The Unseen Cost of the "Not Without My Goldfish" Bill

Tom Lantos, Barney Frank and Chris Shays hate people. How else to explain this?

Federal disaster grants to state and local governments should be conditioned on how they accommodate pets in their evacuation plans, say lawmakers disturbed that some Hurricane Katrina victims refused to leave home because they couldn't take their animals with them.

"I cannot help but wonder how many more people could have been saved had they been able to take their pets," Rep. Tom Lantos, D-Calif., said Thursday.

Lantos is probably right that some people died because they refused to be evacuated without their pets. But, right or wrong, passage of the trio's bill -- which mandates already scarce evacuation space be set aside for pets -- will only serve to crowd out space meant for people, and lead to the death of both more humans and more of the pets they own.

[Cross-posted at The Agitator.]