James Holt's January 23, 2006 PAWS Fairytale to Ron Menaker and the AKC Fancy as republished in Dog News and on AKC's website

SAOVA February 5, 2006 comments in blue. Mr. Ronald Menaker Chairman of the Board The American Kennel Club 260 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 Dear Ron: As requested, I am writing this letter to explain to the AKC's constituency the legislative process that can be expected as congressional consideration of PAWS moves forward. As you know, Senator Santorum and his staff are working on revisions to the language of PAWS with Senate legislative counsel, who write Senate legislation, to address concerns expressed by the AKC and others. In his letter which you read at the recent Delegates' meeting, Senator Santorum stated that he hopes to release a "discussion draft" of these revisions by the end of the month. A "discussion draft" is simply a way of notifying colleagues and the public of a Senator's intention to make changes in a bill. At this time, while Congress is in recess, it is the only practical way of putting new legislative language before the public. Perhaps Dr. Holt is using last year's calendar or is on vacation. In actual fact, the Senate started its 2006 session in early January, nearly two weeks before he wrote this letter. Business was conducted, both on the floor and during Judge Alito's confirmation hearings. Senator Santorum personally introduced five new bills on January 25, 2006 and another on February 1st. Does the further delay signal that Senator Santorum finally realizes that PAWS can't be written to satisfy HSUS and DDAL without causing substantial injury to innocent parties and therefore is a considerable reelection liability? When the Senate reconvenes, Senator Santorum can actually make his proposed changes in PAWS in one of several ways. He can introduce a new, revised bill. He can offer the revisions as amendments to PAWS. Finally, he can offer a revised bill as an amendment in the nature of a substitute for the original language. Any of these actions will accomplish the same result. That result is that the bill that Senator Santorum's subcommittee, or the full Senate agriculture committee, considers will be the revised bill. See above. The next step in the legislative process is a "mark up" and vote on the revised PAWS bill by the Senate agriculture committee. Senator Santorum has indicated he plans to call for such a mark up early in the next session of Congress, which will get underway after the President's State of the Union address in early February. Committee action is normally followed by a floor vote by the full Senate, either on PAWS as a stand-alone bill, or as an amendment to some other piece of legislation that is before the Senate. The Senate's been in session for a month. PAWS was introduced more than eight months ago. "...he plans to call for such a mark up early..." Anyone else hear an echo? I should also note that the PAWS hearing on November 8, 2005 was just that, a hearing. It was not, and never was intended to be, a subcommittee mark up. Most legislation undergoes a hearing process before any votes are taken. The notion that because no vote on PAWS was taken at the November 8 hearing this indicates a lack of support for PAWS is a complete misrepresentation of the process. The hearing was organized by the Senate agriculture committee staff even though it was a subcommittee hearing. If the committee wanted to block action on PAWS, they simply would have denied the request for a hearing. Sheer nonsense and totally misleading. A congressional subcommittee chairman may hold a hearing any time he wishes, on virtually any germane subject. Full AG committee staff stressed that repeatedly in November. What was also emphasized was that committee members aren't compelled to attend such meetings, something made very obvious when none of the ten Santorum subcommittee members made even a token appearance on November 8th. No vote was ever scheduled or anticipated in conjunction with the PAWS hearing. Most informed observers know this is false. November's hearing could have and would have been converted into a subcommittee mark-up (revision) session on 24 hours notice, had broadly supported stakeholder language been accepted by a majority of the subcommittee. See Senator Santorum's July 27, 2005 floor statement in the Congressional Record. A mark-up, to revise S1139 in an effort to quell prolonged and justified public criticism, which destroyed any likelihood of committee acceptance, was definitely planned and dates set, first in September, then for October, canceled and the November press show substituted, an obvious Santorum-PAWS supporter set-back. While the Senator decided to ignore most stakeholders and only deal with AKC, HSUS, DDAL and AVMA, those parties met starting in August, continuing through the fall and couldn't agree on amending language. Other major stake holders, such as SAOVA and CFA, to this day, remain excluded from the AKC-HSUS-DDAL negotiations, which still hasn't generated USDA workable or politically viable PAWS language changes. The release of the post-hearing PAWS II "discussion draft" was rescheduled three times and has been missed again. The hearing accomplished what was intended. It brought PAWS to the attention of members of Congress and signaled to members that the legislation was beginning to move. It is worth noting that more than 90 percent of the bills introduced into Congress never get a hearing. Really? How many of those become law? Few to none. How many controversial bills that get "informational" hearings and no mark-up sessions are reported by the germane committees? None of them. How many law bills that aren't reported become part of the US Code? None, unless the Congress waives its rarely broken standing rules. Since the PAWS hearing, a substantial number of new co-sponsors have endorsed PAWS in both the Senate and House of Representatives. When Congress recessed in mid-December, nearly one quarter of the Senate, and more than one quarter of the House of Representatives were co-sponsors of PAWS. Additional co-sponsors are expected to be added when Congress reconvenes. Only four of sixty-six members of the key Senate and House Agriculture Committees are PAWS cosponsors. All of them are House members, none of whom is senior enough to hold a subcommittee chairmanship. That's not even enough for a basketball team. Two PAWS cosponsors have withdrawn their names and others are considering doing so, a very bad sign for the bill. The same division was the reason that Senator Santorum's 2001 Puppy Protection Act failed. See NO PAWS for detailed PAWS sponsorship data. It is common for federal legislation to take at least a full two-year congressional session, and often several sessions, before it is finally enacted. The fact that PAWS has already had a hearing and obtained such a large number of co-sponsors in the 8 months since it was introduced is very good progress by congressional legislative standards. I am confident that this good progress will continue in the second session of the current Congress. I'm more confident that's very wrong, as demonstrated by all of the above, other information and the fact all the negative written comments about PAWS docketed for the closed November 8th hearing still aren't available to the public, press or legislators. Key committee members want nothing to do with S1139 or HB2669. If pet owners across the country continue to oppose this animal rightist effort and contact their legislators to tell them how they feel, PAWS is dead. Sincerely yours, James S. Holt Federal Legislative Liaison The noise that you hear is AKC's consultant and management whistling past the graveyard.

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