Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman yielding the time. The information you just heard there is a lot of fallacy in that. He makes it sound like the Farm Bureau is behind this. The Farm Bureau is not behind it, other than in Tennessee and in Kentucky. I have got a list here of the infractions, and 90 percent of them are from Tennessee; a couple from Kentucky, a couple from North Carolina, but the majority are from Tennessee. This bill, we sat down specifically with the USDA, APHIS, the regulating body of the USDA on animal cruelty, and we made sure, being a practicing veterinarian, that the owner was protected and that the trainer was protected from an overzealous USDA inspector. They have to be certified and trained, and they have to be licensed. And we added the objective testing. We use thermography. We use radiology. We do swabs of the skin. In fact, we use the same technology that our Department of Homeland Security uses to pick up traces of explosives and things like that. That is how in-depth we went. But we also made sure the safeguards were there for the owner and for the trainer. This bill should not have to--he talked about this is something in the past. Well, if it was in the past, we wouldn't do it. And he brought up the expense of this bill. So we are saying it is okay, if it is too expensive, we can't do this. We can sore the horses because it is too expensive. That is a bogus argument, and I think it is a shameful argument.…”