Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2010--Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, one piece of unfinished business we have here in the Senate is to move a series of good, commonsense bills that would benefit wildlife and domestic animals.

These wildlife conservation and animal welfare bills have already passed the House of Representatives, and for a good reason. They also have bipartisan support. Most importantly, all of these measures are supported by the American people. These aren't Democratic or Republican issues; they are issues of good moral conscience.

I have worked over the years on many bills connected to animals and wildlife. Not long ago, Senator Cantwell and I worked with a number of our Republican colleagues to pass a felony level penalty bill for dog fighting and cock fighting. This was a bipartisan rejection of animal cruelty.

Today, we have the opportunity to help a great number of species. One bill ready for action, the Shark Conservation Act, will improve Federal enforcement of an existing prohibition on the killing of sharks just for their fins. Because of a loophole in the existing law, animals are still caught, their fins are severed, and the dismembered shark is sent back into the ocean to die. But they don't just die, they suffer a horrible and protracted death--all of that cruelty for a bowl of soup.

Another important bill is the Marine Mammal Rescue Assistance Act, which will strengthen programs that provide emergency aid to seals, whales, and other marine creatures that get struck by boats or tangled in fishing lines. This happens all the time.

Other bills, such as the Crane Conservation Act, the Great Cats and Rare Canids Act, and the Southern Sea Otter Recovery Act, will protect some of the most rare and remarkable creatures anyplace on Earth. Without our help, many of these creatures could disappear within a generation.

I also wish to draw attention to the efforts of Senators Merkley and Kyl today to clear an important bill that will end the appalling practice of animal crush videos. It is hard for me to comprehend what some people do. They torture animals and take pictures of them and sometimes sell those pictures. There are people sick enough to want to watch a little animal or a big animal be crushed and killed. They call them animal crush videos. The law we passed in 1999 outlawing these videos was struck down by the Supreme Court in April of this year. Senators Kyl and Merkley have worked to write a more narrowly tailored bill that respects the first amendment while still punishing those who seek to profit from the torture of puppies, kittens, and other helpless animals.

As I understand it, the Supreme Court said you can't stop people from buying these videos to watch. But we can stop people from doing these terrible things that people want to watch.

I hope we can work these out and pass these by unanimous consent. Why do we need debate on these issues? These are good bipartisan bills that deserve to be passed.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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Mr. REID. Mr. President, I have a number of unanimous consent requests that I am going to ask. But I have been told the Republicans want to look a few of these over, and I have no problem with that. I can do it later tonight or tomorrow sometime. These are important issues. I have given a brief synopsis of some of the awful things going on around the country as they relate to animals. We should do something to take care of this. I hope we can get these cleared. These are not great legal issues, but they are moral issues. If we can't treat animals in a fair way, we can't treat ourselves in a fair way.

When we come in, in the morning, I will ask for these consents. I appreciate my friend from Mississippi for his usual manner of being so courteous in allowing me to go forward with my statement.

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