Hey, they might as well continue traveling the same roads that lost them the House and several Senate seats
Almost a year to the day after a unanimous committee vote, a long-stalled bill to promote food safety is poised for Senate passage within a week.
The bill by Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) passed the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee on Nov. 18, 2009, with a 16-0 bipartisan vote. It had already passed the House in July 2009 on a 283-142 vote.
Well, we all love food safety, right? Democrats couldn’t possibly screw this up, right? It’s not like “high-risk foods would be exempt from safety regulations” or something.
The bill has 20 co-sponsors, of which eight are Republicans including Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.). However, other Republicans are opposed. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), for one, issued statements in September that blamed the bill for “new and unnecessary spending†and “burdensome regulations.â€
On Friday, Coburn spokesman John Hart said the senator “hopes to reach an agreement on the food safety bill that would avoid the need for a weekend session. He believes the American people have sent a clear message that it’s time to pay for new bills instead of borrowing.â€
It’s not a big spender, about $1.4 billion over 5 years, but, whatever happened to pay go? Wasn’t Pelosi just saying how great pay go was? Obviously, we all want food safety.
Dingell has hailed the bill as “a monumental piece of bipartisan legislation that will grant FDA the authorities and resources needed to effectively oversee an increasingly global food marketplace.†It is also critical, Dingell said, given the outbreaks of melamine, E. coli and salmonella in recent years.
That phrase coming from a BIG government Democrat like Dingell should scare everyone. One provision is
Require the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department and Agriculture Department to jointly develop a national plan to improve food safety, as well as an HHS requirement for a national system to better prevent possible problems in the food supply;
Considering the idiots in charge of HHS, that should scare the bejesus out of people, too. Why can’t Congress simply pass common sense legislation with a basis in the real world…….made myself laugh.
Anyhow, since you asked, why, yes it is yet another huge bill.
This is typical of the left’s way of thinking. When regulations fail, the way to handle the problem is to make more regulations – not enforce the regulations on the books.
One of the horrible results of this bill will be the death of the local roadside stand and “farmer’s markets.”
This bill demands a load of paperwork to track food from place to place – even if that place is from the field to a stand in front of the farm. Each batch of food must be tested and certified before being sold, which is something local farmers cannot afford.
The end result will be more people out of work in industries that actually produce something, and an increase in government who doesn’t produce anything.