Cat Fish '08 is taking this semester off to intern with Representative Adam Smith's office in DC, working alongside Andrea Tull '02, who we've featured in past. Cat sends along this observation from her first week of work:
"Now, the means by which our nation disposes of elderly horses may seem like a superfluous detail in the greater scheme of politics. But after spending three days in a congressional office, I can assure you that there are countless American citizens (or at least countless citizens of he the 9th congressional district of Washington State) who feel ever so passionately about the issue. Congress was scheduled to vote on the horse slaughter ban today. This lead to a dramatic influx of calls, letters, emails and faxes over the past few days from enraged constituents.
Today Congress voted on the American Horse Slaughter prevention Act (HR 503). Over the past few days, our office has been inundated with constituent calls, emails, letters and faxes regarding this issue. There was a 4 hour period yesterday in which our office received over 400 calls in support of this bill. Many of the citizens were advocates of the humane society who wanted to make sure that “Representative Smith treated horses like cats and dogs”. On the other side there were agricultural lobbyists who called and emailed with statistics on how much the money the ban would cost the federal government due to the fact that they would have to create shelters for these horses.
After carefully listening to constituents and reading memos about the bill, I was highly curious about which way Smith would vote. I could see reasons to vote each way. The lobbyists were very convincing, but the sheer number of constituents who contacted us about supporting the bill was staggering. When we asked the legislative assistant responsible for animal issues only an hour before the vote, he told us that the congressman had not yet made up his mind.
It turns out that Smith did vote in support of the ban, and furthermore, the ban was passed in the House of Representatives. This bill entirely prohibits the shipping, transporting, moving, delivering, receiving, possessing, purchasing, selling, or donation of horses and other equines to be slaughtered for human consumption, and for other purposes. So don’t get any ideas.
Even though this bill seemed slightly ridiculous to me at first, it was a good example of the process by which bills are introduced, debated, voted on and passed in congress. I’m not entirely certain what exactly made Smith decide to support the bill (I'll ask a staffer tomorrow), but I’d like to think that it had something to do with the hundreds of constituents who contacted our office and voiced their opinion. Maybe answering the phone is a more valuable step in the democratic process than I had originally thought; maybe next time I see an elderly horse, it'll give me a little wink."
I look forward to sharing more observations from Cat and have already pestered Andrea for an appropriate shot of the two of them with some impressive piece of Capitol architecture as a backdrop. Once again, PG students and alums hold the reins of power in the beltway!
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