I haven’t been following the debate over the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act which is now being debated in the Senate. But it seems like a set of reforms that are long overdue:
The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act, a prevention-focused bill that would boost the FDA’s inspection mandate, give it mandatory recall authority, and require food facilities to put food safety plans in place, is the first overhaul of the federal food safety regulatory system in over seven decades. It has maintained wide bipartisan support in the Senate and the House, where a version of the bill approved in July 2009.
Naturally, the corporate whores are active in opposition, placing opinion pieces in the newspapers. But, really, this is a bill with fairly broad bipartisan support. It has already survived a cloture vote and succeeded in a motion to proceed. This is a bill about food safety, after all. But that doesn’t mean that the Republicans are abandoning their Party of No Strategy.
Opponents of the legislation, however, have so far declined to expedite the process for bringing the legislation to the floor, threatening to push it until the week after Thanksgiving. Senate rules require 30 hours to elapse after a vote to end a filibuster, but the Senate can agree to bypass that requirement.
“If we have to use up all the time, waste all the time with these 30-hour provisions that are allowed under the Senate procedures, we’re going to have to be here during the weekend,” Reid told colleagues Thursday morning. “This is something we need to get done.”
Republicans, however, dismissed the threat, noting it’s the 19th time Reid has threatened a working weekend during the 111th Congress and that he rarely brings those threats to pass.
I think Reid might follow through this time, but that is not why I am writing about this bill. Now, I know that the Republicans wouldn’t have written this bill in this way, but it is a bill that has broad support within their caucus, and they have had plenty of input in the authorship of this legislation. I know why they are delaying, but why did more than half their caucus vote against cloture and the motion to proceed? Are they really opposed to the first comprehensive updating of our food safety laws in seventy years? Don’t they eat like all the rest of us? Maybe they don’t like some provisions of the bill, but it is the product of a bipartisan effort and there are no alternative bills. The choice is between increasing food safety or not increasing food safety. And, yet, most Republicans in the Senate still oppose this bill.
