Big Cat Public Safety Act

Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 1256, I call up the bill (H.R. 263) to amend the Lacey Act Amendments of 1981 to clarify provisions enacted by the Captive Wildlife Safety Act, to further the conservation of certain wildlife species, 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 to insert extraneous material on H.R. 263.

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

Mr. Speaker, the question that this bill addresses is whether the private, unregistered ownership and exploitation of big cats, meaning lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, cougars, and hybrids of them should continue considering significant and real animal welfare, public safety, and law enforcement safety concerns.

H.R. 263, the Big Cat Public Safety Act says no, and would end the ownership of big cats as private pets and prohibit exhibitors from allowing public contact with big cats, including cubs.

This bill is a culmination of over a decade of bipartisan effort. The Big Cat Public Safety Act, in one form or another, has been introduced by, cosponsored by, and generally supported by Republicans and Democrats alike for well over a decade. Since the 112th Congress, Big Cats have garnered 933 bipartisan cosponsors. It was initially introduced by three different Republicans over a number of Congresses, as well as the current Democratic sponsor.

We have continued to refine the bill in the decade since its first introduction. We passed it by suspension last Congress, and I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support it again now.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act is endorsed not only by numerous environmental, animal welfare, and other organizations, but by countless law enforcement agencies and associations, including the National Sheriffs' Association, the Fraternal Order of Police, State- specific sheriffs' associations, and individual law enforcement officers.

We need to look no further than the compelling testimony from Sheriff Matt Lutz before our Natural Resources Committee to understand the broad concerns with the status quo.

In 2011, specifically, more than 50 exotic animals, including 38 lions, tigers, and cougars were released into the public from a private residence in Zanesville, Ohio, shutting down a highway and terrifying the neighbors.

Sheriff Lutz led the law enforcement response to the crisis. He testified at our hearing this year that his department didn't have any inventory of how many animals there were, they barely even knew that they were there to start with, and his officers weren't trained, obviously, to deal with big cats and other exotic animals released into a public setting en masse.

Incredibly, no one was killed or seriously injured in Zanesville that day, but as Sheriff Lutz testified: ``The outcome could have been much worse if any single condition had been just slightly different, and it could be far worse the next time.''

Precisely because private ownership is unregulated and largely unknown, we don't know how many big cats are currently kept in private ownership in the U.S., but estimates are as high as 20,000.

Privately owned big cats are often purchased or bred as cubs for photo ops, and as they grow larger, they are sold into the exotic pet trade or on the black market for wildlife parts. Adult big cats in private ownership typically live in inhumane conditions that threaten public safety.

Since 1990, around 300 dangerous incidents involving big cats have resulted in human injuries, mauling, and death. In many cases, the animals are shot and killed, as first responders are not equipped for these situations.

In 2003, Congress unanimously passed the Captive Wildlife Safety Act, which amended the Lacey Act to prohibit importing, exporting, buying, selling, transporting, receiving, or acquiring big cats across States and the U.S. border.

Though State laws vary, there is no Federal policy regarding the private possession or use of big cats, and one is critically needed.

This bill narrowly focuses on privately owned animals. It includes exemptions for exhibitors with U.S. Department of Agriculture, or USDA, Class C licenses, and current owners are grandfathered in as long as they register with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and abide by listed regulations.

H.R. 263 will protect first responders and the public, as well as the animals themselves.

In addition to public safety concerns, the exotic cat trade fuels other criminal behavior that we in Congress should not be supporting.

As just one example, the TV series ``Tiger King'' showed us that there is a dark and dangerous side to keeping lions, tigers, and other big cats in captivity. In fact, Joe Exotic from that series is in jail for violating the Lacey Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Now, some opponents of this bill argue that we need to make changes to the bill to help small zoos stay in business. This bill would not affect small zoos. The reality is that most zoos, whether they are big or small, already have policies in place that reflect the Big Cat Public Safety Act standards. They are not going to be asked to do anything that they are not doing already. They don't allow public contact or cub petting, and they already keep cats at a safe distance away from the public. There are only a small few who still allow it, and they shouldn't.

Now, we may hear claims from my colleague on the other side this is a USDA, U.S. Department of Agriculture issue, not a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issue. The fact is that the USDA does not regulate private ownership of animals like big cats.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has long been responsible for regulating big cats' interstate transfer and commerce under the Lacey Act and has the authority to regulate the possession and breeding of endangered species, including big cats.

While the USDA provides basic requirements for preventing cruelty to exhibited animals, the Fish and Wildlife Service is the one that must provide stringent standards to ensure that threatened and endangered species are managed to actively promote conservation, regardless of whether the animals are exhibited to the public.

The Big Cat Public Safety Act merely strengthens and expands an already existing framework under the Lacey Act. It is a commonsense, and, again, uniquely bipartisan solution to address public safety and animal abuse concerns.

Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a July 26, 2022, letter from the Congressional Budget Office.

Congressional Budget Office,

U.S. Congress,

Washington, DC, July 26, 2022.

Hon. Raul M. Grijalva,

Chairman, Committee on Natural Resources,

House of Representatives, Washington, DC.

Dear Mr. Chairman: The Congressional Budget Office has

prepared the enclosed cost estimate for H.R. 263, the Big Cat

Public Safety Act.

If you wish further details on this estimate, we will be

pleased to provide them. The CBO staff contact is Lilia

Ledezma.

Sincerely,

Phillip L. Swagel.

Enclosure.

H.R. 263, Big Cat Public Safety Act--July 22, 2022

[By fiscal year, millions of dollars] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

2022 2022-2027 2022-2032 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Direct Spending (Outlays)........... 0 * * Revenues............................ 0 * * Increase or Decrease (-) in the 0 * * Deficit............................ Spending Subject to Appropriation * 3 ** (Outlays).......................... ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mr. Speaker, I commend my colleague from Illinois, Mr. Quigley, on his work on this bill, and I urge all Members to vote ``yes.''

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

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

Mr. Speaker, first of all, to my colleague's initial comments as to energy and the economy, nobody denies the critical importance of those issues, and, yes, of course, we all should be working collectively on those particular issues.

But by that measure, frankly, I would have wished that more of my colleagues on the other side would have voted for the bill immediately prior to this, which is a major issue and initiative to solve our supply chains and to take care of our national defense in terms of our chips. Also, by the measure that he outlines, we should not have addressed other critical issues in our country--for example, gun violence, women's rights, and civil rights. Of course, we should have done that.

The fact of the matter is that this Congress must and can address the many challenges of our country, and, yes, those challenges include, for this particular hour, the danger posed to our public and our law enforcement communities by unregulated big cats.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Quigley), the author of this legislation.

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

Mr. Speaker, first of all, to the comments of my colleague and friend from California, he says that this situation of private possession of big cats is already covered by current law. That is incorrect. They are not regulated under Federal law. The private possession is not regulated, nor is the private utilization and exploitation covered by current law.

He complains that this would set up a duplicative environment. Neither USDA nor the Fish and Wildlife Service is regulating in this area right now.

So, it is a question, if one accepts the premise of which way you go in terms of who is best to regulate it, it is not going to duplicate anything that either of them does, but it will complement more accurately what the Fish and Wildlife Service is responsible for, which is, number one, enforcement of the Lacey Act, which this is a natural extension of, in which we focus on the trade and endangered species and the impact of that trade not only on the public safety but on the survival of those species around the world.

Number one, the Fish and Wildlife Service does, in fact, deal with endangered species. In fact, it is our primary agency for doing so. So this is a judgment that the Fish and Wildlife Service is the appropriate agency as opposed to the USDA which has a different direction that it takes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva), who is the chair of the full committee.

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

Mr. Speaker, in response to my friend and colleague from Georgia, I simply want to read a list of some of the endorsers of this particular legislation.

These are all members of law enforcement: The National Sheriffs' Association, the Fraternal Order of Police, the Sheriffs' Association of Texas, the Maine Sheriffs' Association, the West Virginia Sheriffs' Association, the Arkansas Sheriffs' Association, the Kansas Sheriffs' Association, the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association, the Buckeye State Sheriffs' Association of Ohio, the Vermont Sheriffs' Association, and the Iowa State Sheriffs' Association.

I have gotten to four lines of a whole bunch of other endorsements from law enforcement.

Clearly, they regard this as one of the areas that we should address for this country out of the many challenges that we face. So I do think it is appropriate that we devote just a little bit of time to what is concerning them.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Castor).

Mr. Speaker, first of all, to the ranking member's comments, this is an informed judgment about which of two existing Federal agencies is more appropriate to manage and administer what, I believe, if I hear the ranking member correctly, is our common goal, our common goal of ending the status quo as to the private possession and exploitation of big cats.

So this is a judgment that we disagree on. I have articulated our reasons why Fish and Wildlife is the better one. He has his view of USDA. It is a policy call for us to make. But we are not disagreeing with the overall goal, I don't believe.

His amendment, by the way, not only--his proposed amendment not only proposed to put it in USDA, but also to essentially preempt the preemption of Federal law. So, in other words, there is a jumble of State laws out there, ranging from good, solid State laws, to no State laws; and that creates a real complicated and very confusing puzzle for all kinds of people, again, including law enforcement.

So you cannot apply a Federal standard across the country with one sentence, and then, in the next sentence say, oh, by the way, any State can do anything it wants. That doesn't make any sense at all.

So either we go in with the Federal standard, or we don't go there at all. Our judgment under this law is that we need to go there with a Federal standard.

As to my colleague's comments on priorities, I would, again, refer to my earlier comments. Those are critical priorities that we are all trying to address.

Certainly, I haven't checked the roll call vote on the bill that we just passed, CHIPS, but I hope, if they are truly interested and focused on inflation, on energy, on self-sufficiency in our country, then I would hope that I saw a ``yes'' vote for them on one of the most major pieces of legislation that we will be passing and the President will be signing shortly to end our supply chain reliance on places like China.

My colleague also knows that we have coming up a major wildfire bill to address that challenge that we all agree is a critical challenge for our country, and I certainly hope that he will view that bill favorably as well, if, in fact, we all have that shared goal.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time. I am prepared to close. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

First of all, I do want to thank my colleague, the ranking member of the full committee. He is a very good ranking member and a very good person to work with on many challenges on our Natural Resources Committee.

I appreciate his comments at the outset of this debate which, I believe, reflected an agreement as to the problem and as to the goal. We may be sitting here debating some of the implementation, but in this Congress, if we can

agree on the problem and the goal, that is a step forward, and I appreciate at least that we have that common agreement.

Yes, we do have disagreements in terms of the exact way to approach this; specifically, which Federal agency should actually have the con on this. We have outlined our arguments here and elsewhere, and we have a disagreement, and that is part of the democratic process. We believe we have the better view of that, given the Fish and Wildlife Service's focus.

I do want to take issue with his comment that it took 2 days to debate this bill in the Natural Resources Committee. Actually, the debate having to do with this particular issue in the Natural Resources Committee was far less than 2 days. In fact, I didn't add it up. It probably amounted to 2 hours of those 2 days. The rest of it was really debating other issues in the context of this bill.

So this is not a particularly complicated problem to grasp from the law enforcement, from public safety, from an animal welfare perspective, and it is not a particularly difficult problem to identify very concise options and to make a decision on those. Those things were vetted in the Natural Resources Committee and are being vetted on the floor here. But to say that this took 2 days, in all due respect, is not accurate.

I do want to comment briefly on the comment having to do with State laws are already handling this. Yes, of course, this is always an issue that we have in determining whether, in the context of our work here, we should have the Federal Government apply standards or leave it to the States.

In this particular case, we have the worst of all worlds. We have differing State laws in terms of the private ownership and exploitation of big cats; and we also have both Federal and State laws that both preempt and leave it to the States.

But I would submit that the Captive Wildlife Safety Act, which is where we started on this almost 20 years ago, a Federal law that said that we were going to, as a country, state that you can no longer import these big cats from their homes; thus, decimating their populations where they came from, and encouraging a trade that has led them to the brink of extinction in most cases. We said that that is a Federal matter, and that is what we are trying to follow.

This is only an extension of that particular act. So I think it is a particularly worthwhile area for us to develop Federal standards and end a lot of doubt among the States and among the Federal Government and the States collectively and get on with the goal of protecting our people, protecting our animals, and protecting our law enforcement.

I urge adoption of this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Scalise for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, the House will meet at 12 p.m. for morning hour and 2 p.m. for legislative business with votes postponed, as usual, to 6:30 p.m.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the House will meet at 10 a.m. I reiterate that because that's 2 hours earlier than the usual meeting, but we have a lot of business to do. So the House on Wednesday and Thursday will meet at 10 a.m. for legislative business.

On Friday, the scheduled last day of the session before the August break, the House will meet at 9 a.m. for legislative business.

Next week, pending action of the Senate, hopefully, the House will consider the CHIPS Plus legislation to

combat inflation by easing supply chain bottlenecks and semiconductors that are critical components in everything from cars to dishwashers to small electronics.

Essentially, all of that, so many things that we use, rely on having chip presence. That will help lower costs for Americans and increase supplies.

This bill also will authorize a generational shift in research and innovation in America, helping ensure the next big ideas will start here, and, importantly, stay here.

The House will also consider H.R. 5118, the Wildfire Response and Drought Resiliency Act. All of us have seen the awful drought and wildfires that are occurring in the West and in other parts of the country, actually.

A package of bills aimed at helping those living in Western States meet the challenges of fire and drought exacerbated by the climate crisis will be in that legislation. It would save lives, property, farms, and businesses from damage and destruction from fire and extreme drought.

The House will also consider, Mr. Speaker, Representative Kildee's bill, the Susan Muffley Act, to restore retirement benefits for over 20,000 hardworking Delphi salaried employees. That is a bipartisan bill.

We will also consider Representative Quigley's H.R. 263, the Big Cat Public Safety Act, which would ban the private ownership of big cats and bring an end to the harmful cub petting industry in an effort to enhance the safety of our communities.

You may not think about this, but law enforcement has indicated this is a significant issue for them because they are the ones that are called in to handle it. This is an effort to enhance the safety of our communities and protect first responders and safeguard these wild animals.

The other reason it is on is because the Senate has asked, and I think there is a possibility that they will pass this through their unanimous consent process.

Representative Jayapal's bill, H.R. 3771, the South Asian Heart Health Awareness and Research Act, will also be on the floor to raise awareness regarding the alarming rate of heart disease in the South Asian community and invest in reversing this trend.

Lastly, I would say that we are going to have Representative Liz Cheney's H.R. 4040, the advancing telehealth beyond COVID-19 Act, which would further extend critical telehealth policies implemented during the pandemic, while also making it easier for seniors, especially those in rural areas, to access emergency healthcare technology.

Additionally, Mr. Speaker, the House may consider public safety legislation, including legislation marked up yesterday by the House Judiciary Committee with a focus, as well, on accountability in terms of enforcement.

The House will consider bills under suspension of the rules, of course. The complete list of suspension bills will be announced by the close of business today. As always, additional legislative items are possible, particularly in this last week for us of our planned session prior to the August break.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Republican whip for yielding the time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlemen for his question.

Of course, we are hearing rumors all the time and press reports all the time about what may happen. I think most of us don't know actually what will happen. But to speculate, we clearly on our side of the aisle, and, obviously, there is discussion that continues in the Senate about taking some parts of the reconciliation bill that can be agreed upon by sufficient numbers to pass it through reconciliation.

If something does happen, and it doesn't happen next week and it happens the following week when we will not be here, then we may well have to come back.

I tell the gentleman the reason for that is it may well deal with the Affordable Care Act and the premium subsidies that were included in the American Recovery Plan and then further extended in the Build Back Better Act.

The reason that is important is because the insurance companies will be setting prices in September and maybe as late as October. In order to price their product properly, they will need to know what we are going to do.

Now, with respect to the gentleman's--and everybody's interested in this, of course. The gentleman asked the question, I think, that everybody wants to know: Are we going to come back in August?

I don't know the answer to that, but I will tell you this--and you and I have discussed this before--one of the reasons we are leaving next week and the week thereafter is because we have a lot of people with young children. We see them on the floor all the time.

Of course, schools now are going back earlier than they used to. When I was in school in the 1800s, schools went back after Labor Day. Now, as you know, we have schools going back as early as the middle of August. Therefore, what we have tried to do is have 2 weeks that Members will have to be with their families on vacation.

So my expectation is if we have to come back that we will not come back during the first 2 weeks. That would be from my perspective, and I don't want to guarantee that, but I feel pretty strongly about that.

I am telling our Members that, and I want to respond publicly, but we may have to come back in August, again, because if the Senate passes language, if it has an impact on ACA, then we need to let the insurance companies know, not as a favor to them but as a favor to our constituents, so the pricing of their product will be more affordable.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. We are all very concerned about inflation, and one of the things that I talked about in the Affordable Care Act, a significant cost for Americans is their health insurance, and that bill is designed specifically to help them with the costs that they are incurring.

But I would point out to the gentleman: Gas prices, which are a significant part of inflation, have come down 36 days in a row, have come down over half a dollar in most areas of the country, and so we are making some progress, but not enough.

We passed a bill, of course, through this House which talked about price gouging. I don't know that anybody is for price gouging. Obviously, how to define price gouging is not simple, but having said that, I think certainly Americans want to make sure that they aren't gouged because they have to have a product.

We have also passed the act related to food and fuel to help with supply lines, to help with competition and help consumers bring their food prices down and gasoline prices by, for instance, helping out in the Midwest with E-15 being available, which is a cheaper price.

The gentleman is correct. We have and we are dealing with inflationary issues. In fact, hopefully, the CHIPS bill is going to pass the Senate. Hopefully, we are going to pass it here, and it will have other items involved in it, hopefully dealing with manufacturing.

I have an agenda that I think the gentleman has heard me talk about probably ad nauseam, Make It In America. I believe we ought to make things in America, and in doing so, help bring prices down because we will have supply availability here. I don't know if the gentleman has heard me use a phrase, we need to stop relying on the unreliable. I think the gentleman has made some of those comments himself.

I also want to say that there is a lot of, in my opinion, political assertion of the fact that this administration has caused inflation, which I think is completely without any factual support. In fact, although clearly inflation is unacceptably high at 9.1 percent in June, the OECD average of economically developed countries in the world is 9.6 percent, so this is not something unique to America.

It is a global inflation. It is not Biden policy inflation. It is global, largely caused by the pandemic, largely caused by the reduction in supply of goods and the reduction in demand for a period of time. And then with the American Rescue Plan we saw, not only in our country, but all over the world, there came a surge of demand, but because you had had the pandemic and you had sent workers home and they hadn't come in to produce goods, the supply was down, the demand went up, and unfortunately, inflation followed, which is very harmful to our people.

As I say, the average OECD, however, is higher than we are. We are not an outlier. The G20 average is 8.8 percent, just about exactly what we are, and our closest peers--Germany, Canada, and the U.K.--are all around 8 percent inflation, so we are all in that place where inflation is causing our people a lot of pain, and we need to deal with it.

The President has been trying to deal with it, and I think we have been trying to deal with it. As I said, we passed a lot of legislation. I think the CHIPS bill is going to have a really big impact.

The car industry and related industries are one-third of inflation.

Why is that? Because the chips shortage has caused literally millions of cars to be sitting on docks or sitting in parking lots somewhere unable to be sold because we can't get the chips. Used car prices have gone up because they are in greater demand. Again, when you have greater demand, prices go up.

So I would say to my friend, you and I agree 100 percent that inflation needs to be dealt with. The Fed, obviously, is trying to do that as well because one way you deal with inflation is to increase interest rates and try to slow down the economy. When you slow down the economy what you are trying to do is reduce demand to meet supply and stabilize prices.

So I say to my friend, we have been doing a lot of things to try to deal with inflation. I mentioned a number of those bills that we passed. A number of them are still in the Senate. But let us hope that gasoline prices keep coming down. There are some who expect they may go back up.

They are not set by us. They are set on the international market, and clearly there is no doubt that the war has had an impact on those prices, a significant impact on those prices. That is not the only reason because, as I said in our colloquy a couple weeks ago, the oil companies reduced production by 800,000 barrels per day.

Why? Because demand was down.

Why? Not for a bad reason. The pandemic kept people in their homes, and they weren't driving, so demand went down, so the normal reaction of the supplier was to reduce their supply.

This President believes that inflation is one of the top problems confronting the American people and the administration, and he is going to continue to work to try to bring that down.

I am hoping the CHIPS bill comes over soon, the Senate gets that done. In whatever form it comes, I hope it is more robust than less robust. I think it will have a positive impact on bringing down inflation.

And it would surprise him.

Mr. Speaker, we have had this discussion for over a month now about these bills, but also every time we have it, there is the plea that we produce, and if we would only produce. I bring this statistic up.

As the gentleman knows, as a result of our going back and forth, my staff has prepared a paper--and they have done an excellent job--as to what actually is the fact. Fact one, U.S. rig count--that is what drills for oil--is at current levels of 733. That is up 272 from 1 year ago. That is a 59 percent increase from a year ago, so that there is no doubt that we are producing more.

Now, as a practical matter, those of us who believe in the private sector and the capitalist system understand that the reason production goes up is because demand goes up and, therefore, companies want to sell more. But there are also companies that have not chosen to produce more for reasons of their own business judgment as to whether they think producing more will cause them to have better profits or lower profits or stay even.

This administration has presided over greater production in their first year than was true in the first 3 years individually--2017, 2018, and 2019, each one of those 3 years--under the Trump administration.

We are producing oil, and we are producing product. We are going to continue to do that. I can give you statistic after statistic of how many applications have been approved, are ready to go, and are not being used.

Rather than just rehash that, I will simply say, back to the issue of the gas prices, gas prices are lower today in real terms than they were at the end of the Bush administration in 2008. I pause for emphasis. In real dollars, the cost of gasoline at the pump at the end of 2008 was higher than it is today, and it is way too high today.

I was out in Virginia, in a rural area, and I saw gas for $4.36. At home, it had been almost $4.95, and that was an extraordinary decrease. I said: Boy, look at that. Then I caught myself because it is still a burden on our consumers, middle-class, working families, when, as the whip says, they confront a price of two or three times what they were used to when filling up their car. So, we need to continue to work on that.

I disagree with the whip in the sense, Mr. Speaker, that I think the President's visit overseas--there was some controversy to it. I get that. I think it was very positive vis-a-vis our close ally Israel, and Israel said it was a very productive visit. I am glad the President did that. I also think that it gave additional stability indicating that this President, although we are focused like a laser on Ukraine and focused like a laser on the Far East, we are still focused on the Middle East and trying to make that region of the world a stable region of the world.

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

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, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

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 yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. LaMalfa), who serves on the Agriculture Committee and can talk about why this bill should have been under APHIS.

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

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 yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Hice).

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

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.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Fulcher).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Bentz).

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

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.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

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.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), my friend, the majority leader of the House.

Mr. Speaker, there are a few bills that we have been hearing might come that weren't discussed, and I know the gentleman alluded to the CHIPS Act. I know the Senate still hasn't finalized anything there. We are hearing they may.

There are some other bills we have been hearing might come over. Of course, it seems like we keep hearing talk that something on Build Back Better may come back over on budget reconciliation, whether it is the trillion plus, whether it is something different, whether we would come back in August to deal with that.

I don't know if the gentleman can touch on what he might be hearing from the Senate, and if there would be any plans beyond next week to come back in August where it is currently not scheduled to be a legislative period that we would be in session. I am not sure if the gentleman is willing to share that, but I will yield.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I appreciate especially the concern about that first 2 weeks because as with my family and a lot of families, those first few weeks where the families are still together before everybody goes back to school, you know, a lot of plans are made.

We have a lot of work to do. We also have families, and you don't want to, you know, lose that element of having people be able to spend the time back in their districts and back with their families. If schedules have to change, at least give some lead time. I know Members on both sides appreciate that.

Clearly, a lot of this depends on what the Senate does or doesn't do. For those of us that would prefer the Senate work in a bipartisan way or especially work in a way that focused on addressing and being aware of the inflationary problems in the country, and, of course, we just saw last week, 9.1 percent inflation, 40-year high, a lot of that driven by the spending in Washington.

There is still talk that the Senate is trying to reach some agreement that would lead to a potential large amount of tax increases. A trillion dollars is a number that keeps being thrown around. It seems like trillions of dollars keep getting thrown around to the point where inflation has gotten out of control from the spending.

We all know how much families are paying for so many things: gas prices, when they go to the grocery stores, all the things that they buy, if they can afford to buy them, those things are dramatically higher.

Hopefully, the Senate doesn't keep adding to that inflation by coming up with more ways to spend money that we don't have. We will see.

There is also talk that as part of the ObamaCare subsidies--you know, that is an entirely different conversation--that bill still needs heavy subsidies that are not affordable, but they are talking about drug price controls that would be paired with that.

Again, more a message to our friends on the other side of the Chamber in the Senate, just for situational awareness when countries do price controls, there is a cost in terms of lifesaving drugs that are not available in countries where they have done price controls. When you look at the United States, clearly a leader in innovation--we have seen it with Operation Warp Speed where we were able to get three different vaccines approved in less than a year because we encourage innovation in this country, we don't penalize that innovation.

But there are countries that do try to fix prices. While it might sound populist to do it, the cost for those countries is that many lifesaving drugs are not available in those countries. We all hear about Canada. Canada clearly is a country that fixes prices. France is a country that fixes prices. You can see here, almost half of the drugs that are available in America that save lives are not available in Canada and France.

I know there is a temptation, as they are negotiating over in the Senate, to get into the price-fixing business. I am not sure which lifesaving drugs the Senate would like to remove off the shelves of the United States, but there will be lifesaving drugs removed off the shelves. Let's not do to drug manufacturing and lifesaving innovation in America what they have done to baby formula in America, where you can't even find it on the shelves. You will not be able to find many lifesaving drugs on the shelves in America if they go to price fixing.

I know it is a heated negotiation over there. They haven't come to an agreement. Hopefully, they won't come to an agreement on something that would actually take lifesaving drugs off the shelves in this country.

I would yield to the gentleman.

I know there has been a lot of work by Members on both sides on the CHIPS Act. Mr. McCaul on our side, through the China Task Force, put out a number of recommendations. The CHIPS Act was one of them. Of course, one of the concerns we are seeing, as that bill continues to be negotiated in the Senate, it is not being negotiated more narrowly, it is being loaded up to the point where we are hearing numbers of well over $100 billion in unpaid-for new spending as part of that bill.

As we talk about inflation, any economist will tell you, inflation is too much money chasing too few goods, and if we already acknowledge there are too few goods, to put another $100-plus billion, maybe $150 billion--it keeps growing every day--of borrowed money, none of that-- they are not prioritizing existing money. Everything we are hearing is all of it would be completely borrowed money.

Next week, we are hearing the Fed is going to raise interest rates maybe up to another point, and that is without $100-plus billion of additional debt being added on. If the Fed is telling us that the spending is leading to higher interest rates, which makes it harder for low-income families to buy their first home, for people to maybe expand their business where they can hire more people to go and meet the needs of the supply chain, they won't be able

to do that if interest rates keep going up.

And yet, as interest rates are about to go up again next week, the Senate is trying to figure out how to keep adding and adding and adding on top of what is already probably well over $100 billion in borrowed money that they are going to send over here.

I hope that we would keep that in mind as we are also trying to address these other problems like gas prices. I know we have talked about this many times. I shared it with the majority whip last week and would ask the majority leader again. We have identified a number of bills that have strong support that would address the many problems we are hearing that are leading to an inability to produce energy in America.

We saw the President go hat in hand to Saudi Arabia last week. As I and many others predicted, we all knew that they were going to tell the President no, but I also suggested that if the President just saved the 11,000-plus miles on Air Force One and stayed here and called places like Port Fourchon, Louisiana, they would say yes to producing more energy, not in Saudi Arabia where their carbon emissions are much higher, but here in the United States where nobody in the world does it better, does it cleaner, or more efficiently.

That would create more jobs in our country, and it would give more energy security to our country. It would allow us to lower gas prices, not just for us but for our allies around the world. And yet, instead of working with us on these bills, the President chooses to go to foreign countries who have no interest in lowering gas prices, and so we still end up in this situation.

I don't know if there is an opportunity to get any or all of these bills brought up where we could actually come to an agreement on some things that would move the needle and help families in America lower gas prices. Today, we are still over double what the price of gasoline was before President Biden took office.

Wherever the price moves, up or down, when families are paying over $150 to fill up their car, it is taking a huge hit out of low- and middle-income families' budgets, and that is one of the driving factors behind the sluggish economy.

I don't know if the gentleman wants to make an announcement of some of these bills coming to the floor. I would welcome that, and I would yield.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. This debate will continue. It would be great if we were debating these bills next week. I stand to be surprised and happily surprised if the announcement comes out over the weekend that some or all of these bills will be brought to the floor.

I would give the gentleman a prediction that if the House were to take up and pass these bills, we would see a dramatic reduction in the price of gasoline. I will leave that out there for the gentleman to consider as one more reason why these would be good debates to have, where we could talk together in support of good policy.

We are both blessed with good staff that help us identify really good pieces of legislation that we could bring to address these big, big problems that families are facing.

Mr. Speaker, unless the gentleman has anything else, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Representative from California and my colleague on the Rules Committee for yielding me the customary 30 minutes, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Today, we are here to discuss the rule providing for consideration of H.R. 4040, the Advancing Telehealth Beyond COVID-19 Act, and H.R. 263, the Big Cat Public Safety Act.

First, H.R. 4040 will extend several Medicare telehealth flexibilities that were initially utilized during the pandemic.

Telehealth has allowed many Americans to receive needed healthcare across the Nation. While my Republican colleagues and I appreciate the extension of these important programs, we believe that permanently authorizing them is the better option.

Once again, the Democrats have decided to skip the committee process and refuse Republican input or look at any possible improvements to the bill. I know that many Members will be supporting this bill, but I still must mention this missed opportunity to strengthen healthcare and telehealth, especially for rural Minnesota and rural America.

Second, H.R. 263, the Big Cat Public Safety Act, would make it illegal for any person to trade, breed, or possess any prohibited wildlife species, specifically exotic big cat species like lions, tigers, snow leopards, et cetera. The bill would impose civil and criminal penalties for violators and grant the Federal Government the authority to order forfeiture of big cats held in private captivity. Many of the provisions of this legislation already exist under the USDA regulatory scheme.

More than anything, Mr. Speaker, I am wholeheartedly disappointed in how my colleagues are managing the remaining time left in this Congress. The absence of any sense of urgency to fix the real problems facing this country is incredibly frustrating.

This country is at the doorstep of a recession, but instead of addressing it, the U.S. House of Representatives is spending time on the regulation of big cats. My constituents are calling my office because their families are struggling to pay for basic needs like food and gas. They are calling because they want us to secure national borders and address the fentanyl epidemic. They are calling because they want to know what Congress is doing about rampant crime in cities across the country. These are the issues facing our constituents. These are the issues they are calling about because they are the issues affecting their everyday lives and the ones we should be focusing on.

It is because of the irresponsible policies by Democrats that we have such a big hole to dig ourselves out of, and now they want to ignore these problems altogether and take up our precious time left in Congress to consider legislation built off reality TV.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose the rule, I ask Members to do the same, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, if we defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule to immediately consider H.R. 8488, a bill to prohibit the Secretary of Energy from sending petroleum products from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to China.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of my amendment into the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or SPR, is an important national security tool and safety net for this country. The United States has already been improperly depleting the Strategic Petroleum Reserve under this administration since it is refusing to increase domestic production during an energy crisis.

We most certainly should not be selling our emergency supply to an adversary like China.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan) to speak further on the amendment.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from South Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to remind my colleague from the Rules Committee that, as I mentioned before, many of the Republicans plan on supporting the telehealth bill, although I think we missed the opportunity to have Republican input and have an improved bill. But we are able to do more than one thing.

My colleague mentioned that this is very partisan. Gas and oil prices are a serious, serious issue for our constituents. As I mentioned before, it is about their getting to work, it is about their getting to school, and it is about their getting to church. They need us to address the cost of oil and gas.

The Democrats have really just simply tried to distract from this issue and tried to distract us with all kinds of other things and not really talk about the issues facing our constituents.

And like I said earlier, we certainly do have Republican support for the telehealth bill. As a matter of fact, I believe that there are Republican sponsors of that bill.

But I think that what is happening now is the Democrats are truly trying to distract from the issues that are really facing our constituents.

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

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

I just have to say that the calls for working together ring hollow to me because working together should be happening in markup. Working together should be happening in committee meetings. But the Democrats have repeatedly and consistently chosen to skip the committee process and bring things directly to the Rules Committee and directly to the floor. And so when they call for working together, I think that that starts at the committee process.

And as for bringing solutions to the floor, the Westerman-McMorris Rodgers bill that would address the energy costs has been brought repeatedly as a PQ to the floor. The Democrats had the opportunity to take a look at that and to vote on it.

With a more exact answer, I yield 1 minute to my colleague from South Carolina (Mr. Duncan).

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

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to mention that finding middle ground actually starts with allowing the minority input into bills, whether that be in committee or offering amendments on the floor. But that is where finding middle ground and that is where finding bipartisan solutions starts.

I would also like to remind my colleague from the Rules Committee that this PQ would not stop consideration of the bills in the rule. It would simply allow consideration of the amendment that was proposed.

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

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

I have to just mention again, because I am confused, and I want it stated very clearly what I have said repeatedly. There are many Republicans who will be supporting the telehealth bill.

Mr. Speaker, there are many Republicans that will be supporting the telehealth bill. That is not where I am concerned that we are not addressing constituents' issues with.

Where I am concerned about our constituents is the price of gas and the inflation that they are facing, and that we need to be addressing those issues; and that is why we offered the PQ that we did. And that is why we have offered repeated solutions to the cost of gas and the inflation facing our constituents.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I do continue to be disappointed in my colleagues. It is possible that they are really this out of touch.

The typical family is now spending almost $500 per month. Across the country, people are making changes like skipping meals, changing driving patterns, and even delaying retirement to adjust their lives to cope with the accelerating inflation; inflation caused by out-of- control government spending and regulation.

Cities across the country are experiencing record crime waves. We have a serious immigration crisis leading to the deaths of countless people at our southern border and in our hometowns because of the fentanyl drug crisis crossing along with them.

I know that, like mine, your offices are getting daily calls about all of these. Why are we spending time on anything that does not work directly to solve those devastating problems in our country?

Maybe it is because Democrats want to distract us from the fact that their policies got us here, rather than fix them. We could be discussing genuine efforts to stop crime or increase domestic energy production or alleviate pressure points to the supply chain.

But, for the sake of the Green New Deal and rampant government spending, Americans are going to have to suffer through inaction on real issues facing Americans by this Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I oppose the rule, and I ask Members to do the same.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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