Is this an issue Congress should even be worrying about?

Question

The House of Representatives has voted to ban slaughtering horses for food.

Thanks for the link to THOMAS.

Answer 1

Is this an issue that Congress should be worrying about? Sure, why not?

If there's a problem with horses being slaughtered for food (and I suggest that you prove it isn't a problem before assuming it isn't one), then leaving it to the states would result in a patchwork of regulation that anyone intent on slaughtering horses could easily get around. It's better to have a uniform set of rules across all 50 states.

As to whether it's wasting Congress' precious time, I assure you that they could craft, deliberate and pass this kind of legislation in a very minimal amount of time. Looking at the legislative record on the bill, it appears that once the committees found the time for it, they acted fast enough to send it to the floor the next day & vote on it. These kinds of bills fly through Congress with the greatest of ease, despite the fact that the media isn't making a big deal about it (perhaps BECAUSE the media isn't making a big deal about it.)

So don't worry one bit that Congress is spending huge amounts of time on this issue. As one who worked for four years on Capitol Hill, I can assure you that the vast majority of their time is spent on bigger, more pressing issues. They simply have the ability to deliberate over thousands of bills during every Congress & pass over 1000 of them each time.

If you want to find out about the pros & cons of this bill, as well as the content of the bill and the actions taken on it by Congress, I suggest you take a look at the bill record in THOMAS:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:HR00503:@@@L&summ2=m&

Answer 2

Yeah, it's silly for congress to spend time on this, but I'm more worried about the stupid things congress does that actually DO impact our lives.

Our founding fathers would clearly have regarded this as one of the matters that's "reserved to the states, or the people". However, we seem to have forgotten that the consitution is supposed to ban the federal government from doing anything outside a narrow, specific list of things.

Answer 3

On the scale of importance to me, this ranks as one rung higher on the ladder than does gay marriage or flag burning. Meaning, very little.

Given that..I do think that slaughtering horses for food is repulsive. More repulsive than gay marriage could ever be.

Answer 4

Horse meat is good.
You'd be surprised how much you've eaten without knowing it.
How many cups of pesticide do you eat in a year on vegetables and fruit?

Answer 5

I guess this keeps them occupied so they don't have to deal with the real issues.

Answer 6

its not the most important thing for them to be dealing with right now

Answer 7

sound ridiculous since most american have no health plan nor money to buy food.