromanagement element to it. In years past the Secretary of the Interior did have the right to euthanize old, sick or lame horses; but we have also narrowed that down to the point that that could only happen with a terminally ill horse as a means of a mercy approach.

In addition to that, other elements that this House passed in the agriculture bill and in finance bills have totally eliminated the abilities of those in the private sector who have

horses to do anything else except what is left to them, dump these on the Federal range, which means that the count the people have been talking about by the States--and it is only 10 of them that are impacted with the wild horses and wild burros--recognize that there is a significant undercount of this problem and this situation. We already have dedicated solely to wild horses and wild burros an amount of land that is owned by the public that is the size of the State of New York. And even with that much land dedicated solely to the purpose of horse range, our micromanagement in taking tools away from the land manager who went and complained about that has caused us to have an overabundance of horses on that land until, indeed, 35,000 horses, we have to find other activities for them; and Mr. Speaker, it is important to know that by the laws of this country they cannot be slaughtered. There is no slaughter of horses. We have banned the practice. We have banned the transportation.

No one is talking about the slaughtering of horses. The closest this bill comes to slaughter is the Rules chairman who limited all the amendments that were possible under this particular bill. And unfortunately because of how we have micromanaged this land, the appropriations for our Horse and Burro Program, which will run close to $60 million in next year's budget, 75 percent has to be done to the excess that we have that has been caused by decisions that we have made on this floor.

Now the solution being presented today is simply not trying to give the land managers the tools that they ask. It is to expand the amount of land by a size equal to the State of West Virginia for more area at a cost of $700 million, according to CBO. However, the agency itself said this will be well over $1 billion when we are finished with this solution. We have found that we have a problem in this country where stimulus bills don't create the jobs we expected, our bloated budgets don't create the jobs we expected, our tax increases don't create the jobs we expected. So instead of tackling that issue, which would be a perfectly legitimate subject today, we're talking about horses, horses roaming an area the size of the State of New York. We may be willing to ration health care for humans but not health care for horses. We have more concern with the habitat for horses than homes for humans, and I have a big problem--and I will speak to the amendment now so I will not come back--with the concept of the change the gentleman from West Virginia is offering. By changing this bill from mandating that the size of West Virginia be found somewhere to setting it only as a goal makes it a much more pernicious issue. A goal is not a legal requirement, but a goal is not defined anywhere in terms in law, which means a goal may actually be an incentive to force them to reprioritize in a way that the BLM does not want to reprioritize.

A goal in statute may be an element and a door opening for lawsuits that will be used against this element. I mean, this is the most dangerous of language when it is so vague that no one has defined it, no one has considered it, but it may be used against us, and especially when the Secretary of the Interior is one of the few people in Washington that has the power of condemnation. Not even the President of the United States has the ability of going in and condemning lands. The Secretary of the Interior does, and we are now empowering that Secretary with a vague undefined term of having a goal of finding enough land, public or private, the size of the State of West Virginia.

May I state one other thing. The chairwoman of the Rules Committee is from New York. The person that was representing this bill from the Rules Committee was from Massachusetts. The good gentleman is from West Virginia. Last year when we talked about this bill, there were gentlemen from West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio speaking towards this issue. With all due respect, there are only 10 States that are impacted by wild horses and wild burros. Those States I have just mentioned have absolutely zero wild horses on their property. If they would take these wild horses and provide a habitat for them, I would be ecstatic. But until that time happens, we are the ones that are bearing the burden, and we understand the issues. And the land managers are asking, free their hands so they can solve this problem, and Congress does not have the wisdom to listen to the experts to do what they know is right to solve this particular problem. This is a conundrum that we should not be talking about. We should be talking about how we can make life better for Americans with more jobs and a better lifestyle.

I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding.

I come to the floor to address a subject matter that seems a bit surrealistic. We have a love for horses in this country. Most of us in this Chamber would agree with that, and I am among those. I can think of a lot of happy times around horses, on horses and working with horses. We also have a responsibility to manage the resources of this country. There seems to be a conviction to try to pull this globe-- under the climate change legislation or the cap-and-tax legislation and many other pieces--back to what would have been pre-Garden of Eden before man supposedly desecrated the planet.

And the default position, amazingly for me, is what was nature like before man began to compete as a species with the other species on the planet? And so that default position that comes from the environmentalists from consistently out of the political left would be this natural balance of our environment.

I have just heard the gentleman state that these horses were native. But they were not native. They are not indigenous. No surviving species of horse was indigenous to this continent nor this hemisphere. They were brought here by the Spanish in the 1500s and beyond. The horses got loose and began to roam the range, and they competed with the existing species that were there.

So if, really, our default position is back to whatever it was Mother Nature gave to us before we competed as a species, then we should look at this not as horses as a natural component of the habitat, but an unnatural, feral component of the habitat.

When I hear about the discussion about the millions spent on these helicopter cowboys herding these horses around and putting horses into holding pens and buying up hay to feed them, I think of visiting the National Bison Reserve that is out there in, I have forgotten exactly where that was, whether it is in southern Montana or up in Wyoming. I remember going there to visit. And I was fascinated. I drove a long way to get there because I wanted to see what it was like when the buffalo roamed the plain. I have walked into the virgin timberland and stood there and imagined what it was like for the pioneers and the settlers to walk through that forest. I wanted to be out there to see what it was like for the native buffalo.

What I saw were paddock-style pastures. In order to manage the bison, the Federal Government has built a great big old pasture and divided it into four quadrants, and there we manage the buffalo by herding them into one corner of the pasture and then another and then another, harvesting some for slaughter. We sell them for breeding stock and we eat them. We do that with buffalo, but we can't do that with horses, because somehow a horse has been raised to another level of species.

This is an amazing thing to me. And as I read through this bill, I don't think I have ever been so taken aback by reading through language. There is much of it that has been produced in this Congress.

I listened to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran) talk about this contraception that is here.

I thank the gentleman.

I think it is important for us to actually read the language on this horse contraception. It says: ``Research, develop, and implement enhanced surgical or immunocontraception sterilization or other safe methods of fertility control.'' Now let that soak in for a little bit. This is enhanced contraception for horses. I don't know what that is. I think it could be about anything that human beings might use. But I suspect that it doesn't include horse abortion for one thing. And so I'm implying that there is a different set of standards for a horse species than there is for a human species, given the debate we have had in this Congress.

It is a breathtaking step to think about what enhanced contraception is for horses. It is one of those things that I don't think will be described here on the floor of the House. It is kind of an imaginary thing. It is difficult to manage these horses. And I would say that abstinence will not be part of this; that is also part of the debate.

So as I watch what is going on, there has been a real effort here to block the humane harvesting of horses. And the HSUS has been successful in doing that. There are no horses slaughtered in America that are going off for human beings to eat anywhere. Some are being hauled, I think against the law, maybe across the border to be slaughtered elsewhere; but to manage all of our livestock, all of the species in our country, we have to be smart about it.

What has happened is they have, through legislation and litigation, blocked the responsible harvesting of horses. It has taken the market of them down from 5 to 600, down to essentially nothing; and the result is we have a lot more horses than we need. And now they have the audacity to come to this Congress and say, we are going to have to hit up the American people for 700 million more dollars in order to take care of these extra animals that we decided now we want to keep around as national pets.

I did the math on this. And if you calculate how the increase in the horse population because of the restrictions in the harvesting, never mind the value of what has happened to the property of the horse owners, they will eat up enough hay from enough ground, there will be 1 billion gallons of ethanol we could produce off of that horse pasture.

I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding.

I am from Wyoming, a State that has many wild horses on its public lands. I also have a degree in animal science, and I may be the only Member of this body who has ridden a BLM wild horse. My sister adopted two. This bill is not respectful of the grass resource.

Let's talk about the ecology and the environment of the plains of this great country. Wild horses graze differently than cattle, sheep, elk, and deer. And the reason is they have a solid hoof; whereas, buffalo, elk, deer, and cattle have a split hoof. When a solid-hoofed animal is pounding our fragile soils in the West, they are tamping or compacting that soil so it does not accept water that is needed to sustain very shallow, very fragile topsoil and the important diversity of grass species that are supported and are needed by every animal that grazes those lands and every endangered and threatened species that uses those same lands.

Furthermore, wild horses are there year-round. Livestock is only there at certain times of the year. Wild horses that were not native to these lands, in the spring, create tremendous damage when the thawing occurs that creates great rises and disruptions of the soil.

Furthermore, when they graze, they pull plants out from the roots. Some of these species are, themselves, threatened and endangered grass and flowering plant species. That is why the Wyoming Nature Conservancy has opposed this bill.

Let me read you what the Wyoming Nature Conservancy has to say: H.R. 1018 is an affront to efforts that have united conservation and ranch interests to achieve real, on-the-ground results throughout the West. Western rangeland supports population of native plants, wildlife, livestock, and wild horses. It is our position that effective management of this rangeland must be based on science, not emotion.

This bill is based on emotion and not science.

Furthermore, when flies congregate on wild horses in the summer, the horses tend to gather closely and try to roll to prevent the flies from staying on them and laying their eggs. Consequently, they're destroying sage grass habitat.

Sage grass is a threatened species that is headed for the endangered species status if we do not control the activity of species that interfere with the recovery of the sage grass.

In other words, this bill is elevating wild horses above threatened and endangered species, above all the plant and animal species that share the same habitat in the West, and this is inappropriate land management, grass management. It creates an unsustainable situation. That is why Wyoming's Democrat Governor has also opposed the bill.

Governor Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming: H.R. 1018, to be frank, props up a program in need of sweeping reform. The current adoption program is full and is not responsive to the real issues of wild horse management. By increasing expensive holding facilities where many of these animals live out their lives because they are unadoptable, H.R. 1018 ignores the reality that wild horse and burro populations are out of control and doesn't get to the real problems that cripple our ability to truly manage these animals.

Furthermore, Wyoming's highly respected premier Game and Fish Department: Simply put, we are very concerned that expanding the management

of free-roaming horses and burros to all public lands would have devastating impacts to the long-term sustainability of the public's fish and wildlife resources and their habitats in the West.

The list goes on and on of opponents. These opponents are people that manage fish and wildlife. These are people who manage grass resources. These are people who have boots-on-the-ground experience and know that you cannot elevate one nonnative species over native species of plants and animals and have an ecologically sustainable grass resource and prairie system.

Chairman Rahall, I have great respect for your knowledge of the mining laws that are so important to my State and your State, but I can tell you respectfully, Mr. Chairman, that wild horses are a problem in Wyoming, and I'm very hopeful that you will choose not to import the problem to your State of West Virginia. But if you do, you will find, of course, that you can sustain mammals in terms of a number of mammals per acre. In Wyoming, it's the number of acres per mammal, and it can vary anywhere from 35 acres to sustain one mammal to over 100. Because of that, the consequences of overgrazing are enormous.

Today's population of wild horses stands at approximately 36,000, and we know that the wild horse program stipulates that the total population of wild horses on public land should not exceed about 28,000 in order to promote a thriving ecological balance.

Mr. Chairman, we are talking about ecological balance. Yes, this is an expensive program, and I concur with the remarks of my ranking member from Washington. But I want to emphasize the disrespect that this bill places on our sensitive, fragile grass resources in the West that, during times of drought and during times of heavy pressure, are unavailable to sustain this feral horse population, nonnative, that is in need of control.