Jim Saxton: “one would hardly know what this bill was about listening to the debate. This rule is about a bill which has been long in…”

“one would hardly know what this bill was about listening to the debate. This rule is about a bill which has been long in coming. We have been working on this bill for 3 years, and it came as a result of a law actually that was passed in 1993, because in 1993, we recognized that we were killing too many dolphins in the eastern tropical Pacific by way of tuna fish fishermen. What was happening back then, Mr. Speaker, is very simply that the way of catching tuna was to find a school of dolphin and recognizing that tuna fish school up under dolphin, we would surround, or the fishermen would surround the dolphin with large nets called purse seine nets and scoop up the tuna fish along with the dolphins. We found that we were killing something in excess of 100,000 dolphins a year. That is what this issue is about. I find it regrettable that the other side has seen fit to take this time and steal it away from the environmental community who have been waiting for 3 years at least to discuss this issue today seriously and take the time and use it for something else. But the bill that is coming today I think is a very important one and it really has taken a long time to get here. What we will do today is to turn back the bill that was passed in 1993, which did in effect make American fishermen stop fishing on dolphins, as the terminology goes, stop fishing on dolphins so that we would not kill 100,000. And we have reduced the kill of dolphins to a very, very low level.”