Taxpayers should back ban on horse slaughter

The purpose of Marc Short and Andrew Koenig's Sept. 30th article "Congress Must Keep Its Promises" was to target politicians for not keeping their word about lowering spending, but what I read was a call to action.

We, the taxpayers, the constituents, should not be spectators but actors, insisting that our tax dollars are spent on what matters to us. For this reason, I want to urge Sen. Mark Kirk to do all he can to prohibit funding for horse slaughter plant inspection, essentially keeping horse slaughter plants from operating in the U.S.

An issue that has the support of more than two-thirds of American voters, banning horse slaughter on U.S. soil keeps our tax dollars from being spent on an industry that is driven almost entirely by foreign demand.

Americans do not eat horse meat, but American communities will suffer the havoc wreaked by environmentally damaging slaughter plants, and American dollars will be spent inspecting the plants so that they can continue shipping meat to international consumers.

This would in fact divert money from inspections of plants producing meat Americans actually eat. Unlike many other issues being debated, this is cut and dry: taxpayer money should not be spent to support something that taxpayers do not benefit from.

Sen. Kirk supported this amendment last year, and I urge him to support it again - when there is so much contentious spending, we cannot afford to ignore something so unanimously desired by American taxpayers.

Kathleen Welton

Chicago