Tonight's the Night - S. 510 - Food Safety Modernization Act - Expected to Pass Senate

After tracking Senate bill 510, the Food Safety and Modernization Act, for the better part of a couple of weeks now, I think I know why they call it “passing” legislation: the same reason they call it “passing” a kindey stone: because it seems every bit as painful.

Following introduction in March of 2009, the bill had a pretty typical path through the Senate - long, arduous, at times pointless. But after lubricating the gears of democracy with the slippery salve of the Tester-Hagan Amendment last week, it looks like the legislation will get an up or down vote, and will likely pass, this evening. OpenCongress has the rundown. Warning - sausage making ahead:

"At 6:30 p.m. ET, the Senate will take a vote on invoking cloture (a.k.a. breaking a filibuster) of the manager’s amendment, which is basically a substitute text for the bill that makes several minor tweaks and includes the Tester local foods amendment. Cloture votes require a 3/5ths majority, or 60 votes, to pass, and this one is expected to pass with a handful of votes to spare (the last cloture vote on moving forward with the bill passed 74-25)."

OK, makes sense. Seems everything these days has to overcome a filibuster. No big whoop.

"After that, there will be four votes on amendments, mostly on stuff unrelated to the food safety bill. The first two votes will be on competing versions of repealing the 1099 reporting requirementfrom the new health care law. Everyone seems to be in general agreement on this — small businesses argue that it would be too much paperwork for them and D’s, R’s and Obama seem to agree — but the question is how to make up for the loss in revenue that would result from the repeal (about $17 billion over ten years). The Republican amendment would pay for it with unidentified appropriations cuts (to be fleshed out by the OMB at a later) and, so far, the pay-for in the Democratic amendment is unclear. The chances of either of these passing is unclear at the moment."

Not sure about you, but I chafe at the idea that additional tweaking of the health care bill would somehow be appropriate to attach to a food safety bill. There’s enough going on in this legislation without having to make it even more complicated for regular folks to understand. Plus, you get those political commercials saying “so and so voted to add $17 billion to the debt!” when what so and so was really doing was voting on a food safety bill.

"The next two votes will be on amendments from Sen. Tom Coburn , one on banning earmarks for the 112th session of the Senate and one an alternate version of the food safety bill. The earmark amendment would essentially take the already-approved internal Republican earmark ban and make it a Senate-wide statute that the Democrats would have to follow as well. The alternate food safety bill would use private food inspectors instead of the FDA, require theFDA and USDA to streamline their activities, and provide the FDA with “limited new authorities” that Coburn says are “designed to better leverage the free market and focus resources on preventing food borne illness.” A section-by-section summary of the Coburn substitute can be found here (PDF). Both Coburn amendments are expected to fail."

One last shot at killing an overwhelmingly supported piece of legislation in a roundabout way, and…

"Once these four amendments are voted on, the Senate will vote on final passage of the bill. Since final passage only requires a simple majority of 51 votes and the Senate will have already overcome a 60-vote hurdle on the bill earlier in the evening, the final vote should be a slam dunk. After that it either goes to conference committee or gets sent to the House of Representatives for a vote on the bill as passed by the Senate. Since time is quickly running out of for the Democrats this year, I expect the conference committee will be skipped over and the House will simply vote on the Senate bill. The House has already voted 283-142 in favor of their own food safety bill (H.R.2749)."

I think the last part is important. The House passing the Senate version means there’s no way that the small business protections afforded by Tester-Hagan can be taken out of the legislation the president eventually signs.

It’s not exactly Schoolhouse Rock, but it’s the way our system works.

Edit: if NaturalNews is against it, it must be good.

Sid

The few people I know who are actually aware of this bill are all adamantly opposed, since among other things it lets bureaucrats in DC to use the force of law to stop you from growing a garden in your yard. Given the record of corporate corruption infesting this Congress, is there any reason to doubt this is anything but one huge giveaway to agribusinesses like Monsanto and ADM? What sort of "food safety" is allegedly to be provided here, and at what price?

I'd wager that the real purposes of this bill have absolutely nothing to do with any aspect of it that is under discussion.